I thought I’d follow up on my last post with a clarification, since my humor is often misread. I hope it is clear that I don’t think it’s so easy for media people to point the finger elsewhere without implicating themselves. However, I do think there is a difference between media that profits by glorifying bad things and media that reports the bad things that are necessary to report.
The problem is that hip hop, especially in the form of rap music and musicians, often comes in packages in which the good and bad are all mixed together. And, like most things in life, it’s difficult to separate what’s a positive and what’s a negative. You get a job you hate because it pays the bills. You fall in love with another human and all their faults.
Even more confusing is that genius often comes in rough packages saying things that are difficult to hear. It’s a strange form of entertainment in which realness is prized and the best flow might contain the most toxic content. Art created in harsh conditions will tend to contain harsh elements.
It’s too easy to say that certain work should be censored or that once someone has money they should adopt more "appropriate" forms of behavior. Especially since history shows us that the shiny, happy elite maintains their power, in part, through a system in which suffering is displaced, often to those poor neighborhoods from which certain rappers have emerged to take their place in fancier digs.
I could go on but if I’m not clear now it ain’t gonna happen. We’re at a unique time for hip hop. We have more social and cultural capital than one could ever have imagined when this stuff started. There is also a growing concern among those within hip hop culture that things need to change. And change has to come from inside the ranks.
I’ll continue to make strong, biting statements as needed. But, believe me, my hands aren’t clean and I’m not outside looking in. The outsiders mostly don’t understand what they’re looking at and part of the ProHipHop mission is to help build bridges across that difference. But I’m not going to do it by glossing over the problems, pointing outside of hip hop to the "real enemy" in another camp or pretending that I’m not implicated in our current situation.
I’m not saying that hip hop is the source of all of hip hop’s problems, but we really do have to start at home while also addressing issues from outside. Besides, what’s part or not part of hip hop is unclear, given that hip hop is now considered by many to be the mainstream and that we sample so much from other genres. My commitment is to living with the contradictions, rather than smoothing them over. And if that’s not clear, we can always talk about it:
prohiphop(at)netweed(dot)com
