BTW, Loonette the clown from the Big Comfy Couch is smokin’ hot. Seriously, I’m mad crushing on her right now.
***(Just so you realize before you begin reading: I’m responding to something I saw on TV about hip-hop. I have things to say about other genres of music and expression as well, but we’re talking about hip-hop here. And yes, I know there is such a thing as conscious hip-hop, because I listen to a bit of it myself.)***
Hello friends! Today I’m here to talk to you about mainstream hip-hop.
One day last week, Paula Zahn devoted an episode of her show (on CNN) to Hip-Hop culture. The overarching question she was asking was if hip-hop was art or poison: is it worth protecting as an art form regardless of it’s woman hating, gay bashing, and celebration of excess and violence.
I’m not here to talk about whether hip-hop is poison or art: there is good being done in the genre as well as bad, and I don’t feel like I’m well equipped to pass ultimate judgment on it. What I will be talking about is accountability. Who should the burden of policing the genre fall to, and who should take the blame for the direction hip-hop is going in?
The thing that immediately interested me was that artists in the genre and the ones who brought hip-hop to the mainstream don’t seem to want to take any sort of responsibility for what they put in their lyrics. They say that the misogyny and glorification of violence that exist in hip-hop lyrics is not to be taken seriously, and/or that they are merely mirroring problems which exist in our culture and in other art forms. They say that what they rap about is tongue in cheek, and the focus should be on the music and not on the content of the lyrics.
I call bullshit. Whether or not hip-hop create mores violence through it’s lyrics (evidence suggests that the messages in music do not tend to exacerbate violence-in fact, in the United States, crime drops during the heyday of “gangsta rap”), and whether or not it is merely mirroring what we see in culture right now, these artists are making money from hateful speech, and glorifying excess. They need to understand that they are responsible for perpetuating the negativity they are mirroring from society, through their music. Hip-hop artists need to realize that what they say and do does have an effect on the world.
I’m not clamoring for the censorship of any form of art, be it hip-hop music or painting or poetry or whatever. I believe intensely in freedom of expression. But to claim that the lyrics and imagery portrayed in mainstream hip-hop videos is somehow showing the terrible underside of the “streets”, to effect social change (or whatever mirroring the problems of society really means) is complete farce. Don’t tell me that “Walk it Out” by Unk has some social message.
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I’m not a city guy, I’m from the burbs — that’s even worse
‘i’m hot cos im fly, you aint cos you not. this is why, this is why, this is why i’m hot’
-Mims
hehe MY NEW THEME SONG; im lame. walk it out is good too, when you feel like following mindless instructions on what new dance is cool for the week (sadly im not joking, i actually like it), a la
‘chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup with a soda on the side! let it rain, and clear it out. let it rain, and clear it out’
for reals tho, who wants to eat chicken noodle soup and wash it down with some soda? that doesn’t sound tasty at all
this is in no form a reply to or even commentary on what you have said
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with listening to hip-hop (I hate that I’m generalizing the whole genre down into “hip-hop”, but that’s a whole other post… maybe). I listen to it too. But it’s just hard to defend your listening habits when someone takes issue with the brutal imagery in the lyrics and in the videos. I actually think it’s impossible, but I’m open to debate.
I was watching the video for the remix of “I’m In Love With a Stripper”, and R.Kelly was talking about how he was in love with a woman’s ass, and not the woman. He said he wanted to marry it (the woman’s ass), and then at the end of his rap he said he wishes he “could put his whole damn head in it”. It’s funny, but it’s also an exaggeration of the larger trend in the music.
I don’t think I was able to articulate myself properly in the post, but what I was trying to say was that whether or not the music is bad or good doesn’t really matter. What matters is that when someone writes something they have to be responsible for what they wrote. It sounds obvious but it really isn’t, I guess.
i dunno, i thought your message was pretty straightforward. i’m definitely not ashamed of anything, just pointing out the frivolity of some of the tracks i’m into. thats part of what makes them fun, for me anyway. as for the complexity of the all encompassing title of “hip hop”, i coudlnt agree more, totally another story.
r. kelly’s head-within-bum fantasy is gross, kinda funny, but mostly gross. (if you’re into imagining the literal connotations and all, like me.)