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 ...
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
What about punk music?
The point of rap music is rebellion and to offend "adults."
If people over the age of say 40 don't find in loud and offensive then they are doing something wrong. Personally, I listen to it all day long most of it is commercial crap (everything that gets radio play), but some of it is original, imaginative, and humorous (if offensive).
I didn't read the entire long winded article but IMHO the author demonstrates his ignorance of the subject by overlooking one key point (often overlooked by people who don't listen to it)
In rap music the lyrics are secondary to the music itself. Which is to say the beat. I listen to rap all day every day and I even I can't understand the 3/4 of the lyrics to these songs. Your lucky if you can make out the hook (chorus.)
Mom and Dad live in Hollywood
Hang myself WHEN I GET ENOUGH ROPE!
Yeah, Rap "retards" alright. I see these morons on the subways and in the streets all the time. Even many of the Arab kids in my nabe walk around "rhymin' and stealin'" (I'm OLD SCHOOL here), which in my circles, would be evidence of severe retardation.
I've been listening to ska and punk for a loooooong time....started in H.S. Still enjoy it, 15 years later.
Like a lot of kids, I started listening to p*ss my father off. It worked.
I like it because it's a good outlet. I like a lot of the people that are in the culture because of their individualism. The people in it that I know run from the ultra-conservative to the ultra liberal, but I think that most would feel very much at home here on FR because they are thinkers that can't stand the herd mentality.
Finally, I'd like to put in two qualifiers here......1) there are two types of punk. The pre-washed, bland, pop, MTV variety and the underground variety. I'd include myself in the latter. 2)The pictures of punk fans with spiked hairdos and safety pins in their noses, largely just make good press. Yes, these people exist - you see them at every show - but most of the fans look like Joe and Jane average. You'd also be surprised at the number of people that take out the earrings and hairspikes after the show, get in their Lexus, and go to their professional job. I'm in IT management, guy that I see shows with is VP in a large bank. Go figure! :-)
That's because there are now two types of people in New York: Spineless yuppies from places like California and thugs such as those in this article.
When I was 15, I was a white dope on punk!
Hilarious!
And accurate!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.