Debate: What's right ... or wrong ... with hip-hop

Debate: What's right ... or wrong ... with hip-hop Anger management? Is that even possible in the great rap debate? By Chris Macias -- Bee Staff Writers

http://www.sacticket.com/music/story/13236489p-14079040c.html

Hip-hop is pop music's great generational divide. It's the beat-driven sound booming from stereos and reaping millions in record sales. But hip-hop is also the scourge of parents and upright citizens who think the music thrives on negativity, misogyny and no-talent rappers. On the eve of the year's biggest hip-hop show, we brought together Chris Macias, The Bee's pop music critic, and Bee senior writer Fahizah Alim to debate the issues that give hip-hop a "bad rap."

Here's an edited transcript of the debate, which was moderated by Bruce Dancis, the Bee's entertainment editor.

DANCIS: We're doing this because the Anger Management Tour starring Eminem and 50 Cent is coming to the area and is probably the biggest rap show of the year. Are you interested in this tour?

ALIM: I really find it hypocritical because it's called Anger Management, and Eminem and 50 Cent are two of the angriest performers that you can ever see. 50 Cent is a thug - you can call him a thug. He was shot nine times. And Eminem's so angry. He's cussing his mama and his baby's mama. I just think this is a message of dysfunction.

MACIAS: Well, Eminem and 50 Cent are obviously angry. That's one of the reasons why people are fascinated by Eminem. I think hip-hop is very much like rock 'n' roll in that your parents aren't really supposed to understand it. Hip-hop is very much a rebel music culture. When it started, (it was) 'You're not supposed to scratch the record like that,' you know, 'Put that spray can down,' 'You're not supposed to dance like that.' Hip-hop is about breaking the rules.

ALIM: Hip-hop is also about social awareness. There are socially aware, conscious rappers in hip-hop. They don't get any airplay, they're not giving these tours.

MACIAS: Well there's always the potential for social awareness in hip-hop. Look at the success of Public Enemy and KRS-ONE.

ALIM: Look at the past success of Public Enemy and KRS-ONE.

MACIAS: I think that hip-hop is always kind of changing. There was a period in the late '80s, early '90s, there was a lot of African American awareness, X-Clan, Public Enemy. After a while people wanted to get back to hip-hop as being a party music.

DANCIS: 50 Cent is coming here. His album "The Massacre" is the biggest-selling album in 2005. What do you think accounts for its success?

MACIAS: I think it's because 50 Cent is a larger-than-life character. The fact of the matter is, just like in professional wrestling, people love the bad guy. 50 Cent is someone who says, "Look at what I've overcome. You can shoot me, you can talk all this mess about me, but here I am and I'm real," and that's what I think people gravitate toward. To me, he's almost like a cartoon character.

ALIM: But it's not benign. His image is not benign. His image is begetting and creating copycats. Kids emulate this. 50 Cent is an ex-con. An ex-crack dealer. Most of these mainstream rappers glorify the drug trade.

I'm worried about a lost generation. I'm worried about the high dropout rate, the high incarceration rate, the high homicide rate of African American youth, inner-city youth. I don't want to glorify a message that perpetuates and exacerbates that problem.

DANCIS: You don't think 50 Cent is an expression of that?

ALIM: An expression and also a prototype and a role model, a negative role model. A whole generation of youth was waiting prime time to watch BET and hear the sad five-part musical saga of R. Kelly. R Kelly, an alleged pervert and pedophile. Come on.

MACIAS: To me it just sounds like the story of pop music: Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin. Rolling Stones (are) getting busted for drugs. Chuck Berry is singing about "My Ding-a-Ling." These were all things that made parents wonder, "What is our world coming to? My kids should not be singing 'Let's Spend the Night Together.'" Are we worse off as a culture because these things are in our music?

ALIM: I feel like it, Chris. I look back at the fact that in 1980 there were 140,000 African American men in prison. And three times that many in college. Today, with nearly a million black men in prison, there are more who are incarcerated than in college. Yes I think we are worse off.

MACIAS: But can you put that on the back of hip-hop?

ALIM: You can put it on the back of a media industry that could give a hoot about what sort of messages and role models they're sending to our youth. And too often life imitates art. I can mitigate it. I'm middle class, middle income, live in a safe neighborhood. I sit down with my children; they have other role models. Those children in the inner city who don't, don't have a pop, don't have a teacher who cares. Where are they getting their image of manhood? (And) you can't find a teenage girl who doesn't have a cropped-top shirt on and a belly-button ring.

MACIAS: You can blame that as much on Britney Spears as you can on a Lil Jon video.

ALIM: Absolutely. I do not hate hip-hop. And some of it is wonderful. I'm saying that the music industry, the music executives, do not offer all of hip-hop. They promote the thuggish, dysfunctional aspects of it. I want to hear some rappers saying get an education so you can move forward, respect your mama, respect your wife, respect yourself. That's also in hip-hop.

MACIAS: The market just shows that some of the music, as socially conscious as it is, just isn't as funky as some of the mainstream stuff.

I think if you just put a bunch of the "Cosby Show" rap all over the airwaves, I don't think that's going to change people's minds. People want to hear what they want to hear.

Pop music is also a lot about checks and balances. When De La Soul and a lot of positive-minded hip-hop came up, some of that was a response to a lot of the gangster rap that was coming up - N.W.A, Too Short. Now, I think you are going to find that people are going to get tired of 50 Cent and Eminem. You're seeing the rise of Kanye West.

DANCIS: Don't you think record companies would promote a conscious rap tour if they thought they could make money off of it?

ALIM: No. You're talking about chicken and egg here. I think if they played the conscious rap more, I think they would get more sales and it would make money for them. I think they don't play it because they don't care. They like to capitalize on the dysfunction.

I've talked to wannabe rap groups for years who say they cannot get promoted. When they go to the record companies, they tell them, 'That's too clean. No, we want it to get nastier. No, we want it to be dirtier.' They say they want the gangster rap.

MACIAS: 50 Cent didn't get signed just because he was shot nine times. 50 Cent was huge on the street before the record industry even knew who the hell he was. It wasn't like, 'I'm the head of Interscope Records and I want to just find some guy who's been shot a lot.' The community already embraced this guy before mainstream America even found out about him.

ALIM: I need a balance. As a mother of sons, I'm concerned about the messages they are getting of manhood and behavior and the hatred toward women in hip-hop.

Sure, my generation had musicians who were drug users and living on the edge. But the messages and the images are so much more pervasive now in the media, than it was back in the day. You couldn't look at Jimi Hendrix 24/7 in your living room or Sly (Stone). But now the youth are bombarded with it all of the time.

MACIAS: I don't think kids are any more protected now vs. let's say, the '70s. I grew up on a lot of classic rock, Ted Nugent "Stranglehold," some Kiss lyrics, the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar". These are all very misogynistic, very heavy-handed macho kinds of themes. Maybe now there is more of a saturation of this stuff, but any way you slice it, the imagery is still the same.

I think we almost expect the worst out of hip-hop. We say 'Look what this music does to people.' You know, I have gone to concerts since I was 12 years old, and I have seen more drama break out at metal shows, at punk shows. There have been stabbings at country nightclubs here in Sacramento. But people don't focus on that. A fight breaks out at the Nelly-Fat Joe show, there's helicopters flying around, and it's like a police state out there. There is a big double standard out there.

ALIM: That's the point. There is a big double standard. As a black person, if you've got your pants sagging, you're going to be treated differently than if you're a white person with your pants sagging. If this hip-hop image is one that people fear, one that people look at as stereotypically dangerous, then I don't want my children or other black youth emulating it and being targeted and being profiled.

DANCIS: Why should a kid who wants to wear his pants sagging not be able to do that? Why should a kid in the '60s who wants to wear his hair in an Afro not be able to?

ALIM: Because they are demonized, they are profiled and they are reacted to by the dominant majority establishment. They link them to this message, this whole criminal behavior. They look at 50 Cent.

DANCIS: Huey P. Newton, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale.

ALIM: In jail.

DANCIS: Did they have a message to people in the late '60s? What's the difference?

ALIM: Yes. Fight the power, not beat the woman. It's a different message. These popular rappers are not talking about socially conscious rebelling against the corporate, greedy racist establishment. They're talking about hit the ho' upside the head. Come on.

MACIAS: That's an overgeneralization. Have you heard the Eminem song "Mockingbird," for example?

ALIM: That's one.

MACIAS: That's one of the reasons why people do gravitate toward Eminem, because he actually is a pretty heartfelt rapper for all the crazy stuff that surrounds him.

ALIM: What does he call his mother?

MACIAS: Well, his mother sounds like she was a little crazy.

I don't think an artist inherently has to have any social responsibility for what they do. Their only job is to express what's going on in their mind.

DANCIS: We're raising intelligent kids, we're raising kids who have moral values and certain standards in the way they treat other people. Don't we have enough respect for them that they can go and hear music and not all of a sudden turn into a thug?

ALIM: I'm concerned about the message they've taken from the whole hip-hop genre: dead Tupac. Dead Biggie. East Coast vs. West Coast. I think they're being exploited with that. I believe their creativity is being exploited to the detriment of their culture.

MACIAS: I think that even without Eminem, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg there's going to be a lot of lost kids regardless. You don't have to put it on hip-hop.

ALIM: Chris, I'm offended by it because I care about these young people who think it's cool and manly to pop a cap, carry a gun. I don't want them to be the lost generation or the endangered species. We need to put some brakes on.

MACIAS: I say let it flourish and let the market decide.

ALIM: Let's have some balance.

MACIAS: I think there's naturally a balance in pop music. A lot of the negativity, when it becomes oversaturated, other things come into play.

ALIM: Fight the power. Let that be the message of hip-hop.

MACIAS: Hey, fight the power and keep it funky, too.