In any genre of music, garbage can be found. It always will be. There will always be people to buy the swill that some record label big wig decided would be the next hot thing, just because it's the next hot thing. That kind of goes without saying. However, the world of hip-hop seems to have two separate factions. The artists trying to spread the word of what it's actually like to live where they lived and the artists who continue to perpetuate this idea of a "baller." This post comes from a seething disgust within me for the latter.
I happened upon BET's Rap City: Tha Basement the other day, only to find a video that did nothing but fuel my hatred for what this genre of music is becoming. More and more the hip-hop world is being overrun with rappers who insist on rapping about how much money they have, spend and use to acquire "bitches" and/or "hoes." The video that sparked this rant is "Splash/Byrd Gang Money" by Byrd Gang feat. Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, Chink Santana and NOE. I offer a little sampling of the lyrics, which mind you I had to transcribe on my own because I couldn't find any site (not even one of the largest collections of hip-hop lyrics on the Internet) that had them... this point will come in handy later, remember it.
"Goddamn I'm so cold,
Money, hoes and clothes, that's all a young n***a knows.
Big bank rolls, my neck froze,
Hoes that wanna roll,
We slammin' them Bentley doors."
(Side note: The second line of this is actually a Notorious B.I.G. lyric... recycled).
Now, in comparison I'd like to offer some lyrics from an artist that I consider to be of the first ilk. The ones that bring some sort of reality of their own lives to the table.
"Me and Willa raised three daughters all by herself, with no help,
I think about a struggle and I find the strength in myself,
These words, melt in my mouth, they hot like the jail cell in the South
before my n***a Core bailed me out."
("Get By" - Talib Kweli)
Artists like Talib Kweli, Cunninlynguists, Dead Prez and even Kanye West (before the fame got to him) rap about the struggles they have faced and overcome. They urge the hip-hop community to strive to rise above. They don't preach about hustlin' everyday and staying in that lifestyle. They don't perpetuate the idea of stacking paper and weighing down necks with diamonds and gold. Some say art mirrors life and that people need something to relate to... can people in the Bronx really relate to slamming doors on Bentleys? To having 24" all-chrome rims? Or can they relate to raising babies in a world full of economic unrest? To struggling everyday to find the next meal to put on the table or a way to put a child through college? The argument is that the flashy side of hip-hop is something to aspire to achieve, but at the same time much of work within that faction of hip-hop relates to hustlin' and dealing... not to getting an education or rising above your situation. Somewhere along the way hip-hop got confused and now hustlin' is glorified and revered. When in reality, that life eventually gets you two places -- in a jail cell or in the ground.
Rapping about bitches and hoes and how your neck stay froze, doesn't bring anything to world of hip-hop. Nor does rapping about how awesome you are when a handful of people know your name (see above lack of lyrics point). It's garbage. It's nonsense. It does not facilitate change in a culture that seeks it. It does not provoke thought or action other than finding a way to get whatever materialistic nonsense XXX rapper is blathering about.
I suppose these points can be made about any genre. But perhaps it is the most prevalent in hip-hop because of the size of the genre. In the late '90s, rap became America's biggest selling music genre. Recently it has declined. There's an interesting article from Time that discusses the possibities of why hip-hop is on the downturn.
"Longtime rap fans are doing the math and coming to the same conclusions as the music's voluminous critics. In February, the filmmaker Byron Hurt released Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a documentary notable not just for its hard critique but for the fact that most of the people doing the criticizing were not dowdy church ladies but members of the hip-hop generation who deplore rap's recent fixation on the sensational."
Hip-hop started out of necessity. Out of a necessity for change within the music industry. It started underground because people needed something to relate to. Can the average hip-hop consumer now really relate to stacking millions in the back of a mansion with 32 friends making in rain on a handful of strippers? I know I can't. What I can relate to is honesty, whether it be about hustlin' in the streets when it was necessary not glorified or struggling to raise a family or watching a friend die at the hand of a drug dealer. I cannot relate to $500 bottles of champagne or diamonds bigger than my face. It would be an interesting world if hip-hop could get back what it was when it meant something. I can feel a change bubbling under the surface in the industry. Let's just hope for hip-hop's sake, the genre doesn't die before it wakes.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Feed my eyes.
The confines of free speech is a hotly debated issue. What is considered "appropriate" or "offensive" is continuously up for discussion. The latest area to be tested is the idea that "public" online spaces aren't necessarily covered under the First Amendment. When a company owns a Web site, they can control what is broadcast in that venue. An article released yesterday by the Associated Press details an instance where a Dutch photographer with a Flickr account posted a photograph of a Romanian boy smoking a cigarette. Without warning, Yahoo removed the photo saying it was in violation of an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Not only does this action infringe on one's right to share the documenting of life, it offers a frightening look into the idea that the Internet isn't as freeing as it is commonly perceived.
This Romanian boy was smoking. He couldn't have been more than 11 years old. Just because it may be considered "inappropriate," doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Nick Ut depicting a Vietnamese girl running down the street naked after being burned by Napalm was ultimately disturbing, but it happened. It also brought the attention of the world the Vietnam War and the fact that innocent people were being seriously affected. In modern times, the way we share information and images has changed.
The Internet is capable of reaching the ends of the Earth in seconds. The entire idea of how people perceive the world is changing rapidly due to the amount of information that is available with the click of a button. Along this vein, the Internet can be a dangerous thing for those who wish to oppress a group people with ideas different than their own. Because of the instantaneous access to a plethora of information, the Internet is a more efficient place to spread the word of rebellion; it's more effective than print publications. I'm not saying that in this situation Yahoo was trying to silence the Romanian people or anything. I'm saying there is a thin line between actual freedom of expression on the Internet and the veil of it.
There are myriad advocacy groups promoting the First Amendment in relation to the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one such group. The foundation's site states: "Preserving the Internet's open architecture is critical to sustaining free speech. But this technological capacity means little without sufficient legal protections. If laws can censor you, limit access to certain information, or restrict use of communication tools, then the Internet's incredible potential will go unrealized." They mainly cover the idea of the government infringing on the people's right to freedom of expression. However, as mentioned above, when a company owns a site -- such as Facebook, Flickr or MySpace -- they can determine by their company's guidelines what is acceptable and unacceptable. Networking sites are such an enormous part of modern culture, that the limitation on what can and cannot be expressed on them can have a crucial impact. The AP article mentioned above states that evicting a user from an online community or networking site "would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town." People easily forget that the sites we visit daily and build our social contacts on are owned. They are not free and clear. What we choose to place on our pages can be removed without warning or, depending on the severity of offending material, more severe penalties may be inflicted.
This all goes back to the idea of what is "obscene," and who makes that ruling. The legal definition of obscenity is as follows:
“Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.
Whether the work, taken as whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
However, there is a lot of gray area within this definition. A photograph of a naked woman isn't necessarily pornographic because it may include artistic or scientific value. Now say that same naked woman was engaged in intercourse with a male, would this be obscene? Again, it depends on the context. The photograph could have scientific value by being educational. It's all relative.
Is a young Romanian boy smoking obscene? Or does it have political and scientific value in that it educates people around the world to the issues of the Romanian population? Now obviously, the Dutch photographer isn't being brought up on charges or anything. His picture was just taken down. But the point here is, who makes that call? In the legal system of our society the government judges, but does that mean in the realm of the Internet that fat cats with bulging pockets decide how and where we can express ourselves? Maybe so.
This Romanian boy was smoking. He couldn't have been more than 11 years old. Just because it may be considered "inappropriate," doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Nick Ut depicting a Vietnamese girl running down the street naked after being burned by Napalm was ultimately disturbing, but it happened. It also brought the attention of the world the Vietnam War and the fact that innocent people were being seriously affected. In modern times, the way we share information and images has changed.
The Internet is capable of reaching the ends of the Earth in seconds. The entire idea of how people perceive the world is changing rapidly due to the amount of information that is available with the click of a button. Along this vein, the Internet can be a dangerous thing for those who wish to oppress a group people with ideas different than their own. Because of the instantaneous access to a plethora of information, the Internet is a more efficient place to spread the word of rebellion; it's more effective than print publications. I'm not saying that in this situation Yahoo was trying to silence the Romanian people or anything. I'm saying there is a thin line between actual freedom of expression on the Internet and the veil of it.
There are myriad advocacy groups promoting the First Amendment in relation to the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one such group. The foundation's site states: "Preserving the Internet's open architecture is critical to sustaining free speech. But this technological capacity means little without sufficient legal protections. If laws can censor you, limit access to certain information, or restrict use of communication tools, then the Internet's incredible potential will go unrealized." They mainly cover the idea of the government infringing on the people's right to freedom of expression. However, as mentioned above, when a company owns a site -- such as Facebook, Flickr or MySpace -- they can determine by their company's guidelines what is acceptable and unacceptable. Networking sites are such an enormous part of modern culture, that the limitation on what can and cannot be expressed on them can have a crucial impact. The AP article mentioned above states that evicting a user from an online community or networking site "would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town." People easily forget that the sites we visit daily and build our social contacts on are owned. They are not free and clear. What we choose to place on our pages can be removed without warning or, depending on the severity of offending material, more severe penalties may be inflicted.
This all goes back to the idea of what is "obscene," and who makes that ruling. The legal definition of obscenity is as follows:
“Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.
Whether the work, taken as whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
However, there is a lot of gray area within this definition. A photograph of a naked woman isn't necessarily pornographic because it may include artistic or scientific value. Now say that same naked woman was engaged in intercourse with a male, would this be obscene? Again, it depends on the context. The photograph could have scientific value by being educational. It's all relative.
Is a young Romanian boy smoking obscene? Or does it have political and scientific value in that it educates people around the world to the issues of the Romanian population? Now obviously, the Dutch photographer isn't being brought up on charges or anything. His picture was just taken down. But the point here is, who makes that call? In the legal system of our society the government judges, but does that mean in the realm of the Internet that fat cats with bulging pockets decide how and where we can express ourselves? Maybe so.
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