Essay 4134

From The New York Daily News…

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Hip hop’s inner demons add fuel to the fight

By Stanley Crouch

Last week in Los Angeles, I participated in a town hall meeting put together by Black Entertainment Television (BET). The meeting reinforced my belief that there seems no end to the controversy brought to hip hop by its extremes of exploitation. Since Essence magazine began its fizzled campaign against hip hop a few years ago, a number of things have happened to keep the fire burning.

We have seen some remarkable things. Don Imus, apparently taking a cue from the rap idiom, referred to some black women on the Rutgers basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s,” and it all hit the fan. In one moment, Imus was on everyone’s tongue in the middle of a discussion of offensive language. Soon the shock jock was taking it from the boots of CBS and MSNBC, both of which fired him from radio and television. Oprah Winfrey devoted two hours of discussion to demeaning images of black women that are pervasive in popular culture. All roads led to hip hop. Perhaps most damning were the grim connections between hip hop and urban crime that Anderson Cooper reported brilliantly for CBS and CNN.

BET’s panel discussion on hip hop had a remarkable cross-section of black people from myriad occupations. Though the focus was on hip hop, the series was actually about how the intersection of race, sex, violence and adolescent rebellion has produced billions of dollars in profit. Some of that profit goes to the rappers, much more to the corporations, but most of that comes at a great cost to the black community. In fact, the cost of crime and violence to the black community has become the new violent minstrel show in which suburban white boys drive the market by purchasing four out of five rap recordings devoted to destruction and self-destruction.

Rap star Nelly complained that his good deeds do not get as much attention as the adult videos featuring his music. Like most millionaires who have philanthropic hobbies, Nelly should hire a publicist to make sure that everyone knows how much he is doing for others.

Master P, from New Orleans, made the most important statement for contemporary rappers. He said that the job facing all of hip hop is the fate of a post-crack generation because the crack generation is gone. Master P pointed out while he and others had said things that they should not have said and misled people in ways that they had not intended, the days of the wild boy are gone. It is time to lead the younger generation with all of the knowledge beyond crime and hustling that rappers like himself have gained since their early popularity.

Of the female panelists, a former “video vixen” said that young people should not take rappers seriously because too many of them are high on drugs, suffer sexual confusion, do what they are told and are plagued by enormous insecurities. No one challenged her assessment.

Something very important is happening in popular culture, and the argument that is gaining more and more ground against hip hop can no longer be shouted down by those who point out its rags to riches stories. The ultimate question is how many of those rappers who come from the bottom are covered with even more filth because of what they had to sell to become wealthy.