Remember when hip-hop used to be ground breaking? When it was fresh, and shocking, and relevant, and felt like it actually might be working towards changing the way we lived, or some other profound bullshit like that? Y'know, back in the day when it actually pissed off your parents?I do. I fell in love with it in the mid-90s when I was a kid. It felt transgressive, exciting and in my naive, teenage mind, I thought it was a music for and about everyone. Like, we're all oppressed by the man and stuff, so we should all unite under one banner and fight back, yeah? Yeah! Well, unfortunately it didn't really pan out like that. I quickly found out that rap had no place for me, not because I was white, but because I like to suck a dick. In fact, I don't just like it, I LOVE it.Anyway, it's all change now, right? Frank Ocean has cured everything and now I'm free to be me! Huzzah!It's good news for Christeene too. Christeene's a drag performer from Austin, whose extreme but hilarious rap video-hoe schtick caught the attention of Funny Or Die, making her a lot of fans and possibly even more enemies. When I spoke to the man behind it all, Paul Soileau, he said:"When it all first started with PJ Raval and myself releasing the video for "Fix My Dick", there were a ton of negative comments…especially from this one person who I think of as a kind of internet comment bully…this lone typist who throws verbal missiles from the safety of their stank couch, ya know? This person was upset on so many levels; I was called racist, homophobic, transphobic, classist. I’d never experienced that kind of an attack before. But at the same time, it was fucking gorgeous and necessary. The stew has been stirred and hot sauce has been thrown in."And It's true that there are certain things that only a drag queen can get away with. For example, making a video up an anus while smeared in faux-shit is probably one of them. "It wasn't created to merely shock, to splash dick and ass in your face for a laugh. It’s made to make you fucking think about the state of things, the state of our interwoven communities in the LGBTQIA world and beyond."I know it sounds like a joke, but listen to the tracks, they're pretty fucking great. Soileau is adamant about wanting to be taken as more than just a shock-jock comedy routine: "The attackers are just as important, and the conversations that come from them - if they have the brains to discuss their anger - are even more exciting. Our videos have been granted access to film fests and art galleries around the world. In fact, so many people have now experienced our work who wouldn’t have necessarily found themselves in the same room as such stank shit. And in terms of the live shows, they are raw, angry, intimate and real. Overall, though, the best is the smiling faces from people having the time of their lives with this shit."Follow The Niallist on Twitter @TheNiallist
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