In this blog:
**Cosby tells the truth and pays the price
**The Elvis-ification of Hip Hop
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Cosby: Whitey Isn't the Problem
There are certain truths about American life and culture that are unassailable, even if they don't necessarily make any sense: a blowjob in a movie will get an "NC-17" rating, but you can literally blow somebody's head off and get an R as long as there's not too much blood...pro wrestling is fake and people love it for that reason, but pro boxing is often rigged and people call it a travesty...and you can be as white as Donny Osmond but talk like Snoop Dogg and be cool, but be black and have a vocabulary like William F. Buckley and you're a "sellout". Try and figure that shit out.
When legendary comic/actor/civil rights leader/philanderer (oops, how did that get in there?) Bill Cosby first spoke out about his take on some of the problems in the black community at an NAACP forum a month or so ago, he got a flak from Black leaders in many in the community for appearing to be "classist" and overly derogatory towards the members of America's black underclass. He reiterated many of those same statements at a meeting of civil rights leader/philanderer Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition today in Chicago. Although his tone and manner may be condescending and imperious, I have to admit that a lot of what Cosby has to say about Black folk these days is true. We don't place a high enough value on education. We do belittle people in our own race for sounding and dressing "too White" (even though almost every facet of American speech and style can trace some of its roots to American black culture). We do have too many incidents of spousal abuse, too much drug abuse, not enough of our kids in college, too many of them in jail. In almost every Black ghetto in America you find somebody driving an Escalade or a even a lesser cars with nice rims or a tricked out stereo--but no one owns a house or runs their own business. Cosby wants to know what happened to us and he lays the blame squarely on our own attitudes, our own laziness, our own inability to get out of our own way. He says it's become "analgesic" for us to blame the White man when we should look in the mirror and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
Bravo, I say. Is Cosby being too simplistic? Of course. Is there an element of being holier-than-thou in what Cosby says? Sure, but frankly he's been that way for forty years. He is consistent and he makes strong points. What are Black people doing to promote the value of education in our communties? Why do we think it's cool to refer to ourselves as niggas, bitches and ho's? And how many CEO's talk like that? America was built on the back of slave labor and the blood of the Native Americans, but we can't keep looking backwards and playing the victim. Of course there is discrimination, a biased criminal justice system, a government that clandestinely funnels drugs into our communities, racial bias, racial profiling and stereotyping. But this could be overcome if we as Black people banded together and used all of this as a motivator and a means of saying "fuck you" to the Establishment. If we invested more and spent less. If we appreciated the value of tomorrow, more than the happiness of today.
You'll hear a lot of "hip" black folks who are "keepin' it real", by trashing what Cosby has to say and calling him a sellout. They will through their ignorance however, go a long way toward proving his point as the most "real" thing will be that nothing has changed.
Don't Matter If You're Black or White? Not in Pop Music
Unlike Cosby or pain-in-the-ass essayist Stanley Crouch, I don't dismiss hip hop and rap as some kind of low class, non-art form. Or the contrary, it is the dominant and most creative form of musical and cultural expression today and while it's slangs and rhythms may drive Cosby, Crouch and occasionally myself crazy, there's no doubt that the best of rap music has a lot to say, moves us, makes us dance, want to make love, in short does all the things that great pop music is supposed to do. It is a great African-American art form.
So great and dominant in fact that it was inevitable that hipster music critics of all races would start to overpraise and overhype those few White faces that began to make noise in the art form. I'm not talking about Eminem--whatever you think of his content, if you have ears his skills are readily apparent. But I've often wondered about the effusive praise given over the years to acts like Everlast, 3rd Bass, Bubba Sparxx and even those New York, old school legends, The Beastie Boys. Just like America needs a Great White Hope in the boxing ring every few years, the music cognoscenti are looking to annoint the next Great White Rapper.
Don't get me wrong--Paul's Boutique is a legitimate masterpiece. So are parts of Ill Communication. The Beastie Boys' latest, To the 5 Boroughs has it's moments, especially early in the album. But if any significant black hip-hop group had as uneven and sporadic an output as the Beasties have over the years, they wouldn't merit a 5-star review from Rolling Stone or the kind of press coverage the Beastie Boys get. That's just the American way, I guess. As an example of the racism that does exist in America, a group like the Beastie Boys gets to have a comeback--maybe multiple comebacks. Public Enemy made relevant music years after "Fight the Power", but when grunge blunted the initial rap revolution of the late 80's, P.E. faded into the background and never could get their stride again.
For every overpraised effort by a white hip-hopper, there are four largely ignored efforts by worthy black rappers, especially in the alternative hip hop scene. Mos Def's Black on Both Sides should be required listening for any rap fan, but it barely got any airplay when it came out in 1999 and now Mos Def is mostly known as an actor and the host of Def Poetry Jam. Meanwhile, we get soundalike thug gangstas like 50 Cent, Ja Rule and Shyne jammed down our throats and of course, folks like Sparxx and "rap-rockers" like Fred Durst and Kid Rock. (One exception--the mixed hip-hop duo Atmosphere, which has toiled on the verge of success for years and is just now getting their due.)
Well, such as it is and will probably always be. Being co-opted is the sincerest form of flattery. Of course, I admit I have the new Beastie Boys album--it's not like it sucks. But to hear some critics, you'd think it was the second coming of Paid In Full, and it's not all that. Let the music and the lyrics drive the hype, not the color of the artist's skin.
Peace...and Happy 4th of July.
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