Bourgeois Negros vs Hip-Hop

[mfuqua23]

Bourgeois Negros vs Hip-Hop (AKA) "What the F**k Happened to Black Popular Music?" By Paradise Gray of X-Clan

Like a retired old basketball player coming out to criticize the latest crop of NBA players, another elitist bourgeois old ass jazz musician Mr. Kenny Drew, Jr. attacks Hip-Hop, this @#%$ is getting old.

This kind of ranting is so common that I have to this date ignored picking them apart as they offer no mental challenge nor intellectual competition or worthy debate. However I'm on a long car trip and I'm bored so I'll have some fun and set this up like a court case so that I can get Hip-Hop some JUSTICE: (please copy and paste this on forums whenever this issue comes up again, and it will). - Paradise 2006

Read this article, to understand what this is all about:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21243

Case: Bourgeois Negros -vs- Hip-Hop (AKA) "What the F**k Happened to Black Popular Music?"

Prosecutor: Kenny Drew, Jr.

Plaintiff: Bourgeois Negros

Defendant: Hip-Hop

Defense Attorney: Claude Paradise Gray

(Closing Arguments):

*Prosecution: Mr. Kenny Drew, Jr. - What the F**k Happened to Black Popular Music?

*Defense: Mr. Claude Paradise Gray - The same thing that happened to Black People. It was stolen, en-slaved, co-opted, integrated and brainwashed!

Prosecution: "You may wonder why I'm talking about popular music in this first installment, since I am generally thought of as a "jazz" musician".

Defense: No wonder at all! You wanted attention and you knew there was no controversy in discussing "Jazz" in 2006, so you are doing what everyone else does. Play the Hip-hop card. But there will be no easy win on this day as I am going to prove to you the ladies and gentlemen of the jury today, that my client "Hip-hop" is innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt. And yes today there will be the use of the infamous "N" word "NOT GUILTY"!

Okay, first off wasn't Jazz like stolen off of our elders by guys like Kenny G and Yanni?

It would seem to me that you would have a more important fight on your hands than attacking your children's music. Didn't your parents hate your music? It's time for yall to grow the hell up already. Is this the best generation for White music? There are no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith's or Elvis's running around right now either. And the same lyrical content that is popular in Hip-hop is present in all of today's young music regardless of race. Heavy Metal, Dance Hall reggae, Reggaeton you name it, if it's young and American, it is laden with drugs, money and sex. It's not even limited to music, it's in Movies and T.V. Have you seen today's video games? Try comparing the Grand Theft Auto Series to Pac-Man, Pong or The Mario Brothers games!

While true that the current image that is the industry favorite marketing scheme is a the menacing face of a athletically built young Blackman, did Hip-hop create this image or is it the same warmed over image passed down from your generation that started this fire? You do remember Shaft, Super-fly, Sweet Daddies Badass, Foxy Brown? The image that you describe could easily have been a Truck Turner poster could it not? The whole Pimp, Player, Hustler image is a throwback to the to black exploitation era and yes my brothers and sisters if you hadn't noticed, we are still being exploited in 2006. Did you even see the movie that you are criticizing? "Get Rich Or Die Trying" by 50 Cent? In the movie 50's character respected women, was very sensitive, a good caring father and showed an incredible amount of restraint even after being confronted with the death of his mother, and almost being killed himself, flipping the script by successfully trading drug dealing for music (as he has done in real life) 50 is to be commended for portraying such a strong Blackman in today's sell-out market.

Prosecution: "And if 50 Cent was really shot nine times, why couldn't one of those bullets have hit a vital organ?"

Defense: Why are you calling for this man's blood, does he really deserve to be dead, what crime did he commit against you?

It seems that the streets also have a problem with 50 now, unbelievably he is "NOT" gangster enough for them, it takes real blood baths and massive jail sentences to maintain street credibility now. I've heard that some major labels encourage criminal activity and use every opportunity to use this as marketing and promotion. Urban magazines such as The Source and XXL (both white owned) have seen jail issues become best sellers.

Why do so many older cats act like they are so disconnected from Hip-hop?

Could it be because they ran off on the black community so long ago that they don't even recognize their own children? They can't understand the lyrics, they can't feel the rythmic vibrations of the drums, they hate the way we dress, our cadence, our rebellious nature, they act as if they hate everything about Hip-hop. Could it be because Hip-hop is the sound of abandonment, the sound of pain, a call for help, a ghetto 911. Other signs of our demise are: Crack, Gangs, Murder, Joblessness, no health care, homelessness, no proper education and being poor in general. Life is not imitating the ways of Hip-hop, rap music is catering to the vampire like blood thirsty lust of America. It allows young white males from the ages of 13 24 to live the inner city experience vicariously. Rap music has sold 75f it's CD's in the past 10 years to this coveted demographic.

Prosecution: "How the hell did we get from "Just to be Close to You Girl" to "Back That Ass Up Bitch"? How the hell did we get from "What's Goin' On" and "You Haven't Done Nothin' " to "Me So Horny" and "My Hump"?"

Defense: I Object!

This is an attempt to sterilize your musical culture while condemning ours, as if there were no drug use among some of the most prominent Jazz and Rhythm & Blues artists such as Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix and Billie Holiday just to name a few. How about lyrical content? How about Blowfly? Millie Jackson? Be fair, don't compare apples & oranges. Let's talk about comparing all the way back to Clarence Carters - Strokin'? How about "I Got Ya" By Joe Tex? Rick James signing about Mary Jane (WEED), Elton John's Lucy In the Sky With Diamond (LSD). Billy Paul's "Me And Mrs. Jones", he was Jones'ing for some Heroin. And don't tell me that Johnny Guitar Watson wasn't Pimping on his album covers. How about the Isley Brothers? The Ohio "Players". C'mon the word "Jazz" itself means to "@#%$" how much of a hypocrisy is this?

Doe's Hip-hop have any positive values, doe's it have no artists who are alternatives to the corporate cookie cutter sound and marketing? Of course it does. Who can forget the uplifting messages of peace, hope and spirituality in the lyrics of Africa Bambaataa And The Soul Sonic Force, KRS-1 or the Poor Righteous Teachers. Or the social consciousness and protest messages in the lyrics of X-Clan, Public Enemy, The Coup, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Paris, Common, Rakim, Dead Pres, Kanye West. If the only reference of knowledge that you have of Hip-hop is given to you by corporate America i.e.: Commercial Radio, BET, MTV, then you get what you ask for! I'll bet that you dug deep to acquire your knowledge of Jazz and R&B and are quite "THE MAN" at parties because of this fact. Why did Hip-hop not rate the same treatment?

We can even get a lil' eclectic: A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, PM Dawn, The Jungle Brothers, Kwame', Kool Kieth, The Boo Yaa Tribe.

Prosecution: "Since only one element of music is present in most of this crap it doesn't even justify being called music."

Defense: You insult a generation of young wonderful people when you insinuate that J DILLA did not create music or that the music he created was one dimensional. How about "The Roots"? How about the Philly Sounds pioneered by D.J. Jazzy Jeff? Isn't he Hip-hop enough for you? Ever hear Premier's (Gangstar) sound? Teddy Riley = Hip-hop. Can't you appreciate the multi-layered compositions of Public Enemy's "Bomb Squad". Kanye West is Hip-hop, Lupe Fiasco is Hip-hop, The Force MD's are Hip-hop and I'll put some LL Cool J up against a R&B love song or two anytime.

While I can sympathize with your frustration as an artist, I can't empathize. Let's get back to picking apart your ill-thought tirade.

Prosecution: "So what's the solution here? Damned if I know!"

Defense: I knew you were going to say that! People like you never have any SOLUTIONS! The worst part of this is that it's not really rocket science.

Here are a few solutions. (WARNING ACTUAL SOLUTIONS FOLLOW). This may cause irritation in some individuals:

- Start a youth music learning program, similar to the African American Music Institute in Pittsburgh. (Or send them a check).

- Use your expertise to work with young Hip-hop producers on musicianship

- Encourage as many old school and current Jazz artists as possible to reach out and mentor young people, collaborate with them.

- Instead of "killing the messengers" who talk about the squalid conditions of the inner city hoods let's actually do something about the conditions.

- Instead of mad flaming rants dis-respecting artists that we don't like, identify good artists with positive music and promote them.

Prosecution: "I find it offensive that any record company would try to make a profit from glorifying something that has decimated the black community the way that crack has".

Defense: So do I. What are you gonna do about it? You make no suggestions about the problem being the multi-media corporations themselves. They are the ones in control and they have the power to make the changes if they are forced to.

You wanna boycott? Boycott the corporations that sponsor negative images of our people.

We are so quick to jump on our own people, think BIG.

Boycott Record Companies themselves not the individual artists.

Boycott BET, MTV, TV studios, Movie Studios, radio stations and their sponsors. You wouldn't even have to start one, you could join the Universal Zulu Nation's Boycott.

My last suggestion to you Mr. Kenny Drew, Jr. is for you to please SHUT THE @#%$ UP!

It's better to let someone assume that you are an idiot, than to open your big mouth and confirm it.

Hip-hop doesn't suck - You Do.

I hope that you will recycle the big ass bottles that all the Haterade you've been drinking came in.

I rest my case.

Claude Paradise Gray

Public Defender for Hip-Hop

http://www.myspace.com/paradisegray

Original Source: Davey D

[viber_91]

This was a good read! Thanx mfuqua23!

[ash trey]

Whoa that defensive guy shouldbe a lawyer! I just loved the fact that he was able to defend hip hop without even disrespecting contemporary artists like 50 cent and paying respects to real artists and legends.Thanks for that FuQ!

[Schnazz]

Interesting read, but I think both sides made pretty bad arguements.

The prosecution was seriously generalizing rap. There is a lot of rap that is musically complex, much more so than drum machines. And there is rap that has "positive" lyrics. But he does have a point, a whole lot of modern rap is how he describes it, at least lyrically.

The defense did have a good point that all media is moving in a more violent, sexist, and lude direction. However, most artists that the prosecution lifted up as examples of how bad rap is are from the current generation of rappers, while most of the artists that the defense showed of the positive side of rap are from quite some time ago. Not exactly comparing apples to apples. Further, the defense jumped all over the prosecution for just complaining and not doing anything and not having any answers. That's flat wrong, the defense was doing something (in writing an article to draw peoples attention to it) and did provide some avenues for counter-acting rap. Community action, picketing records companies, boycotting rap, and organizing a "rap sucks" movement.

[bigted]

Yeah both sides had flaws in their arguments but the main point of the article brings the same argument of old school vs. new school, the prosecution was talking about how it was better back then while the defense was calling the prosecution bitter, I could see points from both sides, the defense is right that it wasn't like there wasn't violence in entertainment and society before hip-hop even came along, hip-hop can't be blamed for all the violence out there, and the prosecution is right that record companies shouldn't only be trying to glorify violence... I don't think that the prosecution's necessarily bitter, he's not being an uncle tom or being bougie, he's calling a spade a spade, he's saying what Will said on the track "Lost and Found", some contemporary fans might point to Will as being bitter as well but he's being honest, people can't handle the truth, hip-hop as an artform has fallen off on the mainstream level, there really isn't much balance, basically most platinum rappers disrespect women and have violent elements in 90% of the videos and songs on the airwaves, while positive rappers like Kel Spencer can't even get a major label to sign them 'cause they ain't marketable enough for the audience that's fascinated by the violent and sexual elements, it ain't an even playing field for balance, and like the defense said violent music was always there but there was always an alternative which is the point he won't admit...

There's not much alternative now, at least on a mainstream level, the defense knows that too that's why he basically talks about the postive side of hip-hop being from a long time ago, it's hard to know about Talib Kweli if you don't see him on TV that much as 50 Cent like when you saw Tribe Called Quest as much as you saw NWA 15 years ago, sure like the defense said there could be a boycott of record labels but it ain't gonna change as long as the general public ignores the positive side of hip-hop, it's gonna stay generalised as a violent and perverted music genre that's not very artistic... Btw Chuck D's latest terrordome on publicenemy.com from a couple weeks ago seems to go well with this topic about how gangsta rap seems to be the steroids of hip-hop in a sense that once gangsta rap blew up hip-hop became more marketable, record labels saw that millions were fascinated by the violent images so more gangsta rappers started to get signed by major labels while the conscious rappers started be ignored and thrown to the side, as long as these kids who make up the majority of album sales stay fascinated by gangsta rap things won't change, you can't expect these gangsta rappers to clean up their act if they're selling millions from it, the ironic thing is though that gangsta rap was created to bring awareness to clean up violence but record companies turned out to monopolize off of it and it became less artistic and watered down to what we have today where it's about as formatic as any other pop music and there's less awareness since it now is something that glorifies violence and of course the murdering of a lot of these popular rappers like Biggie, 2Pac, and recently Proof really supplies more fuel for people to criticise hip-hop, check the terrodome anyways:

GANGSTA: The Steroids Of Hip Hop?

June 16, 2006

Living in America makes it always time it pull out the race card. I really smell race stench on the MLB back turning on Barry Bonds this year as he passed the Babe. Not so much in the media itself , but in the atmosphere they fester in their big payback to BBs so called 'career surliness' toward them. The media kind of lets the average sports ( usually white) working class male pull the pin to the grenade they plant, and step back and witness the perfect storm. Fed right into a millennium lynch mob. The Babe will always be a hero, regardless of how much pork was in some of those ingested hot dogs, liquor binges, and chick orgies in his career and especially the year he almost overdosed in all that excess.

It's much of the same demographic that has supported the posturing of gangster rap. Who am I to argue? As I named the group Public Enemy off what I knew was a fascination of 1930's Capone era lifestyle. In the depression era , the gangster was blown up by the media to the largely skeptical Americanation. It was like modern day Robin Hood fantasies come to life or at least the big screen when that aura was passed from the Capones' and Schultzes' to the Edward G Robinsons and George Rafts depicting them. Escapism in rough times.

Like a sport. As with war and cowboy westerns, television era brought guns to the living room during the baby boom. The first eleven years of my life were Vietnamed with violence. Cartoons were laced with bombing, lasers, and thunderous blows in fights, at least the ones I dug. During the depression era of R&B (Reagan and Bush) the imagery of the updated Robin Hood came in rap music. Somehow crack and guns were in post disco black neighborhoods while kept outside of the white privileged Rubelled fueled cocaine laced Studio 54. Its the 80's and as presented by NWA ...surprise niggers, uh I mean niggas..yeah..WTF?

At college radio WBAU around 1985, KING TEE painted a picture to us in the east first depicting that life wasn't all 'soul train dancers and palm trees in the left coast. Better Get A Gun was the name of the record. Caught my attention. ICEburg T brought the tales of that life to the wax , depicting the details of the good, bad, and the ugly. The South Bronx escapism from the reality of thuglife 1980 style was peace, love, unity and having much fun rather than witnessing the broken glass everywhere. Nobody there wanted to hear no depressing sht. It was already right thurr. By 1987 Scott LaRock and blastmaster KRS ONE brought that reality to east coast rap wax with Criminal Minded. Well the answers were no where to be found on who was gonna fix the ghetto. Not Reagan, Nor the next prez Bush. PE found a way to flip all this gun fare and criminality in the air and morph it into black nationality on the remembrance edges of militancy.

By that time white kids invited to the hip hop party through the portals of FLASH, RUN-DMC and The BEASTIES had to walk gingerly on the black paper rug laid down of afrocentricity. It was a entrance fee of respect beyond the registers of retail.

NWA and the POSSE one upped the lyrical pictures of ICE T with a super team of emcees along with a west coast master of records named DR DRE, who produced with the WRECKING CREW and made early mixtapes of largely East coast rap joints sold at the swap meets( I clearly remember a swap meet outside in the parking lot of the San Diego Sports Arena in 1987, where the ever intimidating ERIC B single handedly confiscated every tape he saw with his music on it from sellers he placed fear upon). I think back then it was the good and evil that balanced upon the shoulders of NWA, the righteousness that made DRE say he wouldn't give into the drug-game at the time so easily when he claimed he didn't smoke weed or cess. Crack and mo guns spread to the cities in 1987-1990, the media bias considered everything outside NYC lines the suburbs, and thus called it that way.

The cable privileged side of YO MTV Raps swelled up at the bravado of the black gangsta though. Black guns, style and maybe some ass in the living room on the sneak tip. Besides the nationalism was a bit too much of a price to pay , where maybe NATIVE TONGUE style invited those to the peace, love, unity and having fun thing as BAM intended. The other flip was that the spread of urban reality into the first Bushsht years, brought the aspect of gangsterism as escapism. The Source immediately praises the gangsta black life because the numbers of fascination were higher, and they never knew it existed in the first place. Black folks in the east were tired of the reality of gangsta life. But something was sold under the counter. Maybe via Viacom. Possibly dragging along everything in its path as well. The key balance of conscious ICE CUBE defected to the east keeping the balance, while NWA spiraled to being 'Niggas for the rest of their lives to white amerikkkas praise.

By this time it was about numbers and the quantity was king over the quality of the issues at hand. There was no looking back as one year the Source claimed that everything that sprouted from the Straight Outta Compton existence had generated into tens of millions of records, white the PE, BDP-XCLANish stuff only resulted in a couple million. The numbers were staggering al the way up to these Get Rich Or Die Trying times. Through the murders of PAC, BIG, BIG L, MAC DRE etc , the style was the dominant identity praised by the media. The films followed path of the modern day rapper classic 'SCARFACE' ( which by the way I think is the most mis-followed movie of all time. The world is never his and people ignore his wackass ending...hello? .. there's a message here..)

Seventeen years stemmed from the seed it could've went either way. Taking the reality and making a better situation from it. But the numbers don't lie. It is what it is. 'Die nigger Die' is amerikkkas longest running profitable horror flick. But its a horror flick to my constituency, possibly a chitlin western porno, possibly comedy to the Barry Bonds hating crowd. A sad documentary, in fact, not a friendly game of baseball as MAIN SOURCE said. It might be what it is Amerikkkan like baseball, hot dogs and big apple pie,but let's check the bat and the blood, before it splinters and splatters into the basics of what was originally intended to do. Balance yall.

Edited July 12, 2006 by bigted