roachboy

it seems to me that to address anything about the opening post coherently, you have to seperate the stories of young damaged children from hip-hop in general.
the story is about damaged children--in this story, hiphop becomes a simple-minded way of rationalizing the damage, one that enables the poster to blame a cultural form for the effects inflicted by social organization--class ideology, the implications of that ideology on education, the results of education as strict instrument of class reproduction in the states, the effects of the existing segregated social order on families, etc.....

it is much easier to blame hip-hop.

it is also ridiculous.

in general i agree with the folk above like jazz and costello, but only in general...it seems that everything that is being said about hip hop somes from the outside, looking at it as it gets staged across videos, or as the commercially dominant forms have become over the past few years---and i think what folk have said about conscious hip-hop covers the main objections that one could have on this level....

but how do folk imagine one assimilates hip-hop?
do you imagine that it is completely a matter of emulating the superficial elements (which is what capitalism offers everyone--surfaces--festishes...)
so like other folk have said, one motivation of the opening post is a reaction to hip-hop as corporate "music"---to what the corporate actors in "the market" have reduced it to in their quest for maximum profits for themselves (certainly not for the artists....)
and what the corporate-dominated relay systems (radio, tv) choose to reduce hip hop to.
a more coherent response to this situation called "rap" in the opening post would be to make basic seperations within hip hop and then think about the extent to which corporate music is trafficking in reducing it to a series of fantasies of wealth. and oppose that---argue that **this general kind** of hip-hop is complicit in extending the damage inflicted by american social organization on these kids to the extent that it colonizes their dreams....with fantasies of based on exactly the same bourgeois fetishization of wealth that probably drives the opening posters (and many other people's) world in different, more "acceptable" sectors...the "american dream" for example...blah blah blah....

but we do not get that here.

if you imagine that the above are the only ways to reapond to hip-hop, then you contradict one of the most interesting things about it, which is the rejection of passive consumption--think about what turntablists do to albums--they make albums from products designed for consumption (you sit, you listen, nice puppy) into objects that form the base for more creativity...where is the problem with that? it involves a radical rethinking of the relation to commodities, one that runs well outside the relations i expect most middle class types who wring their hands about the corruptions engendered by hip hop have to any of the objects they surround themselves with....

you should try to do what turntablists do before you talk shit about the form.
you have no idea.

have you tried to freestyle? or rap set lyrics even? it is not a simple as it appears to be....where is the problem with exposing kids to the possibilities of making poetry and situating that poetry in a particular musical context?
where is the problem with kids experimenting with poetry?

you might not like the kind of poetry---at worst, it is very straight conceptually underneath the slang--but at its best, it can be a marvel--listen to some of the tracks rakim has released for example---in the ghetto from "let the rhythm hit em" or lyrics of fury from "follow the leader"---or in a somewhat more clunky vein. p.e.: or mos def or talib kweli...or krs (check "my philosophy" for another example)

is the problem that you do not like this as poetry?
because it is not suitably--well what? bourgeois? "mainstream"?
because it expresses something of the radical class and spatial modes of segregation of america?
because you do not want to have to see the effects of the mode of social organization that you work to normalize?
are we still in a version of the old w.e.b. dubois vs. booker t washington debate about embourgeoisement, wrapped up in a new package?
is the problem that you would prefer to see a single, middle-class english, and resent the valorization of spoken english in what labov called the general frame of "black english"?

but back to hip hop: how does a form that encourages a very active manipulation and bending of language a bad thing?
who does it "hold back"?

you should try out writing in this mode and rapping before you talk shit about hip hop.
again, you have no idea.

if you not approve of the illusion that is portrayed in the commercial sectors that anyone who raps will necessarily become a big star? well then why not reject all of popular music on the same grounds? because the same argument has been recycled through almost all of it since the 1950s--it is fundamental to the "popular" aspect of popular music--from rock to punk to electronica--all of it at one level or another traffics in the idea that the players are just like the audience, that music is just a question of shifting gears a little, learning a few basic moves, then wealth and fame necessarily follow...
but here too, you get another classical trope from the wonderful world of capitalist culture--the one that eliminates practice, that eliminates process, which is predicated on complete ignorance of what music actually requires. you reduce a way of life to a series of gestures.
you do that and you eliminate music along with it.
hip hop does not do that.
hang out in/around any underground hip hop scene and you will have your ears pinned back.

so. this is already too long. sorry about that.
but this kind of argument really irritates me.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite