It only takes a few minutes of listening to rap music or watching videos to see that there is a cultural obsession with violence. Why is hip-hop so caught up in aggression? Is this acceptable?
Learn more about violence and hypermasculinity in hip-hop.
it probably wasn't until those anti-drug campaigns geekified positive rap in the early nineties.
but seriously, i think it depends on diction. the rhyme the guy spits in NYC outside the convetion in the doc about "coulda been a pop... coulda been a cop" was pretty edgy and masculine. disillusionment, frustration, anger, discontent--those aren't "faggy" themes. besides, it most clearly appeals to the ethos that rappers love to use as justification for their words. that is, ghetto rage.
wasn't one of the points the doc made that black men turn their anger at each other rather than the real enemy: systemic racism in the education system, the economy, etc?
What you're saying is true, and I don't really think it's necessary...
"Disillusionment, frustration, anger, discontent" are all topics that can be addressed without violence and well within the bounds of code-masculinity/heterosexuality...
An easy yes/no (no) answer to this question is justified by the endless examples of nonviolent rap music.
It's almost all "aggressive," but not necessarily about ending people's lives.
Los Angeles, California Sep 07, 2006: I often patronize a hip Los Angeles barbershop to get my 12-year-old son a haircut. Even though they have been cutting my son’s hair for the past 4 years, recently I noticed a quietness, calmness, and maturity to this all Black-owned and all Black- employed business that featured only Black men working their trade of meticulously lining, cropping and trimming the heads of Black males of every age.
The big TV screens that are usually fixed on Black Entertainment Television (BET) have been turned off. The music that played in the background no longer featured any hip-hop songs, only soul and R&B music from the 70’s and 80’s. So, I decided to ask if the TV was broken? The 28 year-old barbershop owner answered, “No, we just decided to make a change”. I went on to ask about the new music playing in the overhead speakers. He responded, “we have lots of children and young males coming into this shop and realized hip-hop music was being used as a tool to destroy and we aren’t participating in our own destruction anymore”. I immediately got out of my seat, walked up to him and gave him the biggest hug. Then I looked into the depths of his eyes and told him, “I’m so proud of you!” He replied, “the responsibility for saving ourselves is up to us and the videos on BET are continuously disrespecting and devaluing Black women and teaches Black males that THUG LIFE equates to manhood”. He further explained, it teaches our children not to fear prison life. He looked down and shook his head in a disappointing manner.
Getting the vibe that he didn’t want to entice a big conversation about social issues in his shop due to not knowing what type of dissention would be invoked by such a powerful stance, I knew it was time to cut the conversation and sit back down. At that moment, I had this feeling of hope that has been missing for the past 20 years.
These barbers aren’t old men, these are men in their 20’s and early 30’s. I felt the most exciting feeling that young people, especially Black men are realizing the depictive lie in hip hop music. Rap crap is just another form of racism that is meant to keep a foot on the neck of the Black race, except this reformed tool of racism is elevated to attack the mental souls of, especially, Black people.
Music has always been the soulful essence of African people. The drumbeat was a form of communication and singing in the cotton and tobacco fields made the long and harsh days of slavery only bearable, enabling the field slave to live to an average age of 28. Slaves were simply worked to death, but singing Negro spirituals gave those left to live another day, hope for a better tomorrow.
Today’s lyrics in hip hop music adds more degradation towards the promise made in the Declaration of Independence, which states that every citizen is “created equal (dah!), they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . that whenever any form of government (FCC allows these destructive messages) becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . . as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Under the current tremendously troubling circumstances outlined below, I’m announcing the enactment of THE RAP CRAP TREASON ACT to abolish negative lyrics that are targeting the Black race towards voluntary genocide.
Ever since NWA (Niggaz with Attitude) busted on the national scene in the late 1980’s, their lyrics were aimed at exposing the dramatic unjust conditions of ghetto life in Compton, California performed in a language that was familiar to most Black people living in the innercity. The once acclaimed rap lyrics claiming injustice was a new form of empowerment and enlightenment has since been twisted around to being utilized as the newest method to keep the Black race so far behind the White race that catching up is a seemingly impossible task.
In the history of the world, there has never been a group of people who have developed more creative musical styles than Black people: Spirituals, Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Disco, and the ever popular Motown sound that named their acts uplifting names such as the Miracles, the Marvellettes, the Supremes, the 4 tops, etc. have all retired into the depths of being archaic to today’s dysfunctional youth.
The biggest improvement of the Black race was directly after the civil rights movement from 1965 to 1985. We had Willie Mays breaking Babe Ruth’s all time homerun record. We had Michael Jackson selling more albums than the Beatles and Elvis Presley. We had Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan changing the way basketball was played by adding sensational acrobatic moves. We had Mike Tyson being the youngest man to ever be crowned the heavyweight champion. We had Oprah Winfrey smash Phil Donahue’s ratings and begin a new trend of talk shows. We had Bill Cosby crossing over to having the #1 show on TV for several seasons. Damn, we were winning and then the enactment of the RAP CRAP TREASON ACT went into full effect and all that was won is now lost and distorted into making one Nigger rich to hurt millions of unsuspecting Black people.
Today, since Russell Simmons sold Def Jam Records, Jay Z sold Roc-a-fella, P. Diddy sold Bad Boy, and Bob Johnson sold BET, we don’t own any major entities of Black music and that includes distribution that dictates what gets sold in retail stores which is connected to what gets played on radio stations.
To add insult to injury, our most successful high profile celebrities call themselves low value and corrupting names like 50 cent, Ludicris, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Bow Wow, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot, and Juvenile. Other subsidiary labels owned by the major 5 media companies that control 85% of what we see, hear, and read name their record labels Murder, Inc., Bad Boy, Death Row, and Ruthless Records. What kind of negative mind altering racist bullsh*t is that?
The RAP CRAP TREASON ACT denounces these most intoxicating beats that can make even Barbara Bush want to bob her head to these funky tracks, but in reality songs and lyrics like, “Bitch better have my money”, “Bitches Ain’t Shit”, “F*ck your parents”, “Ten Crack Commandments”, “A Nigga With a Gun” and “Serial Killa” have all contributed to the downward spiraling of the Black race.
Now, I have mixed feeling about Kanye West, who spoke up for the Black victims of Hurricane Katrina by stating that “Bush doesn’t care about Black people” and had a religious #1 pop hit called “Jesus Walks”. But his dual personality is similar to the 1970’s Black exploitation characters that promoted the local drug dealer to also be the same person who urged youth to stay in school, parallels with Kanye’s album titles, “College Drop-out” and “ Late Registration”. To understand my point fully, one must comprehend this to be a complete smear to his parent’s accomplishments. Kanye’s mother is a college professor and his father holds a Master’s degree.
Just this year, the high school drop out rate for Black students is a whooping 50% and Historically Black Colleges and scholarships for Blacks are being left unclaimed without the enough students to take advantage of these much needed services. After all young people are bribed to believe that since Kanye didn’t finish college and he is rich and famous, so why learn anything academically, I can be just like him. What Kanye isn’t promoting is that he worked his ass off creating beats and was rejected hundreds of times before getting his break many years after starting to make his dream a reality.
The RAP CRAP TREASON ACT also exposes the damaging trend of chronically misspelling words, such as “izz” (is), “wutt” (what), “tho” (though), “tha” or “da” (the), “wat” (what), “knoe” (know), “shud” (should), “jes” (just), “fa” (for), etc. Judging by the test scores of Blacks, do they really know that these words are spelled wrong, or worse yet, do they care?
I’m not being a complete square who has forgotten the natural rebellious nature of most teens. I haven’t forgotten that we had a secret language that was considered to be cool. In the 1970’s, we used a form of pig latin, which was similar to Snoop’s language. The difference is that during that time, it was a complete embarrassment not to graduate from high school, and the PSA’s (Public Service Announcement) for the United Negro College Fund told me every time I watched Soul Train, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”. Nowadays, chronically misspelling words is an indicator of the failing school system and indicative of the power of hip-hop to fraud Black people into believing to be wrong is to be right.
THE RAP CRAP TREASON ACT charges the hip hop industry with the crime of abusing the first amendment’s right to free speech and identifies rap lyrics to be unconstitutional. Rap lyrics yell fire in a crowded theater that has caused pandemonium targeted at a certain group of people who see these studio gangsters as a mirror of themselves, into the danger zone of annihilation.
I further charge rappers with treason due to:
Increasing the prison population of Black males 300% in the just 20 years.
Provoking Black on Black murder rate to being 1,150% higher than White on White homicides.
The declining Black marriage rate and the rising Black divorce rate.
Normalizing the single-parent household.
And damn it, I charge rap artists with faking the diction of a retarded person as something to strive for, when any retarded person would jump at the chance to have a higher IQ. For example, the lazy talk of 50 cent and T.I. being rewarded for sounding like they have no sense at all, and absolutely no education. This subliminal message tells impressionable and vulnerable youth that you can actually win in life by talking as if they have not one year of education. When in actuality these rap fools are being used to fool us into believing the lie that it doesn’t matter, when everything in the ghetto is getting worse and an half generation of youth doesn’t even have an high school education.
Hell yes, I’m charging them with a crime, but the only punishment in my power is to NOT buy any of their music, NOT watch any of their videos, NOT view any of their movies or TV shows; basically BANKRUPT them out of existence.
Destroying the sell-out is my goal.
And for those who act in OUR BEST INTEREST, we must reward them by purchasing books, music, and watching movies and television shows that promote a positive change for our families and ourselves.
Support those who support us. BUY POSITIVITY and ANNIHILATE NEGATIVITY.
Black people we have much work to do. In my book, “Black Women Need Love, Too! Exposing the Conspiracy to Keep Black Women Without Love” has a chapter called, “If you don’t want a dawg, then don’t raise one” that puts us in control of our destiny. Change is within our power and influence.
Ladies, there is a way to talk to Black men that will improve our status as the largest group of single women. We need our men to participate like never before. It’s all in my book, “Black Women Need Love, Too” available on amazon.com. This could be the most important book you ever read. Don’t wait. Order your copy today!
Violence is NOT necessary in hip-hop. It's a choice. Let's remember the message of the pacifist heroes of our time such as Ghandi, John Lennon and Martin Luther King, Jr. Now these were MEN. Men who made a difference. Brave men. I challenge any rapper and/or hip-hop artist to base their lyrics and/or rhymes on the message of these men, the real heroes.
Necessary? - NO. Why caught up? - the same reason that Superbowl Sunday is so big, it is the national holiday on aggressive masculinity that the culture is rampant with. Those of us who've been working for decades to address it know just how entrenched. And yet there are also hopeful signs, like those in the film, & like the gems I get to hear in workshops I do!
Whenever I see the misogyny in hip-hop videos, ads, & culture (thank God there are some stellar exceptions, like in this film!), I am always struck by the similarity to slaveholders & how they treated women: as their property to use, no concern for the effect or harm. And at the same time(highlighted so clearly in the album/VIBE covers shown), the tragic irony of portraying black men as "breeders" for the plantation owners. A sad mix of using and being used. Being simultaneously Plantation Owner & 'Breeder'.
And I was stuck by the juxtaposition and difference to another great documentary also on PBS tonight: about Shirley Chisholm, talking w/ black students "is what keeps me in it" she said. And I wrote a hip-hop musician friend's terrific teen son tonight about how it reminded me of when I met the political guys Rep. Chisholm came up with at the Black Excellence Award dinner in NYC: Percy Sutton (a jewel of a man - he talked of how she inspired them and lead them -- his regard, respect for her so different from the above), Mayor David Dinkins, Coretta Scott King, & others. There are so many high powered black leaders - the dinner honored Percy and then there was an equally commanding, classy gathering at the posh hotel suite of the exec. director of Black Excellence (based in Wash. D.C.): there wasn't any guns, violence or obvious misogyny at either...but there sure was a lot of power, class, influence and brains (intimidating for me quite honestly, and I'm smart!, but what a privilege to be around!) My friend's son is smart like them, and has that charm his dad and those leaders have/had: I told him if he studied hard and used it well, it would serve him like it had those who claimed power who came before him.
And they were not only in politics by a long shot. There are so many incredible black men and women who have come before doing amazing stuff. So many still not known enough. Unlike those demonstrating graceless misogyny/unimaginative violence, the ones who've left a lasting legacy have all exhibited a kind of Grace.
So Happy Black History Month!!
"The Delany Sisters Book of Everyday Wisdom" every school library should have it! And every bookstore should have a display front and center this month! (speak up if they don't) There are so many incredible books & autobiographies: Joycelynn Elders, Sidney Poitier, scientists, educators, Desmond Tutu -- lots of history. How many know a black person invented the fridge? etc. etc. etc.!! Yet in 1996 a group of mostly African-American 7th graders I was doing a workshop with in Greenport, NY, near the famous Hamptons, did not know who Nelson Mandela was when I mentioned him!! even tho he was at the height of his power then and in the news as President since 1994 and getting the Nobel Peace Prize in '93.
I'd like to hug the barbershop owner who turned off that television!!!!!!!! And hug the man who gave him a hug already and wrote so well now. Now perhaps those kids will have time to read about & explore all the amazing people whose cellular memory they carry!! Whose proud legacy they carry on!! (or not) I want to ask that you PLEASE use it well: do them and you proud! America needs you!
Sign of late hour that I forgot to mention Harry Belafonte!! still commanding huge audiences. and Paul Robeson. Neither violent or misogynistic, both who bucked the system and whose impact is still being felt.
