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CAN WE SAVE HIP HOP & RAP? (SOS!) By
Chuma Christopher Ogene Blog
With Russell Simmons and community leaders, activists, artists and music lovers clamoring for change in the rap game... do you think we can turn this Narcissistic, violence/crime/money and sex-preaching trend around 4 THE BETTER? I think we can, we need to make it happen. Dont blink... read on.
What can we do to achieve this? Personally, I was a young adult growing up on the cusp of the 70's/80's with the birth of Electro-Funk and Rap. We loved to uprock and breakdance to the Fat Boys, Sugar hill Gang, Grandmasters Flash & Melle Mel (and the furious Five), Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaata and many more.
The concept was to take the pain, poverty, conflict (petty beefs) and desperation and turn them into vast canvases onto which pictures of HOPE and DEFIANCE were painted in streaming, acrobatic and humorous lyrical mastery. Gang related crime actually went down because brothas and sistas were too busy having fun with tight graffiti, all night street parties and 'battles' for creative and athletic street credibility. Where did this ghetto paradise vanish to?
Even with the hard work and longevity of conscious (and mostly clean) rappers like Mos Def, Common, Cee-Lo, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, LL Cool J, KRS-1, Chubb Rock, Chuck D and many others... there still exists the vile disease of commercialization and profiteering that industry execs (I believe) introduced to the game. The concept of rags 2 mega riches by all means necessary.
In the late 80's with the rise of drug activity, gang related crime and the now famous East Coast/West coast beef, an opportunity to cater to the darker side of the hip hop culture was created. All of a sudden sounds began to change with the background of gunfire, helicopters hovering, sirens wailing and indescribable curses of pain, torment, intimidation and explosive resentment.
All of a sudden the Word Nigger turned into Nigga and became cool. So cool in fact, that it lost its warmth as a term of endearment for one of your closest confidants/friends – and became a symbol of derision, hatred and everyday disdain as it once had been on plantations everywhere… before many of our forefathers spilled their blood to rid our society of the name. We seem to running backwards for dirty dollars. Soon after, it became cool to call women hoes and bitches, to preach killing 'snitches' and worshiping riches. It was no loner about who could rhyme better but who had the bigger guns or rowdiest entourage or posse. All of a sudden getting drunk, high and disruptive became the norm for our celebrities in the same clubs our grandfathers wore suits, wingtips and fedoras to – escorting lovely ladies in feathered hats and elbow length white gloves with tennis bracelets. Courtship and courtesy turned into contempt, callousness and commercialism.
Then the shit really hit the fan. The globalization of rap into a multi-BILLION fashion, music, video, automotive, dance and lifestyle commodity sent Marketing execs into a crack-like stupor and convinced them that the only way to milk this cow was the exploit it as deeply as possible, using the 'Popular Culture' advantage of inner city youth. And that was all she wrote. Next thing ya know, kids that could recite their ABC's or 1,2,3 could recite almost every popular rap video by heart, and gyrate in every writhing, sexually explicit move that video vixens would make. And you expected everything to stay normal. Oh no ma'am. You made this happen just the same way they did.
So now we stand here realizing that our daughters are getting pregnant, shot, beaten, insulted, raped and devoured by mere boys who are thrown into jail, raped and tortured by prisoners and police alike in their pursuit of ICE, dubs, cash, sex and alcohol. Where did they get these ambitions: Rap City, BET, Yo! MTV raps, MTV Cribs and all the other philanderers that turned this conscious culture into a whorehouse. Now these same fools that have profited off the mega business want to whine about offensive language. OK, so lets deal then...
What do we do? Tell Method Man, Ice Cube, Xzibit and others to clean up the foul mouth while still paying them millions to star in Movies and TV? What kind of leverage is there? I believe it can be done and SHOULD be done to liberate Hip Hop culture from the snares of this multi headed monster. Several things we could do.
(A) Clean up both the language and content. Our Rappers need to substitute words like MF, Nigger, Bitch, Hoe with creative (and industry accepted) bleeps or other devices like a scratch, a car horn, simple silence, a bicycle bell, a phone ring etc. These sounds are in sync with the beat and groove and actually challenge the listener to fill in the blanks with the appropriate (if offensive) word of choice. How hard is that, all you mega-producers?
(B) The imagery needs to change. Stop glorifying drugs and murder. That's demonic. All this talking about killing and u wonder why folks re spraying bullets and taking lives of scores of people on college campuses and malls around the country. Stop this culture of attacking the police and intimidating informants. Stop this madness of half dressed girls with drinks in their hands gyrating all over men in EVERY flipping video on the box!!!!! Is that all we can say about our lives and our clubs? Good grief!
C. Do some hard core community activism, lets have a Rap/Hip Hop summit or march nationwide to address these issues and get kids to RELEARN this game from the ground up. Have a code of ethics much like the 'code of the streets' on subject matter that is poisoning our community, and steps we can take to creatively rap about them (literally) to craft a solution that is uplifting to our urban Black/Latino/Native/Asian/White/Multiethnic youth.
D. Have a long-term approach. Hip Hop isn't going anywhere… we all know it. So, how can we elevate this game for our sons and daughters and their children, so that they are as proud of us – as we are of our Jazzy forefathers and mothers of song from the Harlem renaissance. This revolution will also not be televised, unless we have vision. TALK 2 ME. Say something. Vote for this blog. Pass it along.
DO SOMETHING! Thanks 4 reading, thanks 4 your time… but let me thank you only if u participate. Peace!
Chuma Christopher Ogene
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