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 ...
Rap Music (like SH#&) Happens. However, you point is valid. I'm sure every generation listens to the next gen's music and makes fun of it.
As far as old(er) fart goes, if you live long enough you'll get old and make fun of the younger, up and coming generation's clothes and music. It's a fun part of living a boring older life.
I was going to post something very similar.
I have seen countless interviews with band members who made music like HOTD mentioned. Many made comments to the effect that they realized the more parents hated what they were producing, the more kids wanted it and thus, they made that kind of music. There is a stark contrast between the type of rebellion HOTD mentioend that most grow out of and the lifestyle that rap promotes. Not to mention much of the controversial hard rock/heavy metal as mentioned above was simply publicity stunts and marketing schemes. I am sure some rap is too, but it promotes a lifestyle rather than youthful rebellion.
While Johnny Cash did sing of crime and criminals he did not promote the lifestyle. In fact he was a born again Christian before he started his career. He performed many more gospel songs (with his wife June Carter) than he did country songs.
While he did perform many criminal type songs it was to show that through the saving grace of God that if someone like him could be saved then so could other felons. Through gospel and country music, his music was his ministry.
* Breaking the law & fleeing from the authorities (Wanted Man)
Breaking hearts and fleeing women. You need to listen to the lyrics of Wanted Man more closely.
The whole thing came down to this -- the rapper guy with the silly hat who looked like a circus clown basically thought McWhorter "wasn't really black."
Sounds like more than just wimmen problems:
"......I might be in Colorado, or Georgia by the sea working for some man who may not know at all who I might be......"
".....If you ever see me coming and if you know who I am don't you breathe it to nobody 'cause you know I'm on the lamb....."
".....Went to sleep in Shreveport, woke up in Abilene wonderin' why I'm wanted at some town half way in between....."
".....There's somebody set to grab me anywhere that I might be and wherever you might look tonight you might get a glimpse of me...."
If he didn't promote it, as you say, he certainly lived it through years & years of drugs & booze (while he was also singing gospel songs).
In fact he was a born again Christian before he started his career.
He's certainly a Christian but I've never heard him refer to himself as "born again". If he is, it didn't come about before his career started.
He performed many more gospel songs (with his wife June Carter) than he did country songs.
False. While he has done many, many, many gospel songs they don't eclipse his country catalog.
While he did perform many criminal type songs it was to show that through the saving grace of God that if someone like him could be saved then so could other felons.
Now you're just trying to attribute "making an example" motives for Cash's songs that he himself has never done.
Cash also wrote another book called "Man In White" a biography of St. Paul.
More on Cash's life: People Just Like Us.org /Christian Positive Role Models
Wise men listen and laugh while fools talk
Stick up kids don't live long in New York
Fuck around and catch the wrong jukes on the street
Get caught slippin', then get hit wit' like three
I am the alpha male of my group. I am physically superior to all other males. Those who offend me by failing to render me the respect I to which I am entitled will be attacked with overwhelming physical force.
In every hood in the US, I'm that nigga they feelin' Rap full of good guys, 50 Cent is the villan
Other rap performers have watered down their lyrical content to appeal to suburban white people. These rappers are sellouts at best, race traitors at worst. True Negroes, who inhabit inner-city ghetto areas, recognize me alone as an authentic Negro.
I play the bar with 8 bottles all night gettin' right
Teachin' the hoodrats what Cristal taste like
I am a succesful hunter-gatherer, and I regularly consume eight bottles of Cristal [champagne] per night as a symbol of my lofty financial and cultural status. Those who have never imbibed this superior vintage cannot help but be impressed by my financial and societal success.
I put 60 on wrist, 12 on my fist, 100 on my neck
We in the hood nigga schemin', what you expect?
I am fabulousy wealthy, and regularly wear expensive gold jewelry in order to display that wealth. This fortune was earned through illicit means, furthering my reputation as a succesful predator.
My S on 22's leave ya hos confuuuuuused
On the track ready to choose, like "Daddy we want you"
I drive a Cadillac Escalade with 22" diameter custom wheels as a symbol of my wealth and sexual prowess.
My love live ain't change, the shorties still hug me
Bullet wound in my face, and bitches still love me
My many offspring are proof of my ability as a stud. Not only am I a powerful enough alpha male to survive a bullet wound to the face, but the fact that I have done so makes me irresistable as a mating partner to the available population of prime females.
Yet Clinton was the one to bring this joke to life. His cure for inner-city crime was midnight basketball courts.
The Left calls the GOP racist, while they continue to be the most racially divisive, most blatantly racist ("treating people differently according to their race"), and the most condescendingly allof to the problems of blacks in this country. One marvels at how 90% still vote for them, when all they have ever stood for is racial inequity, and all the GOP has ever stood for is equal treatment under the law. Apparently, that many blacks do not care about equality, if they can get preferential treatment at the expense of others. Knowing this, I refuse to feel guilt for any white Democrats who wrote Jim Crow laws and other devices seeking advantageous treatment based on race. Liberal Blacks clearly do not think there is anything wrong with it.
(Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of this thread but) do you have any knowledge that the song is only or at all about infidelity or are you just assuming?
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