Continued from part 2 of the death of rap - 3.1.2007.2 ...
The fact is that the ‘thug’ life is a choice relatively few African Americans chose. But it is those few that have been paraded around on the media like a prize winning dog at a kennel show. I’m no fool, being Black in America is no picnic but it is far from a death sentence or a life long prison sentence in a ghetto. The “hip-hop hoodlums” responsible for the anarchy at the NBA All-Star game in Vegas that Mr. Jason Whitlock wrote about chose to be that way. The only Black artists that “shuck and jive”, as rapper David Banner calls it, are in my opinion rappers. Recent Oscar Award winners Ms. Jennifer Hudson, Mr. Forest Whitaker, Mr. Denzel Washington, and Mr. Jamie Foxx can hardly be described in such a manner. Entertainers like Mr. Stevie Wonder, Mr. Quincy Jones, Mr. Chuck D, Ice-T, and the late Mr. Ray Charles don’t fit such a description either. Yet I feel such a label could be applied more easily to 50 cent, than Mr. Spike Lee. Thus in my opinion rappers today that live the ‘thug life’ are merely showcasing a modern version of the minstrel show, for the main audience of White Americans that buy their albums.
So I am glad to hear that more are heeding the call started by Ms. C. Dolores Tucker, and continued by individuals such as Professor Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Mr. Bryan Hunt, Mr. Rashod D. Ollison, and others (including myself in my own small way). I am happy to learn that sales have dropped 21%, and that no rap album has hit the top 10 for the first time in 12 years. Happy that is if diversity becomes more prevalent. If the realities of what I think is accurate of most Black Americans gets to be heard. I’d love to see fewer music video girls and ‘crunk’ and ‘bling’ [what kind of ebonic idiocy are those words? They rate right up there with that ‘fasizzle’ lunacy. Get a dictionary and learn to speak your native tongue] if it means I can see substance, like that evoked by Public Enemy and KRS-One. Throw in a little mindless fun like Mr. Will Smith’s original alter-ego the Fresh Prince and Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five and I’m a very happy man. I’m sure sales would actually go back up, and probably surge beyond what they have been.
Because I don’t think rap is a temporary medium. I think it’s a powerful form of entertainment, and social outcries. It’s a voice that can express all the aspects of Black American life. Because being African American is not a singular mold, nor a commodity or as Mr. Chuck D states, "...one-dimensionalized and commodified us into being a one-trick image". It was all these positive things once, and it can be again. But until then rap aides and abets the worst attributes of the Black community while giving a show that makes ‘shucking and jiving’ look like a waltz.
This is what I think, what do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment