Hip-hop has no standing archives. Like the seminal works of the few who’ve come before—David Toop’s Rap Attack, Tricia Rose’s Black Noise, Nelson George’s Hip Hop America—Jeff Chang’s ambitious Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation is constructed more forcibly than most histories through the recuperation of lost objects: personal archives, liner notes, old music videos, and formal… return to article
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Reader Comments (10)Page 1 of 1 pagesHip hop is trash… there’s not very many aspects about it that seem positive to me. Overall, it promotes a materialistic, misogynistic, violent and ignorant attitude. To hell with that crap.
Posted by Ryan Conover on Apr 27, 2005 at 8:47 PM D.L. - I know a lot about hiphop, you would be suprised. I grew up around people who were into it and have heard far more of it than I think is nearly healthy. Still, I have come to the conclusion that it is complete trash. I’m not impressed with anything about it, it’s doing nothing but turning suburban kids into little insolent bastards like their idol eminem, walking around with their little arabian nights rag on their head. “I ain’t know that shit man, I’m keepin’ it REAL!” Real? REALly stupid. We gettin’ PAID son, I walk around paid all day son! Something to really be admired.
Posted by Ryan Conover on Apr 28, 2005 at 4:31 AM it’s pathetic to classify a whole genre of music as “complete trash.” there is just as much misogynistic, materialistic, heterosexist, bullshit in the white boy punk rock world.
eminem doesn’t represent the hip hop world, just as limp bizkit doesn’t represent the rock world.
try checking out the coup or immortal technique.
then i suggest you reevaluate your broad, as d.l. said, misinformed statement.
Posted by kiki. on Apr 28, 2005 at 3:38 PM eh, it’s still not music to me. Frigging bass thumping against my head trying to vibrate me braindead! No fun…
Posted by Ryan Conover on Apr 28, 2005 at 9:24 PM As a musician and a lover of almost all genre’s, it’s difficult for me to say this, but, I have to agree with RC. The predominant lyrics of Hip Hop render it garbage.
An entire generation of already undernourished, undereducated and racially segregated children are being programmed (brainwashed) for a life of murder, drug abuse, slackerdness, failure and prison by lyrics so outrageously negative that they shock the conscience.
The sad part is that Hip Hop could be equally beneficial as it now is harmful if the lyrics were equally positive as they are currently negative.
Posted by Lefty on May 4, 2005 at 11:26 AM Actually, it is only the hip-hop crap you hear on the radio that is complete trash. With every genre of music (excluding pop) there is an underground scene. In the majority of these there is actually some form of music, and in some cases <gasp> ideas.
Posted by nameless on May 4, 2005 at 3:45 PM I love music. Most music in any genre is mediocre or worse, but some music in every genre is good. The starting point should be what is the music trying to accomplish, what does one expect of it, etc. Clearly, producing a decent rap requires intelligence and talent, as does any other form of poetry/music (in many ways, this is exactly what hip-hop is-a modern living poetry).
True, it has suffered the same commercialization as every genre. The country stations play lousy pop country. The “rock” stations play boring and mindless so-called classic rock. Etc, etc.
The inflexible trashing of the entire genre of hip-hop is based (though the trashers themselves usually don’t even recognize it) in preconceived notions about class and race, and ironically justified as a supposed defense of women against misogyny. There is plenty of misogyny in hip-hop, and in our culture in general in fact. There is also revolutionary and progressive hip-hop. It’s roots are in part that of a protest culture coming out of some of the most oppressed communities in Jamaica, and then transferred to the US through Caribbean communities in NYC.
Take a listen to Immortal Technique, The Coup, Dead Prez, Paris, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and more. There is a lot that people will miss once they’ve made the decision to block out hip-hop….especially since the best stuff has to be sought out, as with any genre (and you ain’t going to find it on BET or corporate rap radio stations…Yes, Snoop Dogg is lame, but he and the corporate rap execs don’t deserve the honor of getting to define the genre….Drop the cultural bigotry.
Posted by Brad on May 7, 2005 at 4:26 PM BTW,
In response to Lefty, and really more directly in response to the lying Big Business media who dominate discourse…there has NOT been a drastic increase in either felonies overall or in violent crimes among Black and Latino youth (contrary to what one would expect given the extreme rise in poverty for non-white youth)...Govt crime statistics reveal clearly that from 1976-1997, from 1980-1997, from 1985-1997, AND from 1990-1997, however you measure it, percentage of such crime attributed to Black and Latino youth has DECREASED. In fact, the one age group which HAS shown notable INCREASES in felonies and violent crime is older males, and specifically older WHITE males.
Big Business media won’t tell us this…they LOVE to demonize oppressed groups, and youth are an oppressed group; (combining with racism, this is a potent oppression indeed)...but it’s worth considering that there are probably more kids killed in an AVERAGE month BY THEIR PARENTS or other family members, than there ever has been at any school massacre.
Check Mike Males’ important works Framing Youth, and Scapegoat Generation for thorough documentation of these and other slanders against young people in post-Reagan America.
Posted by Brad on May 13, 2005 at 12:36 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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