Maybe this is exactly what's supposed to happen when two of the great artists of our time record a hit song called "N----s in Paris" and then leave it up to you to figure out how to deal with the "----" part. I admit there is something strangely powerful about getting Gwyneth Paltrow to think it was not only OK to use the N-word but that it was somehow a welcome and status-confirming gesture. Not powerful in any way that might effect substantive change to our political system or recalibrate the scales of economic justice or make anyone's life better. But powerful in that purely symbolic and expectation-smashing way that hip-hop continues to be powerful, growing and expanding and colonizing new spheres of everyday life, never bothering to resolve its contradictions, conditioning generations of us instead to understand and even anticipate that strange things will continue to happen. Powerful in a basic, fleeting, previously unimaginable, That shit cray sort of way.

Making a fool of Gwyneth Paltrow is one thing — and maybe an easy thing at that. But it's ultimately a sign of her comfort with Jay-Z, Kanye, and their pals that she would even assume an errant, tweeted N-bomb was fine. It's been a while since hip-hop breached wholly new territories of taste and behavior and drove everything toward some thrillingly weird culture-clashing cul-de-sac where it didn't so much matter whether this was a good or bad look, it was just strange that any of it was happening at all. In the unlikely love triangle between Roc Nation rapper Jay Electronica and the scions of the Goldsmith and Rothschild fortunes, we have reason to believe again — in the power of art, love, and rap music's renewed capacity to offend.

About a week ago, British tabloids began "reporting" on the imminent divorce of Ben Goldsmith — son of Jimmy Goldsmith, billionaire tycoon, financier, and inspiration forWall Street's "Sir Lawrence Wildman" — and Kate Rothschild — heiress of the Rothschild banking dynasty. All was not well for the seemingly well-matched pair, who had married in their early 20s and spent the ensuing decade as society-page regulars. The unlikely Lothario was "bad-boy rapper" Electronica........