What struck me most, though, was how fully the boys’ music—hard-edged rap, preaching bone-deep dislike of authority—provided 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.
Yeah, yeah...James Dean really fucked up white folks too.
Pierce at blackademics.org has a more professional dismissal of the boring, repetitive nonsense. Me. I'm starting to think he's a bot.
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2003 Article
I remember reading his bullshit way back when. McWhorter is the worse kind of whore...his two line quotation from KRS-ONE reveals that he's the type to actually pay the "John" for services and the room. Not a scintilla of skillz. Just a buster. This article could only have appeal with folks who don't know shit about hip hop. And this critique is readily transferable to film and television, but McHo knows better than to go there. "Scorsese the Stupidifier" "Coppola the Corpse Creator" "The Coen Brothers - Corruptors of All that Christian and Wholesome" McWhorter's a first class dumb ass.
My Two Cents
I don't listen to rap and hip-hop music and I try to avoid listening to its devotees or detractors because I tend to take a simplistic view about hearing music and appreciating what I hear. You hear it and get it or you don't. I got Monk, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Los Lobos, Bill Monroe and Eric Dolphy the first time I heard them. It either happens or it doesn't.
Nonetheless, I am amazed at the amount of invective directed toward rap and hip-hop and the amount of power the detractors of these musical genres grant to the recording artists, producers and composers who work within these musical formats. It is wrong to stereotype the fans of this music or, worse, to imply that people who listen to this music lack ambition and have low moral standards. I know a lot of young people who listen to this music and they seem, at least to me, to be intelligent, aware and committed folks. They should not be slandered in this way.
BTW, what could be more misogynistic than Robert Johnson's song that contains this line: "A woman is like a dresser, some men always rambling through it drawers"or more supportive of marital infidelity than the lyrics to Ellington's great song, "Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me"? Nonethless, Johnson and Ellington are not castigated and labeled as destroyers of black culture.
What is really going on here? I'm beginning to suspect that what really troubles McWhorter and others like him is that they envy the pleasurable, erotic and sexual fun this music gives its fans. A lot of folks wish they could be 22 again but that is not sufficient reason to continually dog those who are and, worse, flaunt it.
A "McHo" by any other name
A "McHo" by any other name ...