Black People : How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back

jamesfrmphilly said:
listening to popular music is just like eating at McDonald's.
you get lots of fat and empty calories, not much nutrition.

most of rap and hip hop is garbage.
there are some good songs here and there but you have to sift through a mountain of junk in order to find them.

it is mostly enjoyed by people who are ignorant of musical values and the history of music.
i find most folk who follow hip hop have lost the ability to comprehend instrumental music.
the bulk of black music is lost to them.


this is no more than the dumbing down of the black community.
i find it sad that black people so willingly participate in their own destruction.


It really hurt me, as a young person that enjoys Hip Hop, to see a Brother post something like that on Destee.com.

My Brother you seriously seem to lack a clear overstanding of what Hip Hop and Rap are. Please don't cofuse the two. Before speaking so strongly and making negative comments about the majority of the people that choose to listen to Hip Hop, please EDUCATE yourself.

A little knowledge to share:
RAP is simply some aiight lyrics on top of some party beats and made simply to appeal to the majority. Rap does not seek to educate or uplift.

HIP HOP on the other hand is strictly the opposite. Hip hop artists seem dedicated (dedicated simply because they go in the studio to make this music and really don't make much money at all from record sells) to their music and pay much attention to the tracks behind their lyrics, while also seeking to educate those individuals they are entertaining. You see with hip hop you get the best of both worlds, str8 QUALTIY.

Your words speaking so strongly against Hip Hop is a huge slap in the face to artists such as Talib Kweli (My FAV. :spin: ), Common, Mos Def, The Roots, Tribe, De La, etc., etc.

Example: Talib Kweli not only has unbelievable lyrics but also some very beautiful instrumentals. The Brotha will serenade you with horns in the background while weaving in the story of "Aunt Sara," a beautiful Sister who has been through crazy struggles and still managed to come out on top.

Talib Lyrics:
AFRICA DREAM

"Yo, we the reflection of our ancestors
We'd like to thank you for the building blocks you left us
Cause your spirit possessed us
Yo, you blessed us
Thank you very much
God bless you"


FOR WOMEN

" A daughter come up in Georgia, ripe and ready to plant seeds,
Left the plantation when she saw a sign even though she can't read
It came from God and when life get hard she always speak to him,
She'd rather kill her babies than let the master get to 'em,
She on the run up north to get across that Mason-Dixon
In church she learned how to be patient and keep wishin',
The promise of eternal life after death for those that God bless
She swears the next baby she'll have will breathe a free breath
and get milk from a free breast,
And love beeing alive,
otherwise they'll have to give up being themselves to survive,
Being maids, cleaning ladies, maybe teachers or college graduates, nurses, housewives, prostitutes, and drug addicts
Some will grow to be old women, some will die before they born,
They'll be mothers, and lovers who inspire and make songs,
(But me, my skin is brown and my manner is tough,)
(Like the love I give my babies when the rainbow's enuff,)
(I'll kill the first m***af***a that mess with me, I never bluff)
(I ain't got time to lie, my life has been much too rough,)
(Still running with barefeet, I ain't got nothin' but my soul,)
(Freedom is the ultimate goal,
life and death is small on the whole, in many ways)
(I'm awfully bitter these days
'cuz the only parents God gave me, they were slaves,)
(And it crippled me, I got the destiny of a casualty,)
(But I live through my babies and I change my reality)
(Maybe one day I'll ride back to Georgia on a train,)
(Folks 'round there call me Peaches, I guess that's my name.)"


Peace and UHURU !!!
 
Hip-Hop or Rap:

If you buy a CD and it has a Parental Advisory sticker on it, then that means that it is not anything educational. You can do one song about your family, but then do the other 16+ about money, sex, drugs, whatever. Almost every artist (Rap & Hip-Hop) does it.

I listen to all types of beats, and when it comes to Rap, the beats make the songs hot. Anybody can do lyrics, what should you care about what they say?

If they are sending a good message, then go right on and pick up on it. If they are sending a bad message, then that is when you can press fast-forward (just to play it safe.)

Cedric Denson
 
Cedric Denson said:
Hip-Hop or Rap:

If you buy a CD and it has a Parental Advisory sticker on it, then that means that it is not anything educational. You can do one song about your family, but then do the other 16+ about money, sex, drugs, whatever. Almost every artist (Rap & Hip-Hop) does it.

I listen to all types of beats, and when it comes to Rap, the beats make the songs hot. Anybody can do lyrics, what should you care about what they say?

If they are sending a good message, then go right on and pick up on it. If they are sending a bad message, then that is when you can press fast-forward (just to play it safe.)

Cedric Denson

How much hip hop have you listend to? You should know that parental advisory stickers mean nothing. I dont know if I have one album without it....and I have dozens of albums of highly intelligent material....and some that mix the rougher stuff with thought provoking rhymes. Those stupid stickers on cds are as common as door knobs on doors.
 
Yeah, that is true.

I remember when I was 13, I went to Record Town to by a DMX cassete tape. They told me that I needed a parent to get it. A few months later, I went back and got plenty of Rap and Hip-Hop tapes and CDs with the stickers on them. I don't know, I think it is only the affluent white folks who pay attention to them when they are buying CDs for their children......if they listen to them. It would not make a big deal now anyway, because I am bearing witness to people burning CDs, or going to the corner store to get the CDs. And those guyanese people aren't gonna stop you from purchasing them. It's them earning another $10.00 - $15.00 a CD.

I'm going to start another thread on that in the Entertainment section. I'm not expecting too many replies, but at least I am addressing it.

Cedric Denson
 
I grew up on HIP-HOP

http://www.nbufront.org/html/fvwin98/errol1.html

Black Nationalism and Rap Music
by Errol A. Henderson

To take part in the African revolution it is not to write a revolutionary song; you must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves, and of themselves. ... In order to achieve real action, you must yourself be a living part of Africa and of her thought; you must be an element of that popular energy which is entirely called for the freeing, the progress, and the happiness of Africa. There is no place outside that fight for the artist or for the intellectual who is not himself concerned with and completely at one with the people in the great battle of Africa and of all suffering humanity.



The Origins of Hip-hop

Rap music has had a profound impact on the African American community in the United States. Its greatest significance, to my mind, derives from the fact that it has fostered a profound nationalism in the youth of Black America. Arguably, hip-hop has become a conduit for African American culture to a greater extent than even jazz. Where the latter could, though its polyrhythmic syncopations, embrace both the nuances and jagged edges of the collective Black experience, it could not self-consciously energize the nationalist ethos in quite the way the more lyrically focused hip-hop does. To present these jagged edges, jazz, or be-hop, needed the uncompromising lyric of the poet. Also, poets, with their jagged edges intact, still required the talking drum of instrumentation to fully capture the Black ethos of struggle, resistance, righteousness, exploitation, and creativity in Black America. Hip-hop fused the two—poetry and jazz—in such a way as to render itself the most conductive source of the current of African American culture.

Tupac said. " Reject the artist and the music if it doesn't contribute back to the black community. " What are your thoughts on that today?

I agree totally with that statement. Below is some of his poetic quotes. The man was genius.

http://www.tupacquotes.net/

" I guarantee if people keep mm..supportin' me....Just buying my records, goin to my concerts, just supporting me..I'ma keep givin' money....Like Makaveli, every time it go platinum, I'm putting money up for community centers. "

Tupac Shakur

" And I hope I'm forgiven for Thug Livin when I die. "

Tupac Shakur

" First ship them dope, let them deal to brothers, give them guns, step back and watch them kill each other. "

Tupac Shakur

" You gotta make a change. Its time for us as a people to start making some changes, lets change the way we eat, lets change the way we live, and lets change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so its on US, to do what we gotta do to survive. "

Tupac Shakur

" I can't give up.
It's a rap thang.
And I ain't goin back to the crack game. "

Tupac Shakur

" That which does not kill me can only make me stronger. "

Tupac Shakur

" If we really are saying that rap is an art form, then we got to be more responsible for our lyrics. If you see everybody dying because of what you are saying, it dont matter that you didnt make them die, it just matters that you didnt save them. "

Tupac Shakur

" I stop and stare at the younger, my heart goes to 'em, they stressed out and goin' under. "

Tupac Shakur

The man was real!
 

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