Scion Disses Bavu Blakes

While Scion's NextUp Unsigned Emcee Search contest continues, a growing number of press outlets are spreading the word that they mistreated a contestant, the Texas rapper Bavu Blakes.

I first heard about the controversy at the popular marketing blog AdRants which described the situation:

The car company disqualified an emcee because of his politically charged lyrics about President Bush and the war. The track, entitled Black Gold, is an obvious reference to oil and the war. The rap artist, Bavu Blakes, was willing to alter his lyrics a bit so he could advance to the next round of the competition and potentially win a $50,000 marketing deal, but Inform Ventures, the marketing company handling the promotion for Scion, said he was disqualified because his lyrics were too political. In fairness to Scion, Bavu entered the "underground" category rather than the "political" category but many still believe Bavu was censored.
The lyrics in question are:
1. "Now Bush and bin Laden got so much they rotten"
2. "Texas home of the real death row"
3. "What'd we really go to Iraq fo?"

AdRants includes links to coverage at other blogs and websites. By Bavu's own minimalist account on his blog Texas Mi Dia, SOHH.com has the most accurate version of the tale.

HoustonPress has a similar version published after Bavu's post with this positive addition:
"Reached after the debacle, Blakes was surprisingly upbeat about the whole stink, and with good reason. He believes that the rap game is "90 percent marketing." He'd already received interview phone calls from The Source, among other top-tier media outlets, and "Black Gold" had become the top Texas rap song on Myspace.com, beating both Paul Wall and Mike Jones in plays. Blakes added that he's getting more publicity now than he would have if he'd made the finals and lost."

Plus, he doesn't have to be seen with a wack ass Scion.

While it's true that Bavu's lyrics do sort of violate certain of the contest rules in that they contain "disparaging remarks" about both Bush and bin Laden, that's really a weak interpretation, especially since Bavu was willing to alter the lyrics and it's not like Bush or bin Laden are people in any normal sense of the word.

Though I can't see this as censorship, it is indicative of the fact that corporations want hip hop's popularity without it's edgy content, which may help explain Scion's support for old school and relatively safe acts.

The underground vs. political category issue which some folks are fixating on is kind of weird. By most definitions, underground either means that an artist is unsigned or at least not well known or that an artist has values that contradict rap's obsession with bling and the like. Either way Bavu fits the description. As he says in his blog, he's not a political rapper, which makes sense. Political rappers rap about politics all the time but most good rappers mention politics some of the time, as did Bavu.

But the categorization issue is beside the point, he would have been disqualified no matter what category he was in, based on the interpretation of the rules.

You can check out Bavu's Myspace page with links to the Black Gold track and some other cool stuff too.

I've discussed Bavu's take on the usefulness of Myspace here at ProHipHop and I greatly enjoyed the shows of his I saw while living in Austin. He's a great performer and I expect great things from him in the future. He's definitely on my list of unsigned artists that I would sign if I had a label.