Today I was a guest on Dr. Lorraine Jacques-White’s highly-rated, Atlanta-based radio program Power Talk on WAKO-AM. Also on the program were rapper Yung Joc and R&B singer/actor Monica.
The topic of the show was "Hip Hop, Art or Poison?”
Whenever I speak about the devastating impact of gangsta rap/hip hop on the cognitive, spiritual, psychological, and sociological development of children, I touch a nerve. Today was no exception. Folk don’t like it when you mess with their Kool-Aid, even if it’s got poison in it.
Gangsta rap didn’t cause the problems we face in our community, but it hasn’t done anything to help. In HHH, we document studies that have found that prolonged exposure to commercialized gangsta rap/hip hop music causes behavioral, classroom management, and academic problems.
I ran down the commercialization of the term “nigger/nigga/niggaz.” Nigger essentially means "beast," and widespread use of nigger in rap prevents us from calling each other brother, sister, cuz, blood, or any other endearing term as we did in the 1960s.
Rap has taken us back a hundred years to a time when it was okay to call a black man a nigger. We fought to change that mindset in whites without realizing that we needed to change our own minds first.
It’s hard to get these young artists to understand the damage they’re doing to children. Really all of us, black or white, young or old. Yung Joc said it's about getting paid. Rappers only see dollar signs, and they think that justifies everything they say and do in public.
Rappers don’t want to be role models, but they don’t have a choice. Children love their rapper idols and they imitate everything they do. Getting paid does not justify the lyrical treatment of females as sex objects and the lyrical killing of males.
We talked about sex and misogyny in the music. Monica said it’s the girl’s choice to dance sexually in a music video. That’s true, but what about the impact on our children? What are boys and girls learning about each other when they watch these videos? No one wants to deal with these questions.
If this sexually explicit, violent music was aired late at night or solely on a pay-on-demand channel like most other pornography, then we wouldn't focus so much on the children. But as we all know, children can hear this music early in the morning and right after school. Despite FCC regulations against indecent programming, there has been no protection for them or concern about their development. Somehow, someway the music of Lil' Kim, 50 Cent, and other hard core gangsta rappers have found a friend in urban radio and TV.
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1 comment:
Greetings, Coach. I just learned about your blog from someone posting in the Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes Forum, so I decided to check you out. Glad to see you here doing good work.
As a fan of Hip Hop for sooooo many years, I find the direction of mainstream Hip Hop very disturbing. It is an art form that I have been fortunate enough to listen to since it's inception but have grown disenchanted over the years because of mainstream HH. I still love HH because I am selective and only listen to what's worthwhile. Unfortunately the record labels have pounced on this wonderful culture and played the ultimate Jedi Mind Trick on urban youth. Now instead of positivity and vocalizing mental calisthenics, it's all booty-shakin', guns, cars and jewelry. For all the quality HH that exists (Mos Def, Common and a slew of other talented MC's) there's probably 10 times the trash. The HH artists that I listen to don't get airplay while the ones I avoid like the plague are plastered all over the media and glorified as hood heroes. I'm sickened. It makes My work of championing HH that much harder cuz unfortunately most people think all HH is the same. The labels and "artists" got folks ill-informed on so many different levels.
The sad reality is that it won't change as the record label execs won't let it ($$$) and they continue to run game on the urban youth like MJ's Bulls. It's the classic overlay for the underplay. They'll keep dishing out small portions of the money that's really being made...ya know, just enough to keep Sambo dancin'. And Sambo will oblige his oppressor, not even realizing he's being played and/or even worse, not even caring that he's playing the rest of his own people by being such a chump.
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