Posted on 06/09/2003 5:14:22 AM PDT by rhema
Run-DMC, whose Jason Mizell — better known as DJ Jam Master Jay — was shot to death in a Jamaica recording studio last fall, was just named the greatest hip-hop act of all time by music channel VH1.
Also ranked among the all-time greats are Tupac Shakur, Nelly, Sean Combs, MC Hammer, Public Enemy, Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Grandmaster Flash, Salt-N-Pepa, Jay-Z, the Beastie Boys, Afrika Bambaattaa, Lil' Kim and Queen Latifah. To the consternation of Run-DMC's Darryl McDaniels, Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh didn't make the list, which must tell us something about something, but it's hard to imagine what.
Frankly, I'd rather listen to Jerry Butler, the Cadillacs, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Gene McDaniels, Dee Dee Sharp — now Dr. Sharp, with a Ph.D. in early-childhood development — or any number of other R&B stars from the '50s and '60s.
For the most part, they also came out of the ghetto. Early on, their music was condemned as immoral and obscene (and some of the rougher songs did have suggestive lyrics). But rather than looking down — "keepin' it real," as the rappers put it — the early R&B artists frequently sang about love and happy days ahead. Their songs were melodious. You could understand the lyrics.
They were sometimes beautiful. Many consider Butler's "For Your Precious Love" one of the greatest songs ever recorded.
The hip-hop "stars" of today — whose dominant themes are violence, drugs, misogyny and the in-your-face display of money, jewels and expensive cars — think they're getting a bad rap. But they're getting what they deserve.
Artists must realize the words they speak and the actions they take have an impact on young and impressionable kids. And the message they are sending America's teens and preteens — white and black alike — will not help these kids later in life.
Most rap artists refuse to acknowledge their responsibility as potential role models, deflecting criticism as yet another racist attempt by the media elite to squelch black creativity in the arts. Unfortunately, the mainstream media are "guilty" of no such thing, and actually add to the problem by treating hip-hop performers as serious artists.
Rap entered the mainstream in 1992 with the release of Dr. Dre's "gangsta" album, "The Chronic," which featured such memorable rhymes as, "Rat-a-tat and a tat like that/Never hesitate to put a nigga' on his back." The album is littered with similar lyrics throughout.
Rife with the worst of what rap would regurgitate over the next decade, "The Chronic" was gobbled up by white kids and black kids alike, going platinum several times over on its way to becoming one of rap's all-time biggest albums. The album's popularity spawned hundreds of imitators, each one trying to out-gross the other, in record sales as well as attitude and language. Many of these imitators are now on VH1's list of rap greats.
After a decade of rat-a-tat rap violence and crap, the effects on America's youngsters is only now becoming obvious. Ronald Ferguson, a black professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has found a significant correlation between the rise of rap and the decline of education in the black community. Ferguson found that in 1988, four years before the release of "The Chronic," 35 percent of black children read daily for pleasure. The figure has plummeted to 14 percent. As we know, the effects are now being felt in the white community as well.
America's hip-hop artists have kept it real long enough. We all know about the problems in urban America. It's time for the artists, producers and record company executives who are making big bucks "talkin' trash" to start focusing on solutions. Then, maybe, the VH1 rankings will mean more to America than a list of the best of the worst.
Our young people are watching and listening. It's time for another voice.
Alvin Williams is president and CEO of Black America's Political Action Committee. Readers may write to him at BAMPAC, 2029 P Street NW, Suite 202, Washington, DC 20036; Web site: www.bampac.org.
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True. Hip Hop is just part of a crazy phase that most youths go thru. I sure almost hope everything that I wrote down when I was a teenager has been destroyed. I was thinking today about some of the nutty thoughts YOURS TRULY had when a teenager.
Chill out. 99% of all that gangsta stuff is all an act. For a few years they dress and talk like gangstas and then it is all over. Every generation goes thru a nutty period.
Suuuure it is. Let's see, they probably really start getting into that mentality in middle school, it gets worse in high school, I see tons of it in college...when exactly do they snap out of it? I know it's all an act, but when they try to prove that they're "fer real," they're very unpredictable and damn dangerous.
I'll "chill out" when rap finally does.
Well, here is a "young black." Do it.
Let's peep the game from a different angle
Matt Dillon pulled his pistol every time him and someone tangled
So why you criticize me
For the sh-t that you see on your TV
That rates worse than PG?
Just bring your a-- to where they got me
So you can feel the hand of the dead body
--Brad Jordan a.k.a. Scarface
All I have in this world...
All I have in this world...
All I have
All I have
All I have in this world...
"Rap" is music??
I guess a banquet of beans and franks, washed down with Schlitz will according to other music "connoisseurs," produce a work of symphonic proportions in no time.
Ice-T actually started gangsta rap in 1985-86. NWA made it popular in '87 with Straight Outta Compton.
Scarface wasn't a sheriff.
Posers running around like idiots is a symptom of a larger problem, namely the intrusion of the government into their family structure. That ain't rap's fault.
Neither was Matt Dillon. It was make-believe.
Rap's a willing accomplice, though, and an especially pernicious, cold-blooded, and exploitative one. Government's intrusion is certainly a large part of the problem, notably liberals' attempts to expunge God from every corner of the public square. Statistical morality ain't much to ground a society on.
Sic transit "poetry."
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