Major Lazer, Major Money?

Next time I need to talk to Snob about their collaborations...

Today Mr Vegas retweeted a Racialicious post dealing with ethics, sampling, appropriation, culture, race, collaboration and, of course, Major Lazer. I guess there’s no better time than the present to point folks towards a presentation I gave at this year’s EMP Pop Conference at UCLA. I was part of a panel called “Selling Jamaica”, alongside three excellent folks: Joshua Chamberlain, Tomas Palermo and Melville Cooke. My paper, entitled “Major Lazer, Major Money? Dancehall’s Relationship between Yard and Foreign“ talked about various collaborative initiatives–including those of Diplo and Switch. My goal was not to trash Major Lazer, but rather look at how collaborative processes work between JA and the outernational world. Won’t say too much more, but in preparation I did speak to a whole wack of people (like Dre Skull) for and about the issues I saw as being important, and at the conference I had a lot of people say to me “man, I really wish I’d come to your panel” (which, incidentally, took place at the same time that Chuck D decided to come to the conference, along with a million other great papers–so I understand if those things took precedence!). Thanks to the wonder of the internet, however, you can now check out my paper, others from the panel, and all sorts more from the conference. I’d love any thoughts or questions or comments…