Playa Hatin'
A friend of mine levied some criticism against his brother, who is a philosopher of some renown. He said, “Even after publishing all those books, if you ask him a simple question, like ‘Does God exist?’ he can’t give you a straight answer.”
Maybe questions worth asking don’t have straight answers. Or, maybe life is more about finding the right questions. After all, what good is the right answer to the wrong question? Wouldn’t no answer to the right question be better? Hmmm.
**
In explaining why Miles Davis’ understated style was popular with women, Stanley Crouch remarked:
“If you put an audience of women together and there are 3 walnuts on a table. One guy comes in and he has a sledge hammer; that’s how he gets inside the walnut. The next guy has a nutcracker and he gets into the walnut like that. Then there’s a third guy and just by simply rubbing the walnut some kind of way, the walnut opens – he’s the one they’re going to be interested in.” That’s Miles Davis.
I’m not familiar with the work of Miles Davis, so I can’t say whether or not it has anything to do with walnuts. It’s an interesting theory, nonetheless.
**
In that same interview, cultural critic and essayist Stanley Crouch argues that “We have sunk down into a situation in America in which we assume that all authenticity comes from the bottom, comes from the street. It’s relatively absurd to see in popular media this constant definition of authenticity through something like the rap world in which it is always a celebration of lowlifes, thugs, pimps, and types of that sort.” He rejects the proposition that this is a counter-cultural response by those on the fringes of society, and, instead, posits that such culture is “quintessentially American.”
This raises the question: who makes our counter-culture? We’d like to think, perhaps, that counter-culture is the result of the minority finding a voice. But the rap industry, for example, is run primarily by rich, old, white males, many of whom, I can only imagine, don’t even like the genre, and all of whom sit squarely amidst the mainstream. For example, while the current leaders of Def Jam records look like this and this, the leaders of the company that owns the media conglomerate to which Def Jam belongs (ie, their bosses) look like this. So, can we honestly say that hip hop is the voice of black America? Crouch doesn’t think so. In fact, he charges that Hip Hop is primarily a mode for suburban white kids to take an “audio safari into “the jungle of urban America.”
When I first heard him say that, I was taken aback. Can gansta’ rap really be for suburban white kids? Then it occurred to me that Crouch wasn’t the first to make such a claim. Indeed, if you listen closely, you’ll even hear the occasional rap song about it. Awhile back, a friend of mine, who was working for a hip hop record label, sent me a song called “I Used to Love Her” by Common. Common refers to the early days of rap – think Run DMC and the Fat Boys – as “Original, pure, untampered.” He contends that this “old school” rap spoke to his heart, that it was soulful, and that it wasn’t motivated by greed. But “the game” changed. He continues, “I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative/But once the man got to her, he altered the native/Told her if she got an image and a gimmick/That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy.” Not only that, but he includes a lyrics that seems to justify Crouch’s “audio safari” comment: “She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle/Now she be in the burbs lookin' rock and dressin' hip/And on some dumb [expletive deleted], when she comes to the city/Talkin about poppin glocks, servin rocks, and hittin switches.” Who is hip hop’s target audience?
Common and Crouch are not alone in their criticism. Rapper/poet, Black Ice (video), points out that the shift from early hip hop to gansta rap was contrived: “They’re takin our heart felt demos, putting us in limos, trying to [screw] up our direction..” Not only that, but the very creation of the gansta culture by record labels has systemically altered our sense of authenticity; “meanwhile, they corrupt your perception of what the real is./ See, they’ve taken all our business men and made them drug dealers/ took all our messengers and made them rappers/just flappin their jaws, afraid to admit their treason/ took all our soldiers for the cause/made ‘em killers for no reason/… [and] if you’re negative, you’re positive/and if you’re positive, you’re a hater.”
In response to criticism levied against the industry by Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson, former Def Jam records president Russell Simmons, in an interview with the Washington Post, “rejected the notion that hip-hop music has had a coarsening effect, saying it ‘is the soundtrack that reflects the struggle’ of young people today.” But, that’s the question, isn’t it? Does it reflect anything real at all? Or has it been entirely contrived for financial gain?
For my purposes, it doesn’t matter whether Russell Simmons is right or whether Stanley Crouch is right. The historical question of the origins or gansta’ rap – be they poor and black or rich and white- may never be settled, although it is an interesting subject to consider. What concerns me is that the question of authenticity alone is being used as an empowering or silencing tool. For many people, the conversation begins and ends in asking whether or not something is factually correct. For example, one might ask, was Jay-Z really a drug dealer before he entered the rap game? Was 50 Cent really shot 9 times and then lived to tell about it? If yes, then in the minds of many, it is justifiable for them to rap about selling drugs and shooting people. The flip side of the coin, unfortunately, is that people with a positive message – like Bill Cosby, Common, and Black Ice – are being silenced under the term “hater” because they don’t self-identify with this conception of “inner-city plight.” This is what I take exception to. We must not forget that culture is made by and ought to serve people, not the other way around. We should be suspicious of any culture which attempts to silence those who argue that a given culture no longer serves (or never did) its purpose in advancing valuable, normative social mores, or that it’s advancing the wrong ones. Rather than ask the retrospective question – did this really happen to people? – we should probably be asking the prospective question– do we seek for this to continue to happen? And, do we?
Maybe questions worth asking don’t have straight answers. Or, maybe life is more about finding the right questions. After all, what good is the right answer to the wrong question? Wouldn’t no answer to the right question be better? Hmmm.
**
In explaining why Miles Davis’ understated style was popular with women, Stanley Crouch remarked:
“If you put an audience of women together and there are 3 walnuts on a table. One guy comes in and he has a sledge hammer; that’s how he gets inside the walnut. The next guy has a nutcracker and he gets into the walnut like that. Then there’s a third guy and just by simply rubbing the walnut some kind of way, the walnut opens – he’s the one they’re going to be interested in.” That’s Miles Davis.
I’m not familiar with the work of Miles Davis, so I can’t say whether or not it has anything to do with walnuts. It’s an interesting theory, nonetheless.
**
In that same interview, cultural critic and essayist Stanley Crouch argues that “We have sunk down into a situation in America in which we assume that all authenticity comes from the bottom, comes from the street. It’s relatively absurd to see in popular media this constant definition of authenticity through something like the rap world in which it is always a celebration of lowlifes, thugs, pimps, and types of that sort.” He rejects the proposition that this is a counter-cultural response by those on the fringes of society, and, instead, posits that such culture is “quintessentially American.”
This raises the question: who makes our counter-culture? We’d like to think, perhaps, that counter-culture is the result of the minority finding a voice. But the rap industry, for example, is run primarily by rich, old, white males, many of whom, I can only imagine, don’t even like the genre, and all of whom sit squarely amidst the mainstream. For example, while the current leaders of Def Jam records look like this and this, the leaders of the company that owns the media conglomerate to which Def Jam belongs (ie, their bosses) look like this. So, can we honestly say that hip hop is the voice of black America? Crouch doesn’t think so. In fact, he charges that Hip Hop is primarily a mode for suburban white kids to take an “audio safari into “the jungle of urban America.”
When I first heard him say that, I was taken aback. Can gansta’ rap really be for suburban white kids? Then it occurred to me that Crouch wasn’t the first to make such a claim. Indeed, if you listen closely, you’ll even hear the occasional rap song about it. Awhile back, a friend of mine, who was working for a hip hop record label, sent me a song called “I Used to Love Her” by Common. Common refers to the early days of rap – think Run DMC and the Fat Boys – as “Original, pure, untampered.” He contends that this “old school” rap spoke to his heart, that it was soulful, and that it wasn’t motivated by greed. But “the game” changed. He continues, “I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative/But once the man got to her, he altered the native/Told her if she got an image and a gimmick/That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy.” Not only that, but he includes a lyrics that seems to justify Crouch’s “audio safari” comment: “She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle/Now she be in the burbs lookin' rock and dressin' hip/And on some dumb [expletive deleted], when she comes to the city/Talkin about poppin glocks, servin rocks, and hittin switches.” Who is hip hop’s target audience?
Common and Crouch are not alone in their criticism. Rapper/poet, Black Ice (video), points out that the shift from early hip hop to gansta rap was contrived: “They’re takin our heart felt demos, putting us in limos, trying to [screw] up our direction..” Not only that, but the very creation of the gansta culture by record labels has systemically altered our sense of authenticity; “meanwhile, they corrupt your perception of what the real is./ See, they’ve taken all our business men and made them drug dealers/ took all our messengers and made them rappers/just flappin their jaws, afraid to admit their treason/ took all our soldiers for the cause/made ‘em killers for no reason/… [and] if you’re negative, you’re positive/and if you’re positive, you’re a hater.”
In response to criticism levied against the industry by Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson, former Def Jam records president Russell Simmons, in an interview with the Washington Post, “rejected the notion that hip-hop music has had a coarsening effect, saying it ‘is the soundtrack that reflects the struggle’ of young people today.” But, that’s the question, isn’t it? Does it reflect anything real at all? Or has it been entirely contrived for financial gain?
For my purposes, it doesn’t matter whether Russell Simmons is right or whether Stanley Crouch is right. The historical question of the origins or gansta’ rap – be they poor and black or rich and white- may never be settled, although it is an interesting subject to consider. What concerns me is that the question of authenticity alone is being used as an empowering or silencing tool. For many people, the conversation begins and ends in asking whether or not something is factually correct. For example, one might ask, was Jay-Z really a drug dealer before he entered the rap game? Was 50 Cent really shot 9 times and then lived to tell about it? If yes, then in the minds of many, it is justifiable for them to rap about selling drugs and shooting people. The flip side of the coin, unfortunately, is that people with a positive message – like Bill Cosby, Common, and Black Ice – are being silenced under the term “hater” because they don’t self-identify with this conception of “inner-city plight.” This is what I take exception to. We must not forget that culture is made by and ought to serve people, not the other way around. We should be suspicious of any culture which attempts to silence those who argue that a given culture no longer serves (or never did) its purpose in advancing valuable, normative social mores, or that it’s advancing the wrong ones. Rather than ask the retrospective question – did this really happen to people? – we should probably be asking the prospective question– do we seek for this to continue to happen? And, do we?
posted by Donkey Boy at Tuesday, August 22, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home