Posted on 07/29/2003 7:53:54 AM PDT by bedolido
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’ 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.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
The music you used in your example would incite someone who wished to emulate them, to take drugs, be moody, depressed and a party amimal. The lyrics HOTG used in his example would incite someone to be a criminal, a gunslinger and to hate. While someone might outgrow your example, kids arn't going to live long enough to outgrow being a hate filled criminal gunslinger.
While white kids love playing the part, black kids are trying to live the part. One is fun, the other is lethal.
Like you, I'm in my mid-thirties, and grew up listening to Boston, Stones, Mellencamp, Bad Company, Elton John, etc. Many of those songs had meaning, were well-written, and certainly not vicouos towards others, spewing hate... Is today's generation of children/teens just not into a well-written song? Are they always oblivious to the lyrics? Do they all have the attention span of a flea?
I'm sure I'm being a little harsh, but I'm trying to get a point across
By the way, some of the best music of today is still classic rock and Motown. LOVE motown...
If any of you want to do yourselves a favor with an awesome treat- rent, or better yet buy (you'll watch it over and over again) the movie "The Temptations". It's absolutely FANTASTIC!
Don't forget "Nazareth"!!! ;-)
Yeah, Zeppelin, the Stones, the Beatles, Cream, Pink Floyd. They really sucked. Good thing we had Motown.
That, and I'd blame it on the plague of self-esteem. Hard to have high self-esteem, when you haven't achieved anything worth 'esteeming'.
M-I-L was a 7th grade teacher for almost 40 years. Her opinion is that this self-esteem BS is creating a generation of super-predators. Many kids (even girls, she said) are particularly violent and functionally illiterate, yet they feel just fine about it.
She also said that the biggest change is among the girls. Now, they have just as many discipline problems, and are just as violent as boys. Scary. The girls in my HS - not too many years ago - used to rein us in somewhat.
No thanks. I agree with the author's conclusion, that rap music creates nothing.
White punks on dope?
I don't know what era of "rebellion" you're referring to, but I don't believe those "grungy lookin' white guys with long hair" evoked or advocated anything like killing, maiming, murdering, or raping "bitches" or "cops."
They were too stoned and mellow from weed and wine.
Are you kidding? You could get thrown in jail for a hate crime if you tried to do something like that! /sarcasm
I wonder how this author feels about Johnny Cash who has sung songs about:
* Shooting a man "just to watch him die" (Folsom Prison Blues)
* Doing drugs & killing his wife/lover (Cocaine Blues)
* Killing his wife/lover (Delia's Gone)
* Trying to kill his father (A Boy Named Sue)
* Breaking the law & fleeing from the authorities (Wanted Man)
* Getting ready to inflict violence on his boss (Oney)
* Dissrespect for the law (Starkville County Jail & San Quentin)
And so on.........
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