Just had a converstaion at Starbucks with some local hip hop heads. Creative in their fashion, but let me hear their demo in the hopes I would help produce them. Hellz no! Very very wack lyrics and the worst freestlye I've heard in forever. This industry has been my life since I was 15 and I've done hundreds of projects in hip hop alone, hell, I grew up in the inner city jungles of Jersey & Brooklyn (add Miami), but the time has come to blog about the current state of this lost art.
Its hard for me to critique the monstrosity that has become commercialized hip-hop culture. I love hip hop and didnt even start listening to music until old school hip-hop hit the scene. I am a serious fan of quite a few artists, both young and old. However, hip-hop (at least the stuff we hear on the radio) calls for an intervention, like the relative you love who has been hitting the crack pipe for way too long. The intervention is necessary to protect our kids from receiving poisonous messages that are wired to ruin their lives.
One of the things that drives me crazy about commercialized hip-hop is that the art form has lost the bulk of its creativity. When I listen to white guys on the radio, they sing about all kinds of stuff: the birds in the sky, the iPod they just bought, the girl they are trying to go out on a date with, their days in high school, etc. Apparently brothers dont have that kind of range: They are only allowed to rap about the same tired stuff that the other dude rapped about in the last song. Imma spend it on ya shawty, bottles of Patron fo ya shawty, got my gun for the haters, diamonds on my neck, Im a playablah, blah, blah, whatever man.
So, to make my point, I thought I would lay out the 10 things that any person needs in order to be a rapper, at least the kind of rapper who gets on the radio. Call it the Z Instant Rapper Fun Kit. Im sure that every white boy in Iowa already has one:
1) A really large and overpriced piece of jewelry that you borrowed money to buy: It can have diamonds, gold, platinum, or whatever and has to be really heavy, as if it might crush your testicles if you move too fast. Oh, why is your favorite jeweler snickering at you and calling you in the middle of the night to tell you about another piece he just made? Because he knows youre gonna be broke after your next album drops and wants to milk your dumb a** before its too late.
2) Your body must be tattooed so much that even your mama doesnt recognize you: Im just waiting for a rapper to tattoo his own eyeballs, now that would be gangsta. You better keep making hit records, because its hard to get a job with tattoos all over your neck, just ask Thugnificent from the Boondocks.
3) You have to be drinking out of a bottle of something that is eventually going to kill you: If you are going to be a real rapper, liquor must become a food group. You know Uncle Joe, the alcoholic who lives in yo grandmas basement? He used to act just like you 20 years ago.
4) A gun so you can blast all haters on sight (The Haterologist Extermination Program ): Youre only keeping it real if you shoot another black man, white boys dont count. You can even sell more records if you rap about it, especially if you went to prison. According to the NAACP, black men, can officially say, that they've killed more black people than the KKK (Oh snap, did that rhyme? Now dats wussup!)...oh latinos, not far behind.
5) A whole lot of gold, diamonds and other random jewelry in your mouth: You should be setting off metal detectors, even when youre butt-naked.
6) A pack of random women around you, preferably strippers, all of whom you slept with last night: Dont worry about the fact that theyve had sex with hundreds of dudes before you. AIDS only happens to other people, Eazy-E was a fluke.
7) A pound of weed, an ounce of coke, or a bottle of Sizzurp somewhere in the vicinity: Theres nothing more productive than a man who is so high that he cant even get out of bed in the morning. That was Dr. Kings dream, Malcolms too.
8) A gang of dudes who follow you everywhere you go for no particular reason: Youre not a real rapper without a bunch of straight-up thugs from your childhood who are there to protect you, but end up shooting somebody at a club who then sues you for everything youve got.
9) A pocket full of cash so you can make it rain at the club: Dont save or invest your money, thats actin white. Just go to the club and throw money in the air and take pictures on Twitter with hundred dollar bills hanging out of your hat, thats what Bill Gates and Oprah do with their money too.
10) A full-fledge plan of weaponized, mass-marketed self-destruction: By being determined to reflect only the worst and most ruinous parts of your humanity, you have become a virus to your community and an exaggerated caricature, thus creating a modern day minstrel show. Your over-the-top behavior is a reflection of the crabs-in-a-barrel mindset of impoverished, uneducated samoan/black/latino/whatever.. men competing for attention by showing that their urban experience is more authentic than the next dude. You are exporting a false version of the hood experience to those who believe that the trauma of urban America is exciting, fun and intriguing, like watching elephants mate in the middle of the jungle.
Every little boy who looks up to you and emulates your distorted perception of manhood and thugness is walking right off a cliff that lands him in a casket, the poorhouse or a prison cell. You, and the multi-billion dollar plantation owner who keeps you high, ignorant and unfocused, are destroying the futures of millions of kids who ignore their parents and pay attention to you. When you consider the death toll of the aformentioned men in America, one can easily argue that youre part of an extermination plan no less deadly than what Hitler did during World War II.
Its time to wake up and smell the exploitation.
Now pour me an extra espresso shot and don't "F" it up, save yourself a punch in the mouth...oh wait.
Its hard for me to critique the monstrosity that has become commercialized hip-hop culture. I love hip hop and didnt even start listening to music until old school hip-hop hit the scene. I am a serious fan of quite a few artists, both young and old. However, hip-hop (at least the stuff we hear on the radio) calls for an intervention, like the relative you love who has been hitting the crack pipe for way too long. The intervention is necessary to protect our kids from receiving poisonous messages that are wired to ruin their lives.
One of the things that drives me crazy about commercialized hip-hop is that the art form has lost the bulk of its creativity. When I listen to white guys on the radio, they sing about all kinds of stuff: the birds in the sky, the iPod they just bought, the girl they are trying to go out on a date with, their days in high school, etc. Apparently brothers dont have that kind of range: They are only allowed to rap about the same tired stuff that the other dude rapped about in the last song. Imma spend it on ya shawty, bottles of Patron fo ya shawty, got my gun for the haters, diamonds on my neck, Im a playablah, blah, blah, whatever man.
So, to make my point, I thought I would lay out the 10 things that any person needs in order to be a rapper, at least the kind of rapper who gets on the radio. Call it the Z Instant Rapper Fun Kit. Im sure that every white boy in Iowa already has one:
1) A really large and overpriced piece of jewelry that you borrowed money to buy: It can have diamonds, gold, platinum, or whatever and has to be really heavy, as if it might crush your testicles if you move too fast. Oh, why is your favorite jeweler snickering at you and calling you in the middle of the night to tell you about another piece he just made? Because he knows youre gonna be broke after your next album drops and wants to milk your dumb a** before its too late.
2) Your body must be tattooed so much that even your mama doesnt recognize you: Im just waiting for a rapper to tattoo his own eyeballs, now that would be gangsta. You better keep making hit records, because its hard to get a job with tattoos all over your neck, just ask Thugnificent from the Boondocks.
3) You have to be drinking out of a bottle of something that is eventually going to kill you: If you are going to be a real rapper, liquor must become a food group. You know Uncle Joe, the alcoholic who lives in yo grandmas basement? He used to act just like you 20 years ago.
4) A gun so you can blast all haters on sight (The Haterologist Extermination Program ): Youre only keeping it real if you shoot another black man, white boys dont count. You can even sell more records if you rap about it, especially if you went to prison. According to the NAACP, black men, can officially say, that they've killed more black people than the KKK (Oh snap, did that rhyme? Now dats wussup!)...oh latinos, not far behind.
5) A whole lot of gold, diamonds and other random jewelry in your mouth: You should be setting off metal detectors, even when youre butt-naked.
6) A pack of random women around you, preferably strippers, all of whom you slept with last night: Dont worry about the fact that theyve had sex with hundreds of dudes before you. AIDS only happens to other people, Eazy-E was a fluke.
7) A pound of weed, an ounce of coke, or a bottle of Sizzurp somewhere in the vicinity: Theres nothing more productive than a man who is so high that he cant even get out of bed in the morning. That was Dr. Kings dream, Malcolms too.
8) A gang of dudes who follow you everywhere you go for no particular reason: Youre not a real rapper without a bunch of straight-up thugs from your childhood who are there to protect you, but end up shooting somebody at a club who then sues you for everything youve got.
9) A pocket full of cash so you can make it rain at the club: Dont save or invest your money, thats actin white. Just go to the club and throw money in the air and take pictures on Twitter with hundred dollar bills hanging out of your hat, thats what Bill Gates and Oprah do with their money too.
10) A full-fledge plan of weaponized, mass-marketed self-destruction: By being determined to reflect only the worst and most ruinous parts of your humanity, you have become a virus to your community and an exaggerated caricature, thus creating a modern day minstrel show. Your over-the-top behavior is a reflection of the crabs-in-a-barrel mindset of impoverished, uneducated samoan/black/latino/whatever.. men competing for attention by showing that their urban experience is more authentic than the next dude. You are exporting a false version of the hood experience to those who believe that the trauma of urban America is exciting, fun and intriguing, like watching elephants mate in the middle of the jungle.
Every little boy who looks up to you and emulates your distorted perception of manhood and thugness is walking right off a cliff that lands him in a casket, the poorhouse or a prison cell. You, and the multi-billion dollar plantation owner who keeps you high, ignorant and unfocused, are destroying the futures of millions of kids who ignore their parents and pay attention to you. When you consider the death toll of the aformentioned men in America, one can easily argue that youre part of an extermination plan no less deadly than what Hitler did during World War II.
Its time to wake up and smell the exploitation.
Now pour me an extra espresso shot and don't "F" it up, save yourself a punch in the mouth...oh wait.
Hahahaha. I love this post. It's a common complaint that modern life has somehow managed to destroy art forms -- or art in general! I agree. There's so much ugly shit out there these days that we're told is creative genius; and not only are we supposed to love it, we're supposed to aim to create that stuff too. Hopefully one day enough people will care about changing that.