CTheory.net has an interesting look at the efforts of local bloggers, artists, and electronic musicians to revitalize inner-city Detroit. They bring with them a cyberpunk aesthetic that seems like a perfect fit for Motor City’s ghost-in-the-machine, all-purpose urban burnout. Unfortunately, that may be part of the problem. As Marcel O’Gorman inquires in the piece, do the digerati see themselves as part of a grassroots urban revival or as digital Hunter S. Thompsons, liveblogging from the 9th circle? Do they seek to construct something new and exciting with the aid of local artists and musicians, or use Detroit as a outsized canvas for their own narcissism? O’Gorman has guarded optimism, but his piece reveals a profound ambivalence.

Questions of exploitation, gentrification, and urban culture aren’t exactly new, but they’ve taken a new focus in the digital age. Witness, for example, the blog blowup that erupted when Dallas Penn’s Combat Jack took a swing at the Village Voice’s music blogger Tom Breihan. Breihan is famous (or infamous–take your pick) within the music blogosphere for his advocacy of Southern hip hop artists who rap mainly about selling drugs. Breihan purposefully gravitates towards the darkest, most graphic musical depictions of inner city crime, and knocks more uplifting hip-hop and indie rock as corny. CJ accused Breihan of not possessing a true love for hip hop culture–only a hipster’s alternating fetishism and mockery of the black gangster archetype. For this, CJ declared Breihan’s “ghetto pass” revoked.

I felt at the time that both sides were correct. Breihan, like Norman Mailer before him, is drawn to an image of the black criminal as hip transgressor of societal boundaries. In this case, Breihan uses populist gangsta fare (the likes of Young Jeezy, Lil’ Wayne, and the Diplomats) as a cudgel to beat high-brow critics. However, CJ’s criticism falls flat when you actually read his missive.

His main bone to pick with Breihan is that he doesn’t pay tribute to CJ’s own favorite artists, which CJ defines as the accepted hip-hop canon. There is no crime in developing one’s own critical canon, and many pop culture writers often take an outrageously contrarian stance in order to get noticed. Take, for example, the rock criticism anthology Kill Your Idols, dedicated to trashing every critic’s sacred cow since Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club.

There is also an undeniable element of jealousy involved. Breihan is on the payroll of one of America’s oldest and most venerable alternative weeklies, and doesn’t even write about hip-hop full time. To boot, Breihan is a white hipster. CJ obviously resents Breihan’s power to shape the critical consensus on hip-hop and popular music.

I wonder if the new Detroit bloggers and musicians Gorman describes will be hit by a similar digital backlash.