Another coming to hip hop's defense against the latest couple weeks of bashing. Check out "Don't Blame Hip-Hop" by Kelefa Sanneh of the NY Times:
Hip-hop has been making enemies for as long as it has been winning fans. It has been dismissed as noise, blamed for concert riots, accused of glorifying crime and sexism and greed and Ebonics. From Run-D.M.C. to Sister Souljah to Tupac Shakur to Young Jeezy, the story of hip-hop is partly the story of those who have been irritated, even horrified, by it.
Even so, the anti-hip-hop fervor of the last few weeks has been extraordinary, if not quite unprecedented. Somehow Don Imus’s ill-considered characterization of the Rutgers women’s basketball team — “some nappy-headed hos” — led not only to his firing but also to a discussion of the crude language some rappers use. Mr. Imus and the Rev. Al Sharpton traded words on Mr. Sharpton’s radio show and on “Today,” and soon the hip-hop industry had been pulled into the fray....
Read the rest here. Also check out the 100+ comments.
2 interested person(s)
wow!
hailing from Australia, i have caught this firestorm only through what I am catching online - so the media frenzy that is happening in the US has me stunned. Race, sexism and corporate greed will always be touchstones for comment, but it is amazing the extent to which these things get taken in the land of "free speech".
Thanks for the posts on this K. It may seem amazing given the amount of media saturation this generates that it has barely raised a blip outside of the US.
It's timely that there is the thread kicking around the blogs for the best hip hop LPs of all time (which occurred independently of Imus et al - right?) - perhaps the final list that comes out of this may set the record straight on where hip hop really stands in the discussion.
Either way, hip hop still remains potent 30 years after the ball got rolling. Long live hip hop!
straight bangin has a great discussion on this article and the credentials of the players involved here.
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