Reflection on Hip Hop for October 12th
I was channel surfing while I ate lunch the other day and there was an astounding amount of "nothing on"... I got to VH1 and I was kind of surprised that they were airing rap-- VH1 was always the slightly weak rock and pop holdout when I was in high school, the last time I really had much time and access to cable for channel surfing (not to suggest I have lots of free time now, but I have cable since I moved in with my stepdad)
Anyhow, I was surprised by what they were showing-- not rap videos or anything but like reality shows about hip hop culture... kinda. One was a preview of an upcoming show: Ice Cube taking suburban middle school students around the Bronx and showing them that the hood was a positive place, the preview showed Cube trying to teach the kids to be emcees and the whole crew walking around the Bronx...
After the preview ended, the general programming was about "the ghetto pass", talking about honoring White people who were "keepin it real" and being "authentic" in living life in the hood-- they talked a bit about eminem and gave Vanilla Ice as a counter example, they talked about how no Black people in the interviews actually had any clue what the word "wigger" meant (they laughed, "Yeah, that was probably made up by white people...") and they talked a bit about a really interesting guy I'd never heard of -- Mr White Folks, a white pimp who commented "You can't just come into the ghetto and act a certain way-- people will laugh at you... you have to live here for years before you're accepted." I turned off the television.
When I got Dru's e-mail about this week's reading, the link was messed up for me... I tried to correct it by taking out some of the stray characters, and wound up with an article about Black people in the Indie Rock movement that was a quick and interesting read...
Indie rock article
Anyway, I'm not sure if we were supposed to read that, but combined with Mr White Folks... (hrm.. let me find a link, I'm sure this guy has a page...) Hrm... Maybe he is a real street pimp, I can't find his homepage! Anyway, he's featured in this documentary: Pimps up, Hos down (I'm not attesting to having looked at that site! It warns abt adult content and I'm not in the mood!)
All that combined with the Styles P article has me thinking more and more about race in hip hop the week... I don't know... I feel like white people are at times really full of it when they do the hip hop thing sometimes... it totally depends on the person though... so much of our social identities are just big inflated acts... that said, in the States especially people of our generation are so self obsessed... who really cares who "you are" who gives two shits about "your statement"? For real... go make a change in the world and quit being so self important... It's tricky as college students because our role is to study and write and all that, but still, people walk around like knowing the latest CDs is going to make a difference in anyone's lives... what crap. People talk about holier than though stuff because they listen to "conscious" hip hop or because they're too good for hip hop or something, but it's seems to me that the point of "conscious" anything is that you go out and spread that word, you make an impact...
I was interviewing a Mason faculty for my capstone class and he mentioned how one folk singer who sang all these conscious activism songs said in an interview "Yeah, I don't go and do anything in these global situations, my role is just to sing about them" And that's fine... I don't mind if the artists aren't out feeding the poor, but the people who are buying into their stuff as an identity should be doing something... spreading the word or doing some service... instead people just get off on themselves "Yeah, I know all about everything hip hop" or "everything punk" or "everything rock" (or "Everything classical") Who cares?
That's definitely not where I thought I was going with this blog, but hey, it's good for what it is... Yeah, race and hip hop... I guess I'll save that for another time :)
Anyhow, I was surprised by what they were showing-- not rap videos or anything but like reality shows about hip hop culture... kinda. One was a preview of an upcoming show: Ice Cube taking suburban middle school students around the Bronx and showing them that the hood was a positive place, the preview showed Cube trying to teach the kids to be emcees and the whole crew walking around the Bronx...
After the preview ended, the general programming was about "the ghetto pass", talking about honoring White people who were "keepin it real" and being "authentic" in living life in the hood-- they talked a bit about eminem and gave Vanilla Ice as a counter example, they talked about how no Black people in the interviews actually had any clue what the word "wigger" meant (they laughed, "Yeah, that was probably made up by white people...") and they talked a bit about a really interesting guy I'd never heard of -- Mr White Folks, a white pimp who commented "You can't just come into the ghetto and act a certain way-- people will laugh at you... you have to live here for years before you're accepted." I turned off the television.
When I got Dru's e-mail about this week's reading, the link was messed up for me... I tried to correct it by taking out some of the stray characters, and wound up with an article about Black people in the Indie Rock movement that was a quick and interesting read...
Indie rock article
Anyway, I'm not sure if we were supposed to read that, but combined with Mr White Folks... (hrm.. let me find a link, I'm sure this guy has a page...) Hrm... Maybe he is a real street pimp, I can't find his homepage! Anyway, he's featured in this documentary: Pimps up, Hos down (I'm not attesting to having looked at that site! It warns abt adult content and I'm not in the mood!)
All that combined with the Styles P article has me thinking more and more about race in hip hop the week... I don't know... I feel like white people are at times really full of it when they do the hip hop thing sometimes... it totally depends on the person though... so much of our social identities are just big inflated acts... that said, in the States especially people of our generation are so self obsessed... who really cares who "you are" who gives two shits about "your statement"? For real... go make a change in the world and quit being so self important... It's tricky as college students because our role is to study and write and all that, but still, people walk around like knowing the latest CDs is going to make a difference in anyone's lives... what crap. People talk about holier than though stuff because they listen to "conscious" hip hop or because they're too good for hip hop or something, but it's seems to me that the point of "conscious" anything is that you go out and spread that word, you make an impact...
I was interviewing a Mason faculty for my capstone class and he mentioned how one folk singer who sang all these conscious activism songs said in an interview "Yeah, I don't go and do anything in these global situations, my role is just to sing about them" And that's fine... I don't mind if the artists aren't out feeding the poor, but the people who are buying into their stuff as an identity should be doing something... spreading the word or doing some service... instead people just get off on themselves "Yeah, I know all about everything hip hop" or "everything punk" or "everything rock" (or "Everything classical") Who cares?
That's definitely not where I thought I was going with this blog, but hey, it's good for what it is... Yeah, race and hip hop... I guess I'll save that for another time :)
posted by Unknown at 9:13 PM
1 Comments:
Oh yeah, I took gender representation in popular culture (which talked a lot about race, class & pop media) a year ago and we talked a bit about that TV show... (Black/White) Haven't seen it... know if it's on DVD or what network it's on?
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