USA Today don't know Jack about HipHop
One of my faithful readers (I don't have many, but I do appreciate the ones that I do have) referred me to an article in USA Today that addresses the decline of rap music .
I hadn't read this article, although I had heard about it, because frankly, If I'm not taking a flight that particular day, the only days I read USA Today are the Monday after Selection Sunday, The Monday after the Draft, and the occasional Friday where there is a cool bonus section.
So, if you want to hide something from me, putting it in USA Today on a random Wednesday is a good place to start.
So, since he was nice enough to provide me a link...I will be nice enough to thrash said article for being completely out of step with the HipHop reality I am familiar with.
So, USA Today posits that WHITE folk are tired of rappers overemphasizing "gangsta attitudes, explicit lyrics and tales of street life and conspicuous consumption".
GTFOHWTBS.
The underlying premise is that somehow White folk outgrew Rap and moved on in search of something more meaningful and that us common Negroes were left to pop lock and drop it on our own.
Note to USAToday:
The moment that the Record labels realized that they could profit from HipHop is the moment it ceased to be the cutting edge tour de force it once was.
Just as Jazz, Rock and country before it suffered under the weight of the desire to profit from the artform, HipHop is going through the same growing pains.
HipHop as an art form has NEVER been more vibrant and original...
The commercial output does not bear that out, and that is the fault of the marketplace and the distributors...not the artists themselves.
I hadn't read this article, although I had heard about it, because frankly, If I'm not taking a flight that particular day, the only days I read USA Today are the Monday after Selection Sunday, The Monday after the Draft, and the occasional Friday where there is a cool bonus section.
So, if you want to hide something from me, putting it in USA Today on a random Wednesday is a good place to start.
So, since he was nice enough to provide me a link...I will be nice enough to thrash said article for being completely out of step with the HipHop reality I am familiar with.
Rap's decline can be traced to a range of factors, including marketing strategies that have de-emphasized album sales in favor of selling less-lucrative single songs and short versions of those singles as ring tones for cellphones. But more important to the industry, there are signs that many music-buying Americans — particularly the young, largely white audience that can make a difference between modest and blockbuster sales — are tiring of rappers' emphasis on "gangsta" attitudes, explicit lyrics and tales of street life and conspicuous consumption.
So, USA Today posits that WHITE folk are tired of rappers overemphasizing "gangsta attitudes, explicit lyrics and tales of street life and conspicuous consumption".
GTFOHWTBS.
The underlying premise is that somehow White folk outgrew Rap and moved on in search of something more meaningful and that us common Negroes were left to pop lock and drop it on our own.
Note to USAToday:
The moment that the Record labels realized that they could profit from HipHop is the moment it ceased to be the cutting edge tour de force it once was.
Just as Jazz, Rock and country before it suffered under the weight of the desire to profit from the artform, HipHop is going through the same growing pains.
HipHop as an art form has NEVER been more vibrant and original...
The commercial output does not bear that out, and that is the fault of the marketplace and the distributors...not the artists themselves.
posted by DP at 6/23/2007 11:42:00 PM
2 Comments:
This post has been removed by the author.
when i was a kid, i could read usa today cover to cover and was excited when my dad would bring them back from trips or we'd stay at a hotel where they were complimentary. whooooo!
now... yeah right. one step above a tabloid. they are ridiculous w/thinking white people are looking for substance in their rap/music. GET OUTTA HERE. they LOVE those ridiculous songs most of the black people i know are like "what is this trash?!" since i rarely listen to the radio, the white people at work are sometimes more up on those lil hood songs than i am.
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