Howdy! I’m new here. Unless a particularly inflammatory blog makes the news, I don’t read blogs, so I’m just winging it here. I considered beginning this enterprise with an introductory entry, something with a meet’n’greet vibe, but I figure you don’t really care about who I am so I shan’t.
Instead I will jump right into this business with a potentially inflammatory topic! In trying to gather my thoughts for this entry, I debated whether I should sheepishly begin with assurances that I am not a racist. I went back and forth on the idea. The coldly logical part of myself insisted that anyone who actually read the entire entry would see that I’m not a racist by virtue of the points I made. The people-pleasing part of my personality insisted such reassurances were necessary to avoid getting death threats. The logical side asserted that people usually see what they want to see and if a person began reading this entry with the belief that anyone who hates rap music must be racist, nothing I could say would change their opinion. Again, the mousy side– Well, forget it, you get the idea. Besides, how many people are actually going to read this, right? By typing this paragraph, I have both provided the reassurance and made my views on the general populace clear.
So, onward. . .
My argument about rap music has two dimensions: Aesthetic and cultural.
In my youth, I was in a band. I love music. More specifically, I love my music. Most of the stuff released nowadays is shit and I don’t listen to any of it. Occasionally a really good song will sneak thru, a song I can really respect, but, mostly it’s shit. I have never liked rap music and this opinion has been with me since the explosion of Top 40 rap hits in the 90s. At the time, the aesthetics of the music itself was the biggest factor in my dislike of the “rap music” form. In fact, initially, I refused to call rap music ‘music’. It couldn’t be music, I reasoned, since there was no melody. Often the rapper would simply repeat a catch phrase over and over again; but we don’t call the nursery rhyme chants of cheerleaders ‘songs‘, so rap could not be music, either. Upon further consideration, however, I realized that since the rap form was sustained by a steady beat, then at least I could concede that rap is music, if only in the most primitive form.
Additionally, I despised the fact that much of the “real” music on rap songs was stolen from other people’s songs. From Van Halen to Rick James, no true melody was safe from rap artists’ clutches. Additionally, what did rappers do, exactly, that made them musicians? They had a great sense of rhythm, useful for dancing but not particularly inspiring in verbiage. Then again, I’ve always been at a loss with tongue twisters, so maybe I was just jealous. But, really, speaking very quickly and very clearly to a simple rhythm didn’t make you a musician, did it? Where were the guitars? (Not Eddie’s. I mean, an original guitar lick!) Where were the acoustic drums? (Not Roger Taylor’s, I mean the drumming of the guy in the rap band. Wait, rapper’s don’t have bands? Then, where does the music come from? Oh yeah, they steal it.) And they do steal it. Or, they did. After a big lawsuit was brought by an old band called the Turtles, one of whose melodies was sampled by Soul II Soul, and other landmark cases of the same kind, writing credits for the songs began to be split between the rap artist and the songwriters whose music was stolen. (This, in fact, is the only reason I can think of that more songwriters don’t bitch about sampling: Now they get royalties for the sales of records they had nothing to do with!) So now we say the melody or hook from “real” music is just ’borrowed’ or sampled. Whatever.
Now, I should point out here that there are two types of rap music that I don’t really have a problem with, even if I won’t listen to them. They are the rap music from the two ends of the spectrum of the form, what you might call the “pop-rap” and early “hard core” rap. Young MC, MC Hammer, Fresh Prince and Tone Loc are examples of the former, Public Enemy the best example of the latter. In the case of pop-rap, I could tolerate their output because it was so innocuous; aside from the huge money they made, few really took them seriously. (In fact, it’s sad that MC Hammer changed his name and recorded an expletive-ridden CD just to gain street cred.) Public Enemy, on the other hand, was using its inimitable style to focus the country’s attention on the racial inequities and plight of inner-city blacks. These guys had a real message and used an “old school” attitude to present it. (I’m leaving out the earliest rap which often was so nonsensical in lyrical content that Dr Seuss would have been proud.)
Contrast that with the evil coming from the rest of the rap music form. The demon was called Legion, for they were many: misogyny, rape, murder, thievery, drug use, drug sale, etc. In some cases this is truly where the rap artist came from and I suppose I can respect that to some degree; but wouldn’t it serve your race better if you turned your tragic experiences into a message of hope and change? And what of the obvious fakes, or eventual sell outs? Dr Dre, once the godfather of rap, who made his money on exactly this kind of trash, is now just a fat music mogul. Ice Cube, once a bad mofo, now stars in family comedy films. Ice-T, who gave the world a song called “Cop Killer”, now stars on a cop show, for Christ’s sake!
This point dovetails nicely with my other argument against rap music: The destructive force it has on black culture. I already mentioned that I could give credence to some of this music if the writers would focus more on fighting for change, and offering hope, than revelling in the mire. Nowadays, with the horrifying statistics regarding absent fathers in the lives of black youth, often the only male perspective being offered is the music of gang bangers. They are surrounded by friends who listen to it. They hear the rapper speaking of the very experiences the black youth is going thru. Most tragically, the black youth begins to believe that the only way they will ever get ahead in life is to follow the path of their heroes: crime. (Get rich or die trying, little boy.)
Instead of being celebrated, these rappers should be rounded-up and arrested for inciting violence. I’m all for free speech, but what is the mother of a black child in the inner city doing while her son is becoming a gang banger? What’s even worse is that the rapper from the projects, who is now a rich man, in most cases doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the people left behind. Money was all he wanted, money is what he got. His work is done.
And let me just tell all the people who insist that whites have a stereotypical view of blacks as crooks and murderers that if you want the stereotypes to go away, STOP POPULARIZING THE STEREOTYPE! No, all black people are not thugs, but if an alien landed in America and immersed himself in the popular media portrayal of blacks – and the way that rap artists portray themselves! – he would think the same thing! In political discourse, you often hear the phrase “silent majority”; this usually refers to the everyday Joe who works hard, keeps his head down, and does what he can for his family but whose values tell him there is something very wrong with the path the country is on. Let me borrow – or, better yet! – sample that phrase to refer to the millions of black families that are doing all they can to follow the rules, struggling to keep their heads above water. People who want a better life than what rappers are selling them. People whose inner compass tells them that the rappers and the rap culture are as big an enemy as a bad economy and racist whites.
(And, yes, I know it takes a lot of nerve for a white guy to put himself in a black man’s shoes. I mean it in the best way.)
In a day and age when a black man can become President of this country, isn’t it time for more black Americans to stand up and say to the rappers, “Shut up! As a race we have reached the pinnacle of power in this country and your ignorant, self-defeating evil won’t fly anymore! Take your millions of benjamins and go away so we can raise our children to reach higher, become more!”
That’s not going to happen, of course, I just wanted to get on a soap box. No, rap music is far too lucrative for any of us to expect that it will disappear, or, at the very least, reform itself. As long as the children of this nation are led to believe that success can come without hard work, but, instead, with the ability to speak quickly and clearly over a steady beat, or from a life of crime, then rap music will continue to exist in the same cannibalistic manner it always has.
Thusly and therefore, rap music sucks.
