Journal Entry 6

I chose to write this weeks journal on a profile I read in the New York Times on Lex Luger called “Lex Luger Can Write a Hit Rap Song in the Time it Takes to Read This.” I sifted through a few profiles, but this one I liked the best.

Alex Pappademas, the writer of the article, only followed Luger around for a few days. In this short amount if time Pappademas was able to show Luger’s successes, his character, his family, and his life.

One of the things I really liked about the piece was the way Pappademas was able to add description that stylistically matched Luger’s lifestyle. Everything in Luger’s world is electronic. He works on a synthesizer and a program on his computer constantly smoking weed making beats for famous rap artists. Pappademas’s language matches this synthetic, electronic atmosphere that is seen through the hazy eyes of a drug induced stupor. “It had a thunderous canned-orchestra melody, like an endless loop of some bombastic moment from Wagner or Danny Elfman; a sternum-rattling bass line; and skittering electronic percussion that brought to mind artillery fire,” Pappademas writes. I just love this sentence. “Thunderous canned-orchestra” “endless loop of some bombastic moment” “sternum-rattling baseline” “artillery fire”, his word choice lets the reader (who may have never listened to Luger’s music) in on the fact that his music is grandiose, moving, rattling, electronic, sharp, and momentous. Its almost difficult for me to explain how perfectly his writing matches the music of Luger’s without having my reader listen to the music and read the article at the same time. 

At the beginning of the article Pappademas starts out by briefly telling Luger’s story of success. He leaves the reader with reserved sense of mystery in regards to Luger. Part of this, I believe, is that Luger is not the most articulate human being. The quotes that Pappademas chose clearly show this, and he doesn’t include them until half way through the story. By leaving Luger’s own voice out of the first half, he tells his story through interactions with others. It isn’t until the second half of the article when Pappademas is introduced to Luger’s family and entourage that the writer is able to land on a conclusion as to whom Luger is. Pappademas writes (I included this incredibly long quote because I think it is beautifully written and was impossible to leave any of it out), “In the photo Lex has his hands on the hips of a pretty girl in a seafoam dress. His expression is sour, as if he’s embarrassed to be there. He’s making the same face on the cover of VABP’s CD.

I got it, suddenly — he’s shy. Maybe less so now that he’s found something he’s good at, realized some rewards, signed some autographs — but he’s still not Kanye. He’s a hip-hop star who wouldn’t be a hip-hop star without the Internet. He has the tunnel vision of a hard-core gamer or a programmer, someone who can wire into an interface and shut off his perception of time’s passage — someone who feels more comfortable doing that than he does living in the world. And having his picture taken and answering questions about his craft ultimately takes him out of the zone where he’s most comfortable, the one where everything else falls away and it’s him and the screen and the beat.” 

This quote sum’s up the writers style in this article. The entire article Pappademas leaves Luger out of the equation in a way. He writes about his family, the way he zones into his computer to make his music, his swagger. However, the way he writes never makes it seem as though Luger fits in to his surroundings. In the end Pappademas is able to come to the conclusion. Luger was thrown into this world of stardom and never had the make-up to actually be a star. 

One of the reasons I chose this profile is because I was having a difficult time coming to a conclusion with the profile I wrote for Wednesday’s class. Most of the time the conclusion on a person is at the beginning. A profile on a famous chef shows his masterful way of managing a kitchen right off the bat. A profile on a stylist typically describes her keen sense of fashion sense from the getco. This article does not do that. The conclusion is not one someone could conclude from watching an interview on Luger, or reading his biography. Pappademas was thrown into this mans life and saw his interactions with his world and was able to, in my opinion pretty profoundly, figure Luger out. I want to be able to do something like this for the profile I write.