Editor’s note: Our big homey 40 DIESEL is blessing us with another one of his thought provoking and heartfelt drops. This joint is so good that I’m a little embarrassed because my grind here hasn’t been as profound. Well, that’s not entirely true either, but this is a damn good drop. I may need to post a picture of 40 on the DP dot com contributor’s page. I know just the one too…
Last week ByronCrawford dot com dropped a link from MSNBC about the current demise of cRap music in regards to his 21% drop in commercial viability. The article offered up many other points of why many are becoming tuned out to the music one of the topics being the oft-beaten dead horse of cRap music imagery. While reading a popular rap message board I realized how many of the people out there dismissed this has “hating” and threw out the knee jerk “Uncle Tom” and “Coon” to these black critics of the music. Furthermore, I came across the following rant from rap nemesis and classical Negroe extraordinaire Wynton Marsalis. Wynton hates rap music (ironically his brother loves it), so his scathing retorts in the article are more than biased however…
Where as I don’t agree with all of Marsalis’ statements if you don’t see some truth in his statements than you are lying to yourself. Also, I need to take issue with the notion that hating hip-hop as a black man is some sort of “self-hatred”. The sloppy group think that has plagued black people in this country for decades has done a great disservice to the collective “blackness” and as the only real form of “unity” that we seem to exhibit has often had negative effects such as Democrats taking the black vote for granted, those mentally enslaved by the corruption of the Black Church, the foolish notion that smartness is “selling out”, and other gross fallacies that have fostered and perpetuating ignorance amongst ourselves and the reflection of a people as we attempt to move in this multi-cultural society that were are a part of whether we like it or not. We stand at the crossroads with a black presidential candidate and the only Negroe responses in the mass media wonders if “Obama is black enough” and that Negroes love Hillary because of Bubba “who many African-Americans effectionately call ‘the first Black President'”. I mean that long running inside joke has made it to ABC News Tonight as a statement of fact to buttress Hillary’s standing? Pardon me while I’m starting to openly laugh myself to tears at our media portrayal. The crab barrel has gotten arguably more shallow yet the activity continues to increase…
This leads me to say that why when a black man has some sort of critique for some other black man its labeled as “selling out” or miscontrued as a forfiture of blackness? One of the most crippling elements that is retarding the development of black society in America is the overly emotional quality that cannot take criticism. Are we still that intellectually ill-equipped that any mere challenge of thought or concept warrants immediate retalitation rather than intellectual discorse? If this is the only way that people know how handle the most minute diagreement then we have to look at ourselves and wonder where we really stand as a society. Booker T. Washington was the first to articulate the needs for the newly found freed slave to gain entre in to American society, and that begat W.E.B. DuBois who responded in kind to what he felt were the flaws of Washington’s program and created the “other school” of black thought. Whether Martin vs. Malcolm, or even the evoutionary hip-hop leap of Busy Bee vs. Moe Dee.
Some of the biggest advances in thought and ideal were made out of someone critiquing the current status quo and changes were made. Its the nature of evolution. But let me clarify “critique” and “challenge”. Not this urban action music posturing based on faux saber rattling as a last ditch effort for self-promotion. Not martyring victims of their own ignorance who paid the ultimate price to whet the corporate hip-hop “reality” appetite. I’m talking about the engaging of thoughts and ideas that created the Harlem Rennaissance, and the mutli-angled struggle for civil rights….
But alas as I see hip-hop/rap rise from the slums of a burnt out Bronx and become a multi-billion dollar industry, so how we became lax. When did they start printing out the “WE MADE IT” party invitiations because I have yet to have one. It seems we’ve settled for a trifle of “success” just because we dominate media imagery regardless what the image is? Are we protecting ourselves that much that we don’t wanna rock the proverbial boat with the fear we may lose everything? And in our quest to do so we figuratively (and some times literally) assassinate anyone who dare challenge the great world of corporate hip-hop? Well label me traitor then because we still got a long ways to go and and it starts with these artists owning up to these label execs. These dudes gotta stop being the purveyors of this bullsh*t just because some old white in a suit tells them its gonna sell. Its time to own up and man up to what MAINSTREAM rap music has become. Because I don’t wanna hear people crying in 10 years about “What happened” just like black folks seem to be losing in other aspects of our lives in America.
This ain’t about Cosby, Marsalis, Stanley Crouch, or any of them. “Suck my d*ck” and “He’s an old coon” aren’t worthwhile defenses to people who can write essays about why they think you’re wrong. Educate and arm yourself if you wanna correct this and move out of that glass house before you start chuckin’ stones. Its about a generation learning how to be men with out sacrificing our manhood. Malcolm X once said “The Nation of Islam was the greatest organization the black man ever created and n*ggers ruined it.” Sadly that’s becoming hip-hop’s veritable epitath.
Oh yeah, fuck you to them ig’nant ass bamas who think it’s fun to get toddlers blunted… But thats a whole ‘nother story…
