if you're as bored with conventional hip-hop as a whole bunch of us are
these days, well... read on. Criticcs+AR types+Mags... the whole deal=
MAD BORING.
Saul Williams forwarded this to me, and yeah, I gotta admit, the bro has
some points... just another salvo in the culture wars... Boredom in the
face of a totalitarian state... you couldn't think of a weirder situation.
But hey... it's the 21st century. Between clones, cults, twisted
propaganda from the Bush clan, the general sense of myopia in the media,
and the basic numbness of the populace of the good Old U.S. of A... who
would ever think, like Michael Moore points out - that fear and mass
delusion create - pathological boredom... Bowling for Columbine - my
pick of the SOUND of the year... bullets from K-Mart in the television
skies of the collective mass delusion... 21st century schizoid man in the
urban jungle... fiber optic cables, re-routes exit codes of a planet put
in parantheses by satellites in the sky. Can critics get more boring? Can
art shows based on hip-hop be evn duller? Can the U.S. become even more
totalitarian? This, folks, is just the beginning... Dada for the masses
becomes net-culture dispersion. Check the zone...
peace,
Paul
FUCK HIP HOP
A Eulogy to Hip Hop
by Pierre Bennu
Dissident Voice
December 18, 2002
I know you've been thinking it. And if you haven't, you probably haven't
been paying attention. The art we once called hip hop has been dead for
some time now. But because its rotting carcass has been draped in platinum
and propped against a Gucci print car, many of us have missed its demise.
I think the time has come to bid a farewell to the last black arts
movement. It's had a good run but it no longer serves the community that
spawned it. Innovation has been replaced with mediocrity and originality
replaced with recycled nostalgia for the ghost of hip hop past, leaving
nothing to look forward to. Honestly when was the last time you heard
something (mainstream) that made you want to run around in circles and
write down every word. When was the last time you didn't feel guilty
nodding your head to a song that had a 'hot beat' after realizing the
lyrical content made you cringe.
When I heard Jam Master Jay had been murdered, it was the icing on the
cake. A friend and I spoke for hours after he'd turned on the radio
looking for solace and instead heard a member of the label Murder, Inc.
about to give testimony about the slain DJ's legacy. My friend found the
irony too great to even hear what the rapper had to say.
After we got off the phone, I dug through my crates and played the single
Self Destruction. The needle fell on the lyrics:
They call us animals
I don't agree with them
Let's prove em wrong
But right is what were proving em
The only thing that kept me from crying was my anger trying to imagine
today's top hip hop artists getting together to do a song that urged
disarmament in African American communities, or promoted literacy, or
involved anything bigger than themselves for that matter. I couldn't
picture it.
All I could picture were the myriad of hip hop conferences where the
moguls and figureheads go through the motions and say the things that
people want to hear but at the end of the day nothing changes. No new
innovative artists are hired to balance out a roster of the pornographic
genocide MC's.
In their place, we're presented with yet more examples of arrested
development - the portrayal of grown men and women acting and dressing
like 15 year olds. Balding insecure men in their mid 30's making entire
songs about their sexual prowess and what shiny toys they have and you
don't. The only hate I see is self-hate. The only love I see is self-love
All one needs to do is watch cribs and notice none of these people showing
off their heated indoor pools or the PlayStation Two consoles installed in
all twelve of their luxury cars have a library in their home. Or display a
bookshelf, for that matter. No rapper on cribs has ever been quoted
saying: Yeah, this is the room where I do all my reading, nahmean?
To quote Puffy in Vogue magazine Nov, 2002: Diamonds are a great
investment. They're not only a girl's best friend, they are my best
friend. I like the way diamonds make me feel. I can't really explain it,
its like: that's a rock, something sent to me from nature, from God, it
makes me feel good. It's almost like my security cape.
If rappers read, they might know about the decades of near-slavery endured
by South African diamond miners. Or the rebels in Sierra Leone whose
bloody diamond-fueled anti-voting rampages leave thousands of innocent
men, women and children with amputated limbs.
Often, hip hop's blatant excess is rationalized with, We came from
nothing. That statement rings hollow given even a little bit of context.
African Americans have been coming from nothing for 400 years. That
didn't stop previous generations of artists, activists, and ancestors from
working toward a better
