But it did get its ass kicked...
Why has rap become super negative and aggressive? Why can all rap lines from popular rap songs be placed in one of the following categories: Cars, Money, Sex, Alcohol, Drugs and Violence. Before the typical rap song is halfway finished, my life has already been threatened 7, 8 times and whoever's rapping has alread flipped 4 or 5 bricks. Subject matter in hip hop/rap is extremely limited.
To make things worse, I was checking out somebody else's blog yesterday and there's actually a popular song out called "Do the Heisman on that Ho"... The dance culminates with the chanting about "if your bitch acts up, do the Heisman on that Ho" all while... you guessed it... striking the the Heisman pose... Let's add coonery to the above list, shall we?
When did this shift occur? I remember my first tape was De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising" in 1990. This album was considered a classic by The Source (which at the time was THE rap Bible) and the hip hop community as a whole. Their music was about peace and just having fun. I think their single "Buddy" was as close as you would get to talking about "bitches."
Fast forward to 1998 and beyond and you have rappers like DMX talking about dumping your body in a pond and it being found by "some old man fishing"...Arf! Arf! Just yesterday I heard a 50 Cent song talking about how his slugs will rip your body apart. And this dude lives in suburban Connecticut.
If the cats in the above video are over 20, they were probably saying "Fight the Power" right along with Public Enemy or "Can I Kick It" with A Tribe Called Quest back in the day. Now everybody has a "40 Cal" on 'em.
Things change...true. But when did it become cool to be destructive to yourself and your community? Why has this trend not ended? Will it? I refuse to believe that with all the subjects that comprises life, we in the hip hop world are confined to a destructive box.
If artist like Little Brother can rap about real life issues like growing up fatherless and not making the same mistakes with their children, or Jay-Z can rap about Hurrican Katrina (better late than never) or Nas can put on a bad Sherlock Holmes imitation and play detective as to who killed hip hop, why does 50 Cent have to continuously sing about killing more people than George Bush, or Jeezy have to flip coke over an entire album?
But fuck it! I'm no better than these guys I suppose. I bought Jeezy's album. I guess I'm part of the reason.
2 comments:
Yes, you are part of the problem. Primarily, because you bought Young Jeezy's album. You shoulda burned that joint and bought another Lupe album so he could get closer to sellin' 100,000.
I'm sure you understand that balance is the key. We don't need all rappers to be Talib Kweli the same way we don't need all rappers to be D4L. Mattafact, we don't need any rappers to be D4L. If I want ignorance and violence I'll pop in Clipse or Lil Wayne. Cuz I can listen to Clipse sell coke all day. But, D4L is just trash.
The Fuck really cares? If its dead give it a head stone and let move on to solving more important issues!!!
The whole segments of radio station and conferences being done on this very question and think it is ridiculous that primary black people are wasting time have intellectual conversations on this.
Why don't we disguss why as a race have less than 5% of the wealth? Or how we can keep black men out of jail? or the effect HIV and other disease are messing up our communities?
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