the urbane league

Is rap the problem? No, not per se. Rap music has been taking a lot of shots about its content and messages in recent years. The (commercial) rappers and rap labels say it’s only entertainment, while all the social activists say that it is singlehandedly responsible for the moral decay we are witnessing in this country. What we have here, is a failure to communicate…[sorry, I've always wanted to say that]. What we have here, is what is often the case when you have two [pretty ignorant/self-serving] factions so diametrically opposed to one another and so extreme in their views, they’re both wrong.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, let me say; modern commercial rap sucks. Let me also, in the interest of full disclosure say; it can [with less effort than I'd care to admit] be found on my iPod (or is it in my iPod?). Either way, point is often times the shit you hear on the radio is some of the worst drivel anyone could put together, but gyyoooddamn the beat is catchy. This fuels the self-ordained moral center’s unchecked criticism of rap as a genre and has also led to the coining of cute colloquialisms like “you can’t spell ‘crap’ without ‘rap’!” and “God, I hate black people!” But really, rap has no others to blame but itself. There’s really not a whole lot of rap you can be proud of on the radio. I’m sorry, I’m being presumptuous; if you are in fact proud of the lyrical and creative talents of “artists” such as Souljaboytell’em (understand that, his name is actually Souljaboytell’em…there might have even been a ‘.com’ at the end), Young Joc and Flo’Rida, then you are more than happy with the status quo. Other than Common, Nas, and occasionally The Roots and Talib, there really isn’t ever anything worth defending on the radio. But you know, I think I’m even conceding too much with The Roots and Talib, because you rarely hear them on the radio. I wrote this partially because, just today I found “Rising Down” [an album The Roots released earlier this year] and didn’t remember hearing a single from it on the radio. So what that means is the label probably didn’t push it and DJs probably didn’t see fit to play it on their own. Granted, this might be because I don’t listen to the radio, but then someone explain to me how I know that Souljaboy just got his report card, got all F’s, took it to the teacher’s desk, and asked her to throw some Ds on that bitch [all proverbial I hope].

Now most of these guys will say, they’re just expressing themselves and that it’s just entertainment. This is where I disagree with most of these commercial rappers. They are not representing themselves, they are representing what sells. Now I know it would not be a legitimate blog about the impact of rap music in America if I didn’t quote the hackneyed truism that “80% of rap albums are purchased by white people between the age of 18 and 34.” Most people, myself included, always just took it as true. However, the WSJ had a piece recently where they got information from MRI (the organization that collects these statistics) for 1995, 1999 and 2001. According to WSJ, those figures floated between 70 and 75 percent for all three of those years. So I guess that quote above did come from somewhere, (I thought someone just made it up, as is the case with most69% of phrases in which people quote statistics). More than any other industry, the record industry is all about how much you sell, and not the “quality” of what you sell. So when I hear these rappers say that they are just rapping about their experiences, I say “bullshit.” Most of these guys DON’T tote the assault weapons they claim to. Most of these guys are STILL ass broke, which is funny considering everyone is rapping about just how much precipitate they can conjure up with all their stacks of high society. Most of these guys DON’T have rap sheets anywhere near as long or diversified as they claim. Most of these guys LOVE the police who make up their security details. Most of these guys have NEVER sold (or even been in the same room as) the copious amounts of cocaine and marijuana that they claim to have moved, and most probably didn’t spend their days as youths coming up with stupid two step dances for no reasons. All the aforementioned occur because that’s where the money is. And if 70% percent of that money is coming from white people who are between 18 and 34, then it doesn’t really seem like self representation to me.

This brings me to, “it’s only entertainment.” Yes, to those white people between the ages of 18 and 34 it is, but to the black youth who grow up without [positive] role models in their own lives, they look at these “successful” young black celebrities as what it means to be black and successful. These rappers and entertainers become the super ego of black youth, and their words become mantras and words to live by. I saw a 60 Minutes a couple of years ago, where they spoke to some urban youths about how they’re affected by rap music, and it was honestly one of the saddest things I’ve witnessed in quite some time. One girl who was in junior high said “we do what they say, just because they say so, they put it out there and we just eat it up, even if it’s bad for us.” That’s where my stance of ‘it’s not just entertainment’ comes from. These rappers HAVE to know how many of the young misguided kids try to pattern their lifestyles after what they see and hear. I’m not here saying that they’re all going to hell for contributing to the further decadence of their own race, I’m just saying it’s gotta mean something, right? It is important to note that the messages being put out by these commercial rappers are not taken in the same way by all who hear them. To kids who grow up with their parents as positive templates of what to do, they know it’s a joke. And it’s not entirely a black and white thing, but it is a fact that most urban youth who grow up in poor, single parent households are black, and if these are the only successful black images they see, it only follows to reason they will identify with them.

I’m not even going to waste my time with those who blame rap for the moral decay of America. These are just misguided puritans who still think that they were the only great generation (they conveniently forget what they themselves were doing during the sixties). Or they are religious right fundamentalists who believe that only heathens could listen to/enjoy rap and use its vernacular and not feel deplorable about it. Both also don’t understand that there is more to rap than the shit they hear on the radio. As far as ALL of America is concerned, rap (and any other consumer media for that matter) is nothing more than a mirror of society. What sells is what the people want to buy—genius, right? So it is completely asinine to pin the decadence of an entire generation on one genre of music.

At the end of the day, the best way to fix the adverse affects that commercial rap has on a limited segment of society is to fix the circumstances. It’s like the old adage about guns; “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Rap music per se doesn’t corrode society, the circumstances are what matter”. People love to say that “good rap” and “bad rap” are the same animal; to that I say, so are filet mignon and tripes.