Everyday I worry about what this morally repugnant motley crew will make of this country. I worry about the students I see everyday, people of all colors who do love hip hop, and how they get along with each other in a world that desperately doesn’t want them to. I root for them, I hope they do make it, but to be a full human being is a hard road, and the bumps that life will bring them will make it harder still. Those young brothers and sisters of all colors will have to do as all human beings and artists do, make sense of their lives and incorporate the relevance of their own experiences to the world by expanding on the human truths of their life stories in relation to the truths of the life stories of their parents, their ancestors and their ancestors before.
But the people who worry me the most are the people who take mainstream hip hop's message to heart, those broken and lost brothers and sisters who defiantly brag about their realness, yet do every single thing BET, MTV, Interscope, Def Jam and Bad Boy tell them to do, when they want them to do it and how they want it done. Those kids who worked themselves into frenzy over Biggie's death see hip hop as a hobby, something they did on the weekends before they went back to the world of studying for college and social climbing in upper class society. But to all too many young black folks, bling bling is their religion. And that might work now, but what happens when those rich kids who grew up listening to the gangsta sh!t go into the corporate world, when they become those poor kid's potential employers? Do you think he's gonna give him a job because he likes the poor kids gold teeth? Because he admires his rims? Do you think anyone in the free market sector gives a sh!t about somebody’s whips and hoes? And what is going to happen when that hip hop head who considers Jay Z a “god” gets a wife, kids and a mortgage? Do you think he’s gonna be going to the church of big pimpin?
If you want to see a precursor to what might happen, look at the relationship between the Black Nationalist movement, the real spiritual fathers of mainstream hip hop, and the White radicals of the 60's. Black militants emotionally, physically and spiritually brutalized black women and rich white liberal men got off on it for the same reason white mainstream heads get off on hip hop now, because they like the primitive male fantasy and subconsciously prefer black men to do their dirty work. The result? Because brothers mistook their manhood for their humanity, 3 out of 10 fatherless homes in black community in 1964 became 7 out of 10 fatherless homes in 2004. It is those mothers who are raising our children, and not hip-hop heads, their critics, intellectuals or politicians, who are carrying the race on their back. It is those mothers who can afford the least to be damaged by anyone, much less their own brothers, sisters, sons, daughters or husbands. It is those mothers who are being emotionally, psychologically and physically damaged by the bulk of the hip-hop nation every day. They are sowing the seeds of a cultural nuclear winter, and if we don't do anything about it, a hard rain, as bob Dylan once said, is gonna fall.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
what an outstanding essay Robert! You are very thoughtful, knowledgable and articulate. Art is both representative and influential - this dichotomy/conflict has been argued since at least Aristotle
2 - Geek's Girl
Hip hip's influence spreads far and wide, right down to the bottom of Africa. There are a lot of people who need to read this, I am glad I have.
3 - Temple Stark
Indeed I'm a person, maybe about five years older (use to live in Gig Harbor and Kent) and - as a musical trip - my experience of and journey through hip-hop is very similar to yours (though Tupac was my thing and my appreciation for Biggie (who I'd barely heard of) grew after he died.
Both extremely sad as I still think Tupac was gifted far behind music and would have grown to be a very positive influence. And was to a certain extent already as he proved you could comercially portray yourself as a sensitive / smart black man without repercussions and still be successful. The Wu did that as well to a certain extent.
Mos Def is an inspiration and luckily a lot of people are tuned into that - just not "mainstream."
A lot of mainstream from Jay-Z to 50 Cent to Big Boi to the entire "G Unit" is one dimensional. That doesn't mean they can't occasionally pop out the great sounding tracks, but the SOP behind them is sadly the same.
With Jay-Z, I had a special affinity for Annie (don't ask) so I was drawn in there. But the rest of that album was posturing, as if people really wanted to kill him 9or cared one way or the other) and he was setting himself up as a martyr.
Anyway - fantastic write up.
4 - Bennett
Thanks for this Robert. Though not my style of music, your essay was well worth reading, and I learned quite a bit.
Cheers!
5 - Miss Hipstah
Your comments on Hip Hop and the current state it is in are though provoking. I am a great fan of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, but sadly even their music has lost a bit of its edge in recent years.
Being in college and "academia", it made me think of the various classes which I have attended where a discussion of race was always paired with a discussion of Hip Hop. The constant need by mostly White students to talk about 50 Cent as a current figure of Black culture was, to a degree, sickening.
I wish some of the students in those classes could read what you wrote. Maybe then they'd actually learn something.
6 - Connie Phillips
Robert,
This was very thought provoking. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this subject.
7 - Vern Halen
Thank you. You've articulated a lot of things that have always been unstated, and therefore unknown. Unfortunately, the people who need to read this article the most are most likely the people who'll never see it.