DISQUS

I too am surprised at hip hop's staying power, but I don't get the impression that the kids are moving on to something completely different. Seems more like they are taking it in new directions, which, as always, is the right thing to do with popular music. (Like a shark, it's got to keep moving to stay alive.)
Personally, I like where some jazz musicians are taking hip hop. Roy Hargrove's RH Factor is incredible--the most vital of any new jazz I am listening to. And I read in the NY Times this morning (maybe yesterday) that Robert Glauber, who is a fine young jazz pianist, was riffing on a Dilla beat at the Bonnaroo Festival.
(But "White Lines" is one of my favorites too.)

That clip is amazing. It starts out so slow--not very promising, frankly. You can just feel the muggy heat, and the hangovers of the crowd from the night before. A man scratching his arm. A lady eating half a sandwich. A priest in full collar looking awfully hot. Then, about 1:50 minutes in, something happens. Not an obvious change in tempo, but a groove kicks in that sparks this quiet, sexy energy in Anita. And it captures the crowd. Their body language changes. Then she really gets into it. The priest claps his hands spontaneously and then drops his head (guiltily?) What a cool clip.

"Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious."
Jean Cocteau.

All I know is that I would rather live next to a bad fiction writer than a bad drummer.
Is writing art or craft? What a muddle. When we learn how to write, we are practicing our craft. When we use our newly acquired skills in pursuit of truth, or beauty, or self-expression, we seek to create art. Is it good art or bad art? That, I agree with Kathleen, is entirely subjective to each reader.

Okay, but notice that you have to eliminate two key elements of the plot (the meth, the girlfriend) to make your point!

I read the story and I agree it is terrific. I am not so sure I would agree with you that the boys' behavior is the sort "all but endorsed in the United States." They are meth-heads and the accused one has knocked out his girlfriend's front teeth. So they are a little pathological to begin with. But the way Keith Lee Morris lets the story unfold is indeed masterful.