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Slap-Boxing With Jesus

Who Ever Thought That Hip-Hop Would Take It This Far

By the time you'll be reading this, I'll be en route to Las Vegas. If there's any female fans that would love to split a Denny's bill with me down in Sin City, I'm not too hard to find. That said, today's guest blogger is none other than the author of "Black Rapping School" and "White Girls,"  Boston's own Mighty Casey...

Throughout my whole life I’ve been defending Hip-Hop to my parents teachers white kids, whoever didn’t understand it. I still defend it, but I can’t defend the corporate funded gangsterism and coonery that is currently being attacked. That’s not to say I’m riding with O’Reilly. Anyone who supports the conservative movement and the war in Iraq and criticizes Hip-Hop is like a crackhead criticizing Snoop Dogg for smoking weed. However I can say that I’m riding with Spike Lee(who helped Hip-Hop come to mainstream prominence), Bill Cosby, Oprah and Al Sharpton all of whom I have a lot of respect for and have done way more for the black community than any gangster rapper.

When I first started listening to ‘gangsta’ rap it represented a voice of the unheard, the ghettoes of LA which was previously a voiceless entity was given a voice by NWA. The poverty and frustration which most of America was ignorant to was put in the open so people could no longer ignore it, the gangster movement in LA served as a prophecy for the LA riots. I listened to other ‘gangster’ rappers like Kool G Rap and the Ghetto Boys too but there was a balance, positive songs like Slick Rick’s Hey Young world, squeaky clean acts like Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, pro-black rap acts like X-Clan, Def Jef, BDP Brand Nubian, gave a well rounded voice to the new voice of the  black community. Gangsta rap was underground, only independent companies like Ruthless and Rap-A-Lot and received little to no airplay or video spins but sold records do to a strong movement and word of mouth. In order to find gansta rap, I had to navigate through college radio shows and friends tapes, it was not force fed on me like gangsta rap is on children today.

    When Luke was censored in FLA, I objected strongly, not that I was a huge Luke fan, but if you let the government censor someone for talking about pussy, next thing they’re censoring you for talking about weed or revolution. When Ice T was attacked for Cop Killer I was right there in his corner even though I didn’t really like the song, his creative license gave a voice to the 1000’s of black males who were harassed, beaten and even murdered by the police. My little sister put me on to Tupac and I strongly identified with songs like Trapped and Brenda’s Got a Baby. Tupac became Hip Hop’s own Robin Hood, avoiding the law while repping for the people. When C Delores Tucker attacked Tupac, I saw her as a pawn for the white establishment. By grouping with William Bennet, the former US Drug Czar who is responsible for many of the laws that keep African American males in prison, she lost  all credibility to me regardless how legitimate her claims on his misogyny was. The fact that she ignored his songs like Brenda’s got a Baby, Dear Mama and Keep Your Head Up and focused on the few songs in which he referred to women as bitches and hoes, showed how ignorant she was about Hip-Hop.

    Towards the late nineties I noticed a trend towards more gangsta rap and less positive well rounded material. BIG and Pac had become martyrs for the gangsta rap movement. However rather than emulating Tupac’s black panther influenced revolutionary ideology, and heartfelt poetic compassion for women, they would just copy his Death Row gangsta swagger and playa image. No songs about momma Brenda or keeping your head up but a whole lot of I Get Around type of songs. Around this time Hip-Hop had become a corporate entity, no longer reserved for college radio and the occasional mixshow, as hundreds of radio stations adopted the Hot, or Jamn titles and proclaimed themselves as the place where ‘Hip-Hop’ lives, MTV was playing rap videos ad nauseum. Hip Hop, once and underground force had become corporate sponsored, all over commercials, corporate radio, movies lunchboxes and toys. At the same time, I began working as a school teacher. I noticed how heavily Hip-Hop was being marketed to children, specifically in the urban community. These kids would sing a long with the lyrics, no matter how raunchy or drug related. Kids from the hood rarely see anyone from their background achieve any success or attention so they identified with and idolized them.

In 2002 Gangsta rap has its first fully marketed matinee idol in 50 Cent. Complete with a compelling backstory, dope beats, a gangster image and memorable catch phrases, 50 became the ultimate marketing strategy and brought gangsta rap to mainstream America. It was also clear that Interscope records was marketing 50 and G-Unit to kids 10 and up specifically in the hood, putting the videos on kid oriented show like TRL and 106th and Park and marketing G-Unit sneakers and clothes to young kids. To white kids 50 is nothing but a Scarface like gangsta figure for their amusement to get a taste of the ghetto gangsterism that they will never see in their life but for black kids, 50 is a hero, who they want to be like when they grow up. The young girls who are infatuated by 50 and the likes will look for the same type of guy as a boyfriend and the young males who look up to him will see selling drugs and gunplay as a ritual for manhood. With books, drinks, sneakers and movies 50 became fully marketed to the American mainstream. Unlike before there was no political backlash against 50 cent, maybe because he was making corporate America so much money. Clear Channel, one of the Bush camp’s biggest supporters was playing 50 non stop on its hundreds of urban radio stations, making countless money marketing gangsterism to middle schoolers. Unlike before when Tupac posed a legitimate revolutionary threat to the establishment, 50 and the likes fell into the American corporate structure. America needs black males to fill up their jails, thugs to sell their guns to and someone to divide the hip-hop community through beef to stop it from being the genuine force of resistance it once was. It would not surprise me if 50 was a cointlepro agent, starting conflicts within the Hip-Hop community just as they did with black power movement years ago.

It’s funny that it took an old white man making a racist comment for people to realize what was going on in Hip Hop.  Russ and them decided that the best way to combat the negativity was to censor out a few select words. However it’s much more deep than bitches and hoes. It not the vocabulary of Hip Hop that creates the negativity, it’s the ideology. Queen Latifah and Tribe Called Quest both have used the term bitch and nigga for positive songs(U.N.I.T.Y. and Sucka Nigga). It’s not an issue of vocabulary in the Hip Hop community its misogyny. Ho and Bitch both have a place in my vocabulary, if a girl sleeps around I may refer to he as a ho(which is just shorthand for whore), if a girl is stuck up or mean spirited I might refer to her as a bitch however I’ve been trying my best not to use bitch or ho to refer to women in general as in ‘I’m goin to the club to fuck with these hoes’ or ‘I’m tired of these industry bitches.’ I think a better way to combat misogyny would be to have more female rappers. These days a female can easily become more successful in Hip-Hop, by being a video ho(or vixen but in this case I believe ho is more of an applicable term no Imus) than a rapper. So rap fans have no examples of intelligent, articulate females with their own ideas who aren’t just decoration for rappers to pour champagne on and make it rain on. The few female rappers who have had any prominence recently have had their personas and lyrics developed by male svengalis  and played the sexpot sidekick role rather than developing their own identities. There’s no more Latifah’s to ask the male rappers ‘Who you callin a bitch?’ or MC Lytes to shut down the wanna be players.

As a school teacher I have seen the negative effect on Hip Hop first hand. I work as a music teacher in the Bronx, where the graduation rate is under 40%. Who do you think the over 60% look to for guidance? The bloods and the crips are thick in the BX recruiting teenagers straight out of middle school and artists like the Game are giving them giving them excellent advertisement. These kids look for guidance from rappers, the only symbols of success they see from their community. A co worker of mine who works with 7 year olds told me about a story about one of his kids who took all the money out the monopoly game went to the cafeteria and proceeded to make it rain on the nearest 7 year old ho he could find.

I have heard a number of excuses about negativity in Hip Hop. Most of time, its just people pointing their fingers elsewhere. I’ve heard the comparisons of violence in movies to justify violence in rap. However while most movies are clearly fantasy, Hip Hop depends on its credibility of reality to sell. When people found out that the Terminator was in fact just Arnold Swartzenneger an Austrian bodybuilder, the movie did not lose any credibility. Do you think if people found out that 50 was not in fact a ‘gangsta’ from the hood but just male model from the burbs do you think he’d sell any more records. Rappers are not just playing the roles, they are living them(or at least want you to believe that). This leads to rappers having to justify their gangsta by packin heat, staying around thugs and getting into violent altercations.

    Another excuse I’ve heard is ‘poverty’ as if rappers where forced to smack women, sell crack and shoot eachother because they were poor. This is a very patronizing attitude. Bob Marley grew up in Jamaica with a rock for a pillow and yet still sang about positivity, freedom and stopping the violence, KRS-1 grew up homeless in the Bronx yet still rapped about stopping the violence and educating the youth. Most jazz artists grew up in poverty as did most soul singers. However rather than promote the violence and drugs that plagued their communities or proclaiming themselves participants in the them, they gave a vivid picture of negativity and condemned it(even though some of them were drug addicts, they rarely sung about the positive aspects of drugs).

Even rappers like Just-Ice, whose gangsta is verified in the streets, and Freddie Foxx participated in positive songs like Heal Yourself and Self Destruction. Easy-E helped combat gang violence in We’re All in the Same Gang and Kool G Rap attacked racism on Erase racism. Can you think of one positive song that any of these current crop of gangsta rappers have been involved in? Could you make a Self Destruction or We’re All in the Same Gang without someone getting shot in the studio nowadays?

Music has always been a vital part of black peoples struggle in America. From the folk songs and negro spirituals of  slavery  that helped us abolish it, to the jazz songs of Billie Holiday and others that vented our frustrations against segregation, the gospel and soul music that served as the soundtrack to the civil rights movement, the funk and poetry that represented the black power movement. How will history remember Hip Hop, where are our Louis Armstrong’s, Marvin Gaye’s, James Brown’s, Bob Marley’s, Aretha Franklins? When was the last time you can say a rap song touched your soul and not just made you dance and sing a long with it or go damn what a clever metaphor about selling cocaine. Hip Hop used to be the voice of young black America, now it’s the voice of how white America wants young black America to be.  Will Hip Hop be remembered as a potent creative social force or just a silly ‘gangsta’ gimmick? In no way do I believe in the governments right to censor hip-hop, however I strongly applaud people like Al Sharpton and Spike Lee who have spoken out against it and used traditional methods like boycotts and marches to condemn the negativity in Hip-Hop. When Russel Simmons sold Def Jam to Universal and Bob Johnson sold BET to Viacom, two of the biggest black owned entities in Hip Hop were sold to white corporations. Its not the rappers faults. I don’t condemn and black man for having a criminal background, or trying to rap about it. Malcolm X started as a criminal to become on of the biggest voices for black power. What rapper will take his role and say stop the violence, stop mistreating our women, stop poisoning our neighborhoods with drugs. Rap music is what black movies in 70’s were, originally a potent creative force to show what was going on the hood, it became a corporate sponsored fest of stereotypes, violence, negativity and coonery, A Hollywood version of the ghetto. I can get a more accurate depiction of what’s going on in the hood from the Wire than I could with all the crack rap out today. When Hip Hop first started it was a grass roots movement that didn’t need any of the big labels, TV channels or Radio stations, I think we need to take it back.

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