RoR: Forum

I'm game. What's the battle plan? Drive over to West Auckland with a megaphone....and then what?

No. We're not really going to do anything about this are we?

Post 1

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 2:49am

Is it truly in such a dire state?

In Europe, the waves of American Gangsta Rappers is also having a high tide and the charts are dominated by either American Rappers (Eminem, Kayne West, Fizzle Shinizzle Snoop Dogg etc.) or European copies (NTM (France), l'Assassine ( France), Kool Savas/Bushido (Germany). However, there is also a counter-culture in Europe which engages in more (still leftist) peaceful and thought-provoking rap/HipHop.

However, you have to distinguish people who believe in the music and such who just want to hear an easy beat on the dancefloor. Often, it is just the beat and rhythm that those children truly like. The rest is more or less uninteresting to them. If you ask what the text means or whether they like the texts, you will most likely only get a shrug and "dunno know".

What I think is more dangerous, is the indifference of those people to the texts they hear. They don't actually think about them, they just listen. This is the New Age of music, where the meaning is lost and only the fun and dance-factor counts. I can say this, although I like to dance, because I don't like the lyrics.

Post 2

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 3:52am

Max,-

However, you have to distinguish people who believe in the music and such who

just want to hear an easy beat on the dancefloor.

The proposition is that, in the psychology of music, this is already going too far. Shame!

Post 3

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 6:43am

--Rick

What's the battle plan?

The battle plan should be simply to create beautiful life affirming music and do take the opportunity to have meaningful discussions with younger people of the rap crowd that you know. When they begin to follow what has been presented lyrically in the rap music, freely question their ideas. Only through marketing better music and better ideas can we ever hope to combat any ideas or music we dislike. In much the same way that modernists and post-modernists painters made people angry enough to begin to develop romantic realist paintings of their own to show the world what the art of painting could really be about. (www.cordair.com)

~E.

Post 4

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 6:57am

Eric said:

The battle plan should be simply to create beautiful life affirming music and do take the opportunity to have meaningful discussions with younger people of the rap crowd that you know.

I agree completely.

What is important to rememeber is that this type "music" and its underlying values is a reflection of the culture at large. With anti-reason and nihlism running rampant, rebellion is to be expected. This music and "life-style" are symptomatic of the real problem, and addressing those symptoms will help us to feel better. To make a real change, however, we need to address the disease that casuses the symptoms. A treatment that adresses the whole patient is more liekly to have a long lived success.

Ethan

Post 5

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 7:10am

I blame Dr. Seuss.

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 7:23am

Here's a link to the Rev. Jesse Jackson reading "The Cat in the Hat".

Post 7

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 7:55am

I also place blame on this cultural phemomena for the serious level of gun crime in the US compared to other nations with similiar rates of gun ownership. It is a culture which celebrates violence and intimidation as the means to acquire values. Naturally that creates a far more violent society. I have heard that england has a similiar problem with the 'yobs' (or something to that effect) which are essentially young(er) people who intentionally get drunk in public and harass and attack people (think of the gangs in "Clockwork Orange" )

The reactions of the predominent members of the black community toward the ideas that this culture is teaching is disgusting. Martin Luther King would be disgusted at the actions of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who preech victimhood and oppression and racism as the cause of this violence. Yet new immigrants that are clearly black (often even darker skinned then 'African Americans') who come to American from Haiti and the west indies, etc, that are not influenced by the 'thug' culture that enamors so many young black americans (and members of other races of course) are perfectly capable of integrating into American culture and raising to middle class status just as fast as Asians and white immigrants do.

Michael F Dickey

From the experiences of a Yale educated teacher moving to an inner city school in Po Bronson's "What should I do with my life" pg 288

"That first year stripped him of every notion he'd learned at Yale. At Yale, we were taught that people in poor cities are poor because of factors outside their control. I used to think that inner-city kids only needed to connect. They needed love and understanding. And so if they were disorderly in class, I would let it go as a way of making them my friend, currying their favor. And they kicked my ass. They abused me. If I gave an inch, they would take a mile. I couldn't connect with them. They did not respond to kindness, they took advantage of it. My class would be continuously disrupted. I learned the hard way. What they need is someone to teach them habits that lead to success later in life. They need someone to tell them they've done something wrong. Kids face a thousand choices, and they need someone to teach them to make the right choices. How to act in social situations, how to take responsibility and not make excuses. I've become much more conservative by working here. It's the last thing I expected. It's much more like how my father raised me, with tough love."

Post 8

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 8:33am

Max: "Is it truly in such a dire state?"

No. Personally, I think it is totally absurd to assert that all "rap" is equivalent to "gansta rap" (which, I despise).

Hip-hop as a cultural force has many different branches, with "gansta rap" only being one. Having spent many years within the Chicago underground hip-hop scene, I can attest to the many, many rap and hip-hop artists/musicians whose work and goals are absolutely anathema to "gansta rap".

...You might as well assume that "pop music" is nothing more than Brittney Spears/Paris Hilton (etc.) whorism.

RCR

Post 9

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 9:06am

I'm been an active musician for 30 years, I'm a businessman, and I also work hands-on in East Cleveland, which is a tough inner city neighborhood. Although I sympathize with the perspective of the article, and agree with the main things being painted, I don't see much useful purpose for talking about or approaching the subject that way. For one thing (and this is the musician talking), I roll my eyes up any time something starts up with the "we have to do something about this music" thing. No, you don't, and you shouldn't be talking about doing that. In this case, it's rap music, although I know specifically what flavor of rap the author was referring to. For the most part, it's lowlife stuff that glorifies lowlife activities, and it sits inside a whole lowlife way of existence. People listen to it for different reasons, just like most other music. It's not going away, any more than American Idol is, or any other passe' bullshit in the music and entertainment business will be going away any time soon. Welcome to the exploitation aspect of the business. Rap music shifts, grows, and morphs like all music, and, as much as I have no use for most of it, it is a valid musical form. If you pour shit into that mold, you will make a shitcake, not cookies. On the other hand, rap has a long history of being used for expression that is 180 degrees in opposition to all that silly thug crap. Rap is attractive to some people because it can move information in ways that other music cannot. For me, it's exasperating listening to anyone recite pretty much anything.

It's not the music's fault- the music is the mirror, whether preconceived or otherwise. The thing is, I've heard the same argument made against death-metal, and all kinds of other stuff. With the rap, I kept hoping that it would eventually die a natural death, more like disco did for awhile before it became part of "house" music.
The good thing about thug rap is that on the top levels it's starting to come off as stupid. The bad news is that it has a very deep underpinning- people make their own, make their own mixes, all kinds of stuff is going on at the street level. What will never work is expecting to go to the street level and show something else on cultural grounds. It just doesn't work that way. Just about anything you do to criticize rap will be interpreted very simply, if you know what I mean.

Post 10

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 1:04pm

Rich

The bad news is that it has a very deep underpinning- people make their own, make their own mixes, all kinds of stuff is going on at the street level. What will never work is expecting to go to the street level and show something else on cultural grounds. It just doesn't work that way. Just about anything you do to criticize rap will be interpreted very simply, if you know what I mean.

Yes I know what you mean, rap is the favored music type in my neighborhood, a poor section of the City of Buffalo. When I first set out to question the values of gangster rap in my own friends I chose to focus on the negative focus of the message and not the form of the music. I have heard many underground artists that rap about all manner of things from video games and comic books (fairly popular topics) to how they want to make it somewhere in life.

When questioning and criticizing rap or any other type of music I suppose you have to ask yourself what your goal will be. Will it be an attack from the outside, where you appear to be another authority figure come to condemn that damn rap music, or rock and roll, or whatever. Or Will it be to reach people and open their lives to the possibility that music and art can be life affirming?

If you choose the first method you will most likely be ignored by the people who listen to rap music and be cheered on by those who hate it.

I choose the second method when I talk to people about their favored music genre because my goal is to reach people not alienate them. I feel the need for righteous condemnation every now and again like everyone else but I just don't see any progress being made by the "MUSIC X TYPE is bad" method.

My goal is to get them to think about art in a rational manner and see my conclusions as valid not to guilt them into doing what I think is good for them. It has been effective, not in getting people to stop listening to music, but in getting people to think about the message behind it.

~E.

(Edited by Eric J. Tower on 6/20, 1:05pm)

Post 11

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 1:07pm

One of my favorite rap songs is also one of the first. Subterranean Homesick Blues, by my main man Bobby D.:

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the d. a.
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t try no doz
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need to be a Weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

Man, that's some subversive stuff.
(Edited by Anthony Gregory
on 6/20, 1:08pm)

Post 12

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 7:34pm

Yeah and ya'll are all a bunch of commie athiests. You're making the same kind of generalizations when you're talking about rap. Most of my favorite rap is talking about the success and wealth they have and how they made it on their own. You see that more down South, not that revolution bullshit up north.

Post 13

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 9:16pm

Spot on, Steven. SOLO posters can pour cold water on your article all they want, it won't change the truth of your arguments, or the fact that even rap with life-affirming lyrics almost always consists of little more than a single beat repeated over and over, with scant or nonexistent harmonies completely drowned out by the sound of the drums.

It may be true that calling a spade a spade (perhaps a poor choice of words in this debate, but oh well) will simply cause rap fans to turn their deaf ears to our arguments. I don't care. Part of the virtue of honesty is calling out evil and crap for what it is. I'll reserve my cautious tone and gentle prodding for those whose minds I believe are open to a rational, positive musical esthetics. And I have no desire to give any quarter to the "it's not going away" defeatism expressed in Rich's post. We may as well say, "altruism, collectivism, and statism are here to stay," throw up our hands, and concede the cultural battle to the nihilist status quo. But I don't see why someone with that attitude would choose to hang out at SOLO.

quote ...You might as well assume that 'pop music' is nothing more than Brittney Spears/Paris Hilton (etc.) whorism.

Q.E.D. (Well, with today's pop music, there's also the occasional Creed-esque psuedo-Christian post-alternative crap thrown in for good measure.)

quote Yeah and ya'll are all a bunch of commie athiests. You're making the same kind of generalizations when you're talking about rap.

Come on, Clarence. There isn't a single political article on this website that could accurately be described as "communist." There are dozens upon dozens of rap albums and artists that fit the descriptions Steven provides in his article, many of whom sit at the top of the charts and are most popular at the dance clubs Steven mentions. We've already seen one exception to his generalizations in this thread, and I'm sure we'll be treated to many more before the discussion runs its course. But these exceptions don't invalidate the rule. (Also, remember that many of the nonviolent exceptions touted by rap's defenders are hard-leftists... this may be a rare case where some SOLOists trout out leftist political ideology as an exception to evil!)

This issue really raises my hackles because my hometown of Missoula has been completely conquered by hip-hop. It is all that you can dance to on the weekends, with the exception of special events that come along every couple months or so. It seems about 2/3 of local concerts are hip-hop. We used to have a club that played flashback stuff on Friday's--80s, disco, and the like--that made dancing a blast. It was shut down when a woman was sexually assaulted on one of the hip-hop nights.

There's a hilarious comedy bit by Chris Rock, where he talks about how (paraphrasing) "it's getting hard to defend rap. You see these women out there dancing, to lyrics like 'slap 'em with yo dick, slap 'em with yo dick, slap 'em with yo dick,' and you ask them, don't you think that's a little sexist? But they just say, 'Oh, he's not singing about me,' and keep on grinding... 'Fuck 'em in the ear, fuck 'em in the ear, fuck 'em in the ear...' " Oh I laughed so hard when he said that.

Post 14

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 9:09pm

Battle plan? Don't people have better things to do than trying to get evangelical?

Post 15

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 9:09pm

This is uptight nonsense, with a heaping of over-the-top generalizations to boot. Any club I've ever attended is about having a good time, not a philosophical "anti-life" treatise.

Ayn Rand says back that thing up.

Post 16

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 9:52pm

When I listen to The Roots, Jurassic Five, Blackalicious, Dr. Octagon, Del Tha Funky Homosapien or any number of other decent rap artists, I do not come away thinking their music "almost always consists of little more than a single beat repeated over and over, with scant or nonexistent harmonies completely drowned out by the sound of the drums."

Some of the songs are mostly lyric-heavy, with little emphasis on the music. Same with a lot of folk music throughout the ages. But a fair amount of rap experiences with polyrhythms, unusual time signatures, and harmonic intricacies ranging from standard jazz progressions (involving quite sophisticated voice-leading) to whole tone scales or even pan-diatonicism.

Nor do I agree that virtually all pop music is either "Brittney Spears/Paris Hilton (etc.) whorism" or "the occasional Creed-esque psuedo-Christian post-alternative crap." "Pop music," after all, describes all music that is not "serious" or "art" music. Quite a bit of pop music is rather sophisticated. I'd go so far as to say that modern popular music often exceeds Baroque, Classical and Romantic music in rhythmic sophistication, and sometimes rivals even the most advanced 20th century art music in harmonic sophistication.

Plenty of people just hear noise when they listen to the newest music. This was the case for many hearing The Rite of Spring for the first time, as well.

Post 17

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 9:52pm

I was wondering how long it would take us to get to, "You're living in squaresville, man!"

Post 18

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 10:55pm

Anthony Gregory:

"When I listen to The Roots, Jurassic Five, Blackalicious, Dr. Octagon, Del Tha Funky Homosapien or any number of other decent rap artists, I do not come away thinking their music "almost always consists of little more than a single beat repeated over and over, with scant or nonexistent harmonies completely drowned out by the sound of the drums."

I completely agree with your short list of top notch hip-hop acts, and would add Arrested Development, Digable Planets, Common, Sage Francis, Quannum, and Handsome Boy Modeling School. There are, of course, many many more acts that don't follow the "gansta rap" trend, and offer solid, entertaining, and even inspirational music.

Rhythm isn't to be feared, for goodness sake, and I can't understand why people shy away from the magnificence that can be "the drums". DJ Shadow, The Dining Rooms, and The Avalanches come quickly to mind (in a hip-hop/dj context).

In addition, American acts like the Beastie Boys, Chemical Brothers, British acts like Tricky, Massive Attack, the Icelandic Bjork and the Canadian crew Bran Van 3000 have taken rhythm and rap to new levels of sophistication and aural pleasure. Certainly this music isn't for everyone, but to attempt to wage a war against it simply because it may be labeled as "rap" or "dance" music--well, seems laughable and deeply misguided. I will be the first to admit that I don't always agree with the "politics" or personal philosophies of many of the bands I've listed, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating and enjoying what is happening musically or rythmically in any given track.

Rand may have had puritanical tastes, but that certainly doesn't mean everyone ought to be forced to only appreciate the same limited set of artistic experiences. I'll be holding on to my Mozart, my hip-hop, my pop, my rock-and-roll, and my electronica--thank you very much.

Anthony Gregory:

"Quite a bit of pop music is rather sophisticated. I'd go so far as to say that modern popular music often exceeds Baroque, Classical and Romantic music in rhythmic sophistication, and sometimes rivals even the most advanced 20th century art music in harmonic sophistication. "

I completely agree. Brian Wilson and Stevie Wonder come to mind when I think of true genius in pop music.

RCR

Post 19

Monday, June 20, 2005 - 11:02pm