No loss to me because hip hop lost me when it went gangster in the first place. I just want you to be clear about what's happening.
When rap went commercial a whole different set of selector kicked in, it started circulating in different pattern and yes, it became toxic. Sometimes you just have to lance the boil.
But you haven't solved the problem. The art that survives the purge will be called spoken word and held to that (very high) standard. Americans will find a replacement for whatever it is they got from rap, and a new boil will rise.
Hip-hop faces increasing backlash
Minstrelization of the music combined with negativity equals poor sales
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit.
The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture’s negative effect on society.
Rap insider Chuck Creekmur, who runs the leading Web site Allhiphop.com, says he got a message from a friend recently “asking me to hook her up with some Red Hot Chili Peppers because she said she’s through with rap. A lot of people are sick of rap ... the negativity is just over the top now.”
The rapper Nas, considered one of the greats, challenged the condition of the art form when he titled his latest album “Hip-Hop is Dead.” It’s at least ailing, according to recent statistics: Though music sales are down overall, rap sales slid a whopping 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year. A recent study by the Black Youth Project showed a majority of youth think rap has too many violent images. In a poll of black Americans by The Associated Press and AOL-Black Voices last year, 50 percent of respondents said hip-hop was a negative force in American society.
Nicole Duncan-Smith grew up on rap, worked in the rap industry for years and is married to a hip-hop producer. She still listens to rap, but says it no longer speaks to or for her. She wrote the children’s book “I Am Hip-Hop” partly to create something positive about rap for young children, including her 4-year-old daughter.
“I’m not removed from it, but I can’t really tell the difference between Young Jeezy and Yung Joc. It’s the same dumb stuff to me,” says Duncan-Smith, 33. “I can’t listen to that nonsense ... I can’t listen to another black man talk about you don’t come to the ’hood anymore and ghetto revivals ... I’m from the ’hood. How can you tell me you want to revive it? How about you want to change it? Rejuvenate it?”
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As long the boil arises is
As long the boil arises is in someone else's commuity this time around it's fine with me! We've paid a price for this gangsta BS that's too much to continue.I personally dug the serious PE stuff and the others from the 80s.
As long the boil arises is
It won't, not if people do this and are satisfied.Â
KRS-ONE Album Title: Sex and Violence
“The American public had an opportunity to pick what they wanted from David Banner,� he says. “I wish America would just be honest. America is sick. ... America loves violence and sex.�
David Banner realizes, quite clearly, that the American public is a duplicitous group of moralizers with some serious psychological problems. Just as you can't valorize Martin Scorcese or Francis Coppolla or Clint Eastwood as you buy ass in mob-town USA (Vegas) while deriding the emergence of violence in rap, you can't be a Puritan and read Puritan at the same time.
I was hating on hip hop for awhile, until I realized a few things:
1) I am at least three years behind in my music purchases.
2) There is more quality hip hop available RIGHT NOW than I am willing to purchase.
3) Mass media sales and promotions will peddle to the lowest common denominator...always have and always will. That's the business model. That's not hip hop.
The criticism within this article is not a criticism of hip hop. It's a criticism of the advertising and marketing campaigns of the Big Six record companies. If hip hop is as much the lyrical quality, content, and independence of DelaSoul, Nas, Common, Talib, Mos, Pharoahe Monche, and the Roots as it is of Young Jeezy and Fiddy, then much of the context of hip hop is missing from the critique. Hip hop is as much about the discipline of writing rhymes and challenging the art form (something that first cluster of artists has done for almost about a decade or more) as it is going on tour.
Hip hop today looks like the money that drives it...corporate money. I'm not clear that hip hop (as defined in this article) is all that different from Hollywood...and here is the crux of my beef. Could a writer level a similar criticism at the discipline of acting? Nope. Because acting and Hollywood are not the same thing...neither is hip-hop and nihilism and bullshit subsidized by the New York City music execs. Hip hop has evolved into a craft and it is not easy to do...writing is not easy, nor is finding the right production or marketing approach...
Americans still adore bullshit movies like the violent-ass Departed...and they still adore violent ass TV shows like the Sopranos and Lost...and they have the nerve to call that shit acting. Sex and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence...KRS said it more than 10 years ago...ain't shit changed - and the tendency to CRIMINALIZE black activity while NORMALIZING AND EXONERATING white behavior is evidence, to my mind, of a psycho-pathology in need of a cure.
Southeast Boston: pick your vice...it's on display for all to see - and now, the envelope please....shiiiiit.
Honestly, I suspect this is a cyclical thing. Folks have overdosed on this particular brand of minstrelization. The next round will be of a kinder and gentler nature - but I suspect it will be another manifestation of the same. Declining record sales reflect boredom rather than a seismic shift in values. Picture that.
Just as you can't valorize
Sure you can. It's done all the time.
We are in the middle of such a societal exercise as we speak...in fact, by means of our speech.
I Know You
can do it... and that people do do it...that's the point. that's banner's beef - simply that people are full of shit, which should be obvious. the case of the oscars is simply exhibit A.6009340834982392308220852802390542. it is precisely this moral ambiguity which causes producers of violence content to ignore protesters.
they said, i hear what you said, but i see what you bought,
now shut the phuk up and get back in line, we have a new product that you're gonna love.
the issue here is that folks have jumped off the line - but they'll be back...
Banner is not saying
Banner is not saying anything new or revealing. The public he speaks of as being sick, is the same public that could tolerate human slavery, in its most brutal form, followed by 100 years of Racial Apartheid, for example. So, knowing this narrative of disgust/evil, does that mean you, with your 'ART', serve to continue the cultural pathology that so devalues life and love, especially in your own community? I respect Banner for his efforts in behalf of the Katrina folks. But he cannot, in truth, justify the psycho-pathology evident in a lot of commercial/popular "gangsta rap" that has no socially redeeming value, at least, for our community. Economically, it may benefit a few. And even in this instance, of those it "benefits", we still are victimized to an extent, because these folks are more likely,than not, abandon the community, in a real sense- rather than develop some brownstones in Harlem or Bedstuy, for example.
Blocking the drain instead
Blocking the drain instead of shutting off the flow...
Okay.
Okay. But this is not sufficient for me. This is where, for example, I look at the mad ruminations of kenneth eng, and ponder some of his BS, and try to imagine if I'm clear on the required reflection and dedication and clarity into our peculiar predicament. When one is mining for gold... everything has the potential of yielding a windfall or disaster. Leave no stone unturned. Or something like that.
That is the
That is the purest...rhetoric I've ever read.
We'll talk when you have something more substantial.Â
P! You just trying to egg me
P! You just trying to egg me on! But I'm hungry now.