TonyVanDam said:

not at all..what im saying is that its not a coincidence IMO that the rap music full of negative stereotypes is almost ALWAYS the hip hop pushed to the massess ESPECIALLY when white America finances most of it

LoveAlive said:

But who is also instrumental in pushing these negative stereotypes - Damon Dash, Rusell Simmons, P Diddy, Jay-Z. They are making a hell of a lot of money selling the Black thug image to the world.
And nobody put a gun to their heads forcing them to portray or profit off of these images, either ....
[Edited 5/20/05 14:20pm]

LoveAlive said:

But who is also instrumental in pushing these negative stereotypes - Damon Dash, Rusell Simmons, P Diddy, Jay-Z. They are making a hell of a lot of money selling the Black thug image to the world.
And nobody put a gun to their heads forcing them to portray or profit off of these images, either ....
[Edited 5/20/05 14:20pm]

LoveAlive said:

A lot of white racists love these images also. They see it as "black people staying in their place in the ghetto".

vainandy said:

RIGHT!!!!!

and I cant understand how these rappers and the consumers of it cant see that! Yes, some rappers may be getting rich off it BUT the lasting effects of this is gonna hurt way more!!!!! In the end, the rapper will be rich and living high off the hog while the people whose mind they helped to warp is suffering....this is what really puzzles me though..hip hop has the ear of the world now, why not turn the tables and put out some positive and empowering messages out to the youth.....I dont care what NOBODY says..hip hop today is not keepin it real at all!! Keepin it real was when all the rappers got together in 1988 and did the "Self Destruction" song...yall remember that? THATS what we need to hear today!

LoveAlive said:

I own "we're all in the same gang". Remember that song?

I agree wholeheartedly.

How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans
By BRENT STAPLES

African-American teenagers are beset on all sides by dangerous myths about race. The most poisonous one defines middle-class normalcy and achievement as "white," while embracing violence, illiteracy and drug dealing as "authentically" black. This fiction rears its head from time to time in films and literature. But it finds its most virulent expression in rap music, which started out with a broad palette of themes but has increasingly evolved into a medium for worshiping misogyny, materialism and murder.

This dangerous narrowing of hip-hop music would be reason for concern in any case. But it is especially troubling against the backdrop of the 1990's, when rappers provoked a real-world gang war by using recordings and music videos to insult and threaten rivals. Two of the music's biggest stars - Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. - were eventually shot to death.

People who pay only minimal attention to the rap world may have thought the killings would sober up the rap community. Not quite. The May cover of the hip-hop magazine Vibe was on the mark when it depicted fallen rappers standing among tombstones under the headline: "Hip-Hop Murders: Why Haven't We Learned Anything?"

The cover may have been prompted in part by a rivalry between two rappers that culminated in a shootout at a New York radio station, Hot 97, earlier this spring. The events that led up to the shooting show how recording labels now exploit violence to make and sell recordings.

At the center of that Hot 97 shootout was none other than 50 Cent, whose given name is Curtis Jackson III. Mr. Jackson is a confessed former drug dealer who seems to revel in the fact that he was shot several times while dealing in Queens. He has also made a career of "beef" recordings, in which he whips up controversy and heightens tension by insulting rival artists.

He was following this pattern in a radio interview in March when a rival showed up at the station. The story's murky, but it appears that the rival's entourage met Mr. Jackson's on the street, resulting in gunfire.

Mr. Jackson's on-air agitation was clearly timed to coincide with the release of "The Massacre," his grotesquely violent and misogynist compact disc. The CD cover depicts the artist standing before a wall adorned with weapons, pointing what appears to be a shotgun at the camera. The photographs in the liner notes depict every ghetto stereotype - the artist selling drugs, the artist in a gunfight - and includes a mock autopsy report that has been seen as a covert threat aimed at some of his critics.

The "Massacre" promotion raises the ante in a most destructive way. New artists, desperate for stardom, will say or do anything to win notice - and buzz - for their next projects. As the trend escalates, inner-city listeners who are already at risk of dying prematurely are being fed a toxic diet of rap cuts that glorify murder and make it seem perfectly normal to spend your life in prison.

Critics who have been angered by this trend have pointed at Jimmy Iovine, the music impresario whose Interscope Records reaped millions on gangster rap in the 90's. Mr. Iovine makes a convenient target as a white man who is lording over an essentially black art form. But also listed on "The Massacre" as an executive producer is the legendary rapper Dr. Dre, a black man who happens to be one of the most powerful people in the business. Dr. Dre has a unique vantage point on rap-related violence. He was co-founder of Death Row Records, an infamous California company that marketed West Coast rap in the 1990's and had a front-row seat for the feud that led to so much bloodshed back then.

The music business hopes to make a financial killing on a recently announced summer concert tour that is set to feature 50 Cent and the mega-selling rap star Eminem. But promoters will need to make heavy use of metal detectors to suppress the kind of gun-related violence that gangster artists celebrate. That this lethal genre of art has grown speaks volumes about the industry's greed and lack of self-control.

But trends like this reach a tipping point, when business as usual becomes unacceptable to the public as a whole. Judging from the rising hue and cry, hip-hop is just about there.

2 questions..

1. When did thugs develop a dress code? who determined that wearing clothes 4 times the size and hanging off ya butt is how a thug dresses?

2. Why is it that people who (by watching rap videos) "dress" like a thug and "act" like a thug and proclaim themselves a thug get mad when people out in society treat them like thugs by watching them in stores, etc?

And i dont care what anyone says, the hip hop explosion is rooted in racism. I dont care what anyone says!
[Edited 5/19/05 10:30am]

JANFAN4L said:

She notices kids and younger people today are not aware that they are being discriminated against when they go into stores and just in general. She picks up still the way whites interact with blacks and somehow a lot of younger black people have developed a "I don't give a f**k" (essentially "ignorant") attitude. She picks up on little nuances. And it's disturbingly sad.

Q-Tip
A Tribe Called Quest (by all accounts)

You have to afraid and be on the look out for your own personal safety. The first thing people notice about someone is their appearance. If someone comes towards you dressed like a thug, you have to worry if they really are a thug. I mean an actual, real-life thug is someone that rips people off and robs them. If someone looks like a thug, you can't wait around to see if he really is one or someone that just dresses like one. If you do, you're a damn fool.

What's rediculous is people that aren't thugs at all that are walking around dressed like one. It's getting harder and harder to distinguish between thugs and wannabe thugs. I was at work one day and was outside on a cigarette break. I saw two guys walking up the sidewalk coming towards me dressed like hardcore thugs. I continued smoking my cigarette but I eased my ass up against the door of the building so I could dart in if I needed to. As they walked past me, I could hear their conversation and, as it turned out, they sounded like two very well educated, black "preppy" kids that wouldn't hurt anyone.

This thug look is doing nothing but setting black people back. Black men in suits and ties have had a hard time, for years, getting a taxi cab to stop for them because of a racist white cab driver. Someone that looks like a thug is going to have a hard time getting a black cab driver to stop for them, let alone a white one.

namepeace said:

"with"

LoveAlive said:

When thugs started wearing them. But really, the baggy style started not out of style, but out of poverty. Many inner city youths, who were not of the then-growing black middle class could not afford to get new clothes all the time, so the "baggy" style was an attempt to hide the fact that the pants many were wearing were highwaters. It just went on from there. The shirts got longer, etc. Back in the day, if you dressed like a "thug" you were an ACTUAL LOW LIFE, somebody people knew not to associate with too much.

Well, take heart, everyone. These cats are still holdin' it down:

Common
Mos Def
MF Doom
De La Soul
The Roots
Quasimoto

and these cats are primed for comebacks:

Digable Planets
Q-Tip
A Tribe Called Quest (by all accounts)

namepeace said:

While we're at it, give Heartbeat Props to:

Digital Underground
Brand Nubians/Grand Puba
Jungle Brothers
Guru/Gangstarr
Lakim Shabazz
X-Clan
Public Enemy
Pharoah Monche
Camp Lo

JANFAN4L said:

Actually, the whole baggy pants look started in jail. Inmates were not allowed to have belts or string to keep their pants up. So once these inmates got out of jail, they somewhat took the style of "no belts on pants" with them. The jail mentality thus spread.

JANFAN4L said:

Actually, the whole baggy pants look started in jail. Inmates were not allowed to have belts or string to keep their pants up. So once these inmates got out of jail, they somewhat took the style of "no belts on pants" with them. The jail mentality thus spread.

This thread's topic should be discussed in every high school in America. Seriously.

It always makes me think back 2 a brilliant movie called "Bamboozled", which was a Spike Lee film that equated gangsta rap 2 a modern day minstrel show that perpetrated crude stereotypes and passing it off as entertainment. Worth a rent/netflix.

OF3RF13ND: Your uncle is a fine writer.

Hip-hop is the most revolutionary form of American music since jazz and early rock and roll. It has dominated the landscape for about 20 years. Its language is now used by presidents. It is the music of happiness, rage, rebellion and reality.

But it is lampooning itself to make a buck. Hip-hop now gladly embraces the very stereotypes that it fought. Those of the black man as a gleefully ignorant sexual predator who exploits women, romanticizes a life of crime, threatens everyone who crosses him, and confuses materialism with status. And guess who's been eating this up? The suburban white teens and young adults.

Don't get me wrong, the Ice Cubes, the Tupacs, the Scarfaces, the KRS-ONE's often rapped about crime but also about the consequences. These new cats revel in their own ignorance. The cultural zeitgeist now looks as these guys as exotic creatures, not human beings. These so-called MCs can buy whatever want, society still looks on them as dumb niggers, and the fact that they know that and love to be seen as that is a shame.

But this culture is affecting our kids, more than movies, more than other music, because hip-hop MCs sell themselves as real people, and thus real role models. Why do you think kids take to hip-hop? Problem is, these kids have a hard time with perspective, so they think the purpose of life is to pick up a mic or a MAC, but not a book.

Don't get me wrong. Much of hip-hop today is underappreciated and overlooked. Acts like De La Soul, MF Doom, Common, and yes, Kanye will be around for a while doing their thing. But hip-hop as a whole has lost its diversity and its purpose. Even most of the East Coast rappers are garbage these days.

Hopefully, like disco, the public will turn on hip-hop, the neo-minstrel MCs will vanish, and it will return to the underground.

This thread's topic should be discussed in every high school in America. Seriously.

It always makes me think back 2 a brilliant movie called "Bamboozled", which was a Spike Lee film that equated gangsta rap 2 a modern day minstrel show that perpetrated crude stereotypes and passing it off as entertainment. Worth a rent/netflix.