Business…here’s a quick look at Joey Crawford’s pre-Tim Duncan transgressions.
I missed most of yesterday’s Oprah because it was interrupted by coverage of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I saw a good bit. Saw my man Whitlock and Sharpton go back and forth, and heard a few pretty interesting points being made on both sides.
Today, it’s “hip hop’s” turn to respond. Kevin Liles, Russell Simmons, Common and Ben Chavis are on stage while Whitlock and others sit in the crowd.
My problem with today’s show is with Russell Simmons’ insistence upon referring to rappers today as “poets.” By calling them “poets,” Russell positions the music that’s out as art, and art shouldn’t be censored. Artists have license to be loud and offensive because they’re simply expressing themselves, offering the world a perspective on something they don’t see and providing personal emotional resonance that news stories and interviews provide. Artists tap into their souls and let loose ideas they often can’t say, enhancing their ability to communicate through whatever vehicle they choose.
I ain’t heard much of that on the radio in a long, long time.
(There will be some generalizations used in this post. Not all rap music is one way or another. So save the “what about Kanye West?” comments because I’m accounting for some of those dudes. That said, be honest with yourself about the median record and what it sounds like.)
Let’s be real–the hustle is more deeply connected to rap than any other musical genre. Rap was the first musical genre to describe poverty in stark detail and paint a startlingly clear portrait of what it can drive people to do. Soon after, much of the description moved toward what was done to get out of poverty. Often that meant dealing dope. Often that meant rapping. Often that meant dealing dope in order to make the money needed to get the rapping off the ground.
But the hustle has always been at the forefront.
The problem with so much hip hop now is that the hustle isn’t even masked. It’s right up front for all to see, even when it isn’t described. When I turn on the radio and listen to hip hop, I’m not hearing much that’s particularly inventive or expressive anymore. I’m hearing a lot of formulaic stuff.
That ain’t quite artistic.
The reality is that people like hearing about dealing dope, pimpin’ hoes and clubbin’ all night. That’s what it is. I’ve listened to a lot of it, and I bought a lot of it before I started getting albums for free. Sure didn’t hurt that the beats were fire. So don’t mistake this for a statement from the moral high ground.
But game recognize game, and these cats look awfully familiar. Don’t try to tell me these dudes are just expressing themselves. If they are, they aren’t doing such a great job. The stories about poverty sound awfully repetitive these days. Either these dudes all feel the exact same way, or they’re following a template. If they’re following a template, it ain’t exactly art anymore. It’s commerce. It’s a hustle.
So please, Russell, and everyone else, don’t use artistic license as a defense. That time in hip hop is over.
The problem, as things stand presently, is that mainstream hip hop has become a monolith. The themes are repetitive. The slang has even become normalized to the point where accents are one of the few remaining indicators that cats are from different places. It doesn’t have that individuality anymore. It sounds like it’s coming off a conveyor belt.
I have problems with what’s played on the radio now because I don’t think some themes are meant for mainstream consumption. Yeah, it’s cool to censor “bitch” off records, but it’s not cool to talk about strip clubs and dealing crack at 10 in the morning. That just ain’t the time and place for such discussion. You can tell me that NWA was talking about those sorts of things in ’89, and I’ll tell you that NWA didn’t get radio play. That’s where my issue is.
I won’t knock cats if they want to talk about dealing dope. That’s their right. I’ll knock the people that have flooded me with images of dudes dealing dope. It’s boring, and I’m insulted by the idea that that’s all people want to hear from rappers.
What the game lacks now is diversity.
I still love this music. I grew up with it, and I learned a lot from it. But I don’t like it very much right now. It hasn’t grown up with me. In fact, in terms of maturity, it’s regressed.
So if Russell Simmons and anyone else wants to defend rap on an artistic platform, then bring the art back. Show different angles of the struggle. Show me ways people overcome poverty besides selling dope. Give me something to think about. Make me feel something. Make me want to do something.
Other than turn to the old folks station, that is.
24 thoughts on “As I Watch Oprah”
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But making it rain, leaning back, being in love with a stripper, popping my collar…that’s some deep shit, man.
Seems to me the 90’s format of pushing an album’s sole pretty-singing song as the single has flipped, and now it’s the trappinest cut on the album that hits radio for ‘burb teens to daydream to, while the rest of the album is about more or less whatever. Do you think radio has become the catalyst instead of some kinda safeguard, for whatever reason?
I could not agree with you anymore with this post! thanks and i know more people feel this way!
I don’t think we can say since something is formulaic it is no longer art. A ton of “art” that is much more mainstream than hip-hop is rife with this problem when the given genre becomes more commercial. a recent example is how many novels have tried to follow the “Dan Brown template” after the success of the DaVinci Code.
rap is far from the first genre to describe poverty in detail.
and it’s also far from the first art form to glamorize or exagerrate peoples’ lifestyles for profit.
rap has become, due to its commercial viability, another cog in a media machine that has a chicken/egg relationship with “negative” imagery.
certainly it’s formulaic and feel churned out. because it is. but we are talking about an industry that manages to place the “NOW that’s what i call music” compilations atop bestseller lists year after year.
“What the game lacks now is diversity.”
Can’t agree. Let’s take the ATL for example. In that one city you have:
D4L and Dem Franchise Boys
Cee-lo and Outkast
T.I. and Young Jeezy
Lil Jon and Ludacris
All them dudes sound the same to you? There’s a problem, but diversity ain’t it.
What Russell was doing by calling them poets was savvy, and needed. He was attempting to humanize and celebrate hip-hop before Oprah’s audience. That’s the best way to engage hip-hop and young Black men if you don’t want to alienate them.
While I agree that most rap music has become formulaic, it’s no different from any type of music that at one point was an original sound pioneered by original artists and then becomes accepted by the mainstream audience and then in turn “pimped” out by the music industry. Early rock, blues, R&B, country, metal, you name it, were all the music of the devil until kids liked it and some record exec could package it and make a buck off of it. Rap is just the latest example of a form of music that is being exploited, and the nostalgia associated with early rap is almost completely irrelevant to mainstream rap music and the ideas being put forth within it. When I listen to music today, regardless of the genre, the most amazing thing is when i hear something that is not formulaic and dumbed down. Furthermore, I read Jason Whitlock’s column, and I don’t see any correlation between rap musicians and Don Imus. Certainly, there are double standards in the world, which partly explains why black comedians can make generally rascist comments about their white listeners, and not vice versa, but being Don Imus is not a defensible position, and being a rapper is. Not every rapper is pigeonholed by rascist or sexist views. EVERY Don Imus is.
I am currently leading a movement to get Ludacris off the radio here in Music Mecca Atlanta, GA. The song “Gettin Some Head” needs to be played for 24 straight hours on every white-owned radio station in America. Then listeners can get a clear view of how low rappers are willing to stoop just to sell records. Bill O’Reilly was 100% right on this call and just because Luda makes one positive song, “Runaway Love” he cannot resist the urge to express his true identity, which is that of a sexual pervert who needs to be apprehended.
Hip Hop is art…blah. It isn’t art when all you do is sample hits from the 70’s and 80’s, take verses from Biggie’s Greatest Hits, and steal hooks from the Eastside Boys. If that’s the case, I am going to go trace a Picasso in magic marker, sprinkle some glitter on it and then try to pass it off as my original piece. Wish me luck.
“If that’s the case, I am going to go trace a Picasso in magic marker, sprinkle some glitter on it and then try to pass it off as my original piece. Wish me luck.”
Hey Cedric, 1985 called, it wants its old regurgitated argument about Hip Hop back..
1985 argument…blah…nobody was talking about ludacris in 1985.
White folks always got something corny to say. This is why we can never have an open discussion on race. Even when I’m being serious and saying something progressive, somebody has to toss in his two cents. 99% of readers are cool, and then we have this guy. It’s like he just “couldn’t go on living” if he didn’t say some bullshit about my post. Bomani Jones wrote this piece. Why don’t you comment on what he has to say. Nope, that makes too much sense. You only left a response to the comment directly in front of you. You know good and well, If we were face to face, you’d bitch up just like white boys always do.
I agreed so much with this post. Of course there are some great artists still out there but it’s become crap. Lil’ Wayne was on every song that came out last year, you can’t put out that much and expect it to be good. It’s just not possible.
Does anyone here know that there’s hip-hop outside of New York and the South? Listening to music outside the mainstream is a good idea if you want to find variety. Seems like common sense to me.
And yet, Common, Little Brother, Mos and many other artists still cant go mainstream.
Whazzupwitdat?
bo,
I agree with you.. Must music I listen to now is either oldies, regional (bay area) stuff that I grew up on but feel sort of guilty about the subject matter at my age, and other guilty pleasures that don’t correlate to my life at all, like that new prodigy or styles p. Using those two artists as examples, I will say that they are poets, even if they’re talking about trife/foul/repetitive shyt.
sometimes it bugs me out to go from listening to some “something or other, the gat, blam!” and then I de-Ipod, ride up the elevator and get to working on a multimillion dollar transaction.
As far as these Icebox, I’m a flirt, lip gloss type songs, they’re another kind of guilty pleasure. I usually dl them for the wife, and then end up somewhat digging the little sing song ditties myself.. Whatareyagonnado?
Discuss..
but I really don’t like the lipgloss one, LOL. word to byron crawford (guilty pleasure as well).
Really all I want is a new MF doom album/mixtape every month.
I’m feelin the post BO, very insightful.
You hit on a very important point. Back then it was a little harder to tell if a rapper was spitting his heart and soul on a beat or just sayin what he had to say to get radio play.
When you hear a Laffy Taffy, or a Pop, Lock, and Drop it you instantly get that they’re just trying to sell some records. However, there is a concept, I learned in Marketing about giving the customer not what you know they need, but what they perceive they need. When people are riding around going or leaving that job they hate or want to escape the normalcy of regular life…they turn to songs that take them away from that. They turn to things that don’t make them think hard. They turn to simplicity which is what a lot of these Top 40 songs are — simple.
I can’t ride with YOUR BOI, Whitlock, at all. He doesn’t really come off as someone who gets it to me. Rap music is what it always has been. It’s just converting to work along side everything else in our conforming microwave society.
Anyone else flash back to Chris Rock’s Never Scared album when he talks about how much he loves rap – “Whatever music was popular when you started getting laid, you’re gonna love that music for the rest of your life” – but is tired of defending rap? It’s just tough to argue that L’il Jon is art “To the sweat drip off my balls! Skeet skeet skeet!”
No? Just me?
I look at music the same way I look at journalism these days. Journalism used to be about the information, now it’s about the entertainment. Rap, like all music, is the same way. It used to be about individual expression, and now it’s about entertainment.
Not all rappers are poets, but not all writers are journalists. Art is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? I mean, do art critics feel the same way about all eras of oil paintings?
It’s east to generalize rappers today, especially those in the mainstream, but variety surely doesn’t lack. Perhaps the exposure is what lacks variety. Needless to say, most businesses are in the business of making money. Today, 80% or more of the people who buy rap albums are white, do you think they really want to hear about how badly they’ve treated blacks and minorities in this country? Or would they rather listen to something that gives them energy and something to dance to?
How come it’s artistic to nominate violent series such as The Sopranos and movies like Goodfellas for respected awards, but to blast the rap culture for violence, guns and crime? If you want to talk about double-standards, should we start there?
I am an old hip hop head myself and love some elements of the genre, but man so many of us have been hating on our sistas forever. We have to ask ourselves the question about the main purchasers and distributors of the negative hip hop is.
Common, Mos Def, Talib, Native Tongues, Public Enemy, KRS One and many of the giants have lifted us up but dont sell as much do they.
I wrote a long invective on this in my own website and this problem is not just limited to music but goes much deeper. R&B and dancehall are also guilty of playing to this twisted stereotype.
I ain’t too bothered though as many of us still love our black women, for richer or poorer.
All poetry is not good. In fact, the vast majority of poetry is horrible. Lispy McLisp of all people should know that, given that he has subjected the world to the trash that is Def Poetry Jam.
On the one hand, I can’t stand when older rap fans offer false dichotomies about current rap music as compared with the rap from “back in the day.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “today’s rap is just materialistic, violent, and misogynistic, when it used to be all about fun or used to be ‘the black CNN.'”
Bullshit.
It’s like when older folks say “R and B used to be about love; now it’s just vulgar sex.” These are the same people who will throw on some Marvin in a heartbeat!
Though I hate the revisionism, they are right that rap is not as good as it used to be. The subject matter is not really the issue. There are tons of great rap music about drugs, violence, etc. The range of subject matter and acceptable persona, maybe, but not the subject matter per se.
To me, this is purely an aesthetic thing.
Name me 5 (hell, name me 1!) classic rap album in the last 5 years. Throughout the late 80s, through about 96, there were several dozen quality albums per year, and sometimes nearly 10 classic albums in a single year.
Plus, everybody who’s really good is around 30, if not 40. I am not that interested in what a 15 year old has to say, but that this state of affairs doesn’t bode well for the future. Plus, underground rappers, who are supposed to be relatively free from the corrupting influence of the major labels, are just as lame as the mainstream, though in a different way.
It sounds like the grumblings of a bitter-old man, but damn if it’s not the truth.
the record industry has been sellin’ “swap-meet knockoffs” (if NWA is good, one-hundred more like ‘um will be better!) for decades…Russell Simmons lost his love for Hip-Hop long ago…Russ and Bob Johnson simply are profiteers-in-arms. I’d have more respect for the man if he would come right out and say so…don’t hide behind “art” as a justification for rap music’s sorry creative state.
big up Bomani for stating what should be obvious to everyone who claims to have a love for Hip-Hop.
I said I was only going to read your blog but not send a response, couldn’t help it.
I am a little older to you so I can say that I absolutely grew up to hip hop it has been the soundtrack for my life until now. Half the time I don’t even know what they are saying but when I do it’s usually the same three or four words or lines. There is no lyricism left in hip hop. I understood when Nas named his new cd Hip Hop is Dead because that is certainly true. I watched the town hall meeting on Oprah and as a fan of her show I was disappointed. Having Common on was the safe way to go, when was the last time he sang about drugs or hoes. I am sadden that a art form that I grew up defending to my parents is lost. I find myself telling my 18 year old sister how she don’t know what hip hop is. (damn when did I become a old-timer). It is no longer about selling entire cds its about selling one or two songs. How many rappers out right now has more than one hit cd, other than Ludacris, TI, JayZ, Kanye, Em, Nelly and 50. The rest are one or two songs and they out. I don’t even turn on the radio and BET and MTV is out. So yeah I am listening to the oldies station and filling my MP3 player with NWA, JayZ, Pac, Biggie and hell even Heavy D (don’t sleep on Heav he was the man).
Later
chris rock is fulla shit,
he said all that about hip hop but then appeared all over lil jon’s crunk juice record telling the hos to get lower than low
and saying he wanted to be “the friend that’s fuckin you in the ass, bitch”
hypocrisy.
much like some of the bizarre respoonses to this piece.
though i love that carla shouted heavy d
who is making a comeback!!!!