I can partially agree with your statement. As I've had experience with people who haven't had many encounters with minorities and they were under the impression that their television representation was true. That is until they talked to me more. The reason I partially agree with you is because you named two telelvision stations that represent minorities in certain ways. Now MTV is just a joke if you want to get an understanding of minorities, but I will say that BET not only plays music videos. There is a wide range of things that can be educational for people that may not know or understand minority communities. Every representation of a minority on BET is not a negative one....you should watch some of the movies they play. Also they play a pretty good gospel music on sundays and just the other night they had the celebration of gospel music on there. I'm not say this is all we do as a people but it does show another side rather than the bling bling and the violence.

 

^^^ No, you're right - I know that they have some good stuff, and JAMS is cool too.
But one must remember that contemporary Americans DO get their info from TV and movies, which does not bode well for blacks in this country.

How do you feel about the Cosby bit I mentioned?

Scott (just trying to learn here...)

 

thing i hate the most: some foul mouthed performer ( don't matter the race ) wins an award for a song with choruses full of f-bombs..... swaggers up on stage.... and thanks the lord up above......
Now i'm not a prude; just because i'm old enough to have seen when MTV actually played videos... but some hip hop has great grooves going.... until they bust out the street lingo mumbled so this piece of white toast can't understand a thing.
I'm also sure that some of the stuff i listen to is crap to others, so to each his own i guess. I enjoy listening to the music and lyrics, and just prefer for my taste to keep it R rated or better. Guess I could easily listen to the hip-soul thing, just not the pure rap.
As for Scott's comment about Dr Cosby: that's a solid point in my book. I came up poor white trash in a rough household ( even spent HS years in a 14x70--yep i wuz trailer trash.. ); but instead of using my surroundings as an excuse, i used them to push me harder to make sure my child didn't have to experience what I did. Yes this world can be damn unfair, I can't compare my backgound to another's, and all the hard work can get you nowhere, but no matter who you are at least try and put in the effort to make a change...
right or wrong, that's just my humble .02

 

^^^ Families don't get any poorer than my Dad's when he started out. Life was a one-room house in Montana in the '30s and a job in a mine. My old man worked his ___ off to become wildly successful - had he not done that, I'd be shoveling buffalo crap in Butte. Being poor is no excuse in America. Anyone, from any race and any background can make it. I was one of four white kids in my class growing up in Chicago - and I didn't even know it until I was an adult and looked at some old school pix - my folks raised me to be cool.
It saddens me as someone who was raised to be sensitive to past wrongs, to be inundated with the "N" word at every turn. Some really good tunes I won't even listen to due to what you said above. Yeah, I know I'm not the target audience, but why?

I just wish there were some more positive role models for these kids - and fathers to raise them right.

Sorry again to have hijacked the thread...

Scott

 

Good job guys this is the kind of discussion I hoped would happen, I wanna reply but its gonna be long and Im at work haha Great Posting!

 

if im off topic sorry,but this is the the off topic cafe...


speaking to any Cosby supporter ,

yes his statements are correct but there a reason why he caught so much flak from his community..
the problem with mr, cosby is this he sold out his entire race for that mighty dollar and now he regrets as he is getting older what he did. all his life hes been too busy worrying about his wealth and neglected/ignored/forgot the pleas of his community for help.It took 8 years after the death of his son to wake the hell up . where was mr jello pudding pop when his own community was falling part???where was he when the drug game hit and destroyed my neighborhood in west baltimore in the late 80's??? where was he when the drug game crippled my east baltimore high school and neighborhood 98 ??? note to all... black people hate crime just as much as anyone else. look i moved to different part of the city and my parents couldnt afford to move any further.so like most you have to deal until your time is up and teach your own kid not to make mistakes of what you just been through...

i'll tell you what he was doing....
sitting on his 40 acre estate in the backyard of his olympic swimming pool sucking on 2 chocolate jello pudding pops watching the Price Is Right while waiting for his next script to come so he can make even more cake and so he portray another typical black comedian/buffoon role to further distort image of what black people are really like ...note to the unexposed not all black people are funny we fight this notion every day in the corporate world.

now he wants to ride back into the black community on this high white horse and be some sort of savior/preacher/minister/activist. give me a f_cking break like most in the blacks we dont need more talk and for someone to air out our dirty laundry we need real action and not some bulls%^t publicity stunt to further ones own image. thats from the pulse of the community.


i appolgize in advance to those i may have offended or alienated but it needed to be said.

 

my $.02 on my love for hip hop

You know whats screwed up about the Hip hop/rap music is its strcitly about money and less about creativity and artform. Its like rappers and label owners took a page from WWE/WWF to start fake beefs between artist who might be really friends at the end of day to make money. Im not knocking from a business aspect but from a purist point of view it cheapens the artform .Camron holding a press conference about why he's dissing Jayz. And then he's arguing that the man wears sandels,beyounce sound on his first cd, this doesnt set precedent for a lyrical beef. Come on that the wackest sh^t i have ever seen and im not even an avid Jayz fan. so many corporate level labels force new artists on listners and change there sound when they intoduce them the audience to make a buck. Canibus is a perfect example. If you ever heard cannibus on mixtapes then you know exactly what im talking about. his skills were impeccable and razor sharpback.

Another thing i notice is the dont give the listners time to learn who an artist is .they just package(cookie cutter approach ie... crunk is hott so lets make this artist crunk like ) them to what the new trend is for the day and hope they blow.then if they blow they push out a rushed cd to catch the momentum of the moment. right now i feel that southern hip hop is has become the the junkfood of hiphop aka FRANCHISE BOYZ and Ying Yang Twinz etc...how hard is to songz like shake yoyr laffy taffy and lean with it or my white tee. <-------This doesnt feed my hiphop god/soul at all .there are a select few from the south that have progressed the game but the rest are just garbage

Curently bumping in my deck: wutang, ghostface killa,papoose, lupe fiasco,the whole heiro glyph crew , cormega, baltimores bossman , tribe called quest, mobb deep, game . i wanna say nas but this jayz thing feels like a promo stunt

2 things i got to say is LONG LIVE BIG DADDY KANE!!!what ever happened DAS EFX

 

Im glad someone finnaly gave the shout-out to Hiero, Big Del Im bumping them right now.

 

freeflowing: your comments do make sense. Unfortunately the way many things are portrayed on tv and in the news; the average citizen could get an impression that most blacks in the inner city are...... and most native Americans on a rez are..... and most southern whites are ...... It's all about perception. And I know it isn't right. I watched my mom take hit after hit; with little help to be found ( kids just should not have to deal with that no matter what race or background they come from ). It just seemed to me growing up that there was no chance to better yourself; that this could be my life next. That's why i made sure that my child would not grow up in a similar environment. And i do realize that not all can succeed in doing that.
Look how the people in New orleans suffered so-- yes it was a city with a larger poor population, but what they seemed to concentrate on was all the looting, etc being done by one race. Now when I see that over & over on the news, my thoughts are "what the hell are they doing"??? Would i steal food or water to keep my family alive if needed--damn straight I would. But a tv? My sympathy was for the entire community down there, but not to those who engaged in those acts. And to leave people on bridges with no water?? That saddened me as an American. No one deserves that treatment ( or lack there of ). Guess there isn't an easy answer, or else these problems would have been solved many years ago.

As for the cookie cutter music industry--it's not just rap. Within months of Nirvana, every band on MTV was wearing flannel. Teen music: anyone remember a few years ago with all the boy bands? Teen queens: give a pretty girl a recording contract and a set of hoo-hahs, and look out. Metal is the same.

No matter what genre you listen to, many times you'll find better singers/musicians/bands out there in the "local" scenes or on the smaller labels. They just weren't lucky enough to get that one big deal.

Looks like i've rambled far too long here, a product of older age. It's time to go get some morning donuts...... thanx for listening.

 

i guess just to finish up my ramblings from earlier: as a child being raised in a tough environment, you have few choices but to survive. But as an adult, then i feel you do need to stand up and make the right choices. If that means working multiple jobs, or staying away from alcohol & violence, or whatever--it takes effort and hard work. I'm not preaching from some million dollar home, but i will say that my child has grown up in a safe environment, and hopefully the lessons i learned have been passed on so she has a better start then I did.
As for the hip hop thing, being a senior member of the pasty white toast clan; it's really never been my thing. But if i list the 5 artists getting the most time in my player right now--its a playlist that many out there may not enjoy or listen to ( top 5 right now: Paradise Lost, Sarah McLachlin, HIM, Disturbed, & Circle 2 Circle ).
Heck, just cuz i'm almost an AARP card carrier, doesn't mean i need to act like one.

 

This has actually turned into a great thread

Freeflowing: Out of curiosity (liked your replies) what would you have like Cosby to do when he was 'eatin' the puddin' pops in his pool"? I get what you're saying - I think the $$$ was his only goal and he certainly was not involved in the community then from what I know...but what should/could he have done?
I think we have hit the root here of this issue - waiting for someone to come and save us does nothing. If my pops had waited for help from someone, it would have never come.

I think the best thing you as an African American can do is to let guys like Jessie and Al know that they don't represent you. They keep more black folks down than any white guys can. They have no power if you folks pull yourselves up and kick ___.

My daughters are Native American (Santo Domingo Pueblo) and their backgrounds were pretty awful too. They are doing so well - both working and in college. Had they been raised differently, I think they could have ended up badly too. I will take credit with my wife for that!

We have a very nice house - we worked hard for it. We don't have families writing checks for us. My wife is back in school after years of doing special FX in Hollyweird. I work in the music biz (commercial and the biggest company of all of them) and I am in total agreement with what you guys are saying.
Corporations are in part ruining music. I rarely find something new to enjoy and way too often have to keep my iPod with my old fart rock on it to get by.
There are newer bands that are great, but not like the old days.

As far as being 44 and not acting like it - nobody thinks I'm my age, and my music collection is, in reality, pretty progressive.

If the music companies had more music people running them, we'd get better results. As it is, it's run by lawyers, accountants, and other management. I fear the days of the real music companies/labels are gone...

Scott

 

the hip hop culture has obviously a strong pull on the youth, as far as appearance, speech/language, and culture.
Many rappers do come from tough beginnings, and would have credibility among their fans and peers when they speak. For myself, an average middle class person; I find the language itself hard to understand ( the street lingo, terms, poor "english", etc ) and would appear that it comes from poor education & learning. But maybe it is just the language of the streets; and many of the rappers are very intelligent and just know how to market themselves.
So that could make sense--but what do you say when you see the rich suburbanite kids walking and talking like the tough gangsta rappers... that bad mumbled english, the cuss bombs just flowing...... to me that seems to portray everything that could be wrong with that music genre; or at least it slams of all the stereotypes that abound for that culture.
Does how that fan base react and behave give the bad impression to corporate/white America about the rappers and their fans; or is it no different then metal heads wearing all the leather garb to a show; or Kiss fans wearing thr make up??
just wondering out loud; probably way off base on this...

 

^^Uh, not quite sure what you were trying to say ??? I'll try to respond, though...

Hmm, I don't know. I mean the original appeal of Hip-hop was its subversiveness. It was so different in terms of visual style and musical style. That's why hip-hop and punk got along so well together in the late 70s/early 80s; they both had the same "don't give a f" attitude. That is how hip-hop USED to have a strong pull on the youth. Additionally, it was all happening in the cities - NOT available thorugh mass media for the suburban kids to get a hold of. (Not that there's anything wrog with suburban kids feeling hip-hop.) .....Then came the music video.

Today, I feel it has more to do with TV. Most suburban kids only connection to hip-hop is through music videos. I mean, some people really get it: it's about the MUSIC. Unfortunately, most of the time, it seems people really get into the fantasy of it. The real problem is the breakdown of peoples' sense of reality.

Rapping is rapping. Wordplay. What does it have to do with tough beginnings or education? I would't try to make any inferences just because you don't get it.

What about the guys that wear cowboy hats, but have never been on a horse? lol. I think some people feel the need to fit into a niche and want to act it out to show how serious they are. IMO, there's something wrong with the dudes who are taking things too seriously - whether it be hip-hop, death metal, country, whatever.

Bottom line, people shouldn't be reading into a culture by what they see and hear on TV. Otherwise all black people would either be rappers or athletes...lol

 

I figured i wouldn't get my stuff across where it made sense; and in no way am i saying my thoughts/opinions were dead on.
As for kids today; when you walk a mall as an example, listen to many ( of course not all ) of the groups talking--they sound like they all came from the toughest streets, mimicking the language that i presumed came from hip hop. But maybe it's more of the wannabe gang thing--as far as how they present themselves. And unfortunately I would think that comes from the rap culture ( at least the "gangsta" genre ).
As for the background: seems many of the rappers come from ( or say they come from ) tough beginnings... inner city, drugs, violence, etc... and lets face it much is publicised about the gang backgrounds, shootings, etc all the time. I was wrong to lump all rap together; guess my thought on the language was it seemed acceptable to not have to use correct/decent english to get by in today's world. Didn't Cali look at including in their english courses the "street" language used by some of their kids, to help them learn and get thru? If i misunderstood that, then I apologize; but my opinion was that if one wanted to get ahead in this corporate world, then sometimes you had to conform to certain policies and behaviors. If you can't sit down for an interview and get thru it strong, there wil be no job there. I'm not saying that is right in all aplications, but let's not ignore that it would happen.
For the fans, that's why I put in about other styles and how they act/dress/and even live that lifestyle. Music should be there to entertain an individual; but tv/video is what has brought much of it to prominence. And at times kids will follow what they see on tv.
I don't listen to much rap; and have always stated it's just not my cup of tee. I'm sure for every foul mouth gangster rap; there is someone who really gets their point across without the extreme being used. Maybe if I was a teen now, then i would get into rap; just can't anymore.
And do some listeners take their music far too seriously: yes. And do those affect the perception of others, i'd say they sure can.
Right or wrong, and as incoherent as this may be--just my .02
Hopefully I didn't tick off or offend anyone: not my intentions. Sometimes us 40 somethings don't always understand today's youth, and sometimes it's the other way around. Maybe if more interaction and talk went between the 2, then any gaps could be lessened ( same as making sure a parent is able to talk to their own child ).

 

look, my ramblings have obviously taken this Off-topic thread even more so.

let's get back to the music, what this was all about in the first place.

And with the background I do have in this genre:

let's get a big shout out for the one and only "Ice"..
not "Cube"
not "T"
that's right-- "Vanilla" ......
ice ice baby all the way to the bank....
I can still hear that damn tune in the back of my head....

 

slboettcher

One the first things cosby should have done was apologize for his neglect to his community. second thing he should have done was create a network of ways to help his community sustain itself like acting school or a production company or somethin. doing something is better than doing nothing .most black people are proud and sometimes wait until point where things hard to fix when the community should get the issue out sooner so its never a matter of waiting stuff for free or someone to rescue them but the problem is its rarely a forum that catches the right people attention when do voice their concerns.

the thing i realized early on is when you dont have a strong education foundation/family foundation you are going to need some kind of help and encouragement that where the cosby should play his role.

 

^^^ Good answer - thanks for that. What I'm after here is to learn. As for the original questions on the music, I'm pretty much an "old skool" guy when it comes to rap. R&B isn't what I grew up with either, but at least it's not a negative image for kids to emulate.
Still waiting for a FUNK comeback - George Clinton and Sly knew how to do it!

Scott

 

haha, they're not writing dissertations - it's entertnainment. Entertainment for a specific audience. Street music. No rules. It could be said, you need to have acceptable slang to get by in today's music world

IIRC, someone tried to start an ebonics class as a way to make "black lanuage" into an accepted cultural creation. It was a liberal arts class - not a class to help kids get through school.

I think language is a result of your surroundings. There is a concept of "dual identity" (or some other name I can't think of). It's almost like being bi-lingual. You need to speak a certain way around your friends and neighbors for acceptance, but in school, workplace, etc.., you need to speak another way. I think this is a phenomenon experienced by many people raised in 2 different cultures. For example, I was raised in a middleclass family, but I experienced 2 worlds: one was being raised by my Filipino family/community and another was going to a 99% white private school.

No, you are right, which is what I think Cosby was trying to get at.

 

stankubrick, i do appreciate the feedback; and helping clarify some things for me. thx.
I do understand kids will talk a certain way with their friends, so long as they remember when to "turn it off" and can speak to the level of the person they are conversing with "when needed".
I also agree that the family is the best place to start that child on the right track; it's truly sad that so many kids are raised by only one parent. It can be done, but it places so much more on that one person then when handled by 2.
As for rap, i've already posted the types of music I usually listen to, so the closest i'd get to would be some hip hop soul thing; so my musical opinions wouldn't matter on this thread.
One last thing--all these wealthy actors/musicians who like to adopt kids from other countries, and help out those in other countries: yes all those places have large needs to fill and they deserve help.... but there are plenty in this country who need that help just as much. It seems ok to send millions across the oceans; but if we spend any here--it raises issues between the political parties about welfare systems, and they tend to look for reasons not to help, instead of looking at the reasons they should.
sorry, there I go dropping my .02 again.

 

^^^ EXACTLY. Celeb's suck. So sick of those self-rightious hypocrites.

Scott