Hip Hop/Rap

'Rap' was the name coined by white media to describe 'hip-hop'. It has come to mean the style populer amongst 'white' people - the style owned by white people. Hip-Hop is 'underground' (not pop).

If you follow the power lines... it will become apparent that 'Rap' is an attempt to undermine all the previous struggle and eloquence of the former civil-rights era black America; creating instead swaggering, foul-mouthed, gimp-legged, testicle-clutching, prowess-faking, loud-talking, gun-toting, beeper-packing, cracked out, prostituted ruin.

All the biggest 'Rap' stars are sold by white people to white people, with the express purpose ov demonizing the 'former' slave caste.

Rap is something you do.

Hip-Hop is something you live.

Whilst I appreciate and mostly agree with your analysis, I think it is significant that your interpretation completely objectifies "rap" performers and the numerous Black people who are also fans of the mainstream version of "rap".
I understand the influence of the white media and power brokers, but to cast black rappers and their fans as uniformly ignorant, unreflecting and powerless objects of the music business or the "powers that be" is at best an oversimplicifation and at worst serves only to perpetuate racist assumptions.

Thanks--Brains

Rap music manipulates public opinion. Propaganda, designed to crush the lowborn - the slave cast. Rap music is a component ov a system that suppresses anything more than intermitten consciousness of anything outside it's victims' daily lives.

It seems to me you have just restated your original post.

Why?

Quick way to tell the difference between rap and hip hop :

If the Artist is has a backpack and trying to sell you his CD on the street corner, it is hip hop. this is good. If the artist has a BMW and his bodyguards won't let you near him, it is Rap. this is bad.

Aside from the deaper socio-psychological ramifications ov glorifying anthems ov african american victimization, rap as an artform is shit.

Yes, it is perhaps the most populer 'form ov music'. This means most people like it.

but most people are stupid.

And if they all like something, whatever it is they are liking is probably also stupid.

Did Tupac sell CDs (okay--tapes) out of his back pack before he became a roadie for Digital Underground? At what point did he become a dupe (or operative) for the system?

Do you really believe that all suessful "rap" performers and their fans are so ignorant of the system they operate in?

Since KRS-ONE sold alot of records, is he no longer hiphop even though he interacts with people and uses his prominence to raise awareness of social issues?

(And aren't their similar dichotomies in any genre of music, basically underground vs. mainstream?
like Ani DiFranco is good but Alanis Morisette sucks, Meg good, Beyonce bad, Eliot Smith good, Beck bad etc Beefheart Good, Zappa bad......)

I've heard it put like this...Hip hop is a culture..its art forms include Music (rap or hip hop), Dancing (beat boyz and girlz), and visual art (grafitti).
And like any other art forms these have been to various degrees co-opted and bastardized by the system.

Digital Underground! Last time I kicked it with them we dumped a whole 40 on the sidewalk for the dead homies. shit. when was that? '99 - Arcata, CA? After the show. we rolled to the motel where the sons ov the p were stayin' and lit up a lid ov fine humboldt skunk with the masters ov funk...

Those guys are no joke.

There are always exceptions. KRS-ONE is a good example. The highly esoteric twin peaks, complete with 'black lodge' on US prime time television for 2 years in a row. The beatles.

However, there comes a point when continued success rests upon willingness to conform to the program.

Show me something popular and I will see a lyricist spewing self glorifying sex or drug or violence filled diatribe set to a crude assortment beats that lacks any profound meaning. There was a time when sex and violence and drugs were part ov the â??counter-cultureâ??â?¦ but the mainstream absorbs the counter-culture as a defense mechinism - a way to dilute the 'poison', so to speak. and so, meaning is lost and the revolutionary and the radicals move on. but that is another subject...

And altho I fail to see how pointing out how the media perpetuates racist assumptions in and ov it's self perpetuates racist assumptions, I will, for your sake, refrain from further comments.

Actually, I agree with you.

That's too bad.

yeah... ; )