Hip hop/Rap
How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back
By John H. McWhorter
City Journal
9-16-3
- Not long ago, I was having lunch in a KFC in Harlem, sitting near eight
African-American boys, aged about 14. Since 1) it was 1:30 on a school day,
2) they were carrying book bags, and 3) they seemed to be in no hurry, I
assumed they were skipping school. They were extremely loud and unruly,
tossing food at one another and leaving it on the floor.
-
- Black people ran the restaurant and made up the bulk of the customers,
but it was hard to see much healthy "black community" here. After repeatedly
warning the boys to stop throwing food and keep quiet, the manager finally
told them to leave. The kids ignored her. Only after she called a male
security guard did they start slowly making their way out, tauntingly
circling the restaurant before ambling off. These teens clearly weren't
monsters, but they seemed to consider themselves exempt from public norms of
behavior - as if they had begun to check out of mainstream society.
-
- What struck me most, though, was how fully the boys' musichard-edged
rap, preaching bone-deep dislike of authorityprovided them with a continuing
soundtrack to their antisocial behavior. So completely was rap ingrained in
their consciousness that every so often, one or another of them would break
into cocky, expletive-laden rap lyrics, accompanied by the angular,
bellicose gestures typical of rap performance. A couple of his buddies would
then join him. Rap was a running decoration in their conversation.
-
- Many writers and thinkers see a kind of informed political engagement,
even a revolutionary potential, in rap and hip-hop. They couldn't be more
wrong. By reinforcing the stereotypes that long hindered blacks, and by
teaching young blacks that a thuggish adversarial stance is the properly
"authentic" response to a presumptively racist society, rap retards black
success.
-
- The venom that suffuses rap had little place in black popular culture -
indeed, in black attitudes - before the 1960s. The hip-hop ethos can trace
its genealogy to the emergence in that decade of a black ideology that
equated black strength and authentic black identity with a militantly
adversarial stance toward American society. In the angry new mood, captured
by Malcolm X's upraised fist, many blacks (and many more white liberals)
began to view black crime and violence as perfectly natural, even
appropriate, responses to the supposed dehumanization and poverty inflicted
by a racist society. Briefly, this militant spirit, embodied above all in
the Black Panthers, infused black popular culture, from the plays of LeRoi
Jones to "blaxploitation" movies, like Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which celebrated the black criminal rebel as a
hero.
-
- But blaxploitation and similar genres burned out fast. The memory of
whites blatantly stereotyping blacks was too recent for the typecasting in
something like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song not to offend many blacks.
Observed black historian Lerone Bennett: "There is a certain grim white
humor in the fact that the black marches and demonstrations of the 1960s
reached artistic fulfillment" with "provocative and ultimately insidious
reincarnations of all the Sapphires and Studds of yesteryear."
-
- Early rap mostly steered clear of the Sapphires and Studds, beginning
not as a growl from below but as happy party music. The first big rap hit,
the Sugar Hill Gang's 1978 "Rapper's Delight," featured a catchy bass groove
that drove the music forward, as the jolly rapper celebrated himself as a
ladies' man and a great dancer. Soon, kids across America were rapping along
with the nonsense chorus:
-
- I said a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie, to the hip-hip hop, ah you
don't stop the rock it to the bang bang boogie, say up jump the boogie, to
the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.
-
- A string of ebullient raps ensued in the months ahead. At the time, I
assumed it was a harmless craze, certain to run out of steam soon.
-
- But rap took a dark turn in the early 1980s, as this "bubble gum" music
gave way to a "gangsta" style that picked up where blaxploitation left off.
Now top rappers began to write edgy lyrics celebrating street warfare or
drugs and promiscuity. Grandmaster Flash's ominous 1982 hit, "The Message,"
with its chorus, "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I
keep from going under," marked the change in sensibility. It depicted ghetto
life as profoundly desolate:
-
- You grow in the ghetto, living second rate And your eyes will sing a
song of deep hate. The places you play and where you stay Looks like one
great big alley way. You'll admire all the numberbook takers, Thugs, pimps
and pushers, and the big money makers.
-
- Music critics fell over themselves to praise "The Message," treating it
as the poetry of the streets - as the elite media has characterized hip-hop
ever since. The song's grim fatalism struck a chord; twice, I've heard
blacks in audiences for talks on race cite the chorus to underscore a point
about black victimhood. So did the warning it carried: "Don't push me,
'cause I'm close to the edge," menacingly raps Melle Mel. The ultimate
message of "The Message" - that ghetto life is so hopeless that an explosion
of violence is both justified and imminent - would become a hip-hop mantra
in the years ahead.
-
- The angry, oppositional stance that "The Message" reintroduced into
black popular culture transformed rap from a fad into a multi-billion-dollar
industry that sold more than 80 million records in the U.S. in 2002 - nearly
13 percent of all recordings sold. To rap producers like Russell Simmons,
earlier black pop was just sissy music. He despised the "soft, unaggressive
music (and non-threatening images)" of artists like Michael Jackson or
Luther Vandross. "So the first chance I got," he says, "I did exactly the
opposite."
-
- In the two decades since "The Message," hip-hop performers have churned
out countless rap numbers that celebrate a ghetto life of unending violence
and criminality. Schooly D's "PSK What Does It Mean?" is a case in point:
-
- Copped my pistols, jumped into the ride. Got at the bar, copped some
flack, Copped some cheeba-cheeba, it wasn't wack. Got to the place, and who
did I see? A sucka-ass nigga tryin to sound like me. Put my pistol up
against his head - I said, "Sucka-ass nigga, I should shoot you dead."
-
- The protagonist of a rhyme by KRS-One (a hip-hop star who would later
speak out against rap violence) actually pulls the trigger:
-
- Knew a drug dealer by the name of Peter - Had to buck him down with my 9
millimeter.
-
- Police forces became marauding invaders in the gangsta-rap imagination.
The late West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur expressed the attitude:
-
- Ya gotta know how to shake the snakes, nigga, 'Cause the police love to
break a nigga, Send him upstate 'cause they straight up hate the nigga.
-
- Shakur's anti-police tirade seems tame, however, compared with Ice-T's
infamous "Cop Killer":
-
- I got my black shirt on. I got my black gloves on. I got my ski mask on.
This shit's been too long. I got my 12-gauge sawed-off. I got my headlights
turned off. I'm 'bout to bust some shots off. I'm 'bout to dust some cops
off. . . . I'm 'bout to kill me somethin' A pig stopped me for nuthin'! Cop
killer, better you than me. Cop killer, fuck police brutality! . . . Die,
die, die pig, die! Fuck the police! . . . Fuck the police yeah!
-
- Rap also began to offer some of the most icily misogynistic music human
history has ever known. Here's Schooly D again:
-
- Tell you now, brother, this ain't no joke, She got me to the crib, she
laid me on the bed, I fucked her from my toes to the top of my head. I
finally realized the girl was a whore, Gave her ten dollars, she asked me
for some more.
-
- Jay-Z's "Is That Yo Bitch?" mines similar themes:
-
- I don't love 'em, I fuck 'em. I don't chase 'em, I duck 'em. I replace 'em
with another one. . . . She be all on my dick.
-
- Or, as N.W.A. (an abbreviation of "Niggers with Attitude") tersely sums
up the hip-hop worldview: "Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money."
-
- Rap's musical accompaniment mirrors the brutality of rap lyrics in its
harshness and repetition. Simmons fashions his recordings in contempt for
euphony. "What we used for melody was implied melody, and what we used for
music was sounds - beats, scratches, stuff played backward, nothing pretty
or sweet." The success of hip-hop has resulted in an ironic reversal. In the
seventies, screaming hard rock was in fashion among young whites, while
sweet, sinuous funk and soul ruled the black airwaves - a difference I was
proud of. But in the eighties, rock quieted down, and black music became the
assault on the ears and soul. Anyone who grew up in urban America during the
eighties won't soon forget the young men strolling down streets, blaring
this sonic weapon from their boom boxes, with defiant glares daring anyone
to ask them to turn it down.
-
- Hip-hop exploded into popular consciousness at the same time as the
music video, and rappers were soon all over MTV, reinforcing in images the
ugly world portrayed in rap lyrics. Video after video features rap stars
flashing jewelry, driving souped-up cars, sporting weapons, angrily
gesticulating at the camera, and cavorting with interchangeable, mindlessly
gyrating, scantily clad women.
-
- Of course, not all hip-hop is belligerent or profane - entire CDs of
gang-bangin', police-baiting, woman-bashing invective would get old fast to
most listeners. But it's the nastiest rap that sells best, and the nastiest
cuts that make a career. As I write, the top ten best-selling hip-hop
recordings are 50 Cent (currently with the second-best-selling record in the
nation among all musical genres), Bone Crusher, Lil' Kim, Fabolous, Lil' Jon
and the East Side Boyz, Cam'ron Presents the Diplomats, Busta Rhymes,
Scarface, Mobb Deep, and Eminem. Every one of these groups or performers
personifies willful, staged opposition to society - Lil' Jon and crew even
regale us with a song called "Don't Give a Fuck" - and every one celebrates
the ghetto as "where it's at." Thus, the occasional dutiful songs in which a
rapper urges men to take responsibility for their kids or laments senseless
violence are mere garnish. Keeping the thug front and center has become the
quickest and most likely way to become a star.
-
- No hip-hop luminary has worked harder than Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, the
wildly successful rapper, producer, fashion mogul, and CEO of Bad Boy
Records, to cultivate a gangsta image - so much so that he's blurred the
line between playing the bad boy and really being one. Combs may have grown
up middle-class in Mount Vernon, New York, and even have attended Howard
University for a while, but he's proven he can gang-bang with the worst.
Cops charged Combs with possession of a deadly weapon in 1995. In 1999, he
faced charges for assaulting a rival record executive. Most notoriously,
police charged him that year with firing a gun at a nightclub in response to
an insult, injuring three bystanders, and with fleeing the scene with his
entourage (including then-pal Jennifer "J. Lo" Lopez). Combs got off, but
his young rapper protege Jamal "Shyne" Barrow went to prison for firing the
gun.
-
- Combs and his crew are far from alone among rappers in keeping up the
connection between "rap and rap sheet," as critic Kelefa Sanneh artfully
puts it. Several prominent rappers, including superstar Tupac Shakur, have
gone down in hails of bullets - with other rappers often suspected in the
killings. Death Row Records producer Marion "Suge" Knight just finished a
five-year prison sentence for assault and federal weapons violations.
Current rage 50 Cent flaunts his bullet scars in photos; cops recently
arrested him for hiding assault weapons in his car. Of the top ten hip-hop
sellers mentioned above, five have had scrapes with the law. In 2000, at
least five different fights broke out at the Source Hiphop Awards - intended
to be the rap industry's Grammys. The final brawl, involving up to 100
people in the audience and spilling over onto the stage, shut the ceremony
down - right after a video tribute to slain rappers. Small wonder a popular
rap website goes by the name rapsheet.com.
-
- Many fans, rappers, producers, and intellectuals defend hip-hop's
violence, both real and imagined, and its misogyny as a revolutionary cry of
frustration from disempowered youth. For Simmons, gangsta raps "teach
listeners something about the lives of the people who create them and remind
them that these people exist." 50 Cent recently told Vibe magazine,
"Mainstream America can look at me and say, 'That's the mentality of a young
man from the 'hood.'" University of Pennsylvania black studies professor
Michael Eric Dyson has written a book-length paean to Shakur, praising him
for "challenging narrow artistic visions of black identity" and for
"artistically exploring the attractions and limits of black moral and social
subcultures" - just one of countless fawning treatises on rap published in
recent years. The National Council of Teachers of English, recommending the
use of hip-hop lyrics in urban public school classrooms (as already happens
in schools in Oakland, Los Angeles, and other cities), enthuses that
"hip-hop can be used as a bridge linking the seemingly vast span between the
streets and the world of academics."
-
- But we're sorely lacking in imagination if in 2003 - long after the
civil rights revolution proved a success, at a time of vaulting opportunity
for African Americans, when blacks find themselves at the top reaches of
society and politics - we think that it signals progress when black kids
rattle off violent, sexist, nihilistic, lyrics, like Russians reciting
Pushkin. Some defended blaxploitation pictures as revolutionary, too, but
the passage of time has exposed the silliness of such a contention. "The
message of Sweetback is that if you can get it together and stand up to the
Man, you can win," Van Peebles once told an interviewer. But win what? All
Sweetback did, from what we see in the movie, was avoid jail - and it would
be nice to have more useful counsel on overcoming than "kicking the Man's
ass." Claims about rap's political potential will look equally gestural in
the future. How is it progressive to describe life as nothing but "bitches
and money"? Or to tell impressionable black kids, who'd find every door open
to them if they just worked hard and learned, that blowing a rival's head
off is "real"? How helpful is rap's sexism in a community plagued by rampant
illegitimacy and an excruciatingly low marriage rate?
-
- The idea that rap is an authentic cry against oppression is all the
sillier when you recall that black Americans had lots more to be frustrated
about in the past but never produced or enjoyed music as nihilistic as 50
Cent or N.W.A. On the contrary, black popular music was almost always
affirmative and hopeful. Nor do we discover music of such violence in places
of great misery like Ethiopia or the Congounless it's imported American
hip-hop.
-
- Given the hip-hop world's reflexive alienation, it's no surprise that
its explicit political efforts, such as they are, are hardly progressive.
Simmons has founded the "Hip-Hop Summit Action Network" to bring rap stars
and fans together in order to forge a "bridge between hip-hop and politics."
But HSAN's policy positions are mostly tired bromides. Sticking with the
long-discredited idea that urban schools fail because of inadequate funding
from the stingy, racist white Establishment, for example, HSAN joined forces
with the teachers' union to protest New York mayor Bloomberg's proposed
education budget for its supposed lack of generosity. HSAN has also stuck it
to President Bush for invading Iraq. And it has vociferously protested the
affixing of advisory labels on rap CDs that warn parents about the obscene
language inside. Fighting for rappers' rights to obscenity: that's some kind
of revolution!
-
- Okay, maybe rap isn't progressive in any meaningful sense, some
observers will admit; but isn't it just a bunch of kids blowing off steam
and so nothing to worry about? I think that response is too easy. With music
videos, DVD players, Walkmans, the Internet, clothes, and magazines all
making hip-hop an accompaniment to a person's entire existence, we need to
take it more seriously. In fact, I would argue that it is seriously harmful
to the black community.
-
- The rise of nihilistic rap has mirrored the breakdown of community norms
among inner-city youth over the last couple of decades. It was just as
gangsta rap hit its stride that neighborhood elders began really to notice
that they'd lost control of young black men, who were frequently drifting
into lives of gang violence and drug dealing. Well into the seventies, the
ghetto was a shabby part of town, where, despite unemployment and rising
illegitimacy, a healthy number of people were doing their best to "keep
their heads above water," as the theme song of the old black sitcom Good
Times put it.
-
- By the eighties, the ghetto had become a ruleless war zone, where black
people were their own worst enemies. It would be silly, of course, to blame
hip-hop for this sad downward spiral, but by glamorizing life in the "war
zone," it has made it harder for many of the kids stuck there to extricate
themselves. Seeing a privileged star like Sean Combs behave like a street
thug tells those kids that there's nothing more authentic than ghetto
pathology, even when you've got wealth beyond imagining.
-
- The attitude and style expressed in the hip-hop "identity" keeps blacks
down. Almost all hip-hop, gangsta or not, is delivered with a cocky,
confrontational cadence that is fast becoming - as attested to by the
rowdies at KFC - a common speech style among young black males. Similarly,
the arm-slinging, hand-hurling gestures of rap performers have made their
way into many young blacks' casual gesticulations, becoming integral to
their self-expression. The problem with such speech and mannerisms is that
they make potential employers wary of young black men and can impede a young
black's ability to interact comfortably with co-workers and customers. The
black community has gone through too much to sacrifice upward mobility to
the passing kick of an adversarial hip-hop "identity."
-
- On a deeper level, there is something truly unsettling and tragic about
the fact that blacks have become the main agents in disseminating
debilitating - dare I say racist - images of themselves. Rap guru Russell
Simmons claims that "the coolest stuff about American culture - be it
language, dress, or attitude - comes from the underclass. Always has and
always will." Yet back in the bad old days, blacks often complained - with
some justification - that the media too often depicted blacks simply as
uncivilized. Today, even as television and films depict blacks at all levels
of success, hip-hop sends the message that blacks are... uncivilized. I find
it striking that the cry-racism crowd doesn't condemn it.
-
- For those who insist that even the invisible structures of society
reinforce racism, the burden of proof should rest with them to explain just
why hip-hop's bloody and sexist lyrics and videos and the criminal behavior
of many rappers wouldn't have a powerfully negative effect upon whites'
conception of black people.
-
- Sadly, some black leaders just don't seem to care what lesson rap
conveys. Consider Savannah's black high schools, which hosted the local
rapper Camoflauge as a guest speaker several times before his murder earlier
this year. Here's a representative lyric:
-
- Gimme tha keys to tha car, I'm ready for war. When we ride on these
niggas smoke that ass like a 'gar. Hit your block with a Glock, clear the
set with a Tech... You think I'm jokin, see if you laughing when tha pistol
be smokin - Leave you head split wide open And you bones get broken...
-
- More than a few of the Concerned Black People inviting this "artist" to
speak to the impressionable youth of Savannah would presumably be the first
to cry out about "how whites portray blacks in the media."
-
- Far from decrying the stereotypes rampant in rap's present-day
blaxploitation, many hip-hop defenders pull the "whitey-does-it-too" trick.
They point to the Godfather movies or The Sopranos as proof that violence
and vulgarity are widespread in American popular culture, so that singling
out hip-hop for condemnation is simply bigotry. Yet such a defense is
pitifully weak. No one really looks for a way of life to emulate or a
political project to adopt in The Sopranos. But for many of its advocates,
hip-hop, with its fantasies of revolution and community and politics, is
more than entertainment. It forms a bedrock of young black identity.
-
- Nor will it do to argue that hip-hop isn't "black" music, since most of
its buyers are white, or because the "hip-hop revolution" is nominally open
to people of all colors. That whites buy more hip-hop recordings than blacks
do is hardly surprising, given that whites vastly outnumber blacks
nationwide. More to the point, anyone who claims that rap isn't black music
will need to reconcile that claim with the widespread wariness among blacks
of white rappers like Eminem, accused of "stealing our music and giving it
back to us."
-
- At 2 AM on the New York subway not long ago, I saw another scene - more
dispiriting than my KFC encounter with the rowdy rapping teens - that
captures the essence of rap's destructiveness. A young black man entered the
car and began to rap loudly - profanely, arrogantly - with the usual wild
gestures. This went on for five irritating minutes. When no one paid
attention, he moved on to another car, all the while spouting his doggerel.
This was what this young black man presented as his message to the world -
his oratory, if you will.
-
- Anyone who sees such behavior as a path to a better future - anyone,
like Professor Dyson, who insists that hip-hop is an urgent "critique of a
society that produces the need for the thug persona" - should step back and
ask himself just where, exactly, the civil rights era blacks might have gone
wrong in lacking a hip-hop revolution. They created the world of equality,
striving, and success I live and thrive in.
-
- Hip-hop creates nothing.
-
- Copyright The Manhattan Institute
-
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html
-
-
- Comment
- From Morgan Klein
- 9-17-3
-
- Regarding the 'hip hop holding blacks back' article, while what is
written is all true, the author does not consider that as like attracts
like. Those inclined to already view the world from such a position as the
disenchanted black youth will seek the rap artists that validate a violent
perspective. However, those who are more intellectually/spiritually oriented
will naturally gravitate toward the hip hop artists that center more around
those views and positivity, and there are plenty of them out there. There is
a whole culture of positive hip hop that decries most of the values
associated with the rap culture of which the author speaks, and ultimately
it falls into the responsibility of the individual to either accept what
facets of hip hop culture the mainstream media has chosen to popularize, or
to hunt for something with more profundity. Blaming rap for the black kids
in KFC's rude behavior is like blaming the tobacco industry for an
individual's decision to smoke.
- Comment
Alton Raines
9-17-03
Rap is a culture -- not a musical art form. If it were merely music, a
pastime, a diversion... it would not have anywhere near the impact it has on
people, black or white. We have suburban white kids now "pimping" and
walking and dressing and talking and emulating "Gangsta" and "Hip Hop" and
"Rap" inner-city CULTURE and its icons and overlords, and that includes the
drugs, the demeaning of women and an attitude of self-destruction disrespect
for authority and aggrandizement of ignorance and personal failure otherwise
utterly foreign to the suburban white communities, so it's no leap of
rationale to realize what its doing to the black community. The culture of
rap/hip hop is a culture of apathy, spawned by the welfare state, and like a
sexually transmitted disease, it's spreading itself and infecting others in
different strata. There's nothing redeeming about it, nothing artistically
unique or worthy. Its gutter trash and it makes people into gutter trash.
It's not a fad, or a phase. It's a disease, or better yet, the symptom of a
disease.
-
-
-
- Comment
From Nick Helt
9-18-3
-
- Dear Jeff,
-
- I am white. I am part of the minority. I listen to "underground"
independant rap. I dont listen to the garbage that continually gets fed to
the masses. There is a movement going on that isnt about the materialistic
nonsense that they portray on television. I can tell by the comments you
chose to post, that these people have no idea what hiphop started as. It was
not about what it is today.
-
- Hiphop started as a way to stay out of trouble. When people had a
disagreement, they would battle not with fist or guns, but with skill. The
skill on the microphone or the skill to break(as in breakdancin'). There are
many independant performers out there that are making alot of cash, but
choose not to get signed to major labels because that would limit their
freedom(of creativity & speech).
-
- I can understand why people see that rap is nothing but negativity, but
thats just what "they" want people to see. The corporations only want you to
see the worst. Its my belief that they know it could be used as a
revolutionary tool for the masses. Thats why they keep everyone distracted
by the masonic dollar bills. Its to keep most people distracted from reality
and the truth that is going on under the radar.
-
- The problem is not rap, its the corporations that choose what to show as
rap. Rap has many faces and just because you only see one side to it, doesnt
mean it is ALL trash.
-
- Please, if there is any positive comments about rap, would you post
them.
-
- I love your site, but it seems like this issue only has one side.
-
- Sincerely,
- Nick
-
-
-
- Comment
- Sondjata Olatunji
- sondjata@innervisionsproductions.com
- 9-19-3
-
- This article was recently posted to a discussion group that I frequent.
While the initial hook about the obnoxious young men at the Harlem KFC
sparked my interest, the ensuing "facts" were erroneous and would be very
misleading to the untutored reader.
-
- At the outset let me say that I agree that Rap music has taken a rather
nasty turn in the past decade and there is an unfortunate massive influence
on the today's youth. However, not all of the ills that were described here
are ascribable to Hip-Hop.
-
- The first error was the confusion of Rap music, and it is music, and Hip
Hop. Hip Hop is a culture four distinct elements: Rap Music, DJaying,
Break-dance and Graffiti art. From the Break-dance portion we could derive
the Hip Hop clothing that began somewhat with jumpsuits and sneakers to the
Phat Farm, Sean Johns, etc of today.
-
- McWhorter errors continue with this statement:
-
- "The venom that suffuses rap had little place in black popular culture -
indeed, in black attitudes - before the 1960s. The hip-hop ethos can trace
its genealogy to the emergence in that decade of a black ideology that
equated black strength and authentic black identity with a militantly
adversarial stance toward American society. In the angry new mood, captured
by Malcolm X's upraised fist, many blacks (and many more white liberals)
began to view black crime and violence as perfectly natural, even
appropriate, responses to the supposed dehumanization and poverty inflicted
by a racist society."
-
- Surely McWhorter is not suggesting that Malcolm X actually thought that
black crime and violence was a natural phenomenon to be acceptable by
blacks. Also, that Militant mood is how many of the gains that blacks earned
were obtained.
- Next McWhorter writes:
-
- "But rap took a dark turn in the early 1980s, as this "bubble gum" music
gave way to a "gangsta" style that picked up where blaxploitation left off.
Now top rappers began to write edgy lyrics celebrating street warfare or
drugs and promiscuity. Grandmaster Flash's ominous 1982 hit, "The Message,"
with its chorus, "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I
keep from going under," marked the change in sensibility. It depicted ghetto
life as profoundly desolate:"
-
- As if to prove to those of us who are familiar with the track in
question that he does not know what he is talking about. "The Message" as in
no way shape or form "celebrating"
- Urban pathologies. This track was a historically accurate description of
some places in NYC. Stating the obvious is not necessarily celebration, and
in this case is definitely not celebration. The chorus in question can be
viewed in many ways. McWhorter decided that it should be seen as an excuse
for black crime and violence. Perhaps it could be interpreted that the
narrator may be contemplating suicide or as happened to many black men of
that era, indulge in drug use, go insane, beat his wife, etc. You would
think that McWhorter has never had a day where he felt that if one thing
else went wrong, he would go over the edge. I think not.
- McWhorter then attempts to say that "The Message" was the song that
kicked off Hip Hop's rise to a multi million-dollar industry. Not true. It
was not until Run-DMC's cross over hits such as My Adidas and "Walk this
way." Along with PE "bring the noise" cross over hits and the advent of
Music Videos, did Hip Hop set its foot into the mainstream.
-
- The next and most common mistake that McWhorter made was the citation of
Ice-T's "Cop Killer" track. First it should be known that the group that Ice
T produced this under was a Thrash Metal group and not a Rap group. This
means it was not even directed at Black youth. In fact if you asked most
black youth about said track, they probably have heard of it but never
actually heard it. The only connection this track has with Hip Hop is the
tangential fact that Ice -T also raps.
-
- Having dealt with those glaring errors, we should keep the following in
mind; Black people do not own or control the media apparatus that
continually pumps out the garbage that we hear. It would be easy to blame
Simmons and Puff, but in reality, just as it was possibly to find Africans
willing to cooperate with European slave traders, you will always find a
black willing to anything for a buck. The fact of the matter is that once
Hip Hop crossed over and Time Warner, BMG and Arista found out that they too
could make money selling rap not only to blacks but to the wider white youth
market who fed on "counter-culture" to annoy their parents and be
"independent" they found what works. Furthermore, as pointed out by other
artists, When Hip Hop came to its own with groups like Tribe Called Quest,
Jungle Brothers, and PE's Fear of a Black planet, NWA gangsta rap came out
and pro black, anti-violence got pushed aside by these same record
companies. Along with this the consolidation of radio ownership between
Clear Channel and Radio One resulted in narrowcasting of music to the
younger people whose ability to discern garbage is very overrated. Again the
purse string holders and gatekeepers were 99% white. These same whites
devised rules that determined that certain things could not be said on air
in records. Certain commentaries about Jews, Italians, etc. have been
reported by artists such as Chuck D, of PE fame, to be things that will get
a record or single stopped dead. Meanwhile Blacks are free to call each
other all manner of "nigga, bitch, ho.' Sounds like a insidious double
standard if you ask me.
-
- Lastly, to say that Rap is not music and has no value is to say that
Poetry is not literature and has no value. Rap is poetry regardless of the
subject matter. Rap music is music in as much as beating a drum is music. It
may not be what McWhorter wants to listen to, but he does not get to
determine what is music. Back to the rude kids. I'll tell you what the
problem with the kids are: their parents. I listened to Rap Music as a child
and had a healthy fear of my mother's belt. I spoke and still speak
"properly." I enjoy Rap, Jazz (not that junk on CD 101), Reggae and R&B, and
I Play the piano. I am the result of a parent that made it clear to me that
regardless of what music I liked, I was to be in school on the daily, get
nothing less than a B, graduate from college and move out the house upon
graduation. I would wager my next months income that these fellows parents
are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. That is what is really
holding blacks back.
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- Comment
- From Andrew Simmons
- 9-19-3
-
- Greetings,
-
- This has been a hot topic between myself and co-worker/good friend.
While he enjoys the pop culture world spear-headed by Britney Spears (no pun
intended) I enjoy the Hip Hop culture and Dance music culture of the inner
city. While I tried to explain to him that Britney Spears is doing nothing
but showing young pre-teen and teenage girls how to carry themselves as
sex-objects (inspired by your "Girls Gone Wicked" article) I described to
him how the rappers are destroying the chances of the young black community
with their illogical, nonsense-filled and self-destructive ideologies.
Coincidentally today I find this article.
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- Our rappers as well as Ms. Spears have no idea that their record
companies and media managers have chucked them into a spotlight which blinds
them and they are left with a translucent view of their followers and the
effect that they have on their followers. How? Well as an aspiring
entertainer you want to gain attention and feel as though you are pleasing
your audiencewhich they are (as well as fortune). Unfortunately what they
are administering is negative, a negativity which embodies a host of warped
values.
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- It seems as though in the case of the rap music the defamation machine
gets the day off. There is not as much of any need to work over-diligently
at painting the Black community as bad or negative, these rappers are doing
it for a small piece of the pie. In the community the NY Post sells the most
(no offense to NY Post readers). Average conversation is about rap music and
the performers; a star gazing discussion which produces a need to emulate.
The people are not reading as much. They let AOL show them the headlines.
The stage has been set years ago. The radio in NYC which is dominated by HOT
97 (WQHT 97.1) promotes this retarding culture with such volume. The disc
jockeys have no idea or clue how they effect the youth which says a lot
about them. I also believe the station owners and program directors are in
the game for fortune. Proper English is a thing of the past although I can
really understand why someone as a descendant of African slaves would not
want to accept English as their language but that is another discussion.
This culture makes all cultures but the Hip Hop Culture RICH. I visit the
local "Street Wear" store owned and operated by immigrants who count their
profits while watching the patrons every second they are in the store.
Blasting this hypnotic music.
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- I have TOO many feelings about this topic.
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- My thought which prompted this message is that these zombies don't even
have views so please understand that they don't represent Black Culture.
They get the most airtime but they don't speak for me.
-
- Andrew
- PS. I am happy that I can visit your site for ANOTHER view.
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- Comment
- From Vinson Johnson
- 9-19-3
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- The problem that no one has addressed here is economics. Just like any
other business, the bottom line is money.
-
- If people would not buy the bulls..t that these rappers were putting
out, then they'd be forced to write about other things. But because Eminem
sold 7 million records and 50 Cent sold 5 million, that content is what the
record labels will sell.
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- There was a time when we had positive rappers. But because their records
were not selling to millions of people, the companies yanked their
contracts. The bottom line is money. As long as the so called "black trash"
music sells, then that kind of music will be promoted.
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- I don't appreciate anyone calling this art form not music. Some of the
best musicians have participated in this music and it is real music and it
is here to stay. What the problem is, is that we have a society that is a
glutton for this type of entertainment.
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- You've got mimics of these lyrics in all parts of society, not just the
"black" community.
- This type of stuff has been going on in politics for centuries. Destroy
your enemies and all that.
- It blows my mind as to how shallow people are in terms of casting blame
for the actions of people.
- The KFC thing and the subway thing is a reflection of a system that has
failed. Don't blame the music for a society gone bad and the greed of
Corporations.
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- Comment
- From Max
- 9-21-3
-
- Hi, Jeff. I have been reading the postings at the top of your web page
today concerning rap music. I have to say that I deplore the largely
misogynistic, violent lyrics of rap. In fact I would say if you put the
letter C in front of rap then you will get the general drift of how I feel
about this particular genre of music. Sorry, Jeff, about the language but
it's important you understand how much I dislike this music for you to
appreciate my next comment.
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- Having said the above there is one rap song I heard many years ago, and
actually bought the record, and I would wholeheartedly recommend that you
give it a listen, Jeff. Even today, about 10 years after I bought this
record the intelligence, insight and, dare I say it, prophetic insight of
the lyrics still send shivers down my spine. If George Orwell had been born
in the rap era he may well even have written something along similar lines
himself.
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- The artist is: The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
- The song is: Television, The Drug of The Nation
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- It is freely available from P2P.
-
- Best Regards
- Max
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YES - Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back-
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By Heather Sheridan-
9-18-3-
- I am African-American, and I agree: hip-hop and rap culture are
dangerous to blacks. The level of cultural damage being wreaked by this
so-called "music form" is chillingly incalculable. A think tank of
supremacist Klansmen could not have envisioned a more efficient method of
ridiculing and disempowering a despised race of human beings. I consider rap
and hip-hop the artistic versions of the AIDS virus. They arose during the
same period in history, they attach themselves to a host and then destroy it
from within, and every time you think you're about to defeat them, they
mutate into another form and then replicate. Similarly, the people most at
risk to be infected by each of these devastators are the most mystifyingly
enthusiastic about engaging in the reckless and stupid behaviors that wind
them up infected.
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- An entire generation of males has been brainwashed into no longer
thinking, no longer writing or speaking intelligently, but instead mumbling
rap lyrics like mantras, nodding their heads like catatonic idiots to a beat
the rest of us cannot hear - all day - and doing what the lyrics suggest in
their own lives, to their own detriment. A generation of females now think
their bodies are gaudy currency, to be traded and negotiated at will for
burgers, fries, and baby's formula for the day. Ask yourself: would you hire
a young person with a deliberate limp, clutching his testicles in one hand,
clutching a cellphone in the other, with straggled, ugly hair, poor hygiene,
and gold teeth and jewelry, whose only language is an unending stream or
poorly rhyming couplets about shooting, robbing businesses, and
impregnating?
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Would
you hire a young woman with flashy copper hair, outrageous jewelry,
rhinestone-studded dragon talons on her fingertips, a baby on her hip and a
second baby on the way, wearing a thong you can see jutting out of her
mall-level denim jeans, with an invented name like Taniqua or Sheniquieyah,
who won't even answer phones when asked, and whose idea of a hard day's work
is to gossip the 8 hours through about what babydaddy did this, and what
babydaddy did that? Thanks to Affirmative Action, which I, a black woman,
oppose, this is what is probably going on downtown at your local capitol's
government offices, and is part of the reason customer service is so poor
today, and nothing in America runs on time anymore.
-
- And if whites continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that there are
two black Americas -- one comprised of educated blacks, the other of what
could impolitely be termed "black trash" -- and if white America continues
to lump all African-Americans into one huge monolithic demographic they are
afraid of offending by declaring rap "offensive", this is the hiring pool
you and I will be forced to choose from for the remainder of the decade.
Whites will miss availing themselves of the very blacks -- millions of us --
who would stand right beside them driving this "music form" into its belated
grave.
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-
In
less than two complete decades, by a single form of repetitive, mind-numbing
so-called "music", all the previous struggle and eloquence of the former
black America has been reduced to ruin: swaggering, foul-mouthed,
gimp-legged, testicle-clutching, prowess-faking, loud-talking, gun-toting,
beeper-packing, prostituted ruin. And whom have we to thank for it?
-
- One could offer that it is the nameless hierarchy behind all the record
labels and television networks, they who have ever made all the decisions
about how many times which race should be depicted and in what way, making
yet another faceless and ultimately racist decision to keep pumping rap and
hip-hop music out like rotted meat pulsing out of some national grinding
machine, like poisonous piped-in lullabyes to pacify and entertain some
despised collective black "baby" -
-
- But ultimately this is the fault of black people themselves.
-
- As a black woman, I was excoriated profoundly and with great, ridiculing
mass malice whenever I dared to say openly that rap was not music and
hip-hop was going to eventually call in a price from the black community.
Uneducated blacks brayed with laughter and pointed scorn at me, calling me "Wanna
Be White" and other names, for opting to step out of the company line and
call, for lack of a better phrase, a spade a spade. (Educated blacks always
agreed with me.)
- As a member of the entertainment industry, which I am, I was ignored by
colleagues when I asked why rap was still being signed, produced and
promoted when it has clearly hit the limits of every music genre's twenty
year lease on the collective consciousness. I may be politically incorrect
on your site for saying this, but Jews were the most supportive of my views
and asked me, mystified, "Why do blacks LISTEN to this stuff? Don't they
realize what it's SAYING about them? YOU realize... why don't THEY?" But the
young whites in my industry seem hypnotized. Some of them adore rap. Their
children have bought hip-hop materials, be they clothing, CDs, what have
you. Most of what I perceive is an industry-wide white horror of disavowing
rap culture in any way lest they be categozied as racist. That seems to be
the cause of all this from the media end.
-
- So, I am saying to whites now:
-
- Educated African-Americans agree with you and always have: rap is not
music; hip-hop is not a valid music form; and even if it were, its time is
up; the music itself is aurally destructive; its lyrics and iconography are
less than healthy; all in all it presents a poor aesthetic, and one we
frankly, as the Americans who created it, need to disown now in favor of The
Next Big Thing Coming Up The Block. Rap is not rock music. Hip-hop is not
soul. This is McMusic, counterfeit mass produced product for a counterfeit
mass produced consumer base. But the jig is up, fellows:
-
- As a black person, I'm playing the race card here and declaring it now
safe for whites to say out loud that rap's reign is over. If you want rap
and hip-hop to go away, you as white Americans must begin by making the
unified decision to admit, publicly, that there is such thing as black
trash, just as there is such thing as white trash. Rap and hip-hop are the
music of black trash.
- They are not all our race has to offer culturally, and have never been,
and never will be. They do not speak for our people, and we call out for an
immediate end to this epidemic. Rap and hip-hop, in my opinion, are indeed
the cultural equivalent of AIDS: they arose at the same time, they attach to
a host and destroy it from within, and every time humanity thinks it has it
licked, it mutates into another form and replicates. But just as the medical
community will eventually lay HIV in its cemetery, for every kingdom hath
for certain a grave, white and black Americans will eventually come together
as one and put rap and its diseased sister hip-hop six feet under, for good.
That day must surely come for us, as flowers follow rain.
-
- Dear white America: Rap and hip-hop are the pop music of black trash
America.
-
- Pass it on.
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"As black men we should
be building a nation of strong
black leaders, not a nation of superenergized,
drunk pimps."
- Minister Paul Scott, founder
of the Messianic Afrikan Nation