I dont listen to hip hop because I wouldnt feel comfortable listening to the same people i hate to see in the street

Pffft. No.

I listen to Burzum, go figure.

It depends on the crime and "how much" of a fan I am of the artist...but,

generally, NO

AURA712 said:

How about burning a couple of churches, murdering people and starting a neo-nazist movement of your own?

novabrkr said:

Burning churches is bad? That's only property which serves as a place to spread hate.

Would burning down a kkk meeting place be bad? Same thing.

dogmaiswrong said:

Oh, that reminds me, Varg hates blacks too.

R.Kelly and that is only cause I saw his trifling ass on dvd!! I was leaning heavily toward MJ...But I need more proof in his case!!
[Edited 1/18/07 9:55am]

tonyat said:

At least r. kelly didn;t force anyone. He has been sleeping with 14 year olds for a while. MANY famous people have done the same thing. His brothers allegations however are serious; i hope they aren't true(beating his wife, abusing his niece etc).

MJ; go onto the smoking gun and look at the case jordy filed in 1993; it contains sick detailed desciptions; page after page. You can not possibly think all that is made up after you read it. Jordy has no relationship with his parents at all these days so it;s obvious they weren't in on it together and he is hurt by how they handled it and didn;lt have his best wishes(his money hungry father). Note there is people in this world who make money off their own kids being sexually abused; i will not bring up specifics but it's obvious the father tried to make money out of the situation.
The former head of security for MJ who hasn't sold a book or anything and is a kind family man said he didn;t see ANY ILLEGAL touching but he saw MJ cuddle up to boys on the ride and one 13 year old said 'no, f*ck off' after MJ spoke to him. This happened a couple of times and the boy looked totally shocked at what Jacko said. The guard said the rides had large seats yet jackson insisted on sitting right next to the boy.
I have studied body language and seen shows with some of these people analysed and The guard was telling the truth. There is also the man who had the phone conversation with MJ as a kid and MJ brought up sex and masturbation which is not appropriate at all.

At the least Jacko is obsessed with little boys; sexual or not. However there is also some liars involved who make up stuff which may be based on fact. If anyone witnessed any molesting and din;t say anything then they are no better than jacko.

I've always been a big Rick James fan and when he committed his crimes, I still remained a Rick James fan. The crimes don't change the music from being good. Also, with Rick James, his crimes were just like he was.....wild, outrageous and freaky. He didn't commit some average boring crime like fighting or shooting like these boring asses today.

novabrkr said:

That is a little extreme...if it were "that serious" I can seperate the artist from the art

Axchi696 said:

Right, if Bono was drunk it wouldn't really affect my opinion of him. But there are certain things he could do that would definitely lower my opinion, and his place in this world is partly due to his respectability.

vainandy said:

What Rick James did was very wrong, but I can forgive someone who was addicted to crack. Not if he burned me with his pipe and held me hostage, but in theory I can say that it wasn't really him in his right mind that did that.

Yeah and Michael Hutchence of Inxs killed himself and though it was a cowardly selfish thing to do, they still are one of my favorite bands, and also Bono was Michaels best friend and saw all the signs of someone that was going that route and didnt stop it and i dont hold that against Bono, its just human nature, no one is perfect, and a record deal doesnt give you perfection

lastdecember said:

That was an accident and you can't compare it to a rick james or r. kelly

NDRU said:

He wasn't on crack.

Did you actually see the pics of the girl he beat(the second one); DAMN. Her face was horrible, he severly and repeatedly beat her. It's hard to enjoy funk by a man who could do that to a women or man infact.

dogmaiswrong said:

true, hurting yourself can't possibly compare to hurting someone else

Great thread...

Being accused of a crime and actually being convicted are two entirely different things.

MJ is my personal example. I am a child of the 1980's and Prince and MJ were megastars, so I always bought their CD's. To make a long story short, by 1993, MJ didn't have a new album out(Dangerous was 1991) and shit was hitting the ceiling all over the news about this, that, or the other. Just the perception of a crime being committed, especially against a kid, was strong enough to have me retire my MJ CD catalogue for about 7 years.

I started listening again around 2001 then the new shit started about molestation. I retired MJ from that point forward.

Even with his recent acquittal, the perception lingers, so I no longer by MJ albums.

NDRU said:

True, but he did hurt alot of people by doing that, family, his parents,brother and sister, band and close friends, not too mention his child. Accident or suicide can be debated all day, but in the end he did hurt alot of people.

dogmaiswrong said:

The smoking gun? Is that a website? If so do you have a link?

I don't think a crime committed by an artist should cause you to totally disown their music.I mean, with all the praise James Brown is getting(and may he RIP) since his death, most of us tend to forget that he's also been accused of rape. Yet he's made some of the best music of all time. And it's the same with alot of artists mentioned here. Elvis, John Lennon, Chuck Berry, Rick James, etc.....I can go on and on. Yes, they may have done some bad things in their life. Doesn't mean that you should automatically stop listening to their stuff.

In the case of MJ and R.Kelly...I was never that big of an R.Kelly fan, but I grew up on MJ.As much as the allegations bother me, I'm still gonna love most of his music. Just cause he may have done a crime doesn't devalue songs such as "Billie Jean" and "Rock With You".

Another thing with these two...Not that either allegations are any better than the other, but it makes me laugh that R.Kelly, with all the crazy shit that's come out about him(including the molestation crap),is still embraced by music buyers and radio, while MJ became the evil pedophile boogey man who's career went short of visiting the glue factory. I don't know...Maybe it's cause MJ's appearance adds insult to injury, or maybe it's cause MJ puts out like 2 albums every decade while R.Kelly is rather prolific. I just think that music fans tend to put MJ on a higher level of shame than R.Kelly when, in reality, they're pretty much accused of similar things(at least as far as child molestation goes). Hell, it's not like R.Kelly is exactly portrayed as a man wrongly accused. I mean, he married Aaliyah when she was 15 FUCKING years old!!! And this is very much public knowledge.
[Edited 1/18/07 22:18pm]

BTW...I did read the Smoking Gun report on MJ, and yea...that shits pretty graphic. As much as I love the guy's music, the report definitely creates doubt of his innocence.
[Edited 1/18/07 22:20pm]

dogmaiswrong said:

I thought the name thing was meant to point out how sick it is that we live in a culture that reveres sweetness and innocence, yet makes stars out of monsters. Any given person could list off just as many deadly killers as they could pop and movie princesses.

That's what I was told anyway.

meow85 said:

yeah that too.

i know you are really suppose to separate art from the music, but I just can't stomach to listen to anything R. Kelly sings or writes anymore.

missfee said:

there's MUCH WORSE people than r. kelly. Do you listen to hendrix, JB,miles davis, sly stone, rick james etc?

Or do you listen to hip hop? There's a few Really bad individuals worshipped by many in that genre just as with other genres.

Did you see the Big Pun dvd?

dogmaiswrong said:

no i didn't see this big pun dvd you are speaking of, and uh yeah there are worse people than R.Kelly, but what he did/doing is just nasty. i look at it like child molestation really, whether the girls consented or not.

and uh yeah i do listen to the artists you mentioned, but i'm able to separate their art from their private lives. sure they may have done some terrible things, but its not for me to judge them...it's just that i just can't separate kelly's actions for the reasons i have already stated. i think's kelly's actions were worse than the artists you have mentioned.

missfee said:

No way. Big pun beat his wife for 12 years. He beat her with guns, lead pipes and she even need medical treatment but he wouldn;t let her. Once he knocked her out and she had to have 16 stitches across her head. Sly stone made sanatana's wife have an abortion WITH A COAT HANGER! Hendrix knocked his gf on the floor and smashed her nose with his foot; he also smashed a glass bottle in his gf's eye. She nearly lost it. Bob marley held his wife down and raped her after she refused him sex for all his cheating. Jackie wilson tried to rape patti labelle. Of course y'll know about JB.Axl rose was accused by three women of rape and beat them regulary among other assualts.I could go on.

R. kelly likes young teenagers14+; he;s got problems and is possibly abusive(brother's allegations). I saw the video about three years ago and there is no force. The thing is i think it's sick but MANY rock stars have done that and it's nowhere near as bad as what some have done and what MJ may have done. Gary glitter is a convicted rapist who raped two 11 year old girls and had images of children being raped and abused on his pc.

Even though he pees on people, I still find myself digging some R. Kelly... but the stuff he did pre-pee. Like all that "12 Play" and "Summer Bunnies" stuff is classic. And that joint he dropped in 1995 with "You Remind Me of Something?" Man... hold up! (LOL)

poeticrockstar said:

I have every kelly album; they're mostly excellent, some juvenile song though; 'i like the crotch on you', WTF

I was never a big R Kelly fan in the first place, but that whole mess made listening to him even more unbearable.

I'm also not a big fan of rap, mostly because of the violent content. I like rap artists with a positive message, but I just can't get into the hardcore stuff. I don't want my money to support that lifestyle.
[Edited 1/19/07 9:34am]

lastdecember said:

good point