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The Hip Hop Generation Gap: I Cram to Understand

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What in the name of patriarchy is Ice-T talking about?

Cop Killer Ice-T? Law and Order Ice-T?

It isn’t clear to me whether Ice-T is more angry at Hurricane Chris’s
and Souljah Boy’s perceived lack of “black thug” masculinity or at the
their inability to measure up to Rakim, Das Efx and BDK as emcees.

“Man Up”?

“Take those beads out your hair”?

Please take a moment to understand the irony of a gangster rapping black
man pulling his Cop Killer song amid political controversy, turning around
and acting as a police officer on a television show, then criticizing
myspace rappers for ruining hip hop.

It took me a minute to tie that together. Irony is bugged.

Why did societal pressures influence Ice-T to pull cop killer,
but there is not nary chirp about 50 or Prodigy rapping about killing
20 dudes on Thursday after breakfast?

Because the murder of black men fails to enrage us.

Talk about the public performance of “The Black Thug“.

Ice T has been moving in some real, ahem, non thuggish,
circles for the last 8 years so he comes across as putting
10 on 2 for telling someone to man up.

Granted, I will note that he has performed as recently,
as 2006 as a rapper.

However, it would be interesting to see how he performs his day
to day masculinity on the set of one of his Dick Wolf projects.

What Ice-T and many of us fail to understand is that, since Mc Hammer,
in general, and since The Chronic specifically, since the advent of
Soundscan, Hip Hop is like property in Downtown Brooklyn,
Oakland or Chicago.

Its worth a lot of money to those who own the rights to it.

Capitalism performs a specific function with precise efficiency.

This function is to obtain the most profit out of capital (productive
property).

Sometimes that capital is a rental house other times its stock in Viveindi
Universal Studios.

Let me ask you this.

Why is a cd that cost $3 cents to make $15.99 in the stores? Profits.

Why is the rent $1100 this year, when it was $850 three years ago? Profits.

Why is gas $4.20 per gallon? Demand, Supply shortages AND Profits.

Quality control, culture or People be damed.

There is a comment on a three year old post on Hip Hop Blogs, ironically
on the hip hop generation gap which sums up why 2008 is not 1988.

The commenter interestingly named, Iamtheskidwad writes,

I think it’s important to see that the exceptional 1% comes to represent and define an era. 99% of artists today are just as wack as back in ’89 (when there was just sunshine).

Overall, I think the quality of rap music overall has remained solid to this day. But I definitely agree that we don’t have that special 1% anymore. This is old news, but I think the optimism and the sense of possibility was a big part of it. The music had an expansive consciousness. There was a balance between the individual and the group. Rappers still had a little restraint. They were still conscious of their role as representatives of black people and the struggle. Now the attitude is like, “Of course I’m part of the struggle… I’m black.”

I also think the audience in the 1980s was looking to rap music to address a wide range of issues. The music had a multi-dimensional social and cultural purpose. But now the music seems to have a much narrower purpose: hedonism and typecasting.

I know this might strike some people the wrong way, but back then I think it was more about being a person, an individual. Now, it’s way more about being black in this very self-conscious and superficial way.

I find it ironic that now that a lot of the artistic chains have been lifted, black artists can say anything they want… and yet somehow precisely the opposite is what happens: a lot of rappers seem to be reading from a script on “how to be Black.” sorry, i just had to say it.

Upon rereading that I moved by both the honesty, eloquence and sincerity.

Rappers had a little restraint.

Now rapper turned actor-rappers are telling the myspace rappers to man up.

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The Guardian

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I woke up this morning tired. Putting ice on my knee tired.

I went out to Ms. Coca’s party last night.

Ali Shaheed played Electric Relaxation and I got hoarse from singing along.

I was checking my blog statistics this morning and noticed that I was getting
referrals from The Guardian.

I clicked on the link and saw that The Guardian had linked to my
“If You Want to Change Society” piece under their Best of the Web section.

I had to blink back the water y’all.

Thank you to Latoya for the Racialicious cross links.

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Thank you to the folks who e-mail me, who reach out and ask for advice,
who write and share how they are “on becoming a more human human”,
or that they are “struggling with learning that their partner has a near
fatal disease and they just wanted to reach out”.

bell and Audre speak out their being power in the margins, so there is nothing
like being recognized, publicly, for being yourself.

Hip Hop, Violence and White Men

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Honesty is incredible.

I was honest in my piece, “If You Want to Change Society…”,
and the Racilicious readers turned around and gave me some feed back
that took it to a whole other level. I found myself writing so many
responses that I knew I just had to go ahead and post about it.

A reader, a white dude from the suburbs, wrote the first response
that had my wig twisted. The comment is incredible because
we know that white kids buy and listen to rap, but we never
hear them reflect on how it has impacted them. The commenter,
Vodalus, speaks on violence, hip hop and being from the
suburbs. He writes,

It seems to me, as a suburban white kid, that another problem with rap music is that it conflates black youth culture with violence. It teaches non-black listeners that black youth who listen to hip-hop and dress like rappers are likely to be violent. Recognizing that this is largely a false assumption and rooting out the biases stemming from that conflation has been hard work for me. It?s also work that I don?t think I could have accomplished when I was growing up in the suburbs.

I wish that rappers would stand up and admit that they are delivering prepacked stereotypes straight to the suburbs. Not only are they teaching black youth to disrespect themselves but rap teaches non-blacks youths to fear and disdain young blacks. -Vodalus

The above comment made me wonder how T.I. and David Banner
would have responded if they were asked how do they feel about
white teenage boys consuming their music? Singing along, buying it
etc.

Someone also made a comment that reminded me that we lack
a fundamental understanding of capitalism. Capital being productive property.
In the 1800’s we Negros were productive property. Now productive property
is a house with a rental unit or stocks, bonds and dividends. Capitalism seeks
to make as much profit as possible of all capital. Hence why you can’t stop
gentrification. I was reminded of this when a Racilicious commenter,
Phil Deeze, noticed how on the new VH1 documentary on video vixens
there was no mention of the consumer.

Well of course. There will also never be any mention of the consumer,
of unionizing he vixens or the similarities between the vixens and Venus
Hottentot. Phil writes,

And, sadly the component that wasn?t mentioned was the consumer. Someone is out there watching the booty-shaking and grinding. Someone is out there buying the CD?s and going to the concerts. People of all races. But black folks are responsible for the images out there because most of the images that are out there for black folks are harmful images.
~Phil Deeze

I also read something that would have MLK break-dancing in his grave.
A commenter aptly named, Devils Advocate, made the power argument.
I ride for being a more human human, not a more power driven being.
I want to not that his analysis was both well thought out and cynical.
When I read stuff like this I think, thank god they weren’t on the US
Abolitionist committee otherwise I would be sharecropping in
Alabama right now. Devils Advocate writes,

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Instead of talking about how we can make the community better, why don?t we just continue to find new ways to exploit each other?s needs more profitably? I mean, that?s what drug dealing, prostitution, and war-profiteering are all about. And hip-hop too. And academia.

Call it cynical if you want, but as I look at the empires of today and yesterday, morality (and religion) serves only to control laborers, allowing the managers to do as they please. What if the black community stopped trying to heal itself and just succumbed to that desire to exploit? After all, isn?t that what brought this nation?s founders their great power today?

Another commenter, Kjen said in 38 words what it would take me to , wink, say
in 500.

The ?close your legs? argument always disturbs me because of how it continues to disempower men. It encourages men to distance themselves from the only people they have control over, themselves, and blame women for the s**t they do.

Alexandra caught something about the Hip Hop vs. America piece
that I noticed, but didn’t know how to analyze. Raw Patriarchy. Remember
when David said “close your legs”, then hit on Time writer Lola Ogunnaike and
mumbled on the under that he was going to open hers and she blushed!
Alexandra nails it when she writes,

Great Post.
I especially agree with part of we don?t want to hold rappers accountable because dont? want to hold ourselves accountable……David Banner also undermined his comments by hitting on the female panelist after she agreed with his comment. How are you going to tell women to close their legs in one breath and say I?m gonna get another open hers in another. All she did was agree with him, he didn?t have to say that.
The men act this way because women want thugs and dope dealers argument annoyed me too is he serious with that.

I am always struck by the willingness to blame the victim. I would imagine
that Sasha means well, but the trifecta of Capitalism, White Supremacy
and Patriarchy is largely responsible for plethora of ills that impoverished
Black, White Latino and Asian teens are suffering from. Here comes Moniyhan.
Sasha writes

I believe if more girls from poor communities were taught to respect themselves and their bodies, rates of teen pregnancy, stds, and generational cycles of poverty would decrease….I don?t believe in trying to force rappers, filmmakers, etc. to only create certain types of music or movies. Yes I know that the images of black people and women in entertainment is often stereotypical and indicative of how societies them but I can?t change that…you are right, after school programs are not the solution to teen pregnancy, stds, generational cycles of poverty, low academic test scores etc. If a child is not being raised properly and all the other children in the neighborhood are in the same boat, nothing is going to change that until you get the parent?s to change or someone else steps in.

I hope she isn’t a teacher.

I close out with a little bit of Audre Lorde, who I have been reading
the last two weeks. You notice the influence?

Raising Black children -female and male- in the mouth of a racist,
sexist suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love
and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in
order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach- love,
survival- that is, self determination and letting go. For each of these,
the ability feel strongly and to recognize those feelings is
central: how to feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be
overwhelmed by it, hot to enjoy feeling deeply.

I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor settle for,
those corruptions called power by the white fathers who mean his destruction
as surely as they mean mine. I wish to raise a Black man who will recognize that the legitimate objects of his hostility are not women, but the particulars of
a structure that programs him to fear and despise women as well as his own
Black self.

From the essay, Man Child, Sister Outsider


Who Raises the Kids, Rappers or Parents?

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Our children’s successes and our children’s failures belong to us.
We are the reason.

Every time I criticize hip hop, I am dumb founded by the responses I get back.

Its like, I am talking about peoples mommas or something.

Sportaphile’s insistence that it starts with “the family” is misguided, at best.

No one makes it anywhere in life without the help of several people. Whether
you are selling crack or bound for Congress. Somebody has to put you
on and nurture you. And the help does not typically or necessarily begin
or end with your own family.

I know some pretty fabulous people, I also know some amazing fuck-ups.
Many cats fall right in between.

Investment bankers, 15 year veteran d-boys, music video editors.
brain surgeons, full time cigarette hustlers. You name them. Dot knows ’em.

So I am perplexed at the “it starts at home”, but what about those
for whom home is NOT where it is? Where home is a war zone.

Sniff, sniff, is that a boot strap that we are suppose to be pulling ourselves
up with.

Hip hop or rather rap music and videos carry and incredible amount of weight
with young people.

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge?

That shit remind me of the the displacement denial that people in
Bedstuy-Harlem-Forte Greene have. They think they are going to be able
to remain in their neighborhoods. But I have this little friend called the Euro,
and he is the new game in town. But I digress.

Back to rap. Rappers shouldn’t carry the weight that they do, but they do.
(For the record, listening to new Busta Rhymes, Don’t Touch Me,
as I write this.me likes).

I knew in April that I had to openly criticize Hip Hop when Birkhold pointed out that
not doing so constitute being similar to whites who refuse to acknowledge
racism. While Birkhold writes about the need to talk about how patriarchy
has been internalized, the need to critique it can be extended to the discussion
about the scope and extent to which our children are affected by the lyrics and
images.

He gets into what is in store for us when we decide to be bold enough
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This unfortunately means that a critique of the way hip-hop has internalized patriarchy must lead to a painful examination of the ways we have internalized patriarchy. Despite the soreness this may cause, reflection and self-critique is necessary. In many ways, refusing to engage in this reflection mirrors the refusal of many whites to admit to collaborating with racism or acknowledging that America itself is a racist nation.

What is it going to be, empathy or darwinian “my momma raised me right”?
The latter implies, I don’t know what the fuck yours was doing, but mine
was on her job.

The latter attitude is what got us where we are now in the first place.

For every 1 time you point the finger at what some rapper says, you should point 50 fingers at the broken and dysfunctional homes we come from and try to fix **THAT** instead.~Sportafile


I am capable of critiquing more than one thing at a time. Are you?

As for building a foundation, I am in the middle of writing a position
paper on addressing the preschool to prison pipeline. Its ambitious,
hard, frustrating and necessary.

My general premise is that that policy and spending has to shift to
prevention and that the economic incentives to having such how Black male drop
outs head to prison must be acknowledged, analyzed and addressed
in order to make any true head way.

Is that foundation enough for you?

It’s like we’re making skyscrapers with faulty material and no structural integrity. We can’t stand up if we’re ankle deep in quicksand.

Let’s work on the foundation before we start blaming ANYTHING else in the elements thats bringing us down.~Sportaphile

Penni Brown respond

We can’t stand up if we’re ankle deep in quicksand.

If you’re ankle deep in quicksand, the last thing you’re going to be thinking about is building a structure to avoid quicksand traps. Your going to be screaming, ‘THROW ME A DAYUM ROPE!

Thats the point. Many young bucks don’t ever receive any rope. They receive a f-cking brick necklace and a substantial amount of rap music and videos serves as a link holding that necklace together.

(Reminds me that I need to do that piece on Grand Theft Auto.)

What is the problem with acknowledge that some Hip Hop feeds the darkside within us? Why is that sh-t so difficult? Are we saying that Parents are completly absolved from parenting?No Are we saying that rappers are completly absolved from their responsibility?No. Are we saying that WE are completly absolved from our duties as those who remember WATCHED Yo MTV Raps? Maybe. Just kidding. Just kidding.

A Response to BET’s Hip Hop vs. America

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Last week, Tracey Rose sent me the above video.
As I watched Hip Hop vs. America the video weighed
on my mind.

For example, in the clip titled TI and Nelly Speak Nelly continued to
talk about TipDrillGate.

The general sentiment of the women at Spelman
was that they wanted to host his bone marrow drive,
(his sister died of a bone marrow related disease) but that they
also wanted him to speak on the images in the TipDrill video.

Spelman’s attitude towards Nelly was “We care about your sister,
but we care about our sisters too”.

Dr.William Jelani Cobb gets into the nuances of TipDrillGate
when he writes,

The flyers posted in Cosby Hall said it all: “We Care About Your Sister, But You Have To Care About Ours, Too.” The slogan explained the position of the student-activists at Spelman College whose protests over Nelly’s “Tip Drill” video led the artist to cancel his scheduled appearance for a bone marrow drive on the campus earlier this month. But in a real sense, their point went beyond any single rapper or any single video and went to the center of a longstanding conflict in the heart of the black community. But rarely do we hear the point that these students were bringing home: that this single video is part of a centuries-long debasement of black women’s bodies. And the sad truth is that hip hop artists’ verbal and visual renderings of black women are now virtually indistinguishable from those of 19th century white slave owners.

Nelly seems to want us to believe that the actions of his
non profit render us silent on a critique of the video.

Record scratch.

I have spoken here before on my view non-profit programs.
The general notion is that they tend to have more to do with
serving the interests of those who created them, than those who
they claim to serve.

However, Nelly does have a point about the positive contributions
of Black men in general and his contributions specifically
being unrecognized.

Perhaps it would behoove us to recognize the positive, tangible,
contributions that both the famous and the every day folks make.

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and about us as a people is the cheering of Nelly as he
expressed his anger towards Farai.

While watching this I thought, why was she the only person on
stage representing the interest of thinking about analyzing
how these images impact all of us?

Why did Master P get so defensive towards her as well? As if
she is responsible for him having to hustle.

That they were allowed to yell on stage indicated that
Toure was doing a poor job of moderating.

Then came the next segment titled, and Toure redeemed himself.

Nelly was mentioning how his daughter made recently honor roll,
that parents come up to him complaining about how
Hip Hop is “messing their kids up in school”.

Nelly then states, “My daughter doesn’t watch Tip Drill”.

That, is what we call the rub.

Toure then, interjects and asks, “How can you make Tip Drill
but your daughter can’t watch it?” Nelly’s response?
“Tip Drill came on at 3am on a program labeled for adult audiences
only”.

Interesting.

This is odd. Rappers are artists and artists know that you can’t
control product distribution. RIAA anyone? Once it is out it is
on the internet, on DVD’s, youtube, its viral.

You can no longer control information.

Nelly appears to be lightweight enraged at the gall of us. At our
audacity about caring about how we are displayed in “Tip Drill”.

Which brings me to the street.

Yesterday I saw a young man, maybe 16, with a t-shirt which
said “Bad Girls Suck, Good Girls Swallow“. His willingness to
wear the t-shirt is indicative of someone who may potentially
lack respect for the sex and sexuality of another being.

If that statement is on his shirt and he is willing to wear it,
I could only imagine what was going on in his head.

Perhaps it is more important to me is that the message being
sent to all of the younger boys and girls that see him in the
street wearing it.

Which bring me to the street.

When the woman at the beginning of the video said, Dudes getting
at her on the street was normal, “everyday like breakfast”.

I wondered how the rap panel would respond if I asked them,
“How do you think your videos contribute to how men treat
us on the street?”

Why do Black men speak to women the way they do on the street?

Why is there a presumption of access to us, our bodies?

Why is their a refusal to see that rap videos normalize the notion
of access?