Neither did Tupac or Biggie kill anyone.
While a lot of rap seems to be gut-wrenching tales of life in the hood, you kind of have to wonder what exactly’s going on here, becuase if I’m not mistaken, most rap is bought by white teenaged boys. Rap artists know this full well; that their paying audience wants to hear the most outrageous lyrics and stylings, but are they really telling the truth, or are they just putting on the blackface on going “Mammy…”?
I could give two shits whether an artist wants to sing about abusing women and selling drugs, but I have very serious doubts about the actual authenticity of many rappers. There are some who are “real”, but many are cranking out megalomaniacal doggerel for the money, period. I think that just doing whatever bullshit sells is far more destructive than having misogynist outlaw lyrics.
But why does it have to be ‘real’? No other art form is held to this. Why should a rap artist have to rap about what is real? Why can’t he be allowed to tell a story for those that are living the life he raps about?
Why can’t he be allowed to paint metaphores that he knows hard core hip hop fans and hard-knock ghetto residents will relate to?
Maybe he loves the gritty fodder of street life and wants to flex his lyrical skill expressing that. If the end result is a song about woman abuse and drug selling, well then so what? I have a hard time understanding how that song may actually take a good kid and make him abuse women and sell drugs.
I confess to being a bit too annoyed when hip-hop is bashed, because I often sense it is misunderstood and that those that don’t understand are way too willing to paint the art form as garbage. Once everone has agreed that there is nothing to the art form, it is easy for all kinds of untruths to abound unchecked.
Tupac and Biggie did not die over a rap feud. 50 cents gunshot wounds have absolutely nothing to do with hip-hop. When I hear otherwise, I cringe, because I know that hip-hop is taking another hit that it doesn’t deserve.
An Arky, am I to understand that sense white teenaged boys buy most rap, then that means rap artists are all shuckers and jivers and Step’n Fetchits? I don’t get it. Lord knows I believe that many black artists, from hip-hop to Oscar winning movie actors have done the ol’ “Mammy”, but I don’t see why hip hop should be criticized. If anything, criticize the the media (MTV, BET) that has created some sick hybrid of hip-hop and shiney trash, and pushed it to the masses.
I agree, art is expression. Period.
Whether or not rap is destructive is really a question ultimately over whether the source – human beings – has aspects that are destructive from which that artistic expression blossoms. Yes, human beings have destructive aspects.
Attempting to squelch the artistic expression of human experience is dangerous, utopian, and contemptuous of humanity. Which is fine if one wants to find humanity contemptuous (I sure do), but then we’d have to include all humans. “Destructive” human expressions weren’t invented by rappers.
Alright, maybe rap ia not so intellectual these days, but why does it have to be rap that has to be intellectual? It’s not rap’s job to be intellectual? music never had to be intellectual. What’s a life long value you can learn from listening to a piano all day? It’s places like school where you should learn intellectual values, right? Though it might be not interesting cuz of your interests, other people may like it because they have their own interests. Me, I like modern rap because it has a nice mean beat you can dance to, and it has funny jokes often, and it has many different cool voices and whatnot. And I findthat those intellectual rappers you are talking about just can’t really make a good mean song to dance to and stuff.
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Nzinga, but when I read the lyrics to that song, that’s pretty much the message I come away with. I really don’t see how it can be taken differently. Isn’t it about how he should be able to do other women behind the girl’s back? Maybe I am way off base, if so it’s probably because I come from a radically different background.
I’d like to reiterate a couple points though
1.) I generally don’t get into these discussions precisely because I know that I don’t know much about the style. While there’s a bunch of this style of music I enjoy listening too, I’m not into it enough to learn the deeper truths of it. But I wonder how much of the audience base listens to it the way you would, vs. the way I do.
2.) My previous statements about message saturation and the need to rein things in a little apply to pretty much all entertainment culture, not just rap. Rap’s current mainstream form is just one small piece of a larger picture of things getting out of hand, imho.
3.) I am not advocating censorship, and it is not my intent to make a criticism about rap or hip-hop as genres. I am saying “yes, I think there’s a problem with the current mainstream, but I don’t think it’s as big of one as people say, and I don’t think there’s any easy answers of what to do about it.” Art should be free and unrestricted, and rap can be art just as much as any other kind of music.
I said many, not all. This is no different than artists in other genres, really, but the stance of many rappers is that of street-tough realism, so if they do just for $, again, no thanks. I have just as much lack of respect for overwrought emo bands that are just doing it for style points or money or whatever.
I hope I am clear on the fact that I’m not singling out rappers, particularly, because BS posers exist in every genre (geez, look at country!), and I don’t like them, either. I’m kind of cranky that way, is all.
Um, not to crash this conversation, but I have to admit I find this subject (Nzinga’s POV vs. yours) really fascinating. I don’t really listen to rap, for the basic reason that I don’t feel I can relate to it at all (now women singing R&B is another thing.) Rap as a general rule leaves me feeling confused and disoriented… and yes, I think some of it is downright silly. (Read: ‘‘This is Why I’m Hot’’)
The song in question is a good example of this sense of grasping I have when I listen to rap. There’s something of gravity and importance in this song, but I’m not quite able to articulate it.
Anyways, with the song you linked to we’ve got the following lines:
which indicate to me the song is about way more than screwing behind his lover’s back. The point of the song, is, I think who he’s chosen to screw, and why.
One difference is that Tony Soprano is a evil man who does evil things, and I know it, and you know it, and the writers, directors, producers, and actors know it, and even the characters know it. And whenever anyone tries to claim otherwise - the argument is clearly seen to be the piss poor rationalization that it is. And there’s none of the “maybe you don’t understand the slang” business thrown about.
The whole point of the Sopranos, IMO, is that this guy Tony is still a human being and not dismissable as simply ‘evil’; that’s the whole reason the show has resonance because he can still love his kids, etc. and morality can be relative.
I suspect that the conservatives who hate rap
a) have never listened to a single rap song from beginning to end and
b) think there is only one type of rap, and that it’s gangsta.
Gangsta rap was the predominant form for a good run; it’s not surprising that this is what non-listeners think of when they hear the words “rap” and “hip hop.”
A large body of popular art glorifies crime and violence. This is true of other forms of music, and it’s true of movies and television as well. It’s telling that Tony Montana from Scarface is a hip-hop icon among fans that like their music on the rough side. If you’re listening to music whose subject matter is crime and violence, it’s logical that your choice in movies follows the same template.
So you do understand the slang? Because I gotta tell ya, I would be very impressed indeed it hip-hop’s greatest critics understood the songs they were criticizing. I have been studying hip-hop since 1979. I have absorbed street slang through my friends, neighbors, families and god help me, even school. Even I have to “hit rewind” a few times when I get the new GZA in my player.
And while I Ilike to think that I have the ever-evolving East Coast slang mastered, I am not nearly as quick with Southern Hip-hop, which I only want to know about in the first place so that I can bash it from a foundation of knowledge and understanding. I feel pretty comfortable calling Lil Wayne crap. Although even I admit he’s come a long way since his beginnings.
But again, the idea that the harsh critics actually understand the slang…the idea makes me chuckle.
Its kinda hard to day rap is destructive. Rap has lots of sub genres three are plenty of politicol rappers, others that rap pureply about make lifer better for yourself & and then there is the gangsta rap that seems to be what everyone thinks rap is.
I dont know how you can blame a destruction of society on a genre of music. Its like saying all heavy metal music leads to school shootings.
I can dismiss Tony Soprano as evil. I don’t care if he loves his children or raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Plenty of people that we could call evil in real life probably love their kids and lollipops and all that jazz.
I haven’t listened to a rap song in a long time, becasue it all seemed to get very negative and violent. Now, I’m old enough to have owned the Sugar Hill Gang’s Rappers delight album when it was new. I used to like rap before it got all dark and nasty. About a year ago, when my car was in the shop my wife and I caught a ride with a 20 something friend of ours to the PX. She was playing “Lil’ Kim” on the car stereo and to be honest it was the most offensive, depressing, horrible thing I’ve heard in a long time. As unfair as it may sound the awful 30 minute car ride has made me actively hate rap.
Here are few quick example of modern rap. Some is gangster rap, there is some by white people, some by blacks, some by Italian Americans .ect All is seems to me to be intellectual / Telling a story (possible true & relates to them) / informative.
None of this seems to be “stripped down elemental version of forceful expression as compared to say, many forms of rock and roll”
Immortal Technique - The 4th Branch
Immortal Technique - Cause of Death
Dead Prez - Be Healthy
Brother Ali - Uncle Sam Goddamn
**Nas - I Can Lyrics
**
**Jedi Mind Tricks - Uncommon Valor (A Vietnam Story) **
[QUOTE]
I don’t know why I’m over here this job is evil
They send me here to Vietnam to kill innocent people
My mother wrote me said the President he doesn’t care
We trying to leave the footprints of America here
They say we’re trying to stop Chinese expansion
But I ain’t seen no Chinese since we landed
Sent my whole entire unit thinking we can win
Against the Viet Cong guerillas there in Gia Dinh
I didn’t sign up to kill women or any children
For every enemy soldier, we killing six civilians
Yeah, and that ain’t right to me
I ain’t got enough of mother fuckin’ fight in me
It frightens me and I just want to see my son and moms
But over here they dropping seven million tons of bombs
I spend my days dodging all these booby traps and mines
And at night, praying to God that I get back alive
And I’m forced to sit back and wonder
Why I was a part of ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’
In a fox hole with nine months left here
Jungle like the fuckin’ harbinger of death here
[QUOTE]
**Jedi Mind Tricks - Shadow business **
None of these seems to be desructive. All seem to be a expression threw music, which come of as an art to me.
Alot of rap can have a posative effect on people and not be destructive.
I agree. Part of the appeal of gangsta rap is the ideal of The Outlaw as a heroic figure. The Masterless Man. A guy who doesn’t have to get up at 7am every day to go to work and have his boss berate him. A guy who lives on his own terms and doesn’t take shit from anyone. It’s an attractive day dream.
There’s not much difference between the protagonists of gangsta rap songs and Wild West gunslingers, 1920s bootleggers, bank robbers, bikers, or modern Mob figures, to name some other outlaw types American culture has been fascinated with at one time or another.
Thanks tonedef, I’d also like to place some excerps from an example of a newer song called
evening news (by Chamillionare). It’s a song that kind of informs you about modern political stuff and kind of mocks how the interviews work of the American media (it’s very funny). In this rap song, Chamillionaire simulates two people talking to each other. One is the host named Bob O’Wildy (know where he got that idea from and another is himself. The lyrics go something like this
If you want to hear more of the song, there’s a video of it on youtube. This song video also has a song called hip hop police (the video kind of combines both songs) which I also think you people here would be interested in.
My personal two pennorth is that Rap has run its course,its been around for several decades now and its become stale and uninteresting.
In the U.K. its become a resort for those without any discernable creative talent or originality but who want to be in the music industry.
Rap is all about lyrics and alot of the lyrics over here would insult the averagely intelligent eight year old with their childish rhymes and Walter Mitty sentiments.
Before anyone leaps on me as a generic Hip Hop hater may I say that the O.P. was specifically directed at the contemporary music scene.
Personally I think Grand Master Flash is a genius,but he’s old school.
This point has been echoed a couple of times in this thread, but it doesn’t wash with me. Rap music is a product of the late twentieth century - yet if it is regressive to the point where it mirrors the deeply flawed sexual attitudes of hundreds or thousands of years ago, I think that makes it much worse than the old writers. There was moral outrage when Rock ‘n’ Roll came about in the 50s/60s, but that was the patriarchal establishment outraged at the promotion of sexual liberation (as naive and utopian as that might have been), while rap seems to talk a lot about trading money for women’s bodies (in every sense). Maybe this is not promotion of misogyny but description of a ghetto reality, but it pisses me off.
Fair enough, but the point was that a show like the Sopranos doesn’t rely upon viewer’s dismissing Tony as evil, IMO. It relies on the exact opposite of moral judgment in my view; specifically, the complexity of moralities in the real world.
Sort of like rap.