everyone is talking about how much rap music is gross and filthy, consumerist, nasty, iced out, played out, raunchy, disrespectful, decaying society and how it has people forcing other people to say horrible things to even other people. they say the music videos look like commercials for diamond mines, with girls who have found new ways to shake stuff, that well, they shake stuff that…um…extra shakes. and that these poor poor women are not career minded but helpless damsels who are forced to learn moves for a guy a dream and a camera. not just women trying to advance their careers by getting work that will have their faces on more television sets than they ever would have imagined. and what is so bad about the human body these days??? (flashbacks to janet and justin…alright it happened…what i want to know is who died from it?)
i have digressed.
so rap is the new bad guy? and we have people calling for its head on a platter, a styrofoam plate…its cleansing…its sanitization. stop the use of the n-word, the b-word, the h-word. and then i read an article where there was like a parade/funeral for a word…a word? and all this criticism magnified after a rambling man in a cowboy hat who mumbles personally subjected a group of collegiate academically minded women to like loose street walkers. and we are to believe that because don imus listened to a rap cd or was so moved by spike lee’s film *school daze* he thought he could ‘go there.’ i bet he’s never even listened to a rap cd but what he did was personally slander a group of women he didn’t even know. and he subjected their integrity (i’m putting this very very lightly) and as a media personality he has to adhere to the contractual agreement between him and his employer. he misspoke and had to pay the consequences.
what if rap music did sanitize itself? no men and women wearing nothing but stuffy hugo boss and dolce and gabbana suits, rappers wearing fossil watches instead of cartier. girls shaking but only to beat infusing songs with dances that only look like a mild round of the ‘macarena’ or my ‘go to safety’ dance, a non-sensual robot. always peppered with a wry smile. always. no cars. well cars, but nothing but kias, and the occasional ford escort or maybe nothing more than a mazda six. pickup trucks welcome. and the occasional beatifically sleek range rover…only if it’s been toppled like that saddam hussein statue and drug throughout the streets of the atl by a small child, with people beating the tires of it with brown sandals and ultra bright white keds.
so the new face of rap. songs that only talk about love and hate in the guise of a four year old sing song rhyme or to a mother goose track. an album cover devoid of style or statement.
so are you meaning to tell me that once rap does an ‘about face’ all of a sudden, crime will disappear? women will be more respected? racism, homophobia and sexism will be gone? poverty over? we will have better and universal health care? the job market will explode and everyone who wants a job will get one? that our educational system will supply every school with the necessary tools and technology to compete with the rest of the world? that illiteracy will be non-existent? that abortions will decrease in number and all of a sudden everyone’s language will be grammatically correct? that high blood pressure, cancer and gas prices will be on a massive decline and hiv/aids gone?
is that what they are trying to tell me? that smaller t-shirts and the elimination of baggy jeans (and for the record, i have always dug baggy jeans on dudes) but that this small fashion adjustment will better a people, will better our country? and that an ignorant rambling media personality will never say another offensive thing? and no racist, sexist homophobic, mean hurtful thing will ever be said or done?
is that the message? if so. if we allow ourselves to believe that…our true problems have only begun.
but if this works. if the censoring of rap music works. where will the censoring end? if you cleanse lyrics, you have to extend it to every genre of music to any time period. you have to therefore cleanse artwork and museums, history books, plays, musicals, magazines, books, advertisements, tv programs (where anytime between 8pm-11pm is a gore-fest of crime. and ‘desperate housewives’ isn’t known for being exactly moral), poets, writers, media personalities who are critical will have to burn some of the books they’ve written (mr. o’reilly), and not support their poet friends who use ‘questionable’ language. then what next, the cleansing of our minds? thought police? the stuff that writers have been detailing for a long time as a cultural possibility? and for those who don’t like the praise of ‘things’ (cars, watches, clothes, drinks, chains) but align each tv show or magazine with ads to sell things…um, double standard?
if words will be banned, can i sue a guy for saying “muthereffer!!” after slamming his finger in his car door? can i? can i?
where would it stop?
music censoring already occurs on the radio and it should. to only get the nasty you gotta buy it. to not see the girls shakin like bacon, you gotta use your remote and flicker past the station. if you worry what your kids are watching, talk to them about it and listen to what they are listening to. when they are away from your watchful gaze, they will need you in their subsconscious. discuss it. to look into this rap issue better, you gotta actually listen to the words. what are they really saying? i listen to too much of the other stuff to be really proficient in this issue. but think about it…cause it’s not what you think.
or is it?
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