This is a picture of the brain of someone listening to popular rap music. As you can see the cerebellum is malformed and there is also a black arrow taped to the medulla oblongata. However, the clearest sign that popular rap music makes a person brainless is the fact that this brain is no longer on the inside of a skull…
When I said that rap music was making you dumber it seems to have touched a nerve among some of the readers at this site, to which an incredible amount of inane and ridiculous comments have followed up the original post. I won’t spend time refuting the naysayers individually because I realize that I may be talking too much. Instead I will be concise and succinct in my explaination so that anyone who chooses to comment will have clear examples to compare.
1) Popular crap music is no longer art, but disposable commercial bullshiite.
Art has a contextual relevance and a permenance as a cultural marker. Art will indicate the watermark that the culture that created it exists in. It reveals what you know about your universe and what you value inside of that knowledge. It tells other stories as well. Are you a heroic people, or simply brainless cowards? Do you seek challenges or simply the lowest common denominator, the status quo.
Art is on some deep shit like that and all of you neggars need to recognize. If your art is afraid to challenge you to think then by default it makes you a coward, and a dummy. I said that popular crap music was for retahds, but there are some retahds that are fucking hardbody. They might be as dumb as the hyphy song, but they ain’t taking shit from nobody. Those are the retahds that are too smart even to listen to ‘Snap’ music.
EXHIBIT 1 is a simple piece of art. We all get it. You pat the person that created it atop the head and you hang it on the ‘frige with a magnet until it gets yellow and hopefully the artist grows up and develops the cognitive motor skills to create more complex imagery. The only person keeping this crap would be the woman that birthed this retahd. Women are programmed to be like this and that is why so many enjoy the misogyny of popular crap music even though it leads to physical abuse and rapes.
EXHIBIT 2 is a more complex piece of art. It plays with color and texture brilliantly. Just like EXHIBIT 1, this sample describes something that we imagine to be real, but the abundance of carefully precise details makes that representation more factual and substantial. If you were walking down the street and you saw both EXHIBIT 1 and EXHIBIT 2 in framed glass and you could take one home with you which one would it be? Can we all agree right now that you would have to be retahded if you chose EXHIBIT 1?
What is happening right now in popular culture is that the streets are littered with EXHIBIT 1‘s and the people desire a piece of art to admire so badly they are picking them up. I blame the T.I.’s for what they are doing to all the LITTLE JOHNNYs of the world.
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LITTLE JOHNNY had taken to listening to crap music by FIFTY CENT, YOUNG JEEZY and JAY-Z. Here he is pictured on his way to the Summer Booty Fest 2003 concert. The highlight of the show was when NELLY poured a gallon of warm carmelized candy apple syrup on the behind of anyone who wanted a free pair of his ‘Apple Bottom’ brand jeans. LITTLE JOHNNY has a pair. |
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Today LITTLE JOHNNY enjoys listening to our old cassettes of Air Supply and DAN FOGELBERG while he becomes a productive member of the community. |
Note to readers: WILLIAM H. SUNDAY is a high school dropout and is not a licensed general medical practitioner in any state or county.
Art and commerce are never completely independent of each other (see: Michelangelo, Leonardo, and the other ninja turtles).
More to the point, the classic hip hop we all praise was never pure art; it was always commercial; it was a commodity, like everything else under capitalism. It just happened to be much better than the vast majority of shit that’s out now.
PRT was never THAT popular. PE and Cube (does he count for you? He is not from NY and was the driving force behind the most negatively influential group in rap history) were popular primarily because their music was ridiculous(ly) good. Their “rebel” image helped too. To the masses of fans, black power, black nationalism, political consciousness, etc. in rap were fads, no different from crack rap, horror core, crunk, nerd rap, etc. Once it was no longer popular, these folks threw away the African medallions and red black and green wears and moved on to the next rap fad. To behave as if these groups and their messages were untainted by commercial forces and as if their audiences were inherently smarter or more political is just plain wrong.
This revisionism that older rap fans tend to fall into is unproductive to say the least. It reminds me of former hippies (now corporate execs) talking about how their music (as opposed to rap) really meant something and changed things. Bullshit. They were following fads and the “revolutionary” character of their music was merely a marketing gimmick that lined the pockets of the very suits they were “rebelling” against.
Just say that the music was better then and leave it at that. Don’t try to paint yesterday’s music as existing in some fantasy realm beyond commercialism.
^What are you talking about?!? Fall back or read the blog posts thoroughly. From the first day that rap music was broadcast on the radio it was commercial bullshiite. Day motherfucking one. Forget Oprah or that woman that is holding the reins at the Negroidian Network, Sylvia Robinson is the mother of all cultural hustlers.
I love the irony of the Ice Cube persona on P.E.’s ‘Burn Hollywood, Burn’ and his starring role in ‘Are We There Yet’. As for N.W.A being the most negatively influential group in rap’s short history I will say that the jury is out on those remarks. What about the Beastie Boys?
This post was preceded by one a few weeks ago that said todays pop music, crap music, contained simplistic vocabulary on the level of infant programming. There is no revisionist history contained in that argument. Study the evidence that was provided.
Art doesn’t have to be separated from commerce. You must be reading another post. My point is that when commerce seeks to publish only one type of picture (EXHIBIT 1) the culture is robbed of the pleasure of viewing anything else. Eventually the culture comes to be defined as that of EXHIBIT 1.
I can agree that historical revisionism never helps people understand or appreciate the evolution of rap music, but where is the evolution?!? Rap music is thirty years old now. By the time most of us turn thirty we aren’t still watching Sesame Street in order to learn how vowels interact with consonants. If someone receives their strongest language communications programming from Sesame Street and they are thirty, or even twenty, then I think you need to ‘fess up and admit that they are retahds.
I’m just sayin’.
What’s the matter?
You can’t handle the truth?
The problem with art and commerce are the same problems of anything that get’s paired with commerce (especially politics). People use it to their own ends and their own gains. The only reason to limit the scope of what people are exposed to and constantly produce (uninspired) reimaginings on the same theme is so that you can continue to profit. When people tried to find the “new” sound or artists it was all fair game. Well why be a victim to that when I just take a sound that was already there and keep convincing people this is the new version of it to line my pockets (I mean those other guys aren’t getting played on the radio they’re stuff must not be good…right). It’s easier to market gangsta than it is intelligence when everything you feed people is based on gangsta. Despite the fact that a man made a million off of “Pet Rocks” in this country…and it appears as though people still are.
“From the first day that rap music was broadcast on the radio it was commercial bullshiite. Day motherfucking one. Forget Oprah or that woman that is holding the reins at the Negroidian Network, Sylvia Robinson is the mother of all cultural hustlers.”
As long as we’re in agreement.
“As for N.W.A being the most negatively influential group in rap’s short history I will say that the jury is out on those remarks. What about the Beastie Boys?”
I would say the Beasties’ negative effect had more to do with the audience’s tastes for vulgar, violent lyrics. NWA provided artists with the model of “real” blackness that these idiots mimic today. 2 Pac may be their Jesus (Michael Eric Dyson!), but NWA is their God, which would make the Beasties, what? Fallen Angels?
“This post was preceded by one a few weeks ago that said todays pop music, crap music, contained simplistic vocabulary on the level of infant programming. There is no revisionist history contained in that argument. Study the evidence that was provided.”
I remember that post. The evidence was mad sketchy, mostly becasue of the sample size and selection bias. You could have chosen any number of older, classic joints that weren’t wordy (but were still dope) or some from today that are very wordy. I would be interested to see someone do a real study on this, though.
“Art doesn’t have to be separated from commerce. You must be reading another post. My point is that when commerce seeks to publish only one type of picture (EXHIBIT 1) the culture is robbed of the pleasure of viewing anything else. Eventually the culture comes to be defined as that of EXHIBIT 1.”
Well, I think everyone can agree with that, but the piece didn’t read like that at all. No disrespect.
“I can agree that historical revisionism never helps people understand or appreciate the evolution of rap music, but where is the evolution?!?”
There is some evolution in terms of production, and sometimes concepts, but you’re right, there is no sense that rap songs and albums are more “advanced” than those in the previous decades. None whatsever.
“I’m just sayin’.”
“What’s the matter?”
“You can’t handle the truth?”
As am I.
No prob.
Good shit.
Oh yeah, I forgot this part: “The T.I.’s thought that he might develop into a Black Nationalist, or worse, a communist so that’s when they began to conspire to bring a less complex and diverse texture into the playlists of commercial radio stations.”
The “TI”s would support anything that makes money. If Black nationalist rap, Communist rap, or terrorist rap made money, believe that somebody would sign them and make millions off of it.
““Art doesn’t have to be separated from commerce. You must be reading another post. My point is that when commerce seeks to publish only one type of picture (EXHIBIT 1) the culture is robbed of the pleasure of viewing anything else. Eventually the culture comes to be defined as that of EXHIBIT 1.”
‘Well, I think everyone can agree with that, but the piece didn’t read like that at all. No disrespect. ‘”
To me that was the whole thrust of this piece, hence the opening paragraphs regarding the way art defines a culture.
billy,
nice post. i don’t know about all these intellectual replies and comments. shit made me laugh. period.
the two exhibits had me rollin.
peace
My eyes are open…
“If you were walking down the street and you saw both EXHIBIT 1 and EXHIBIT 2 in framed glass and you could take one home with you which one would it be? Can we all agree right now that you would have to be retahded if you chose EXHIBIT 1?”
Absolutely not. There’s an emotional power that the untutored immediacy of EXHIBIT 1 conveys which is severly lacking in EXHIBIT 2. In fact, I would say that EXHIBIT 2 is boring, unimaginative and unartistic. What it is is commercially viable because it valorizes process (how realistic can I make the surface of this horse) over emotion and artistry (is that thing going to bite you).
Either that, or I’m retahded.
Crap music today is horrible! The record companies should place a label on all crap records stating “may cause brain damage”