The problem with hip hop journalism
No genre of music has experienced a more dramatic negative shift in values and content over the past 30 years than hip hop.
No genre of music has experienced a more dramatic negative shift in values and content over the past 30 years than hip hop.
He is often tactless and lacking decorum, and his honesty comes with absolutely no filter. Branding him as arrogant, obnoxious and egomaniacal seems to be the simplest, most obvious conclusion available. It’s just not entirely accurate.
When the writing is good, it doesn’t come from me so much as through me; I’m a vessel through which the words flow and I just try to catch up to the thoughts racing through my mind and get them all on paper.
The black community faces numerous problems. Black-on-black violence, white-on-black violence, failing inner-city schools, police brutality, racial profiling, poverty, disproportionately high incarceration rates, the breakdown of families, the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and a host of other issues that can be traced back to structural racism and the lingering effects of slavery and segregation.
We’ve been socially conditioned to make ourselves small, and instead of fighting those who would seek to reduce us, we fight those who refuse to reduce themselves.
These false beliefs equating blackness with danger now permeate the American psyche, influencing every aspect of our culture, from the legal system to entertainment. Minstrel shows notoriously mocked black stereotypes for profit, and modern entertainment—most notably mainstream rap music—has become a vehicle to promote the black thug stereotype ad nauseum.
Most cultures hold their elders in high regard. It’s safe to say that hip hop in its current form is not one of them.