The Ostracized Negro
Hip-Hop Culture, Ethics & The Black Church
The Convict
I was visiting my friend jemondG last week, and,
while he was getting ready to go, I glanced at
the TV which was droning on unattended in the
background. There was a music video featuring
some nappy-haired rapster (they all look alike
to me) and his buddies tooling around in a
yellow convertible that was full to bursting
with teenage black girls in fairly skimpy
bikinis.
A couple things occurred to me right away:
first, nearly all of the guys were wearing both
a durag and a hat. I figured, in terms of their
utility purpose, either would do, but these
young men wore both. The style seemed to also be
the ribbed A-shirt (what Jemond calls the “wife
beater” shirt), and the ubiquitous sagging jeans
over Tommy Hillfiger boxer shorts. Ok, tee
shirts if you must, but I really don't get the
do-rag and hat bit. But the main thing that
bothered me is what always bothers me when I see
images like that: the insinuation that I'm just
not black enough.
Almost every day I feel like I'm being accused
of something. Convicted of the crime of
singularity and felonious non-conformity to what
is considered the norm or the mainstream of
popular black culture. I am repulsed by the
images on BET and I feel assaulted by the
constant onslaught of the “F” word and barbaric
mangling of the English language that is a
conditioned response to an urban cultural
expression which is, let's face it, a
manufactured product. A largely white funded and
white profited self-reinforcing dumbing-down of
Black America, ingeniously designed to keep us
ignorant, barbaric and poverty-stricken, divided
among ourselves, morally and ethically bankrupt.
No Good:
Not a commentary, that's the name of this short-lived group. Pop Quiz? Why is this woman in her underwear?
I mean, look at these folks at left, a struggling
new group called No Good, comprised of such
positive role models as T.Nasty, Mr. Fatal and
their female rapper Jiggie, who apparently lost
her mind along with her pants for this publicity
photo. The imagery— the threat of violence, the
material prosperity, and the black woman
demeaned, are the necessary hallmarks of a
successful music career these days.
Across America you have black kids— from Maine
to Nebraska— learning how to talk like west
coast gangster rappers, southern twang
inflections and all. It's truly creepy to hear a
kid on Lennox Avenue in New York talk with a
southern twang and use, universally, the same
broken English as kids in Los Angeles. This is
not an accident. One kid speaking broken English
in Boston and another speaking a different kind
of broken English in Miami is an accident. Both
kids, who have never met, sounding like brothers
is not. It is a conditioned response to a fixed
constant stimuli; to an urban “culture,” which,
let's admit it, is much more commodity than art.
Perhaps in capitulation to its widespread
uniformity, we've made a case for the legitimacy
of this thug and hoochie mentality, defending it
as some unique artistic or tribal expression,
which it is not. It is a manufactured product,
packaged and for sale. It is the black race in
America clinging to the lowest rung of artistic
integrity while crowing about how we own that
rung and how that rung is some unique,
spontaneous cultural movement.
The demeaning of our women. The thug-life-ing of
our young men. It is da flava environment of
dese, dem, and doze (do ya feel me, yo?
Knowhatemsayin'?) that validates the worst
impulses of young black men either too tired or
too cowardly to press forward in a society
specifically designed to keep them down. It's
all good— ain't no need for no education, yo.
Bump that religion, G. Life ain't nothin' but
b—s and money. Things are just fine down here on
the bottom rung.
What you see on TV and what you hear on the
radio and what you read in so-called “urban”
magazines is not life and is not really art.
We've become a paradoxical culture, imitating
the “art” that is allegedly representative of
real life, but of course, isn't. Yet, here we are, modeling our real lives after
the stupidity we are bombarded with daily
through the so-called “black” media. And I, the
stranger on the shore, often feel rejected and
passed by because I don't subscribe to this
propagandizing of Black America.
Idiots: Chief Keef (right) is a major role model to urban teens.
The Anti-Intellectual Standard
I'm puzzled by the communal brainwashing, the mass hypnosis
gripping our community to the point where God-fearing,
church-going mothers, some who pray daily for their children's
safety and survival, allow this degenerate, disgusting,
anti-family flotsam to be piped into their homes ad nauseam and
consumed without filter by their children. It's like Invasion of
the Body Snatchers; we've become a race of Pod People, ingesting
this filth and imitating art rather than the other way around.
The tragedy is, to a great degree, I can't find a place among my
own people. I have great anxiety when I'm invited to social
functions where there'll be a lot of black people because, to
some great extent, I am not, culturally, in the mainstream. I'm
the stranger on the shore, Tom Hanks back from the island
wondering where his world went. These pod people who speak
English as though it were a second language to them. These
people buying too much beer and spending the rent money on
clothes and hair weaves. It's as though a great many black
people are mind-controlled, emotionally arrested people. Thin
skinned, histrionic, suspicious of most anything they don't
understand, conformist and tunnel-visioned, vested in a culture
of under achievement that makes a virtue of misogyny and
intellectual cowardice.
Look, I'm sure there's something positive in this mess somewhere
beneath the surface, but surface is all most people see. And,
it's a seedy, wretched surface, full of the thong kids and
cuddly types like Nas, Beanie Sigel, Outkast, Black Robb,
Ghostface Killah, his partner Dirty Ol' Bastard, J-Shin, Lil'
Zane, Yuckmouth, Bone Thugs 'N Harmony, C-Murder, Mac-10, E40, Lil' Kim, whose most apparent talent is her ability to
look slutty on her album covers, and countless other young
people, exploited for their gifts and abandoned after their
first album or EP tanks amid a bloated field of urban music
(have you ever heard of Young Shootas, Dirty Heartz Villainz, Da'
Unda' Dogg or the girl group Infamous Syndicate?). Okay, maybe
somewhere in there there is Common, whose M.O. is philosophy
over felony, and Ghostface and Bastard are part of the
award-winning Wu-Tang Clan. But this is a culture of foul
language, excesses in drink and drugs, and of black women
reduced to an obscene footnote. And I'm just not interested in
any of it.
I'd like to think it's just that I've outgrown it. That my
disdain for much of the hip-hop culture is borne out of
generational differences and the arrival of middle age. But, by
any rational objective standard (or any religious model—
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu), the main thrust of the
urban black culture is anti-moral and, ultimately,
self-loathing. It advocates the ontological rape of black women
by black men; a de-humanizing of black women into momentary
sexual diversions and stage props. It imposes an
anti-intellectual standard on young black men while
incongruously defining their existence by an unsustainable
standard of material wealth, sexual acuity, controlled
substances and binge drinking. Failing to achieve or sustain
that lifestyle, especially in the absence of a quality
education, leads many young black men into often unrecoverable
spirals of low self-esteem, while many black girls binge and
purge and starve themselves to look like the hoochies in the
videos, hoping to attract the hardened, gangstered “rough necks”
who will inevitably abuse and neglect them. The patterns are, by
any reasonable and objective standard, pathological; a race
subsumed with self-genocide by means of centuries-old
unreparated wounds growing increasingly cancerous with each
successive generation.
The propagated music video stereotype of the black woman is that
of a nameless, promiscuous, mute concubine. A totally disposable
asset, like the rapper's watch or his car; buy her a 40-ounce
and a spliff and she's on her back like a turtle. The black man
as the virile, god-like figure, now a virile satanic figure; a
foul-mouthed bringer of violence and mayhem loosed in the
streets of OurTown.
Is all hip-hop bad? Of course not. I love Lauryn Hill. I don't
get Wycleff, but I love her. I was elated at the positive vibe
she invested her Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the positive
messages to the young girls who form her core fan base. And I
have never seen Hill dressed like a hooker or engaging in
simulated sex or other degrading situations in some capitulation
to coked-up marketing execs more invested in selling records
than in the young minds they are poisoning daily. I love
Meshelle Ndege O'Cello, a little-known bassist and rapper whose
jazz-flavored funk riffs soar on her marvelous Plantation
Lullabies. And although the bisexual O'Cello appears topless in
the CD artwork, it is (to my subjective opinion) more artistic
than hoochie, and, while her angry lyrics border on extremism
and racism, they are, still, reasonable artistic expression
intended to challenge the listener moreso than metiquette or
titillate. And, geez, the woman can just play like nobody's
business.
I wish I could say the same of Janet Jackson, a woman too
beautiful and far too powerful in the industry to be lowering
herself to scenes of S&M and simulated fellatio. This is a woman
who. like Hill, could be celebrating the achievement of having
sold a gajillion records with her clothes on, but instead
debases herself at every turn, trying, I suppose, to out-Prince
Prince. Janet apparently misses the point that Prince is a
unique bit of business who exists out on the island with me, and
whose warped vision of the world comes as much from his painful
real-life experiences as anything else. Nobody expects Prince's
fetish-driven worldview to be anything more than Prince's
opinion. It's art, and is, in that context, far less potentially
damaging than much of the BET stuff that presents itself as
'real life,' a reflection of our lifestyle and our culture. It
is neither. It is a lie of irreducible proportions that we as a
people buy into every time we pay that cable bill.
Born into a stellar showbiz family whose wagon had already lost
its wheels long before she hit high school, Jackson has never
had any real-life experiences, so her attempts at being “bad”
come across like cheap Styrofoam. Prince's rage is genuine, hers
is, in large measure, manufactured by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis,
Prince's former pals. Together Again, Anything and Special are
fine moments, but they are Poignancy On Cue, with Miss Janet
celebrating her sexual emancipation at the expense of the teeny
boppers who form her core audience. Much as I enjoyed her most
recent Velvet Rope (and I did play the thing to death), I still
think she could have upped her integrity as an artist by cutting
back on the simulated sex. I object to the deification of sex:
not as a liberating factor to grown women but as obsession and
near addiction, an insatiable injunctive demand on her life that
reduces the fiercely independent Miss Jackson and, by extension,
her millions of pre-teen fans, to the disposable object her rap
counterparts routinely knock boots with.
Whether she or her brother/rival/tormentor Michael like it or
not, young kids are their core audience. They can try and
reinvent themselves all they like, and they can scream about how
they are not role models, but, at the end of the day, kids are
still buying their records, Which means they are getting rich
off of the souls of young America, white and black (in their
case). But, rather than use her bully pulpit to help shape young
minds, Janet opts to continue finding new ways to shock us every
couple of years in her painfully obvious attempts to bring
closure to a childhood exploited by Gorilla Joe. What about
the time you said you didn't f—- her, she only gave you h—?
Okay, I get the idea, the emancipation of a scorned woman. But
the explicitness of the expression (sans warning label on the
CD) is a breach of an implicit contract between the Jackson clan
and the legions of parents who grew up singing along to Got To
Be There who still think this stuff is safe for consumption by
their children..
Role Model:
Idiots like Rick Ross, whether they think so or not, are role models to our youth.
This is what Black America has to say.
“Wide receiver weezy throw da p-ssy at me. Ya p-ssy lips smilin' I make da p-ssy happy. Take your panties off, the p-ssy lookin at me.” —Lil’ Wayne
Cultural Genocide
Likewise, TLC, who, despite their mature age still look like the
pre-teen demographic that buys their records, continues to
squander their opportunity. Scrubs places their cards squarely
on the table: a guy has to have material wealth to win their
affection. I was completely flustered when a young friend in my
car started singing cheerily along to This Is How It Works— a
primer on oral sex from the otherwise harmless Waiting To Exhale
soundtrack. I'm sure she was enjoying my Old Guy discomfort
immensely, but this girl was just years out of Barbie Dolls and
Rock 'N Roll Elmo, and this, to me, was an invasion of her
innocence and a betrayal of the race in general by a trio of
sellouts too immature to see the damage or too greedy to care. I
should rush to qualify my annoyance with the trio by noting the
incredible Waterfalls and the poignant and awesome Unpretty,
both of which show their raw power at speaking to young black
women on a level more superficial girl groups like Destiny's
Child can only aspire to.
And, when did Destiny's Child start the hoochie thing? Part of
the Houston trio's immense strength in their wildly successful
second album was the notion of four young women who were not
showing every inch of skin. Their more recent evolution into
Just Another Skanky-Looking Trio is totally ill-advised and
revelatory of their character and artistic integrity, an
integrity that was, apparently, a marketing gimmick. DC is far
too popular to need to undress for increased record sales, so
one is left to conclude these still very young women are
suffering from the same tribal dementia that grips much of the
nation. As they gain more control over their careers, more and
more flesh is exposed, demeaning the girls and devaluing their
art and whatever ethical foothold they'd made in the community
as they cheekily go about the business of selling their young
fans down the river. Last year I might have held DC up as an
example of the positive aspects of urban youth culture. But
today, the popular and positive Minnie Mouse divas who talked to
young black America about Bills, Bills, Bills and Sweet Sixteen
may as well be in the yellow convertible with the other thong
kids, grinding blurred nether regions for BET's family network
while liquor is poured on them poolside. Oh, gracious, I'm so
very Rush Limbaugh today, but honestly, at first glance, it's
impossible to tell Destiny's Child from any number of extras in
any tacky rap video.
Of course, white America now has Eminem to contend with. A
purveyor of hate and masochism of the first order, Eminem is the
Elvis of the new millennium— the talented white boy getting rich
off of a borrowed culture. But white America finds Eminem
shocking, vile, disgusting. They have risen up, in large
numbers, to protest this guy, who is, arguably, no more vile
than, say, groups like Cypress Hill or even Ice Cube back when
he used to be good (Cube's brilliant AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and
Death Certificate stand as landmark recordings, brilliant in
spite of the violent, racist, and misogynistic imagery. I've not
heard much in the last 20 years that could come near Cube's
seminal shotgun discharges, his dissertations on ghetto rage).
But, lo, white America has risen up with a loud cry, helping ol'
Em to sell a lotta records, while black America remains a
de-fanged, mute, shuffling and servile non-entity, saying little
and doing little about the dozens of Eminems, plain and peanut,
in our midst. Maybe the damage inflicted by this “music” is
mitigated somehow by the “artists” themselves being black. Maybe
if Em, or some other white rapper, re-recorded some of the
popular “music” saturating our airwaves, calling our women
bitches and “ho's,” we'd finally notice how offensive some of
this stuff really is.
Do I want to be white? Absolutely not. No Michael Jackson skin
peels for me, but I also don't want to be forcibly assimilated
into a bankrupt culture of dese, dem, and doze; the overlong
cultural adolescence Black America has struggled through since
the emancipation, our efforts to play catch-up and find
equanimity in a nation socialized to see that as a threat.
Back to the video...
These nice young men took the girls to party somewhere, where
there was lots of images of liquor being poured out to
overflowing as the crew celebrated. The girls dutifully gyrated
before the cameras, at times these ministrations were blurred
out by the thoughtful, family-centered folks at BET whose idea
this was to play these uplifting, life-affirming videos in the
middle of the day when children could and certainly do see them.
I despise BET, a network empire built on cultural genocide, but
that's a different rant. The tragedy of black single moms
abandoning their children to this crap day after day is the New
Black Holocaust. It would be better for a parent to stick a
needle in their own child's arm and hook them on heroin than to
hook them on this— a steady diet of exploitation. The role model
of the hip-hop “G", his jewelry and watches bling-blinging and
his girls typically dressed in as little as they can get away
with (and, typically, for no apparent reason. I mean, really,
why is that woman above in her underwear while the men are fully
clothed?), is the mainstream of thought in young black America.
Too overt to be subliminal, the message to our young girls is it
is both acceptable and normal to show as much of your body as
possible to anyone who wants to look. That your mission in life
is to find a man and to hang onto him by any means necessary and
to have Brandy's figure, even if you don't have Brandy's gene
structure. As though the myriad of opportunity presented to men in this country
are not equally available to women.
The boys we tell heroic tales of glittering thugs with no
apparent means of support who drive fabulous cars, wear
incredible jewelry, and, statistically, do no not have
meaningful relationships with women. In fact, women have
precious few speaking parts in any of these videos. While the
half-naked teenage girls certainly gets your blood going, the
overwhelming sadness I experience at the exploitation of she who
could be a senator or a great teacher or sports legend or priest
overwhelms me and ruins the simple frat boy pleasure of the
ubiquitous bikini scene.
Didn't We Almost Have It All: Whitney in her prime. Selling 100 million records with her clothes on.
Not Black Enough
My friend Doc Bright once told me, “I'm not black enough for
those people,” meaning he'd long ago separated himself, with
Wynton Marsalis-like haughty resignation, from the popular
stream of black consciousness (or lack thereof) and had found
peace. Peace is likely the most elusive quality in our daily
walk. Trying to find our center as an individual surrounded by
an oppressive majority voice is a daunting challenge. Which, I
guess, helps explain the inexplicable Macy Gray, the wonderful
and wacky font of non-conformist thought, as well as the
delightfully eccentric Erykah Badu, both of them pillars of my
overall sanity.
To be fair, there are anti-social flourishes to even these
artists. Gray's whimsical I've Committed Murder (And I Think I
Got Away) is rife with violent imagery (of her killing her
boyfriend's boss when she refuses to give Gray his severance
check), and Badu's Tyrone certainly stereotypes black men
(albeit justifiably so; the sad truth of the rampant
disengagement of most black men is what makes the song so
side-splittingly funny). But neither artist targets these songs
to minors or presents these extreme views (for the most part,
clearly satirical) as a normal, acceptable or desirable state of
affairs.
Or, maybe, I'm just whining again. Maybe I just wasn't invited
to the party. I'll be 40 later this year, and maybe this is a
generational thing. I'd be prepared to accept the fact I'll
never be into the saggy pants look, or glorifying excesses of
drugs and alcohol, making a case for bad grammar as cultural
totem— all of that— if any of it, at face value, seemed positive
to me.
I don't say Waaaaassaaap! I don't wear baggy clothes. I don't
even know which channel BET or MTV are on. I don't get Wycleff
Jean. I didn't see Scary Movie. I don't think the Wayans are
funny. I don't want to come to your house and smell marijuana. I
can't stand black women who curse like sailors. I don't like
soulless music. I don't watch the WB. I don't go to clubs. I
don't own a single thing made by Tommy Hillfiger. I have never
smoked, never done drugs and never had even one drink in my
entire life.
I think Spike Lee is a pretty good filmmaker with occasional
flashes of brilliance among the murky pools of self-indulgence.
I like Lenny Kravitz, not so much for his non-existent moral
imperatives as for his willingness to exist outside of the
mainstream, in the place of the Ostracized Negro where people
like Prince and Doc and me can find some small comfort. I like
Seal and Tracy Chapman and I thought Living Colour's Stain
was brilliant. During the day I have CNN on in the background. I
watch All My Children and Letterman religiously.
I'm the man who fell off the world, shaking his fist at the club
that would have me while yelling at Jemond to hurry up. Feeling
superior on one level and inferior on another. It's not my
world. I don't belong there. I have no place in it. I'm just not
black enough.
And, maybe that's a good thing.
Christopher J. Priest
11 February 2005 Page One
1 February 2001 Page Two
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