Tuesday, April 17, 2007

"I HATE HIP HOP" - DECONSTRUCTED



Denmark Vesey ...

Chicken or the egg?

Rapper or the Audience?

Fundamental to the anti-Hip Hop argument: 1) Rap appeals to kids. 2) Kids emulate what they hear. 3) Therefore Rappers must be held responsible for what they say. Rap indulges in the use of terms like “Bitch” and “Ho” and “Nigga”, while celebrating guns and violence which triggers a tsunami of negative behavior throughout the culture.

Have I left anything critical out of the argument?

Good.

I argue that that is arrogantly ignorant analysis. To reduce all that Hip Hop to a gross categorical over simplification is the height of intellectual laziness.

To boycott Hip Hop while eagerly consuming mainstream bad language, sex guns and violence is the ultimate in discrimination and self-hatred.

These “kids” who are the subject of our discussion are not completely ignorant mindless sheep. Actually they are the products of a variety of complex unique historical, ecological and socio-political factors. In a world of ideas and messages competing for their attention, Rap is one of many contenders.

They RESPOND to RAP because RAP is relevant to them. They find it empowering.

Why do kids not respond to the messages from the bourgeoisie black consumer class? Why is Lloyd Banks more recognized than any member of the Congressional Black Caucus? Why is every black leader with the exception of Minister Farrakhan ignored by young blacks?

Because THEIR MESSAGE IS NOT RELEVANT. It fails to empower it's audience. The message is incoherent, vague and one-way. It lacks moral authority. It is void of courage. It is hallow old and not well thought out. It is contemptuous liberal feel good mentoring instead of mutually beneficial partnership.

Instead of criticizing rap, the energy should be spent developing and delivering an alternative message, equally relevant and intrinsically real that inspires, compels and empowers young blacks.

The Post Civil Rights Negro has failed to excite the imaginations of young black Americans. They appear refugees from a bygone era still struggling with racism and glass ceilings. Passed up by Mexicans and Asians. Last year’s players.



The Corporate Negro appears a disenchanted, compromised occupant of a glorified plantation. Often laid-off employee with a degree and student loans toiling away at jobs he hates while scheming an escape. Compromised emasculated conformist. A snobby sucka.

In a society increasingly dangerous for young black men, rap has served as a collective alter ego, a confidence sandwich to millions of young men starved for self-esteem. In the marketplace of masculinity black men are moguls. Aint no glass ceilings.

Yeah. Rappers talk about guns and violence. Therefor we have a more violent society. Bullshit.

Does James Bond make white people kill each other? Does Hannibal Lecter make white people eat each other? Does 24 make white people torture Arabs? The governor of California has killed far more people on the screen than has 50 Cent.

Should the only people allowed to use a gun on TV be white men?

Say what you want about Rap. But any brotha who can “take a phrase that’s rarely heard, flip it, and make it a daily word” and get paid millions and buy ball teams and when on the mic, make every woman in the club throw her panties on the stage – aint all that dumb.

While the corporate world appears to punish black men for being black men – the rap marketplace pays them for it. Women scream their names and try to touch them, not clutch their purses.

The iconography of Hip Hop has currency. Rich. Masculine. Media savvy. Powerful. Self-Defining. Accessible. Capitalist. Winner. EVERYTHING AMERICA WORSHIPS. – Jay-Z

The iconography of the Post Civil Rights Negro is the flickering black and white video of the emasculated loser, a victim ultimately dependent on the largesse of white folks – Harold Ford, JR.

The Corporate Negro seems a struggling hustler with a degree, a bitter bench riding player hater who would switch places in a heartbeat.

The fact is America worships Hip Hop. Every Sunday millions of consumers plop their fat asses in front of TV’s and consume a Hip Hop product slickly packaged as football.

Hate Hip Hop? That’s like hating money.

Hip Hop has international market and political potential yet to be tapped. For black people to divest themselves of Hip Hop would be like Jews divesting their interests in the film business.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

boy, you have got this scruffy cat by the tail haven't you?

did you want to be a rapper when you were a wee kid??

Anonymous said...

DV,
Your a good writer who it appears attempts to constantly make your arguments with your emotions versus facts:
#1)I have not witnessed anyone on your blog suggest that ALL hiphop or rap is bad(example:Gospel). I am referring to Gansta rap or overly explicit lyrics that talks about nothing like "Gin and Juice" or violence... 100% of that is counterproductive for many but obviously very entertaining to you.
#2)Many rappers, such as Ice T, have credited pimp and writer Iceberg Slim with influencing their rhymes... Thats right a P.I.M.P. ("hoes" and "bitches" ring a bell)
#3)Gangsta rap CD sales have fallen steadily since 2005. Most of the fanbase is now white males instead of black and Latino males. The 2007 domumentary, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes' features some of these issues. So I am not sure how that would equate to discrimantion or self-hatred to boycott it.
#4) Kids respond to Gansta Rap because it's marketed to/for them. Congressmen don't target non-voting age persons so maybe that's why kids may know of Lloyd Banks. I am sure that many kids in the 60's knew of Nat King Cole versus Thurgood Marshall.
#5)Please point out the last Rapper lead boycott outside of Jay-Z's boycott of Cristal...?Comparing politics with Gansta Rap?
#6)Gansta Rap inspires my mentee's to wear their pants around their thighs. To not complete a sentence without the use of the word "nigga". To call any little girls who give them no attention a "bitch" while potentially grabbing the girls arm without consent.
#7)The constant reference to "Corporate Negros" really comes off as if your a disgruntled former corporate employee. It does nothing to help people to possibly understand your point of view.
#8)Really do you attempt to suggest that a life of Rap artist is a better route for Black men versus education and employment in someone's firm? or self employment?
#9)You maybe naive if you don't believe sex, violence and gun play don't impact many in our society no matter what channel TV, movie, music.
#10)So if some brotha came up with a variation of a hot dog that young black men loved to death and made mad loot that alloyed him/her purchase a bball team that would be OK based on your argument that is doen't matter what your selling if you are macking paper.
#11)The rap marketplace pays black men for being black? Gansta Rap is not being black... Its being Gansta which Italian and Polish mobsters started... How is that Black? Additionally, last I looked Marshall Mathers was not Black... So there goes your theory.

All you have to do is sell your soul to the devil and pretend to be hard and the loaned gold chains, cars, houses can be yours too.
#12)Very few artist make any lifelong dollars in the music business.
#13)If Rap/HipHop even were that popular based on your NFL statement then it would be safe to assume that BET would have higher ratings than the NFL... Correct?
Fact is the NFL had very high ratings prior to rap popularity my man. I personally see no video girls or rappers during my football game. I don't recall seeing a rapper during the Superbowl halftime performance did you?

Come on DV... Come down from the hills of Belair and come spend a week with me and the little homies in at the rec. center of South Bronx. It may alter your opinion... ;)

Regards,
Anon

Denmark Vesey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Denmark Vesey said...

jasai said...

did you want to be a rapper when you were a wee kid??



Nah. I just never wanted to be a conformist.

Denmark Vesey said...

Denmark Vesey said...

Anon, I told you to get a nickname.

Man, I was born in the Bronx. I've seen ghettos all around the world. Some make the Bronx look like 75th and Lex.

Regarding the relative redeeming social value of Hip Hop, I'm talking chess. You talking checkers.

Michael Fisher said...

What you are worshiping is reactionary, conformist Gangsta Hip Hop and not Hip hop, per se.

Look. The argument that guns and violence causes kids to become violent is fallacious. What is important are not the guns and the violence in and themselves of, but HOW they are used artistically.

I had that argument with Cory Robbins in 1989 when I exec-produced what at the time probably was the first female "Gangsta" rapper on the East Coast, now little known, Lisa Ali Star, aka LA Star.

The music was so-so, but her lyrics where incredible and based on her true-life experience as as South Bronx Crack Dealers' girlfriend.

The story was gripping. A true life crime story with all the street language you wanna hear. The video she had conceived for her story was full of violent imagery and guns and s***.

I tried to convince Cory to do the video again and again, but he chickened out.

Why did I want to do that video? Because it told a true story the unfolding of which taught a lesson - REAL Gangsta life will get you killed. Kinda like Slick Rick's Bedtime Story.

You can't teach a lesson like that without being true to the game and the imagery.

In any case, they completely mismarketed the poor girl, called album "Poetess" instead of Gangsta B***, and made me hire Flex (yeah, the Sitcome dude) to do a Michael Jackson rip off video for one of the love songs she had on the album.

So, she sank into oblivion.

The thing is. What you've got to do is distinguish between a reactionary and backward use of violent imagry (which is conformist), and a positive, progressive use of violent imagery (which is non-conformist).

Your heros, Jay Z, Snoop,fitty, etc. are conformists to the hilt. In so far they are in bed with the corporate and post-civil rights guys you deride.

And that, my man, against all your protestations to the contrary, makes you a conformist.

Anonymous said...

DV Said...
Man, I was born in the Bronx. I've seen ghettos all around the world. Some make the Bronx look like 75th and Lex.

Anon Said...
Seeing a ghetto and living in a ghetto are two different experiences. So maybe it's time to come back 50 years later. But you would still qualify to be Gansta rapper.

DV Said...
Regarding the relative redeeming social value of Hip Hop, I'm talking chess. You talking checkers.

Anon Said...
I am talking "Life" your talking "Poverty" "Jail" & "Death"

Regards,
Anon

Anonymous said...

Mike Fisher stop name droppin' it takes away from your arguments!

Michael Fisher said...

"Mike Fisher stop name droppin' it takes away from your arguments!"

Huh?

Oh, chill...

What name dropping? I'm using real people and events to make the point. That's name dropping?

The reason that has to be done here is 'cause DV accuses anyone who doesn't agree with him to be a corporate bourgeois negro who has no clue. As he did before.

Well, the arguments put forward by yours truely are based on anything else but a bourgeois negradoom life. That takes the wind out of DV's sail.

Besides, just by me posting under my real name that'd be "name dropping" extraordinaire anyhow. (wink) LOL

Anonymous said...

DV, I don't want none ;-)

Just wanna say RIP to the original Biggie Smalls! Nice pic!

the good nurse said...

DV,
Great post. While I am not the biggest fan of Rap, I do have a respect for the art. We all have to remember when Langston, nikki, and other GREAT poets first published their works it too was met with resistance. Deemed as too street, too black, too off the beaten path. I say to those who are offended, don't listen, teach your children that this is a mean world we live in and everyone is not going to play by the rules, some people are going to say things you don't like and may even hurt your feelings. It is what it is. Teach your young queens and kings to resist the evil and embrace that which is good. Be an example to the wicked. By the way, you may want to check out this brother..he is almost as fab as u are! http://blackisms.blogspot.com/
much peace,
Nurse Cook

Mr. Wilson said...

Okay DV...

First thing I want to say is...primarily I am on your side but...

I do have to play devil's advocate about modern rap. You have to admit that most of the hip hop we get exposed to today, is not the raw expression of what is in the hearts and minds of these young and talented griots. What we get is sent through a filter meant to get the most units sold, even if its white kids. If you listen to "underground" hip hop, even the gulliest grimiest brothers seem real, human, and somewhat balanced. Mainstream (aka corporate-sanctioned) hip hop is marketing-driven, not art driven,

In 2007 rappers are on the slave block as they get presented as products and brands. I don't think 50 cent got shot 9 times with a real gun, but it makes for great marketing because he sounds invincible and untouchable. I bet 50 cent has gone to Jimmy Iovine with more than one record expressing how lonely and isolated he is, but Jimmy ain't letting the public see 50 as anything but an alpha male silver-back urban gorilla that solves all problems with dispassionate aggression. "Nigga get your ass back in the studio and murder somebody on the track...do you think Vivica liked you for your soul?"

Most of these young rappers are not being honest about how they are getting manipulated and pimped by these companies (although Jadakiss has made some notable references throughout the years). Most of the rappers you mentioned are coerced every step of the way through their creative process by the irresponsible and money hungry white-run corporations to express themselves the way they do. They don't even get signed unless they demonstrate that they are willing to be exploited, and once they get the contract, they must do what the label says or never get one word on a record, ending up broke as fuck. I will grant that some brothers are too brilliant to be completely nuetered and find a happy medium between pleasing execs and still saying something relevant (Jay-Z and Andre 3000), but many are just tyring to eat and will do and say anything (ying yang twins) they are told to. The execs will force the rappers to be or do anything that they think will results in album sales, and some shit is socially irresponsible. Suggesting to little black boys that affluence is the only way to demonstrate self worth is social irresponsible. Suggesting to little black girls, that their ability to make their ass cheeks clap together is more interesting than anything they could ever say is socially irresponsible. I am not saying this is the source of the problem, but it isn't helping.

DV, I know this for sure: something is missing. Rakim had swaggar, Biggie had charisma, Pac had heart, but the corporations hadn't locked things down so tightly then. Today, the images are skewed, unrealistic, 1 dimensional and there is much less diversity. Where are the fun happy but fairly clean rappers like kid and play and will smith? where are the political rappers like public enemy? where are lyrical monsters like big daddy kane? where are the new native toungues? where are the pharcydes, the black moons, the souls of mischiefs?

today's kids are identifying with Lil Wayne, and Young Joc but partly because they aren't getting exposed to anything else. we talked about exposure at dina's, and these kids are getting exposed to the same hyper agressive mysogynist image instead of getting exposed to a diverse range of rap heros and identifying with them all. i had eazy e, but i also had krs-one and they were both embraced by radio and mainstream outlets then. or is there really something different about this generation?

DV, just admit that something is amiss and in spite of the fact that rappers represent a liberated crotch grabbing alternative to looking up to corporate negros, the truth is almost every rapper you have named IS a corporate negro. and not only that, at least this corporate negro isn't owned and can take his brilliant understanding of info. theory and communications systems to another corporation if this one starts tripping. in other words, the truth is that given my education and experience, i have more options than 99% of rappers, but how would kids ever know that?

but basically, i am on your side against anybody that tries to demonize hip hop or any genre of hip hop. fuck anybody who says there is something wrong with gangsta rap. NWA was a blessing to me and expressed a hostility and rage I didn't even know I had as a good little southern boy. Although I wouldn't even want to hang with cats like Havoc and Prodigy if I knew them, I think my life is enriched by Mobb Deep because what they do is artful.

okay...chew on that...

Anonymous said...

look at kc, kicking something thing means something...

nice kc. you were eloquent and steady. nice. but like a hungry street hustler, he will find a way to shank your position until it's bloody and stumbling backwards.

Anonymous said...

James Bond, hannibal lector, ect...don't have the appeal and influence that rap does. Rap is shaping an entire young Black generation (unfortunately)

Denmark Vesey said...

Brother Paul,

Is "Rap" shaping an entire generation of young blacks ... or is a generation of young blacks attempting to shape themselves and "Rap" is one of their tools?

Again, in a time when so-called black leaders can barely get on television unless they are chasing a racial ambulance - Hip Hop has access to millions.

I see many positive, self-defining impulses and a method to the madness of Hip Hop.

More importantly, I do not see a viable alternative from us ... "educated" blacks.

Anonymous said...

What you got DV? With all of this shitting on and shunning of educated black folks, surely you have got some ideas, some methodology for those who can’t, don’t or won’t rap. What can concerned citizens do to reach and teach?

Anonymous said...

Marvin Gaye said more to Black America with one song... more than any Gansta rap song that I have ever heard. What's Going On!... Listen that was rapping. What I find funny is that most commercial rappers don't even write their own lyrics... Yet some on this blog making them and the message to be so uplifting for young men and women of color specifically because how they "flip it". Ok so they are telling their story of how supposedly their life was as a Gangsta in hood. There ain't nothing (most of the time)great or relaxing about living in the hood. I don't think anyone on this blog is running to live in the hood. To live that Gansta life. My point is if you have options to alter your life then Gansta rap means something total different to you DV. It is your alter ego. You won't dare live that life because you know in your heart you would not be living the life you are probably living today. So my point... When you feel you don't or you REALLY TRULY don't have options to get out of the hood then one may decide to actually live that Gansta life of Philadelphia MC Schoolly D (1984 Look him up the first to lay Gansta lyrics). And that my friends may inspire the asshole climbing in your window tonight "with a gat in one hand and a blunt in the other".
See real rappers/poets/ganstas & bloggers "Keep It Real"

Regards,
Anon

Denmark Vesey said...

Anon,

I see what your problem is. You are unable to discern the difference between artistry and documentary. It aint that deep, but your analysis is over simplistic.

I've got one word for you: METAPHOR.

I've got another: SYMBOLISM. MYTHOLOGY. STORY. METHOD TO THE MADNESS.

Just because you can't see it, Anon, doesn't mean it's not there.

Why is the Hip Hop artist limited to a literal translation?

For the record, the handkerchief heads dissed Marvin initially too. 25 years from now, they will just be seeing the opportunity in Hip Hop.

"Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today" M. Gaye

Anonymous said...

Maybe this is the heist that educated black folks (who can't or don't rap) should pull in order to reach today's young critical mass.....

http://www.propheticnetworkblog.com/

Denmark Vesey said...

Interesting cat Jasai.

What's your take on this?

Anonymous said...

He’s saying something. He’s doing it in a god awful get-up but he's saying something.

I am going to check out his book. I am always so reticent about those who use a “way" simply to garner material wealth because I feel like that speaks to the depths them and it becomes a wayward example for those who are not as adept at self directing and discovery. But the bible says that is man will not, he can make the rocks will cry out so I guess the word is the word and the truth is the truth, despite the messenger.

Needless to say, the jury is still out on this guy with me. What I am glad to see and hear is something that the people's ears can perk up to. Something that is not disparaging of other religions (he quotes the Buddha and Muhammad) and his teaching calls for action today. Waiting for the great goodness in the afterlife and on the lord today to get results for groceries and healthy bodies is not on his list of things to cover in the service. For that I am eternally grateful.