I Just Heard the N-Word 30,000 Times
After I returned the iPod to my young relative, I tried, as delicately as possible, to start a discussion with her about her taste in music. Why, I asked, do you choose to listen to this type of song? Confused, she asked what I meant. I tried to rephrase the question: What was appealing about this music, as opposed to other kinds of music? But she didn’t understand what I was talking about. “Other” kinds of music? As far as she knew, the music on her iPod was simply music; the music that existed. It was the music that “everyone at school” listened to, all her friends, her clique, everyone. She was, it turned out, completely unaware that there was any other kind of music. Well, not completely unaware, but aware enough to know that other kinds of music were designed for other audiences, and had nothing to do with her.
It’s hard to remember what it was like being 14, but one’s grasp of the whole wide world is still very limited. The stuff in one’s immediate vicinity takes on overarching significance; the big picture is not yet in focus. She explained, in her 14-year-old way, that she didn’t “choose” the songs on her iPod; they simply were all the songs that she was cognizant of, and/or that were trendy in her social circle. They were the soundtrack to her life.
Later that day, I asked her mother how the girl was doing, and the mother was quite proud and pleased: The girl was doing well in school, was not hanging out with the wrong crowd, and seemed to have no behavioral or social problems. Nor was she in a gang, nor was she a racist – in fact, you couldn’t ask for a better daughter.
As the reunion broke up, the girl came over to me and offered to let me borrow her iPod for a while if I wanted, since she has the same mp3s loaded on her iPhone too, and she could use that in the interim. I accepted.
And so I embarked on a bizarre masochistic quest: To listen to every single song on her iPod, just to prove to myself that my first impressions were accurate.
That was three weeks ago. I’ve been wearing these damn headphones almost constantly ever since, just starting at the beginning and letting the tracks play one after the other in a continuous stream. Turns out that she had 1,500 mp3s on her iPod, somewhere around 80 hours of music.
And it became 80 hours of pain, far worse than I had feared: Practically every song featured the word “nigger,” from as little as once or twice in the lyrics, to as many as 60 repetitions. I calculated a rough average of about 20 “niggers” per song, which meant that over the last three weeks I’ve heard the N-word 30,000 times.
And having heard all this, I can report back: The experience is soul-deadening.
But I’m an adult; I can take it. Yet I became very concerned for the sanity of not just of my 14-year-old step-cousin-once-removed, but of all children and teenagers raised on a diet of N-word lyrics. What would it do to your brain if you were informed that a certain thing was absolutely forbidden to say or think, and then that very thing was made ubiquitous in your environment? It seems to me like a form of psychic torture, a way to create a worldview based on cognitive dissonance.
Context
Apologists say that the crisis is not nearly as bad as I’m making it out to be: the N-word is only forbidden in certain contexts. Sure, non-black people are never allowed to say it under any circumstances; and even most black people in most circumstances are not really allowed to say it; but if a gun-toting gang member accosts a fellow gun-toting gang member with the N-word, well then it’s perfectly OK. And since many rappers either are or pose as gang members, then they have a societal permission slip to use the word whenever they want. We all understand this, and it doesn’t bother us, the apologists say.
The situation becomes even more complicated when one realizes, as I did after weeks of hearing this stuff, that the word “nigger” is not just one word but serves many different syntactical roles, and has different meanings which can be either positive or negative.
For example, as in the lyrics above, “my niggers” is a term of affection. But “these niggers” or “some niggers” is usually an insult. “A nigger” often means simply “me” — as in the common rap lyric “Talk to a nigger,” which means “Talk to me.” Essentially, in the rap universe, “nigger” has been stripped of any irrevocable negative connotation, and instead just means “a black male,” and can be rendered positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the context.
One could argue that this is an attempt by African-Americans to “reclaim” the one-time insult and defuse its power by adopting it, celebrating it, and redefining it, just as homosexuals did with “gay” and “queer.” But this doesn’t always work; in a well-known recent example, gay sex columnist (and later anti-bullying bully) Dan Savage used to insist that his column’s readers always address written questions to him with the greeting “Hey faggot!”, but he dropped the practice after the conscious attempt to “reclaim” faggot fizzled, and his fans said it was no longer funny or effective.
Yet to be honest I don’t think the omnipresent usage of the N-word in modern “gangsta rap” is a conscious attempt at anything; it’s just people using their daily language in their music. And that daily language is daily seeping into the consciousness of “average” America through a generation of kids who listen to rap as a part of their daily routine. And most adults aren’t really aware of it. They may have some dim consciousness that rap violates taboos, but I think the typical person over, say, 30 years old really has no clue just how extreme and commonplace this taboo-violation has become.
Were I a king, animals who make such music would be taken to the nearest border and kicked over it.
And were I your queen, I’d hold your coat while you did it.
Then we’d go home to the castle together and I’d break out my old vinyl records of the Love of Life Orchestra…
How about Ivete Sangalo and Jorge Ben Jor?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40NkHUqdtqU&feature=related
Please, just make sure you kick them over the Mexican border. I don’t want the rappers here in Canada any more than you want them in the United States.
You get to keep them. Mexico doesn’t allow that trash.
I have a 14 year old son who also has an I-pod. A quick check shows that he is listening to – The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Meatloaf, Warren Zevon, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Tom Jones (Tom Jones?)
Sheesh, where did I go wrong? All this time he could have been learning to become disaffected, sullen and distant while pretending to be cool.
Those are some pretty good bands.
Even I get mellow to Skynyrd’s Free Bird.
Hope springs eternal!
Your son’s tastes certainly seem more advanced than those of the subject of the article.
But–even so, a whole world of timeless music, of the best music our culture has produced, music that will still be listened to and loved when rap is a subject only for cultural historians, seems to be beyond this generation and its immediate predecessors altogether.
We once used to have great popular music, the best popular music in the world. But the entire American Songbook seems closed off, not merely irrelevant but unknown. Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, just to name a few at random…simply beyond their ken.
I don’t even have the heart to ask whether any of the stepdaughter’s generation have ever heard a note of Beethoven or Motzart. They might at least recognize the names, but Brahms, Shostakovich, Dvorak–alien to them.
Still, nice middle-class children from two-parent families may imbibe unintentionally enough in the way of values to counteract to some extent the corrosive effect of a diet of this music and this music only. Among inner city black kids, I can’t believe this sort of thing doesn’t have effects that are entirely deleterious.
Of course they’ve heard Mozart and Beethoven — are you kidding? Except they most likely heard it as background noise. Classical music is used in every other tv commercial and played in many restaurants and book stores; it’s forced on us every day whether we like it or not, and we’re oversaturated with the stuff. You might ask whether this kind of overexposure degrades classical music, but certainly the problem isn’t that we are totally unfamiliar with it…
It’s not as bad as you think. Kids have a lot more listening options today and get their music free, so they are hearing music from all genres and developing much broader tastes than the typical young person from my generation. And it’s not just kids getting off on 60s rock and roll, either. Popular music from the 30s 40s and 50s is also finding new popularity with younger people.
The news is always about society going to hell in a hand basket, and it’s easy for a person to become insulated among people who think just like himself, but when you step outside those boundaries you find that real people are rarely like those portrayed on TV.
I fully admit I am 63 years old. My iPod is loaded with Artie Shaw, June Christy, Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Jimmy Lunceford, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Margaret Whiting, Johnny Hartman, Billy Eckstine and more.
When I have it playing softly through an iPod-compatible radio at work, I have many of our younger folks stopping by to ask what I am listening to. One at a time, folks, one at a time.
She was, it turned out, completely unaware that there was any other kind of music.
zizzle, she be yankin’ yer chain, you did say she was fizzletizzle, rizzle?
Who cares about “nigger,” if that’s what they want to call themselves? What I care about is generations of females growing up thinking they are “bitches” and “ho’s ” — and generations of males growing up thinking they are.
I’m a teacher and have seen the same reactions from moms for years. They do not know the words, and since the media calls them “controversial” or some such, they think that’s all it is. They never think to look it up and are insulted if you complain. Even schools will let kids do their work with headphones on — or go on the net — never knowing they are filling their heads with this stuff.
It has depressed me for years. We see the results now with beat-downs and “polar-bear hunting” in the cities. Thank you for this. I only wish it would go viral and folks would WAKE UP!
P.S. Not only the language, but the words about forcing “bitches” to do things and about rape and killing white people…It is so vile.I stopped reading newspapers in the 80′s when the critics kept praising this junk as “voice of a generation” and “brilliant.” I’m a woman, and this hurts me to my soul. But race trumps everything, doesn’t it?
Amen to that. N****r might be offensive, but f**k, p***y, c*nt, b*****s are worse content. The catch is that n****r has been granted some weird PC holiness in the past 20 years. When you call a girl a b***h or c*nt, it’s a hell of a lot more hateful, and explicitly so.
Unfortunately for young girls, they don’t have professional offense-takers like Jackson or Sharpton to go on television for them and condemn disparaging language.
I need a break. I’m going to go watch Blazing Saddles now.
Please, please introduce that little girl to other music. Take to concerts, festivals, heck even a Fanthom opera performance. Her life will be so much happier. But never,never tell her she is listening to trash. That is something she has to discover for herself.
Ooooh yes, what a superb idea.
Zombie, listen up – a couple of WONDERFUL, “ho-talk free” bands:
Band:
Mountain Man, album: Made the Harbor (USA)
http://shop.spunk.com.au/product/mountain-man-made-the-harbor-cd
The Little Stevies (Aust)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=little+stevies&oq=little+stevies&aq=f&aqi=g6g-m1&aql=&gs_l=youtube.3..0l6j0i5.730.2588.0.3672.13.12.0.0.0.0.433.1884.0j5j3j0j1.9.0…0.0.I2r5LwmU5Qw
Gorgeous harmonies, fun/thoughtful lyrics and great music. All in their early twenties.
Seriously, it sounds like yourt niece might need a benevolent aunt to start taking her to the odd concert…
Now THAT is a good ideas! Expose fans of rap and its variants to better choices. And show a little patience! I didn’t like jazz or country or classical very much the first time I heard them and some of those took several listenings before I found myself appreciating them. There are still jazz and country and classical songs and styles that I don’t much like.
Stand outside her window with a boombox over your head!
On the serious, it is sweet this little girl responded so strongly to your interest in her life and her music. She probably doesn’t have very many people who show interest in her as a person.
You made a connection, got through to the kid. Don’t screw it up by trying to educate her… Let her educate you.
This is just how it is. Some music will speak to you, some won’t. Steve Allen didn’t “get” Elvis, but Allen “got” Beat poet Jack Kerouac.
hey Ho
I actually like rap’s rhythms and music. A lot of it is simply brilliant. It’s the words that are so awful most of the time.
The trick is to be able to appreciate lots of different musical styles.
Kids do pick up stuff from music-savvy adults, especially if they find they like what they find.
And re jazz? I taught myself over two years to appreciate it. i seldom listen to it for choice, but when I do I can enjoy it.
Incidentally, those two bands i recommended can be enjoyed by everyone, not just a fifteen year old! Check them out!! Their music is beautiful.
Also can recommend an Israeli-Australian artist Lior. Start with his song This Old Love on youtube.com and go from there. Lovely songs.
My favorite mention of this recently is that Trayvon Martin’s Twitter page was supposedly full of similar language, which of course hasn’t been reported (much anyway) by the MSM. In addition, I know what happens to me if I call a 17-year-old Black male a “boy” and he’s alive to do anything about it…
One time at work, we had a crew of four guys trying to push a heavy load of cargo. It wouldn’t budge. The boss-man yelled, “Put your backs into it, boys!” …And the one black guy on the crew went and complained to management, “He called me ‘boy.’” “Um… from what I hear he called everybody ‘boys.’” “But I was one of them, so he called me ‘boy.’”
Thank God it never went any further than that. The management told him to forget it and move on. Even so, I’m sick of this playacting at being offended just for some financial gain or merely to intimidate.
“which of course hasn’t been reported (much anyway) by the MSM”
I’m sorry, I’m starting to really tire of this lazy acronym. Let’s be honest…the big networks do NOT represent the mainstream of society. At least not yet….not as long as they continue to claim that America is a “Center-Right” country. No, sweetie, by definition, average America is CENTER. Just like average IQ is 100. Period. If you think it to be right skewed, then that’s only because you are left-skewed. Duh….
MSM is an acronym for Lazy Assed Stupid Reporters and Their Bosses in the High and Mighty Media Complex of the USA – I.E. those stupid leftist media jerks that have to check in with the DNC for the best way to report (slant) most any story not favorable to Zero and wrecking crew (The Democrats).
MSM says all that and more to me and many of my friends and family – how about you and yours?
“MSM” = Main Stream of the Media. Not that of America, which is separate and quite distinct.
I’m just astounded that anyone finds that entertaining. I’ve heard the hum of machinery that’s more interesting. That “music” is downright dull.
I’m going to shut off this stupid YouTube thing and listen to Rick Wakeman blaze over a moog for a while.
Later, kids.
A couple of years ago Van Morrison was asked in an interview if there was any modern music he liked or found interesting. His reply was – nothing.
it’s difficult for me to even dignify rap and hip-hop and all the related styles as ‘music’. to me, melody is a vital element of music and it is utterly lacking in rap and its cousins. as far as i’m concerned rap is ‘music for non-musicians’. i have grave doubts that most rappers can actually sing a real song with a melody, even one as simple as twinkle, twinkle little star. i’ve never looked for sheet music for a rap song but i’d be surprised if you could find any since they are just chanting in a monotone, not performing a melody. that’s the real reason it is so horribly drab to listen to. it also ensures that just about anyone can create these songs since you don’t need any actual musical ability beyond the bass player and drummer. from what i hear, even much of the bass and drum lines are ‘borrowed’ from other songs.
So according to you, the following is not music because of lack of melody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doz5w2W-jAY
No melody in a lot of the stuff Rex Harrison “sang.”
I realize you’re trying to refute my definition of music but I actually agree that the Rex Harrison clip is not very musical either. I’m basically sticking to my definition.
Now, I don’t mean that definition to be taken particularly seriously in the sense that a dictionary definition is actually meant to be taken. I realize that are a variety of things that are deemed ‘music’ which don’t fit my definition. I know John Cage “composed” a piece called 4:33 which is essentially four minutes and 33 seconds of silence yet it is called “music” by some people. (The Wikipedia article says that the piece was actually about the incidental sounds made by the musicians during the silence – well, if they say so….). Pink Floyd have a “composition” on Ummagumma called Several Species of Small Furry Creatures Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict. There are no musical instruments whatever in that piece, just some guy raving away incomprehensibly in a language I don’t know – Gaelic maybe? – and various strange vocal and special effects. I assume this is considered “music” too by some.
As far as I’m concerned, rap is only barely music and more by courtesy than content in the same way Cage’s 4:33 is music.
To me, music’s key ingredient is a recognizable melody that you could hum or whistle that others will recognize if you get the pitches right. It may have a lot else besides that – complex harmonies, counterpoints, polyrhythms, etc. etc. – but there is at least a melody that makes up part of the piece which you could hum or whistle.
Any so-called music that lacks that ingredient is of little interest to me.
Hummability only goes so far. The often non-melodic note clusters of effective movie scoring, for instance, are not hummable but they are surely emotionally moving stuff.
Which proves what exactly? That a single non-singer produced a song or songs with limited melody, in no way refutes the contention above.
Just be intellectually honest here. It takes very little talent to produce rap music, outside of the rhythmic element in the rapping. But I contend very few people consider that musicianship.
The problem with rap is similar to that of so-called reality TV stars; shock value and outrageous behavior has an audience of idiots, voyeurs, and sadists. That it reaches enough of an audience that it’s now considered a genre is depressing and symptomatic of a society in decay.
Don’t confuse Rex Harrison’s inability to carry a tune with the lack of melody in Lerner and Loewe’s work.
Every song that Rex Harrison “talked” in My Fair Lady has a melody. He talked the songs because he couldn’t sing.
And if you’re equating rap to the music of Lerner and Lowe then there’s no reason to pay attention to anything you say.
I think Zombie has a problem with cause and effect. If there is no pressure, legal, societal, whatever, then the lowest common denominator in all of us wins.
Of course, according to this, the music industry should go bankrupt. Here’s hoping.
(And they made fun of my co-religionists for having a mass meeting on dealing with the dangers of the internet. Well, if you tell a 14-year-old “it’s OK for me, but not for you”, how likely is he or she to listen?)
Do you really want to try to censor rap out of existence?
As vile as I find rap and all its variants, censoring it is only going to make it more popular.
I have no problem with personal appeals to the people who create, produce and distribute rap to please stop. I think the idea of exposing kids to better music is even better. But I don’t favor the state jumping in telling people what they can and can’t listen to. This isn’t Cambodia under Pol Pot yet!
Holy Chow, talk about hyperbole.
MZK wasn’t asking for censorship, and certainly didn’t warrant the irrational leap to Pol Potsville.
“… no pressure, legal, societal”
“Legal” means by force of law. So no hyperbole here; law is government, government is force, and “pressure” of force directed against content, is the genesis of censorship. That’s where that road goes, whether the OP intends to go there or not.
Hmmm…censoring music will make it go underground…hey, that gives me an idea! We should censor everything but rap and other highly offensive music!
Just think of how popular Beethoven, Brahms, and Rachmaninov will become, if the orchestras had to meet in hiding to play, individuals had to smuggle iPods and SD cards to listen to them, and the news was replete with stories of quartets put into prison for playing their music.
It will spread like wildfire! And this boring, tame rap stuff will just die out of existence. (After all, no one’s going to prison over it, so it must be passe.)
Something else that bugs me about this genre is how materialistic it is- they’re always rapping about money and singing the praises of specific brands of shoes, liquor, cars etc. Wow that’s deep. In two hundred years time, people will still be able to relate to even a schmalzy love song but hearing this stuff? People will be like, “What the hell is sippin’ Cristal?” Even in twenty years time, it’ll sound really dated- brands and fashion come and go with the wind.
I agree — I was going to write a whole third section about materialism, but the essay would have gone on too long. The worst offending song in this regard is “Vans,” a rap song about a specific shoe brand that literally sounds like an advertisement:
Unbelievably, no one paid them to make this song — it was a gift to the Vans corporation, gratis.
The crazy part? “The Pack’s hit song “Vans” was number 23 on the top 30 hip hop charts, played on 65 hip hop stations nationwide and on 35 pop stations nationwide. It was also listed at No.5 on Rolling Stone’s “Best songs of 2006“.
Complete insanity.
IMO, Rolling Stone has lost a lot of moxie in recent years. I read it with great anticipation 30 years ago, but can hardly bring myself to pick it up these days. Its glory days of Hunter Thompson and PJ O’Rourke are but fading memories.
Zombie, I am actually a bit suprised it took you this long to realize this.
Seriously.
I am a middle aged father of two daughters. Approx 10 years ago, disturbed by my (then) 13 year old daughters attraction to that type of music (via her friends of course, as we did not play that stuff at home)I presented her with a challenge. You may not possibly like the title I gave it, but I was trying to “keep it real” and in the spirit of the challenge.
I called it the “Bitches, Bling and Blam!” challenge. She had to find in the music she was listening to, a rap song that did not contain:
Bitches= Misogyny in the lyrics or any visual content. Women treated as equals, not lessor than or simple sex objects.
Bling= Lyrical or visual displays of wealth. We had discussions about how this might affect kids, especially poor kids.
Blam!= Violence or threats of violence.
I did not even address the use of the “N” word as I knew it would be completely futile. I was more interested at the time in my daughter focusing on the view within rap/hip hop of young women, such as she would be soon.
She accepted the challenge.
She has kept this up over the years, and has presented me a sadly short list of songs that meet the criteria. Unfortunately she still enjoys the genre (I personally cannot stand the music style one bit)but it has made her think about it, and she has admitted to culling out many songs on her former playlists that she had been filling her head with.
Her reward when she presents a song that meets the criteria is I have to listen to it, and respond with a detailed critism, both positive and negative depending on the merits. I then give her a rating in “credits”, which she doesnt actually get anything for, except the satsifaction of knowing her stubborn old retired military Dad admitted she was right.
*Note* She presented a single Kanye West song years ago that really met the criteria, but at that time Kanye West had that televised rant about George W Bush being a “racist”, so I zilched that credit simply because K. West is such an utter douchbag.
At 23, my daughter emailed this to me a few days back:
BBB: I Win!
Read the lyrics all the way through. the last line is
“My little sister’s eleven, I looked her right in the face
the day that I wrote this song, sat her down and pressed play”
“Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)”
(feat. Ashtro Bot)
And the song in question? (NSFW, contains profanity)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=RpX–7xb2IA
“Bitches, Bling and Blam challenge”–great idea. I’m going to remember that for when I have kids.
If only more parents thought to do something similar.
I could list you hundreds, if not thousands of songs. Off the top of my head I’ve listed a few below. Seems your daughter wasn’t looking hard enough. The songs may contain some profanity but otherwise do not have any degrading/mysogynistic themes. Take some time to educate yourself before you bash an entire genre without having any idea what you’re talking about.
Common – The Light
A Tribe Called Quest – Check The Rhime
Gang Starr – Royalty
Pete Rock & CL Smooth – They Reminisce Over You
Masta Ace – Beautiful
Gang Starr – Discipline
What a ridiculous response. You’ve truly proven you didn’t understand, AT ALL the father’s purpose of said task.
The aforementioned ahem, ‘groups’ other than ‘..Tribe..’ have overwhelmingly demeaning, vulgar lyrics.
The father’s point for his daughter(s) was if there requires ‘research’ in finding clean lyrics to A song from a hip-hop album(s) – there’s something wrong with said supposed ‘genre of music’.
I can go ahead and find a rock song with vulgar and misogynistic lyrics. Does that mean you need to “prove” to me that the genre of rock is not all bad?
Yes, you finding a single rock song *with* such lyrics is exactly identical to a father challenging his daughter to review her entire play list of rap songs to find the ones *without* such lyrics. Seriously, think about it a minute.
Maybe your experiments with chemistry have affected your ability to comprehend and reason.
The commenter didn’t disparage an entire genre, he simply asked his daughter to systematically evaluate whether the songs on her iPod fell into the BBB categories. Furthermore, she was not compelled to obey. Based on the love and respect she has for her father, she made a conscious decision to engage the exercise.
That you can find thousands of hip hop songs that aren’t misogynist, over-the-top materialistic, or espousing gangsta culture is quite beside the point. The issue was simply whether the daughter was willing to be honest about the musical content on her iPod.
Given your knee-jerk reaction to the comment, methinks thou doth protest too much. An effort to stifle the debate perhaps? Sorry Chem dude, that tactic doesn’t work with those not suffering from white guilt.
My degree in chemistry has damaged my brain huh? I think you missed the point. But I appreciate you taking the time to make fun of my mental abilities. Seeing as I work at one of the top research institutions in the world, I could probably run circles around you in any test of mental capacity. So, go f**k yourself you condescending asswipe.
wow…. talk about validating his point….
Wow! Way to prove him wrong! /s
Zombie, at least one of your fellow columnists here on PJ Media defends this garbage style of “music” (using the term loosely, of course).
I was in the target age demographic for rap when it first emerged in the 80s, but I was into heavy metal, which has comparatively tame lyrics. After listening to metal musicians with actual talent (Slash, Eddie Van Halen, and a multitude of others), I wasn’t about to fall for a musically barren and worthless genre like rap.
Which brings me to my point: not only are rap lyrics soul-deadening, it has no merit from a musical perspective, either. If the lyrics are scraping the bottom of the cultural barrel, the musical talent required by the “artist” is practically non-existent. Rap is the musical equivalent of a painting by Jackson Pollock – pointless spew that accomplishes nothing beyond fattening someone’s wallet with the hard-earned cash of those foolish (and tasteless enough) to pay. Sure, someone can stretch and contort themselves into a pretzel in a futile attempt to justify it as “art” that requires artistic ability, but deep down in their heart of hearts, everyone knows the truth: crap is crap.
It’s depressing that millions of kids grow up hearing this “music.” Not only does it promote the worst possible moral values as positive and normal, it doesn’t even inspire anyone to take up a musical instrument, put in the work to learn how to play it, and possibly create something worthwhile.
I agree that 95% of rappers are talentless, and that most of the “music” in the background is just a ripped-off “sampling” of other people’s actual music.
That said, there is a tiny handful of rappers who are quite good at what they do, skill-wise, if you can get past the banal or cringe-inducing lyrics.
Here’s a good example of an actually skilled rapper doing a catchy song (rife with obscenity and shallowness, unfortunately, but try to overlook that for the moment):
Busta Rhymes – Break Ya Neck
No one can match his blistering verbal pace.
“That said, there is a tiny handful of rappers who are quite good at what they do, skill-wise”
Not that skill should be an excuse, of course. Well-crafted evil is still evil, and should be treated as such…as should its makers.
Completely agree on Heavy Metal.
A lot of it may have been the typical adolescent male thing, but I had always found Metal to, in general, be literate, intelligent, and musically sound. Iron Maiden could quote classic poetry and make it work; rappers couldn’t string two coherent sentences together if they tried.
Metal also allowed me to work out that teenage rebelliousness and helped act as a *postitive* anchor from which to grow as a human being. Rap can not, and does not, do that. While working out rebelliousness, it also helped strengthen the bong between my father and I (he listened to Black Sabbath before I was ever born), and he actually became a bigger fan of some groups then I did.
I’m just hoping that was a typo and that metal strengthened a “bond”.
Laughing out loud at the potentially Freudian misplaced last letter of that word. I’m thinking he surely meant “bond”, but it is Sabbath he parenthetically references right after so all bets are off. With Sabbath writing songs like “Sweet Leaf” and “Snowblind” and “The Wizard” you just never know.
Few musicians of any genre can match the lyrical or musical sophistication of the band Rush. Neil Peart’s lyrics are not only poetic, but thought provoking.
I know hip hop has a sub-sub-genre of artists referred to as poets, but even their lyrics fall well short of what I consider “poetic.” (As shown in the body of the article, rhyme alone does not equal poetry.)
As a parent, I not only can but must be responsible for what my children listen to, what they are taught, and what they let into their “little skulls full of mush” until they reach the age of majority. While no parent can totally control what their teenagers listen to, by being very careful about what children listen to while they are younger, and by encouraging them to think about what they listen to and read as they grow, parents can shape their future choices.
The author admits to cheering for Frank Zappa, yet the lyrics of Rock, especially much of the acid rock and heavy metal of the 70′s and 80′s, grew into the cess pit that is today’s rap. Remember in “Back to the Future”, how Biff and friends thought they were being so cool and dangerous by sneaking smokes, and were actually afraid of some black musicians that smoked pot? We ended with rap because we surrendered our values 40 years ago and allowed society to progress to this level.
The main problem is one of desensitization. As many authors have pointed out, if you want to make a child callous, uncaring, and able to watch otherwise unacceptable actions without caring, expose them to continuous and slowly-increasing levels of it as they grow. The military found this out quite a while ago. Back in the Civil War, it was not uncommon to find, after a battle, muskets with 5 or 10 rounds rammed home. The soldiers would load, but be unable to fire at a human target. Similarly, getting a soldier to actually bayonet an enemy was a problem. Around WWII, the Army figured out the solution, used also by the police: during target practice, fire not at a circular bulls-eye but at a torso-shaped target. When you practice with the bayonet, use a scarecrow as a target. The targets aren’t human enough to trigger the social reflexes BUT, in the field, when the brain has only milliseconds to sift through fight-or-flight choices it will see the enemy as a human-shaped paper target or a scarecrow until after the deed is done. Do you wonder why killing seems to easy to inner city youth these days? First-person-shooter video games make excellent military grade training/conditioning systems. We have an entire generation of youth that is conditioned to literally shoot first and ask questions later.
The same is happening with rap music. The authors young relative is being conditioned to accept the vilest vulgarity as normal, not to mention the dichotomy of being told one thing by her parents and another by the “cool” musicians. She is being taught that what her parents say and warn against is irrelevant – since they do nothing to remove her from this music, and that ultimately nothing matters except being socially accepted. And we wonder why so many young girls end up – willingly – as prostitutes or as “breeders” for some rap-slinging pimp, selling them so as to live on the Social Security checks.
That Zombie’s cousin allowed her step-daughter to listen to such filth is a loud statement about her parenting (or lack thereof) skills.
My kids know my wife and I regularly review the content of their playlists, iPods, games, and DVDs. They also know that we are their parents, not their friends (don’t get me wrong–we love our kids unconditionally and shower them with time and affection) and that trust isn’t given, it has to be earned, and freedom to make one’s choices w/o review is trust-based.
In my experience, when inappropriate content is discovered, a parent only needs to restrict use of a desired medium (iPod, computer, etc.) a couple times in order to achieve appropriate choices in media.
My recollection of my teen years and the accompanying teen angst was that I looked for something–answers? Inspiration? I’m not sure–in song lyrics. I’d write them on my notebooks. My naive and foolish understanding of relationships came from them: as mean as a boy might be to me, I knew that males hearts could break because of the number of songs written about heartbreak. Heck, even a song about dumping someone (“Angie”–by no less misogynists than the Stones) still evokes melancholy-on the part of the singer. Most songs from my youth involved double entendre. There were some over the top racy lyrics. (Stones, anyone?) But I really don’t recall ANYTHING as blatantly filthy as what Zombie presented hear. I do despair of our future…
I came to this after reading an article on Chivalry linked from Instapundit.
No male who chooses to listen to rap regularly will ever be capable of chivalry or even understanding it. No female who chooses to listen will ever be worthy of receiving chivalry.
Sad, to lose so much, without ever realizing it.
Chivalry is an outmoded paternalistic social construct devised to keep women in a subservient societal position vis a vis the patriarchy.
Sarc Off
Note: Only reason I’m responding to this is because Chivalry sadly is dying, but it’s not dated nor is it something that should be forgotten. Now, when I say Chivalry, I don’t mean the code of honor used by Knights of old, I mean what it represents: Honor, respect, and loyalty.
Yes, while Chivalry can be viewed as a way to ” keep women in a subservient societal position vis a vis the patriarchy”, that is only because of the way you were brought up to understand it. Instead try to view it for what the core values represent:
1) Opening of a door: Shows respect to a female and lets them know that you’re considerate, which leads to point…
2) Letting them enter first: Shows that you do not place females “behind you” and thus that you respect them. Traditionally being first into some place represents power and authority (how is this painting a female as subservient?)
3) Referring to them with appropriate titles: Again, shows respect to the female and reinforces the idea that men view females as equals, not “servants”.
Just 3 points that my MOTHER always taught me when dealing with females. I fail to grasp how you can view Chivalry as “outmoded paternalistic social construct devised to keep women in a subservient societal position vis a vis the patriarchy”. If mothers would reinforce this concept in their sons the world as a whole would be better for it.
My wife on our first date looked at me as if I was an alien when I held the car door (and subsequent restaurant door) open for her. She stared at me for about a minute before asking “Why are you holding the door open?” Ask her what made her pick me over anyone else and she’ll tell you it was one of the major deciding factors. I’m 27 by the way, not someone older when Chivalry was considered the norm.
Er, the “social construct” remark was meant sarcastically as evidenced by the words at the end of the s entence “sarc off”.
Interesting post though.
Ahh, I stand corrected Jill. Thank you for informing me of my error. Didn’t realize what that meant, confused me for a while. Despite being a product of the l33t speak I still don’t know 1/10 of it.
True enough about, George, but it’s rarity in today’s world makes it that much more valuable, frankly.
In the cases you cite above, I don’t think we can lose anything that didn’t exist before, possibly.
Just some thoughts, friend.
Let me try to restate my first post correctly this time:
True enough about chivalry, George, but its rarity in today’s world makes it that much more valuable, frankly.
In the cases you cite above, I don’t think we can lose anything that didn’t exist before, possibly.
Just some thoughts, friend.
Zombie,
One thing to take heart from – There’s no further down they can go.
The next step will be to simply repeat the word nigger over and over again with no context at all. I’ve already heard rap talking about raping a white girl with a 9mm pistol, then shooting her as the ‘climax’ and then murdering a cop with the same pistol, yada yada yada ad infinitum.
There really isn’t anything more they can do to shock. It’ll wear out and die off like Disco.
Orion
You realize that disco didn’t really die? It simply got a new name, “House” and many of its descendants are thriving quite well, which would include rap/hip-hop.
It’s rock that’s looking pretty much dead today, thanks to the combined efforts of such great “bands” like Green Day and Nickelback.
Rock is dead? Turn off your Top40 radio-only for ‘input’ on the matter, JeremyR.
BLS, Pennywise, QOTSA/Kyuss/ Eagles of Death Metal, Them Crooked Vultures, A Perfect Circle, Clutch, John Spencer Blues Explosion, Che, Les Claypool, Blindside Blues Band, Bad Religion etc.,
While a litany of rock bands exist, You’ve got to admit very little innovation is occurring in rock music. In addition, while it’s not as lyrically debased as hip hop, it’s not far behind. As one who formerly was a rock station DJ and part-time rock writer/critic, I’m deeply saddened by the fact that it’s increasingly difficult for me to find exciting and/or interesting new rock music.
That being said, I will, however, admit to being impressed with the skill required to properly play some current metal given its extraordinary speed and unique time signatures. (Should some of these guitarists be classically trained, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.)
Yes, further descent is possible. I’m surprised that we’re not there already, given the psychic numbing effect of rap and violence.
James Dobson writes that the next step is cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice. I just read VDH’s chapter about Cortez’s conquest of the Aztecs in his book “Carnage and Culture.” They had arrived already: Aztec priests practiced human sacrifice and wore ceremonial robes made of human skin.
That’s what I was thinking. Torture porn will come to rap. We’ll be hearing graphic descriptions of girls being cut up and burned and drilled with holes, girls screaming horribly, girls gushing blood, etc.
when i was a kid, in school the dumb ones sat in the last row and not because they necessarily wanted to.
these rappers, all rappers, would be crowded into the last row last seat if that held true today.
they have a style that teenagers enjoy. we liked juvenile delinquents and thought them kinda sexy, with their leather jackets and ducktail haircombs.
they’ll get over it. we did.
the rappers had best figure out how to move furniture up and down stairs. at least it means a paycheck.
You’re deluding yourself.
A friend once told me I was ‘culturally retarded’ because I grew up without a TV or much modern pop culture influence. (I’m 24, for a frame of reference.) Well, if some angry guy screaming about titties and n*gg*rs is culture, you can have it. Music it ain’t.
Good for you Rosa. Pop culture literacy is overrated to the extreme.
First the obligatory & well-worn disclaimer: the C in rap is silent.
I’m thinking now that this dreck would make an easy target for satire. Make it as dirty & stupid as you want, & then flood the musical Net with it. Hey, how hard can it be to make talentless ripoffs of no-talent works? Then–or from the beginning if you like–direct it at the Magic Mulatto & certain other members/supporting organizations of his party. Maybe we could make g@ngst@ ¢rap unpopular in a few months!
One more disclaimer: I don’t intend to male a dime off the idea, so let any who feel inspired have at it!
I’m trying to figure out how a parody of a rap song would be any different from the original rap song. Isn’t that stuff already a parody? Of music?
Eh, just for historical context; probably the first.
Patti Smith circa 1978:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLIkM4wvcC8
Like Patti Smith maybe the rappers will also become irrelevant. Do you remember when she tried to make a comeback? A 45+ yr old housewife & mother trying to recapture her glory days! How very sad.
…but not as sad (repulsive actually) as the thought of some person having relations with Ms. Smith.
Spider Robinson, the science fiction writer, wrote an essay that stated the first rapper was a white guy named Lord Buckley. Buckley claimed to be a Lord from England, although the reality was apparently that he was an American lumberjack from the Northwest. Anyway, according to Spider Robinson, this guy was rapping in 1950s, long before Patti Smith. Buckley died in 1960. This is the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckley
I’ve never looked for or heard his performances so I don’t know how closely they resemble today’s rap so please understand that it’s not ME that’s claiming he was the first rapper, it’s Spider Robinson. According to the Wikipedia article, Buckley in turn was influenced by various things that existed before him which might be called early forms of rap.
Point taken. In fact, I had an updated comment that must have been caught by the naughty word filter that tried to correct my post. Before Patti Smith there was Peter Paul and Mary singing Talking Candy Bar Blues and Dylan doing Subterranean Homesick Blues;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHfWjYSwK9c
These were in the 60′s.
Also Gil Scott-Heron in 1971 did The Revolution Will Not Be Televisised;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0
The talking blues have been aroung for a long time so it does not surprise me that Lord Buckley has a claim to firsties.
I also mentioned that Patti Smith’s tune featured the n word that shall not be mentioned as a central part of her song, Rock and Roll N word that shall not be mentioned. Click on the link to hear the song and read the lyrics, many of which contain the n word that shall not be mentioned. Was her song over the top sensationalism or an attempt to diffuse the n word that shall not be mentioned of some of it’s emotional import? I don’t know. She and the late Gil Scott-Heron have both been accused of being poets. Maybe they were trying to stir something up.
And there’s a comedian out there who does a famous little bit about how blacks got rap from white people – then he does a square dancing call to demonstrate exactly how they are related.
This can all be traced back to the liberals’ “relative morality” in which there is no right or wrong, there is just feelings. As long as you FEEL good, you ARE good.
Bingo! Notice how mum the MSM and progressives are to this noise. Notice the NOW girls are sympatico with this crap. Talk about your war on women….crickets
Allowing this noise to be sold and played was just another progressive sop to blacks.
The real villians are the radio moguls who allowed this junk to be produced.
The next “right” will be allowing blacks to get free hearing aids because they’ve gone deaf by the time they are middle aged.
Has “The Pack” been invited to perform this work of art at the White House yet?
and you know why?
because it’s old hat, too tame and too lame.
Zombie, this here is what I call real honest to goodness journalism. This isn’t just some pontification and spin on the latest Obama-Romney gaffe of the day or an urgent memo about evil democrats, which is what goes on around here most of the time(all of which is okay but monotonous as hell). I guess not every one here like to spend their professional life in their pajamas. I mean I read pjm like its got caffeine in it but gets really really repetitive.
Yes it’s horrible. It’s what it says about our ‘culture’, more than anything else. I’m just glad the great African-American musical artists of the past – from Coltrane to Monk, from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Hendrix – weren’t around to see this.
People who object – what’s the big deal, and we are all just a bunch of prudish fuddy duddies – don’t get it. There is nothing redeeming to this anti-music, it is soul-destroying, it is anti-culture, it is anti everything that matters.
Richard Pryor stopped using the n word and gave good reasons why – it’s counter-productive and self-defeating, demeaning to black people. Clearly these new rapper anti-artists never paid any attention..
And let’s face it – the generation of parents (our generation) are responsible for what 14 year-olds are listening to. If parents don’t care what their kids are listening to or don’t see anything wrong with it, and they clearly don’t, parents’ apathy and irresponsibility will come back to haunt us. It already has.
Hey as with Zombie, I’m all for kids listening to rebel music, even with sexual frisson. No problem. This isn’t rebel music though, it’s just a nihilistic brain-dead anti-culture that revels in baseness and profanity, misogyny and racism, whilst pretending that it somehow takes a swipe at the establishment. In other words it is also delusional and self-deceptive.
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a ‘nigger’ this and a ‘pussy’ that
on a 14 year-old’s mp3
“Rap”, which should be called “Grunt” as it sounds more like grunting than rapping, is to music what vomit is to food.
Can’t use the word Grunt. It’s already being used as slang in the military that is referred to the enlisted.
Hope I did this right as this is the first time I’ve responded here.
Actually, the term “Grunt” is/was used for years to describe the various flavors of Infantry (Airborne, Air Assualt, Mech, Light, etc), both Officer and Enlisted. The “Super Grunts” were the guys in the Ranger Bats, and the Special Operations communities.
Cheers!
I hardly know where to begin but naming you all as a bunch of worthless, cowardly, weenies seems like a good start, clucking your asinine spineless tongues through another round of “ain’t it awful.” Oh, and Zombie, apologizing for writing a series of letters in a certain sequence; you’re beneath contempt.
And you all, you represent the defense of the Republic? Do you think the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence contain ideas that were found on the back of a serial box somewhere, not worth all that went before and all that has transpired since; just something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but, whew, you didn’t know you’d ever have to actually stand up for the them? Probably you thought they’d be a gift that just keeps on giving.
Return of the King Film: Aragorn’s Speech from the Black Gate
Aragorn: Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Stay in your seats you pathetic ciphers, he’s talking to men!
I’m mostly down with what you’re saying, but dude: cereal.
Yo Pete, did you just have an orgasm or an aneurysm?
Ah! Another keyboard commando!
And “cereal” – it refers to grain.
Finally: you fail to understand – the heart that is dead cannot be stirred. The cultural issue must be addressed.
Pete,
With apologies to Sgt Hulka: lighten up, francis.
And stop taking yourself so damn seriously.
Troll alert with a marked need for psychotropic intervention.
One can only imagine what Zombie would’ve thought if the iPod was full of dubstep.
Given that dubstep offers very little lyrically, what’s your point?
Zombie, I wouldn’t worry. The whole thing is so imcomprehensible for all I know the word “nigger” could have been a nervous tic.
I find the best thing to do with ghetto rap/music is enjoy the music part – which is ususally great – and ignore the verbal part.
At least the black people singing this stuff know what race they belong to!!
That’s a start!
Chillax, sister – Oops, I mean SistAH.
The music part is great? Really? You don’t find sampling to inherently show a lack of creativity? Plus, do you not get bored of the repetition? Even the honest rappers will admit the music isn’t supposed to be the point of focus, it’s just a rhythmic support center.
First of all I listen to a lot of different music.
No, I don’t find it monotonous. Interestingly, a friend I was discussing this with also finds it monotonous.
The rhythm is often soothing, and I think it corresponds to rhythms in the womb or something like that. i don’t commit to that statement as i probably skimmed over a sentence like that in an article on another subject.
The sampling is used as a jumping off point for more and different music, and is a musical tool – often adds an interesting contrast. Don’t forget that the voices of the singers, though their subjects are often awful, tend to have a rich deep timbre, which is doubly a pity that what they actually say can be so ugly.
Mind you, I’m no aficionado. i don’t collect albums of rap, and i don’t play it or hear it that often. When i do I often find the lyrics inhibit my enjoyment of the music.
Be that as it may, I find the beats soothing, easy to move to and interesting, as they’re not always the same.
A lot of rap crosses over with spoken word exercises and i’m used to that genre and find it appealing. So the voice speaking over a layer or three of musical craft is a good listen. the sounds can be marvellous.
if you think American rap is tedious though, just forget about the Australian version!! Talk about monotony! Boring rhythms, droning nasal voices.
Odd really, cos Australian music is pretty great. But then the Aussies doing the rap stuff are not really musical, that’s my impression anyway.
Australian music is great compared to what, Israeli music?
I love Zombie and the work Zombie does but this article could’ve been written 20 years ago. I think it’s too late.
The word ” nigger ” was not a problem when we were reading Huckleberry Finn fifty years ago. Yet in many libraries today Huck Finn appears only in censored form, the word nigger having been expunged.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45645-upcoming-newsouth-huck-finn-eliminates-the-n-word.html
Parents prefer to indulge themselves rather than spend time educating their own children. Entertainment is no longer a pleasant diversion. It has taken over most peoples lives. Only on their death beds will they realize how much of their precious time on earth they have wasted.
A long time ago, I came up with this (after David Letterman);
The Top Ten Skills Necessary To Be A Successful Rapper
10. Grimace and Snarl
9. Make Strange Hand Signs
8. Swear A Lot (Use “F**k” and/or “N*****r” at least twice in every sentence)
7. Stay High On Drugs 24/7/365 (And get seriously blasted on Leap Day)
6. Always Call All Women “B***hes” and “Hos”
5. Get Tattooed As Extensively And Bizarrely As Possible (a trick borrowed from goths)
4. Threaten People You Don’t Know And Have Never Even Met (The phone book is a good place to look for prospects- just pick one or more)
3. Kill People At Random, And Then Justify It By Claiming They Were Discriminating Against You
2. String Random Words Together In Songs And Interviews (Then claim that when other people have no idea what you are talking about, it proves that you are a genius and they are both morons and racists)
Aaannnddd The Number One Skill Necessary To Be A Successful Rapper;
1. Feud With Other Rappers And Get Killed By Them!
Bonus; The One Skill That Is Totally Unnecessary To Be A Successful Rapper;
0. Having Any Trace Of Musical Talent Whatsoever.
I rest my case.
cheers
eon
Hey now. Tattooing was big among rockers long before goths. The difference between punks and goths is the quality of tattoos, and the quality of rapper tattoos is just atrocious. Their tattoos are designed to looke like they were picked and poked, done in a prison cell.
And it was big with hookers and sailors before that. So what?
How was it Merry said to Frodo, “You won’t save the Shire, my dear Frodo, by being shocked and sad.”
Plato spent an amazing amount of time talking about music, and how important (and dangerous) it was, and how it had to be censored.
And I think of those old Nazi and German Army songs from old movies–how catchy the tunes were, etc.
Music, my friends, is how the universe was created in, according to Tolkien. It is divine, and more dangerous than most of us today seem to know.
No wonder it is being used to desensitize and destroy our children.
And we do nothing? If you believe the hardest drugs should be legal, and hold a general libertarian position of that, then I see you’re being against all censorship. But unless you have that sort of position, I can’t see being against censorship in the case of this music.
An Préachán
Chill. They grow out of it. There’s a big disconnect between what they listen to and what they say and do, as you demonstrated with your 14-year-old relative. She’s a good student. She doesn’t go around parroting the words of the rap crap she listens to.
When my daughter was 13, I took her to a concert featuring an act then called “Puff Daddy and the Family.” There were a lot of lyrics from the music featured that night I thought were vulgar and tasteless, although not quite as intense as the examples you cite. I’m sure she listened to a lot of rap during her teen years and maybe still does.
My daughter is now 27, has her college degree, is married, works two jobs and goes to school. Her main job is teaching autistic preschool kids. I’m very proud of her and don’t think she’s eroding the basis of Western Civilization. From what I hear, teen sex, crime, the abortion rate, etc. are generally down, despite the popularity of song lyrics like the ones you cite and the popularity of Grand Theft Auto, etc. Chill.
The use of the anecdotal to respond to the macro-impact of the coarsening of a society is not particularly instructive.
Of course SOME grow out of it. Because individuals do all manner of things, good and bad.
But it misses the point. In fact, it’s largely not relevant to the point.
Do we as a society wish to denigrate women, worship gang “attitude”, glorify “putting a cap in your ass” and trivializing sexual relations? I’m not a fan of rap because it clangs off my ear musically…it is not aesthetically pleasing to my personal tastes. But as someone who loves words, I can read it and hear angst or romance or passion and appreciate a message. In rap, that is a rare commodity. It’s mostly just spitting out prison yard verbal gang signings.
Tupac’s “Dear Mama” is an exception. I heard the angst and recognized the effort to say something meaningful. Again, it’s not my favorite style for listening pleasure.
What MY take is from Zombie (whose work I deeply admire and appreciate across the board), is that there IS a line…or should be, that society as a whole should not cross without examining itself before doing so.
As for the “N” word. It’s a despicable word. It is a word of lowest common denomination. Nobody can own a word. You can’t. That includes marriage and that includes the “N” word. It lessens all of us when a group tries.
So, my position is that we should take down every word from the societal auction block. And, like the “N” word, some words just aren’t worth the breath it takes to utter them.
“As for the “N” word. It’s a despicable word. It is a word of lowest common denomination. Nobody can own a word. You can’t.”
The N-word is a despicable word if a non-Black person uses it but I have witnessed it being used by the Black-American population as a term of endearment or verbal recognition to the “Brother” or even IDing each other since the 1970s. N-word may be off limits to the non-Blacks; not to the Blacks.—– Seems to me they own the word!
Twenty years ago a young black man tried to impress me with his rap singing; I thought he was mentally ill. Mr. Krauthammer used the expression “word salad” the other day on Fox News in describing President Clinton’s rambling apology. That expression would seem to apply to the unintelligent noise that the young girl was listening to.
As for using the “N” word, whites must be considerate of their audience, whereas blacks not so much. I rarely use it, but when I do it is usually inserted between the title “Reverend” and the names “Jackson” or “Sharpton”.
“Can music cause the degradation of the soul?”
No. Allan Bloom asserted that in “Closing of the American Mind,” a book wholly and completely refuted by liberals.
Any book that is refuted by liberals is obviously a great book.
Having read Alan Bloom’s book (twice), I can certify that it’s an excellent and still relevant book. Sadly, the cultural trends that he decried have only worsened.
So it goes. What kills me is that many people will defend this stuff as … poetry.
Just shows you we are doomed as a society. And I’m not just some old fart screaming about modern “music,” although rap is far, far, from what real music is. At this stage of the game, disco is Mozart compared to this junk.
Any entertainment format that uses this horrible language and these terrible images and treats women like whores should be shunned by all people in this nation. How did it come to this? When did we go from actual music to people just swearing, moaning, and screaming for hours on end? This just shows you the fundamental lack of imagination in the music industry today and the horrible lack of talent as well. I guess it’s much easier to swear constantly and pick words that rhyme with “itch.” This is the lowest of the low in “entertainment” and I’m not quite sure how much lower the vermin who put out this stuff can go. I’m just surprised that there is a still a market for it. Just shows you how musically challenged this nation has become.
After so many years of dumbing down students in the public schools & paying people to sit at home & do absolutely nothing for a living, it really should come as no surprise that our society has become sooooo decadent. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
Old fogey nonsense. Zombie, stick to what you do best and stop complaining about the artistic and moral heights to which feminism and black liberation have brought us. Coco is proud women of color beholden to no white man! Good for her! I celebrate her achievements.
If you want your kid to stop listening to rap, start listening and enjoying it yourself. Once a parent stamps approval it is no longer attractive to the child and they move on.
Rap was blending of Beat and evolving Jazz poetry in the 50-60′s with jump rope rhymes and clapping games children would belt out in school yards. When commercial success hit Blondie with her song and Video “Rapture”, it paved the way for broad appeal and the rest is History.
Beat rap exists in unlikely places such as Italian Opera, musicals My fair lady and the Music man, and many other places we would not normally associate rap until its pointed out.
The issue with the lyrics themselves is valid, its a bit unusual but Music has always been on this path, it must push the envelope and force change and adaptation. It must evolve into something different for each generation, has been this way since the first flutes and drums 70,000 years ago.
In the end it is no different than when i took up guitar and hung posters of Hendrix in my room and my parents thought i was going to Hell. I turned out OK, am self employed, support my parents and still enjoy playing my Strat to Hendrix.
The Kids are Alright.
Disgusting “music.” Ignorant “musicians.” How did ignorance become a life-style?
There must be hundreds of hates crimes in these demonstrations of ignorance, banality and soul-killing muck.
You just hit the nail on the head. Not that I support “hate” crimes, but since they (hate crimes) exist, they should be used to eliminate this obscene genre of “music”.
Sue the record labels, You Tube, whoever is making a profit, for dissemimating “hate”. Throw it right back in their faces.
“How ya like me now?”
Do you suppose the first daughters are allowed to listen to this noise some people think is “music?” IMWTK.
Did it occur to you, Zombie, to share with your young-lady relative a list of some artists from other musical genres, preferably ones that are not quite so vulgar & decadent? Widespread Panic comes to mind, as they still enjoy a good deal of popularity (their concerts generally just about sell out). Did you express your concerns, that you air in your article, with this girl’s mother?
I note that some seem to think we all should just “chill” on this stuff. Pardon me if I don’t chill on themes of misogyny, sexism & the degradation of women. The N word uttered endlessly & frequently, along with the garden-variety peppering of the F word is bad enough, but the attitude displayed against women is truly unconcionable. Giving this countenance is almost as bad as not railing against the horrid abuse women undergo regularly in Islamic societies in various parts of the world.
Beating on a hollow log music.
And in addition to the 1500 obscene songs on the iPod, you don’t want to think about how many porno movies that girl has seen or how many porno movies her male friends have on their computers. I had something of a fight some years ago with my wife who had asserted that I really didn’t care about her boys because I wasn’t adequately maintaining their computers which were running slowly and troublesomely. They had of course whined to her, leaving out a few things, and I knew what was wrong with the computers because I’d worked on them repeatedly. I prevailed upon her to come sit with me as I first reinstalled the antivirus and other protective software they had removed and then proceeded to remove over 50 gigs of downloaded porno from their hard drives and made my wife watch a bit as we did it. This all ocurred while the boys were away and when they returned there were screams of outrage about how the stuff on their computers was their private property and we had no right to be messing with “their” computers – which of course they did not buy nor pay for the ISP, but stuff like that doesn’t occur to teenagers these days.
I have a great appreciation for Merle Haggard’s, “Mama Tried,” though I can’t say my wife tried very effectively; the modern mommy, especially the modern divorced from the sperm donor mommy, is so concerned that her kids “like” her that she can’t bear to “try” anything they don’t like. Modern youth “culture” is right out of “A Clockwork Orange,” and, unfortunately, the girls are only too willing to be the bitches and whores the boys make them out to be and treat them like. The oldest was a good-looking jock and all the pretty girls with all the right last names practically took numbers to have him treat them like crap. I’ll admit that I ultimately gave up on trying to have any real influence other than by example; I simply could not overcome the anti-parent influence of the schools and the toxicity of popular culture. Because we were by today’s standards fairly authoritarian, the kids do have some sense of “caught” and “not caught” if not of right and wrong, but that’s about the best we could do, and we did try.
Good one Zombie. I can’t stand rap and hip hop, for me it is just noise and awful noise at that. Modern country and western music is in the same category. Bluegrass is great. After a long time being a rock fan, starting with Elvis back in the 50′s and continuing with Jefferson Airplane, Lynyrd Skinner, etc I have begun to appreciate baroque music, especially Vivaldi. Is it because he wrote music in a similarly degenerate period of European history???
Bluegrass! Yes!
It has melody, harmony, rhythm, and counterpoint. It provides for disciplined improvisation. And, best of all, the songs are comprehensible!
The only sin I can discern in Bluegrass is that you enjoy it more if you play an instrument, and so very few young people do, these days.
“The only sin I can discern in Bluegrass is that you enjoy it more if you play an instrument”
So true Dianna. I play in a bluegrass group. The most fun playing music I have ever had and I have been playing music since the 60′s. However don’t give up on the kids. There are an amazing number of them out there either playing or learning bluegrass and traditional music and many of them are great musicians.
There is hypocrisy if we are to truly believe music itself is responsible for misogyny, degradation, and societies attitudes towards women. And comparing rap to actual torture and abuse of women in third world / Islamic societies is such a reach it defies logic.
Music is a REFLECTION of society, not its driving force, and never has been. Societies ills do not Stem from rap but from fundamental forces that have always shaped them; equal protection under the law, access to economic power and credit, stability and security. When once of these is lacking pressure builds and lashes out in various manners, music being one of them.
Generational music reflects society just like a Mural or painting, it captures the moment in time. If Rap is reflecting ugliness, the problem isn’t the music, its is the environment itself.
“And comparing rap to actual torture and abuse of women in third world / Islamic societies is such a reach it defies logic.”
I assume you are reacting to what I posted above (as no one else had touched on this). I wasn’t comparing the two but alluding to the dismissive reaction that some on here had displayed to the misogynistic, sexist attitudes illustrated in this “genre” they refer to as “rap.”
You are right though, IMO, in your assessment stating that rap is a reflection of the “environment.” I alluded to that as well, pointing out the sequelae of generations living on welfare & getting virtually no education at the public schools.
It is more complicated than you make it out to be.
First, we, as individuals, have the right and responsibility to shun works that encourage degenerative behavior; thus, it is not hypocrisy to identify when music is degrading, and then shun it ourselves.
Second, this notion that music reflects culture can sometimes be absurd: after all, an artist or director will sometimes justify his “gritty” work with the line “people want to escape reality, so we need to shock them”. Music is a means of communication, nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes music reflects reality as it is (or at least what we think it is), sometimes it reflects the world as it was, and sometimes it reflects the world as we want it to be. Heck, sometimes it reflects the absurdities that we can imagine! (Unless you’re going to tell me that singing about two boys sitting barefoot in a tree with their shoes on is a perfectly natural reflection of the world.)
Third, music and culture can reinforce and influence each other, in a type of feedback loop. I can go to church, listen to a hymn which inspires me to be better, and resolve to go to church more often, where I hear another hymn…and so forth. The fact is, when many of these rappers sing about the “evils of their life”, they may be telling the truth…but others who listen to this crap will see their lifestyles justified, and so they continue to to live it…and then listen to, and perhaps create even more music, extolling the “virtues” of the lifestyle…and so forth. One way to break out of that cycle is to stop listening to the music that encourages it, or never listen to it at all. One way to start such a lifestyle, is to listen to the music that justifies it.
While, granted, not all people who listen to such crap follow the lifestyle…but it certainly doesn’t encourage a lifestyle worth living. Thus, why in the world would anyone justify listening to such crap? (And I would add that the musical elements involved are irrelevant–these lyrics are crap, and will be, whether sung in a pseudo-musical sort of way, or if sung to the accompaniment of orchestra, with the full force of training as a classical vocalist–and thus, should have no place in our musical experience.)
My son, who is now 23, once told me that rap is an acronym for ‘Retards Attempting Poetry”. I thought that was rather fitting.
Take heart, Zombie, that parents reacted the same way when the Beatles hit the airwaves. I remember adults saying that it was ‘not music’.
As for the n-word, I have my own theory: For as long as I can remember, there have been elements in black culture that went mainstream. I think that black culture resents that to some degree. I think that the profligate use of the N-word is merely an attempt by black culture to have something of its own that can’t be stolen by the mainstream.
I, too, enjoy black music.
Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Louie Armstrong, Charley Pride, Chuck Berry,
etc., etc., etc.
And is there anyone who doesn’t get a lump in their throat when they hear
Brother Ray singing America the Beautiful?
Jim Whittaker
Hemet, CA
Excellent!
Ample evidence that trying to elevate a “society” by education has not been successful. Instead, the “education system” not only defers to, but glorifies, the deficient “sub-society”, and even creates courses of study to promote it.
And just keep in mind, that, having a leak that displays confidential information being issued from the White House is “offensive”, this kind of “music” is welcome and dignified by The President of the United States.
I wonder why Obama doesn’t have his own rap music to spread his bitchin’ ideals to his favorite voting bloc?
Any minute now, I guess. His data mining organization will have full knowledge of this.
I grew up listening to this. It always struck me as strange to hear my stepsister, a tough gal who took no crap whatsoever, listening to stuff that utterly trashed.
I like R&B a lot better than this. A lot is very, very sexual, but more romantic and less outright in your face porn in word form. Also it helps that is usually much better music.
I was a club DJ in the 80′s and quit when rap hit the scene. The requests from the crowds started to grow asking for that garbage. Thus, I eliminated myself from being the “non-market-friendly” part of the club. But the club closed shortly after I quit anyhow.
Gone were the clever songs of Phil Collins, the fun excitement of Bananarama, The sultry power of the Eurythmics. Nope…rap had come and landed and to me, I think the kids glued themselves to it to separate themselves from adults.
In the 60′s they spoke often of the “generation gap” which had as one of its defining parts, the music. The Doors, The Grateful Dead, etc. Gone was the doo-wop of the 50′s though it made a reappearance here and there in a contemporary song and re-makes of old favorites still got covered but the music of the 60′s, taking on the power made available by ever-increasing technology and amplification allowed kids to be defiant without being violent about it. And as much as adults swore it was the root of all evil, such was not the case.
Today, in a natural evolutionary state, kids have abandoned the melody and only the beat and rhythmic tone of the words is the opium of the ear. To be fair, most kids probably have no idea what the “songs” are about on a rap album, as I myself had no idea what “Eight Miles High” had anything to do with when I was a kid…I just liked it. I did note, however, that many (most) rock & roll bands seemed to find themselves in a lot of personal trouble.
As do rappers. Adolescence fostered by market demand. They become millionaires and are able to afford behaving badly.
I doubt many kids will look upon rap though with great fondness. When my high-school class organizers thought disco would be the right music of choice, we all complained heavily. Even at ten years it was so heavily dated that it sucked out loud. The music that lasted and held firm ground were the rock & roll bands of the 70′s when compared to this disco group or that. I think most stuff by ABBA and the Bee Gees is completely forgettable. Most people I grew up with make a fake gagging sound when I mention disco.
So I think kids today may find that rap may be fun for now and they convince themselves they like it because mom and dad as well as most adults hate it. It’s not so much “music appreciation” as it is defiance and when you couple that with the frustration of being a teenager who really wants to punish adults for “being mean”, well, it seems to fit. The teen rebellious phase.
Sure, some will never grow out of it. Most should or will. And like my peers from the 70′s when I mention disco and they say, “What were they thinking?”.
I’ll stick to my C&W these days, but that market, too is getting infiltrated with liberal schmuck-ness, probably promoted by liberals with money who want us “bible and gun clingers” to wake up to the new world order. Sorry, though I am not a fan of the way Sirius does business, they do offer alternatives to the money-market artists, and I download music by independent artists from Amazon.com. It will do to the music market what the internet has done to the newspaper. And I’m so thankful for it.
The black subculture, its lack of morality, is the singular cause of HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases moving like a wildfire through their population: 12% of the population but over 70% of AIDS in America. The same thug/gangster/woman-demeaning mentality has moved Latinos into a quick second place in the same race, with a 25% over representation in these diseases. They are now spreading drug-resistant varieties of all these diseases, since the same populations tend to be non-adherent to drug regimens, which drives drug-resistance. The costs to taxpayers for these “behavior-based” diseases is untold billions of dollars.
There may be some grounds for optimism in present cultural trends. I sing in a male barbershop chorus, a genre not paricularly noted for embracing popular culture. We have three black high school age singers as active and very capable singers and performers. They are also members of their high school show choirs, take part in musicals, etc. Maybe it only works in flyover country, but I think we should be stressing and supporting school music programs. Exposure to real music can have a very positive effect. Don’t let your schools music programs be sacrificed when budget cutting happens.
An interesting question is this: Suppose you were sitting in an audience in an academic forum. A professor had created a video depicting Mohammed, the prophet revered by Muslims, in various salacious or disgusting situations narrated by lyrics like the ones in this article.
The professor has an undoubted right to create and even display such works, as long as whoever is sponsoring his presentation is OK with them.
But suppose Muslim students in the audience jumped up and shouted, seeking to disrupt the proceedings. Would you rush to physically restrain them or force them out? Would your attitude be something like, “How dare you try to shut down this exercise of free speech, you [expletives]? Lie back and take it!”
Or would it be more like, “Look, guys, we let people do this stuff. I know it’s disgusting, and it’s not something anyone should fill his head with. In fact, I’m starting to wonder what I’m doing here. We don’t stop people from exercising free speech, but THIS isn’t an example of how free speech creates positive progress. The option for those who don’t like it is to leave. You know, I think that’s just what I’m going to do. Care to join me? Oh, and we can complain to the management and even withhold our money from the organization, if it depends on voluntary contributions from us.”
The point isn’t whether the offended Muslim students would accept your proposition. That’s another issue. The point is what you would be motivated to do. There are, in fact, forms of free expression that we aren’t urgently motivated to defend on the spot, when face to face with an understandably offended party.
The rule of law is precisely for the things we don’t FEEL like defending. It protects many wonderful and important things, but unsavory things hide behind it too. Those unsavory things are protected by our laws and social attitudes about freedom, but that doesn’t make them good. They are not the reason why we protect speech. If they were, we would have decided not to protect speech a long time ago.
Zombie,
I saw a parallel between blacks being able to ”take back” nigger with how Muslims are the only religious group capable of getting their way of prayer rooms at public schools,etc.,…..the potential behind their word is VIOLENCE.
On the other hand, gays (as you, yourself, noted) will never reclaim ”faggot” and women will never reclaim the word ”slut.”
There are simply too many people out there who know that, in a fair fight, they could take them.
Sad that we are falling to ”might makes right,” but you are reporting that very fact from the front lines.
You know I’m right.
I wonder if this is why it is just assumed that white people are racists.
A strange form of projection. Even though the word is never spoken by white people, by hearing it 30,000 times in their daily music, they assume it must be because the people that they don’t associate with….their parents, business people, white adults speaking among themselves….use it all the time, and are therefore racist.
More than a decade ago, I took my daughter to the neighborhood wading pool She was about six at the time. There were three black girls in the pool aged 6, 10, and 12, I would say. The black children were not with any adults. There were several white children and several supervising white mothers and grandmothers.
The black children bantered back and forth, arguing, playing, and doing the negotiating and having fun that goes on with playing in the pool—but every other word was “n—–”, bitch, or ‘ho’. After five minutes of this stuff, I loudly ordered my daughter out of the pool commenting about the level of pollution present. I meant verbal pollution. But, was so astounded with the talk of these children, and even ashamed, that I was obtuse in my message. I was equally astounded that nobody said or did anything about the children’s speech. My message was directed at the children, but also the passive parents around me. (All of this, I explained to my daughter as we went elsewhere to spend the day.)
Of course, the white mothers and grandmothers did not get my drift about what was being said, and, stared at me, no doubt thinking that the pollution I was referring to somehow meant the three black girls, themselves, rather that their speech. The white mothers and grandmothers stared at me as if I were a member of the KKK.
You see, I live in a neighborhood which is a leftist enclave. To confront the black children for their distasteful speech, which is what I should have done, would have been “judgmental”, “racist” and not “accepting of other cultures”.
By comparison, had this incident occurred during my childhood, no matter what the race of the children involved, some parent would have publicly disciplined them, expelled them from the pool, or even escorted them home to their mothers who would then have measured out appropriate discipline.
Culture matters, both our national culture, which has declined over the past several decades—and—the culture of each ethnic group. In my opinion, people are fools to accept black rapper music as somehow representative of authentic black culture. The old computer saying comes to mind. “Garbage in; garbage out.” This GIGO and the politically correct non-judgmentalism which allows, or even promotes, it harms all of society’s children. In particular, it holds back black children from achieving the equality America offers all our children.
What a tragedy for all children. What a tragedy for America.
Your anecdote reminded me a great deal of this one except that this was (presumably) more current and had the parents standing by throughout:
http://notalwaysright.com/children-of-the-scorn/20403
This website specializes in anecdotes about customers that have done things which are foolish, obnoxious or otherwise unsavoury. Most of the anecdotes are from actual staff of these stores, some of them are incidents observed by other customers.
The first word to assault my ears was “nigger,” and within the next 60 seconds “nigger” was repeated at least ten more times…
They key element of fictive reality is what subjects can’t be talked about, to include what is permissible to say if you *do* break the convention and talk about it.
Under that, naturally, are words that can’t be used, or when they *are* used, the rules for who can use a forbidden word and how.
Modern racism is of the reverse sort. We have laws on the books requiring racial discrimination, and the nations of EUrabia do too. The scam is so well implemented that we had news entertainers weeping tears of joy about how the election of a black American signaled the birth of a post-racial America.
But, actually, we hyper-racial now. And he ain’t a black American, he’s a mulato born in Kenya.
“And he ain’t a black American, he’s a mulato born in Kenya.”
That doesn’t matter to these people; they aren’t looking at who he is but what he allegedly signifies. He does his best to reflect that though.
You are of course absolutely right. We’re not a nation of laws anymore. We’re a country of extemporaneous rules now, having migrated for some reason from the document to the living document. In this brave new world I can turn on my flat screen and watch a packed house listen to the talentless Chris Rock and roar with approval.
“I can turn on my flat screen and watch a packed house listen to the talentless Chris Rock and roar with approval.”
This is doubtless due to becoming inured to not knowing at all what one is missing. The small c’s love it this way.
If blacks had something to actually brag about, they would be the biggest racists EVER. The problem is, every time they are the ‘majority’ things turn to SH*T. Hard to brag on that.
Of course, we have racism against whites because there is no such thing as ‘equality’. Some people are prettier or smarter or more intellectually creative than others. You can’t make people ‘equal’ by hobbling others. Marxism is an epic FAIL.
I view music styles like this as a symptom of the generation, though it does feed back on itself to a degree. Banning it isn’t practical. Putting labels on it isn’t practical either.
What is practical is raising your children so that they know why you don’t like this music. It’s not about the style, it’s about the lyrics.
I’m saddened that an entire generation of kids seems to think so little of the future that they talk this way.
They should also be told very emphatically that disdain for rap music is not disdain for black people. I loathe rap but I hate it equally whether the rapper is white, black, hispanic or any other ethnicity.
I’m a big jazz fan and think very highly of people like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and so forth. Many of the most important jazz musicians were as black as any rapper. And Jimi Hendrix was arguably one of the most important rock musicians ever. The top white guitarists, like Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and many more all flocked to see Hendrix when he appeared in England and came away stunned by his virtuosity.
This song is NOT for those who are susceptible to the vapors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0ncfiPsMg.
Of course, we should remind ourselves here that rap “music” (aka Hip Hop) isn’t music at all. You can buy a used oscilloscope and see for yourself. Let’s be kind and leave it that Rap is very bad poetry. Its widespread acceptance as music tells us two things:
1) We’ve given up on music.
2) We’ll swallow whatever designation (name) we’re issued now.
It is wonderous how many things we can divine from a used oscilloscope.
How do you tell music with an oscilloscope?
,
I tried to get a jump start on this early with my daughter. From the day she was born ( even before she was born, actually) my wife and I played nothing for he but classical music in our car and in our home. As an infant she heard Bach, Handel, Hayden, Mozart, Debussy etc. every day, without exception. As she got older (2-3) we began to introduce her to traditional jazz, and to the American songbook (Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein etc) via the great singers like Sinatra, Nat Cole, Ella Fitzgerald. We also take her to concerts, not only classical, but bluegrass, and jazz as well as musical theater. Now my daughter is 6. She plays piano. She can name 10 classical composers off the top of her head. She can tell Bach from Brahms from Stravinsky….Her current favorites are Satie and Arvo Part. The way I figure it, she now has a strong foundation which will protect her from the mind-numbing assault that is sure to reach her as she becomes a teen….And I must admit it gives me great pleasure when I go into her room and find her listening to the Brandenburg Concertos while playing with her dolls.
The late Richard Pryor on The “N” Word:
http://youtu.be/AltWj4iAmno
The Left assaults the decorum and values of the Middle Class–witness Democrat White House soirees with foul and suggestive language and actions. And the Left provides the Ghetto Low Life Criminal Black culture as role models for America. “Being Black” they call it. Well, the Black people I grew up with would consider such behavior, language, and attitudes what they are: Animalistic Decadence.
I am shocked positively shocked. May I say that I’m shocked again? This is that the general public out there fails to see the delicacy of Black Poetry or Lyrics of these beautiful ballets. It is a touching coupling of both rime and rhythm that hasn’t been seen since the time of Handel’s Messiah. Please take the time to learn to enjoy the beauty of this multicultural experience. Please embrace it.
I agree: such rap songs have the lyrical artistry of a pack of wild dogs savaging each other in the distance, perhaps during dusk’s afterglow.
That was beautifully said. Now I see that there are at least two people who really appreciate this art form.
What you’ve just said is the absolute PC party line maintained by academics, politicians, and “open-minded” music critics today. Basically, if a minority group suddenly decided that defecating in public was the thing to do, po-faced intellectuals everywhere would celebrated it as a unique expression of ethnic identity and it would instantly become criticism-proof. Don’t like it? RACIST!
That’s one of the things that keeps rap music alive today. Not the main thing, but definitely an enabling factor.
Bugs, that was some really good insight and is worth commenting about. If I can ever think of anything to say, I’ll post it. In the meantime, I’ll turn up my Gansta Rap and swim through the feces of the world.
Zombie, I love your work and photojournalism. I feel like this piece is a little misleading. Within any genre there are artists with ignorant and harmful lyrics, as well as artists with thoughtful and uplifting lyrics. “The Pack” does not belong to the latter category. Why not do some more research before you fuel the anti-hip hop bias that is common among conservatives? I am a conservative myself but I have an honest appreciation for the artform.
Let us know when Judas Priest or Insane Clown Posse are at a Presidential Inaugural Ball spouting racist nonsense.
I guess you skipped this part of Zombie’s essay:
–
And so I embarked on a bizarre masochistic quest: To listen to every single song on her iPod, just to prove to myself that my first impressions were accurate.
That was three weeks ago. I’ve been wearing these damn headphones almost constantly ever since, just starting at the beginning and letting the tracks play one after the other in a continuous stream. Turns out that she had 1,500 mp3s on her iPod, somewhere around 80 hours of music.
–
Zombie didn’t listen to a mere handful of songs and then dash off her essay; she listened to 1500 songs which involved listening to rap almost nonstop for three weeks! And apparently the vile stuff she’s quoting is typical of virtually everything on the iPod.
It might help if you could disabuse us of our prejudices by listing a few hip-hop artists – specifically rappers – who do not conform to our negative profile. I would also be interested to know how their sales and/or radio play compares to that of the nastier performers.
The author presents facts and anectodal evidence. To rebut him, something more specific than “oh, rap music isn’t ALL bad” is required.
I echo Fail Burton’s sentiment.
‘..anti-hip hop bias.. – honestly?
99 +% of ‘hip hop’ is demeaning in so many facets. The ‘message’ is often anti-woman/ family/ fidelity/ marriage/ law abiding/ upward mobility/ educational etc.,
The KRS One lyric you’d also provided only proves how misused/ missing consonants and vowels is sadly the STANDARD for hip hop ‘lyrics’.
I’d like to quote KRS-One on this issue:
Instead of broadcasting how we smokin’ trees, on the radio we need to hear more local MC’s
Where you at? Come on where you at? This is the difference between MC’ing and rap:
Rappers spit rhymes that are mostly illegal, MC’s spit rhymes to uplift the people
Peace, love, unity, and havin’ fun- these are the lyrics of KRS One
Even rap music is canned. Sheesh. We wonder why the kids can’t function as adults once they become adults.
What’s wrong with auto-tuning, synthesizers and a guy shambling around the stage like one of H.P Lovecraft’s fish-people from R’lyeh while women in shiny hot pants and Mickey Mouse afros pretend they’re drilling for oil with their hips?
I question your artistic acumen.
Culture is a product of institutions and the ones guiding black culture, whatever they may be, are failing miserably. Until it becomes “cool” again to read books, learn how to spell, learn how to communicate, and respect other people (including women and your own offspring), the only way forward is down.
Listen, if these obvious pathologies were fixed the academics, experts, advocates, and organizations devoted to the “poor” and “discriminated against” would be out of jobs so, don’t expect these problems to be fixed anytime soon, but rather expect them to be exacerbated, extended, inflated, and enlarged.
Reading the news from Alabama this AM. Last night, at a party ,three young men were shot dead including two former Auburn football players. There have been other incidents at the school including 4 players pulling an armed robbery. Incidents like this abound at other schools and in urban streets. I think the nihilistic soul destroying gangsta rap on all these ipod’s is a big factor. Young men and women spawned in the bastard culture schooled by ghetto all stars are prone to random violence for perceived dissing.
Lots of other crap in pop culture such as porn but gangsta rap is such a destructive force, We have sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind.
Why do people want to control music and speech that they don’t like? (I know the answer).
Who wants to control music?…What are you talking about?
Criticizing something isn’t the same as censoring it. Free speech works both ways.
Agree!
Zombie, that’s a gold mine of sample data you found on the iPod of a post-modern American teeny-bopper -
To me, the data indicates that rap music has reached a nadir. (Of course, every music style eventually gets old. Forgive the differences, but even Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony didn’t remain in the top ten forever…).
However, that music is just *bland* in terms of melody, harmony, and lyrical content.
The pop music industry was already gasping for air when rap / hip-hop gave it a shot of adrenalin and a few more years of life.
I can only go by my own taste in music: for my first 20 years, a radio was the soundtrack of my life, but since then I haven’t been able tolerate the radio for more than a few minutes.
I don’t claim to be objective, but I also don’t think it’s the result of an age gap, because I love to listen to good music from any generation / genre.
In economic terms, it sounds to me like the supply of good music isn’t meeting the demand for good music.
There appears to be an opportunity here for a new genre of “edgy” musicians to be marketed to bandwagon-teenyboppers like your cousin.
How about pitching the “bigwigs” at PJ Media to host periodic music contest polls, or “battles of the bands” (First through Third Prizes: music videos in the headline, with a Creative Commons license)? Suggested MCs: music aficionados Zombie and Spengler.
Martin Luther King’s “dream”:
“… little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Fair enough. That glorious day has arrived, and we are judging character.
Where was CoCo Brown and her wise words when I first joined the “dating scene” (ugh – awful expression!) 20 years ago?
To think of all that time I wasted treating women with respect and even reverence when all along they were just cheap skanky tramps looking to fulfill all my basest male desires. Stupid wasted youth!
Took me awhile too, back in the mid-’80s when I arrived, recently divorced, on the dating scene. I didn’t understand that the young, pretty ones, the only ones I was interested in at the time, thought that if you didn’t feed them two Miller Lites and throw them on a bed, you didn’t like them.
As a lover of the music by Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane and Grover Washington, I’m bewildered, as I have been over the past decade how it could have come to this. How talent, love of beauty and creativity counts for so little anymore. How human beings can exult in filth, depravity and the existential gutter they cast their souls into. I share your discouragement Zombie.
Agreed. It’s not just jazz, though. I think Prince might have been the last black man who knew how to play a musical instrument instead of a turntable and who, simultaneously, could sing rather than yell into a microphone.
(And I apologize for having to actually spell out the word “nigger” repeatedly in this post, but there’s no way to write an essay on this disturbing topic without confronting it head-on.)
I know there was a short mention of this back at Comment #25 (most of which comment was a bit over-the-top IMHO), but I don’t think an apology was necessary. And that’s because the second part of the sentence I quoted above is absolutely true.
Like you, I don’t use the word nigger, whether as a pejorative or in any other context – except in an intellectual discussion of social issues where the word is relevant. Which is exactly the case in this instance.
And no intellectual discussion is worth a damn if people tip-toe around the subject matter for fear of violating the pieties of political correctness. No problem in the world, least of all social problems, will be solved if it isn’t addressed openly and honestly, finely honed sensibilities be damned.
That’s why I found this article to be so refreshing (the subject matter notwithstanding). You WERE willing to use the word “nigger” repeatedly (albeit with a few slips into “N-word” silliness), as the subject of an intellectual discussion that needed to be held.
And it’s that sort of straightforward honesty that makes sites like this one so valuable.
Well done.
Has anybody considered the music itself?
I think the problem with American popular music began when electrically amplified instruments (guitar, bass, synthesizer) were introduced.
The most damaging aspect of rap, rock, punk, goth, metal, disco, most country, most pop, dance, house, techno, etcetera is the intensely annoying sound of electric guitar, electric bass, and synthesized “beats.” The verbal accompaniment pales in significance, though it can also be very detrimental. But the sounds act directly on the delicate parts of the brain.
This “music” affects the human brain differently from the sounds of the human voice and acoustic imstruments, those sounds that people have listened to and produced for millenia. In my humble opinion, this modern “music” damages the human soul and the human spirit, to say nothing of the intellect. I wonder what effect it has on the body and physical health.
Martin Luther King’s “dream”:
“…people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
As you wish, Martin.
There is no excuse for the filth in rap, it is simple minded at best and clearly pathological. The urban black culture it represents is no better than depraved jihadi Islamo-fascism. They are both a cancer on world culture.
I note the delightful habit of black dudes out our way of cranking up the volume and opening up the car windows when stopping to make a statement and “share” their music at red lights, and particularly when pulling into the local 7-11 for gas or cigarettes, or a big gulp, and letting this crap about bitches and ho’s, MF this and MF that, and general antipathy toward whites—a figurative middle finger directed at all the white people in the area—blast out, as they leave their car with the music blasting and the widows open, and walk in to get whatever in the store, or as they leisurely pump gas.
Eminem won’t let his daughters listen to his “art”.
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/eminem-wont-allow-cursing-in-his-home-2010810
He doesn’t mind making millions off your kids listening to it though. I’m willing to be his kids go to private schools where the thug life he preaches about is nowhere to be seen. Call me crazy.
yeah even a man who knows he’s no good does not want his own daughter to grow up in thug life- like mafiosi don’t want their kids to go into “the life” and pray that money they make will pay the way out for the next generation.
Sadly what many people never realize is WHo we are and what we do ourselves influences our kids much more than what we say and tell them to do.
Lament from Kanye West:
Restraining order cant see my daughter
Her mother brother grandmother hate me in that order
Public visitation we met at Borders
Told her she take me back Ill be more supportive
I made mistakes I bumped my head
Courts sucked me dry I spent that bread
She need her daddy baby please
Cant let her grow up in that ghetto university
Sounds like Eminem is a good role model for parents — that your job can be for adults, and that adults should take responsibility for what their kids listen to.
South Park also comes to mind. That’s an adult show. If parents let their kids watch it without making sure the kids don’t glorify the raunchy parts, then that’s on the parents.
Its simply creating a halo effect, repeating such word many times is like they want us to be use too of using it … these days abusive languages and racist language become part of our daily conversations through these songs earlier I just created a survey using: http://www.surveytool.com/survey-questionnaire/ for how often we heard racist words and putted some N- words and other words in that … more than 80% of people were aware and comfortable using these words in their daily routine …
This is crazy … is this is a sign of good or civilized society ?
30,000 times, and lost what remains of your hope in humanity, did you?
Go suck your thumb.
Zombie,
Your cousin’s parents are idiots. Nice of you to try to keep peace. You listened for 80 hrs. to confirm what you already knew. Embrace the divide and start your own family if you don’t have one.
I think the “N” word is only used once around 1:45 in this one.
This is a black guy rapping (but I am not sure he is a rapper) about rap. The language is vulgar, but that is the point. He is making fun of the genre.
I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJQU22Ttpwc
Rap, along with Reggie, belong in a category I call “spinal cord music.” The affect is to synchronize the spinal cord’s electrical discharge frequencies with the beat, thereby dominating the rest of the nervous system.
Therefore, I twitch and forget to think… to paraphrase Descartes.
While I detest rap music, I comfort myself with the thought that, “this too shall pass.”
“Spinal Cord Music”
Well there’s something basal to it. It could be the beat, the emphasis. It’s sort of like the fascination dogs have with smelling the butts of other dogs. Smells, beats, hums — these get right to the strangest and most mysterious parts of basal brain-nervous system — the hippocampus and the amygdala. Those two organs LOOK LIKE PENDULUMS.
While I disagree with your lumping in Reggae (and I’d guess you’d also include Rock-Steady and Ska), there’s no denying the more primitive beats can trigger both deep relaxation and excitation effects. And not just (Afro-)Roots music, but also drumming AND PIPING from other cultures. Like Japan, like Scotland.
Do you not realize that dogs (and most carnivorans) have scent glands on each side of their anus?
Personally, I have gone through my iPod, and found that with the exception of OCRemix* and maybe one or two bands, everything on there is from groups founded in the 90s or earlier. Many of them are still releasing now, and make the only tolerable stuff produced this century. What could they be doing right where they continue to sell albums 10, 20, even 30 or more years after their founding, while the Millenial crap merchants will be forgotten in less than five? Hmm, I wonder.
* OCRemix.org, a site where individuals produce “remixes” based on game music. You would be surprised at the wide variety of musical styles represented there. Funny thing is, I checked the “about” section, and they were founded in 1999. So the streak continues unabated.
The whole point of rap is to be transgressive, to break the rules, to say what you are not allowed to say. It is definitely bad for nice kids to listen to, but nothing can be done about it.
The Ku Klux Klan said it would come to this.
I absolutely didn’t believe it.
Meatloaf came out of the closet shortly after the passing of Andrew Breitbart as being a republican,
I can’t believe how dirty I feel reading that. My children have never heard my husband or I use language like that but it scares me that if my blonde blue eyed child were to hear these songs and sing or say them at an inopportune time, the could end up in trouble, seriously injured, or worse because it’s ok for some to say but not for others. Once these words enter their vocabulary, they will be used. They are hateful, demeaning words no matter who is using them. We as a society have to either admit that some words are so inappropriate because of the hate or vulgarity they imply that no one may use them in public, or that they are acceptable and anyone may use them…
“… a way to create a worldview based on cognitive dissonance.” Precisely the goal.
Cant spell crap without rap..
Does anyone believe 20 years from now you will hear rap music transformed to elevator music. To me that is the definition of good music, inter generational.. Although my parents thought the Beatles were just making noise and singing YEA YEA YEA, they now hum along to Beatles music in the elevator.. I hear Stairway to Heaven and Hotel California as elevator music.. Dont think I will live long enough to hear Cop Killer as elevator music.. I hope not anyway…
Read Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons” for some insight into the attraction of this music to adolescents and 20-somethings. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being in a club where this stuff is being played you’ll see that what now passes for dancing is basically just boys and girls, and often girls and girls, and ocassionally boys and boys, grinding pelvises together on the dance floor. If it is a rowdier place or a house party, the addition of alcohol and drugs tends to make girls’ clothes fall off.
On the other hand, if you have teenagers or 20-somethings, maybe there are some things you’re better off not knowing about. I only relatively recently got two of my three twenty-somethings out of the house and still have one incarcerated with us, so I know more than I ever wanted to: think, “A Clockwork Orange.”
It can’t be that bad of a word if the alleged victims of it use it so frequently to refer to themselves.
We’ve all been brainwashed that this particular word is the epitome of all evil, because THEY don’t like US to say it ever. Never mind that it’s perfectly OK for THEM to use it without thinking twice.
Maybe if it was pronounced without the final R, it would be OK. It seems to work for THEM.
My 12 year old son immediately understood the problem with rap. He listened to a number of rap songs and groups and then took the time to listen to some other music because he thought rap performers did not have any real talent- his exact words: “I don’t know Dad, it is not music. I am not sure what it is but it aint music.” He also hated the sick love ballads my wife always plays from the 1980′s (Journey, Styx, REO, Heart, Bryan Adams) and thought that was all there was to music.
Then he played Guitar Hero and discovered rock and roll.
One of my proudest moments was when my then 13 year old son came into my office and asked: “Hey dad, have you ever heard of a band called Led Zeppelin?”
I told him Jimmy Page is one of the great guitar players of all time and he almost fell out of his chair when I showed him the OTHER Jimmy.
Zombie, this is indeed depressing. But one thing makes me happy, and that is the fact that you, a distant relative of this child, care more about her than her own family does. Why do I say that? Because you talked to her and became interested in her world, even to the extent of doing what I wouldn’t have the stomach for doing in listening to all that filth.
Don’t despair. The fact that you told her there were other types of music may one day lead her to seek it out! She doesn’t seem to know anything but this filth. That’s horrifying and sad. But kids remember things. She might remember this conversation and one day may seek out something better. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Thank you for your good work.
Here’s a Simpsons reference that illustrates why black people can use the n-word.
John: Queer?
Homer: Yeah, and that’s another thing! I resent you people using that word. That’s our word for making fun of you! We need it!! Well, I’m taking back our word, and I’m taking back my son!
The only reason these idiots use the stupidly-forbidden word Nigger (or nigger, whatever) is to get a rise out of anyone who’s stupid enough to care. It’s all about power. People with black noses saying we with white ones can’t use a word but they can. Well, have at it, Niggers.
Sorry but you are not hearing nigger, but hearing nigga. the day thye stop using the words will be the day I stop using them. Just like the NO_LIMIT_NIGGA in Fla. He was nothing but a young want to be criminal. deserved what he got. HE WAS high on DOPE
What is a parent? Where does one get a parent? How does one become a parent? These wonderful songs and the marvelous culture they are born from are the by-products of people, not yet adult, having and raising babies and trying to protect themselves and their babies from the real world. They do not know what a parent is. They do not know where to find a parent. They can never be parents; they can never make a home; they can never grow their babies into people. Their babies will live the same homeless lives they have lived. Drugs will help. There is a song in here somewhere.
Each generation in the past century or so has bemoaned the coarsening of the culture, but that does not mean that they were wrong. Since the end of the Victorian Era, the culture HAS been on a downhill slide.
It isn’t just that music, art, film, and literature have become more vulgar. We have seen the logical outworking of that vulgarity in people’s lives. The rates of illegitimacy, poverty, incarceration, divorce, etc, have all reached appalling levels.
To all the people who think this is somehow normal and not evidence of real decline, I riddle you this:
I’m in the same county in California where I went to high school in the 70s. There were no gangs, no drive-by shootings, and we didn’t even have a continuation (kick-out) school. Now we are so infested with gangs that we have to have three continuation sites, two just to segregate this main Mexican (Norteno/Sureno) factions from each other, and one where the staff tries to figure out who is salvageable as they are not yet clearly gang affiliated (the various black and Asian gang factions are there but much less numerous).
We have drive-bys all the time, not a week goes by without something bad. Lately there is a nasty racial element emerging between the blacks and Mexicans, this is happening all over the state but the “news” keeps it out. (The same week Trayvon was story #1 7 black teens in SoCal kicked a Mexican kid’s teeth out and videoed it to put on the internet). Please don’t tell me how abortion is down, that just means the 14-year olds (pregnant often by adult males) just have the kid to get on the programs, it’s a way of life (the Mexicans have gone totally to hell with this, they used to have a miniscule rate of teen pregnancy).
I used to live in Berkeley and work in Oakland, it’s just as bad there (except Berkeley is so proud of their low rate of teen pregnancy–which really means they use abortion as birth control).
What happened? Can you seriously argue that culturally our standards haven’t collapsed and this has not been transmitted into behavior?