Get mad, we're bein' had, gangsta rap's really bad
December 1, 2005 | Globe and Mail |By Margaret Wente
At the Urban Music Awards in Toronto the other night, everybody dissed the people who think there's something wrong with rap music. Everybody, that is, except for one of the special guests, a mother whose son had been gunned down on the street. There is something wrong with rap music, she said, just as there is something wrong with killing someone at a church funeral. Rap music is not harmless. It glorifies the culture of violence that killed her son.
That is not the fashionable position. What's fashionable is making fun of the stupid politician who wants the rapper 50 Cent banned from Canada. And, of course, his position is absurd. What's the point in banning 50 Cent when his music and his image are available any time, any place, anywhere, and the kids at Jane and Finch internalized his every move long ago? You might as well try to ban the air they breathe.
Sophisticated people know that violent, misogynistic lyrics are inherently harmless. They're a form of social protest, or just a way to work off steam. Look at Mick. If obnoxious lyrics lead to violence, then why haven't 100 million Rolling Stone fans run amok?
Eugene Rivers has a view on that. I wrote about him last week. He's the black pastor from Boston who argues that underclass culture, not racism, is to blame for Toronto's deadly guns-and-gangs crisis.
Mr. Rivers maintains that for adolescent white males, who make up its biggest audience, gangsta rap is relatively harmless. Like the Rolling Stones, rappers offer rebellion on the cheap -- a low-cost way to give the finger to authority, have an outlaw fantasy life, and drive your parents nuts, without any social consequences. The white kids "go off to college, put on a suit and go to work at Morgan Stanley". But for black kids who grow up without family discipline, a sense of law and order, or alternative role models, gangsta rap "has an absolutely catastrophic effect".
Call it the Murphy Brown mistake -- the belief by large segments of the educated overclass that underclass culture is really very cool. And it is -- for the overclass. After all, when an affluent thirtysomething white career woman has a baby out of wedlock, chances are things will be okay. When a poor black 17-year-old does the same thing, chances are things won't be okay at all.
When a juvenile outlaw culture is the only one available to adolescent males, there's going to be trouble. And when famous rappers dictate the behaviour code, watch out. A few weeks ago, a platinum-selling rap star named Cam'ron Giles was shot in both arms while tooling around Washington in his $250,000 royal blue Lamborghini. The mystery of who shot him, and why, is a hot topic in the hip hop world. But the police investigation has gone nowhere, because nobody, least of all Cam'ron, will talk. If he did, he'd lose his street cred. "It's not in our nature," his rapping buddy told The Washington Post.
Needless to say, the shooting has been good for Cam'ron's career. His next album is called Killa Season, and, as one fan said, "this is definitely going to help his sales."
Among the fiercest critics of hip hop culture is John McWhorter, a black American academic. Two years ago, he wrote a blistering essay called "How hip hop holds blacks back", in which he traced the decline of rap from happy party music to the ugly glorification of thug life, bling, easy money, fast cars and woman-bashing. "Of course, not all hip hop is belligerent or profane", he wrote. "But it's the nastiest rap that sells best, and the nastiest cuts that make a career." Today, hip hop is a billion-dollar industry, and stars such as 50 Cent and Cam'ron Giles are extremely rich.
Mr. McWhorter argues that the attitude and style expressed in the hip hop "identity" keep blacks down. "Almost all hip hop, gangsta or not, is delivered with a cocky, confrontational cadence that is fast becoming a common speech style among young black males. The problem with such speech and mannerisms is that they make potential employers wary of young black men and can impede a young black's ability to interact comfortably with co-workers and customers. The black community has gone through too much to sacrifice upward mobility to the passing kick of an adversarial hip hop 'identity'."
But when hip hop is all there is, don't expect the music to fade any time soon.