Hang the MC - Hip Hop and Violence - CBC

[Deeps]

Here is a 4 part series on the realtionship between Hip Hop and Violence that I found on the CBC website.

It seems pretty well rounded and fair thus far.

Hang the MC - Link

"It’s not fair to blame hip hop as the sole reason for [gun violence], but at the same time, we have to take some responsibility,â€

Kardinal Offishall

[boiler]

This is a can of worms that seems to come up in one form or the other every few years. Remember the 80's backwards messages from the devil (try this it works: play Queen's "Another one bites the Dust" backwards and tell me it doesn't sound like "It's fun to smoke Marijuana.") And of course later on when Marilyn Manson was blamed for Columbine.

The basic question here is "Does Art imitate life or does Life imitate art." Obviously life and art interact and influence each other but I think it is wrong to point at one aspect of art and say it has such a profound affect on society, as to be the driving influence behind society.

We can not blame societies ills because of the commentary of society by artists. This is as ridiculous now as it was when Ozzy was the most evil man in the univerese according to "Regan" era mentality.

Bob Marley said that reggae music was a black person's news source. (I don't mean or want to turn this into a race issue). News media has a way of catering to the ruling class. Bob said Reggae music was the way for the poor people of Jamacia to communicate with each other about their social condition.

Hip Hop and Rap music is (I think) no different. It has become a vehicle for artists to comunicate on the social condition. If it involves guns and violence, it's because society has guns and violence. Guns and violence have been around a lot longer than rap music.

Not only that but an article like this will immediately give a reader negative feelings about rappers and violence. Not all rappers preach this either. Listen to k-os and you'll know what I'm saying.

(I didn't realize I would be so passionate on this issue)

Edited February 10, 2006 by Guest

[thatpatguy]

I blame those who blame the media

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Not only that but an article like this will immediately give a reader negative feelings about rappers and violence. Not all rappers preach this either. Listen to k-os and you'll know what I'm saying.

Have you read the article?

K-os is an idiot, he once introduced his guitarist as "The only white person I like." He has no freestyle skills. And his biggest hit from last year (Crabbuckit) was so much of a Ray Charles ripoff that his band would play 'Hit the Road, Jack' as a segue into the song.

That said, I do like most of his catalog.

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[boiler]

Yes I read the article. I fail to see the connection that they are trying to establish.

Take away Rap music, and you still have guns and violence and gangs. I hate to draw from such an extreme example but Al Capone wasn't sitting around listening to 50 cent.

[mattm]

Blame the hip-hoppers all you want, they're an easy target.

I don't see any blame laid to a government that spends over $300,000,000,000/year on their military ($400.1 billion last year according the free new mexico newspaper). The last thing I saw this money used for was to steal a country for their oil. Just think, a tiny portion of that money, let's say $20 billion, could probably clean the shit out of the streets. If they decided to spend just half of the defence budget on death one year they could probably find a cure for cancer and aids, etc, with the rest.

Now take a look at drugs. Drugs are most likely the primary reason for a lot of gun violence somehow or other (or the money or addictions that stem from them). Now, take a look at the US stance on drugs: Prohibition. Same here in Canada. If there's no prohibition, there's no illegal cash flow which means there's no money to have the violence over. Why not set up some treatment programs and open up the eyes a bit before grabbing the easiest scapegoat you can find.

Who knows. I think Hip-Hop definately contributes to the violence as it doesn't just talk about it, it glorifies it. I'm talking the gangsta rap here. There are lots of Hip-Hop artists that don't glorify violence (I assume and hope but I don't like it so I don't listen to it and don't know the genre all that well).

My two cents is that governments need to start actually caring for their population and doing something rather than just pushing the blame around.

mattm

[SmoothedShredder]

Art is a reflection of society. If you censor the art you're ingnoring the root causes. I don't like the things Tupac Shakur had to say, but his art was incredibly powerful cause it was a truth, a big truth, an awful truth, and one that not alot of artist were addressing. His music reflected the horror. This alone makes the art valuble, if only to say "Hey, look what's going on." I learned more about the issues in LA and the greater issues of race relations in the USA from Tupac then I did from any Newspaper or Website.