By Polar Levine for http://www.polarity1.com
September 28, 2007
For a political class that clumsily instigates global mayhem like a
large pack of boozed-up jocks in a small bar, it sure does scare
easily. After one terrorist attack it shuts down the Constitution and
draws up plans to bomb or imprison anyone with a towel on his head.
Now, unable to do anything useful about our catastrophe in Iraq,
Congress moves on to a more manageable mortal threat -- rap lyrics.
The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection
chaired by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) convened to address the issue last
week. The hearing was a made-for-Jon Stewart event -- these media-
clueless hacks straining to persuade (not force) titans of the
recording industry to stop releasing hard core rap -- one of the
industry's few remaining golden geese. Our leaders, however, would
find it easier to sleep at night if they knew that, after more than a
generation in the cultural bloodstream, rap has become as safe as milk
to a young audience that is in no way shocked or corrupted when they
hear the dirty words that guys like Snoop, Dick Cheney and Mom & Dad
use in public every day. And that the booty in all the videos is
basically of the retarded ring-a-ding-ding variety of the Rat Pack's
swingin' fifties -- but with better graphics. What's disturbing to me
is not that rap presents a threat to American society's brain-dead
power grid; it's that rap no longer tries.
When I first heard The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious
Five, the sun orbited Earth one time in tribute. My idols were Dylan,
Zappa, James Brown and Coltrane and I was discovering Ginsberg, Dada
and Cage. That song had the power to enlighten through wordcraft both
graphically real and surreal. And it was driven by the collage medium
of the Futurists and Dadaists on up through Cage and beyond. Plus it
had groove, my primary addiction since I was hatched. Rap was the
future of the future and it defined the very essence of NOW. By the
time my kid was five he'd already digested James Brown, the Beatles,
Cab Calloway, Hank Williams, Celia Cruz, Bob Marley, Olatunji and
Elvis. Then I slipped in some rap starting with Public Enemy and Tribe
Called Quest. Nine years later, rap is all he listens to and most of
it has been a pablum of sing-songy choruses, kiddie jingle synth
hooks, juvenile rhymes with "dirty" words (that no longer even shock
the old folks) and pathetic grooves -- like a gangsta Barney with a
cheesy beat. Junior is too old to take Dad's playlist suggestions
seriously, but his summer camp counselor had the creds to set my
little man straight. He now regularly raids my collection.
The few pockets of brilliance and relevance that remain -- mostly
underground -- prove the rule that hip hop has become as blandly
American as mass-produced, lab-processed apple pie. The most
threatening cultural force mainstream America has faced since Jack
Johnson has become so non-threatening to power, so predictable and so
darned cute that any middle and upper class suburban sixth-grader can
accurately mimic every gesture in the lexicon and be ghetto for
Halloween. Even Karl Rove finds it cute. When poverty, prison and lack
of opportunity become fashion statements for the comfortable -- only
to be abandoned after college orientation week -- something very
perverse has occurred in our cultural DNA. For well over a decade hip
hop has provided racists with an uninterrupted flow of images to
validate their hate. Meanwhile the mainstreaming of the gangsta
minstrelsy has upstaged its backstory of poverty and hopelessness; an
ongoing tragedy no longer able to compete for attention.
Here we have a medium based on words and messages with artists who can
sling them and a gargantuan corporate infrastructure to deliver them
to millions of people. But almost 30 years after The Message, hip hop
culture is more rigidly conformist than the Eisenhower era and offers
only a micro-variety of flavors in its country of origin (things are
more promising elsewhere). And it has virtually nothing to say that
isn't about f--kin', fightin' and blingin' while anybody with less
property than Diddy is struggling to pay the monthly and our tax money
is sponsoring apocalypse. But few rappers find that stuff compelling
enough to rage about. The post-Katrina Kanye West has moved on, having
more pressing outrages to vent about. He's squirting like a baby
because MTV didn't give him a space man. And 50 Cent threatens (for
real or for promo) to go home if he doesn't sell more product than
West.
It's so typical that our tax dollars -- particularly Mr. West's and
Mr. Cent's tax dollars -- are wasted on bogus congressional
investigations into the politicization of the Justice Department and
the war in Iraq when subpoenas should have already been issued to
determine how it came to be that Kanye West left Vegas with only his
dick in his hand. And why has there not been bold bi-partisan
legislation mandating the purchase of 50 Cent CDs by every American
adult, child and fetus?
So don't push them 'cause they're close to the edge.
They're tryin' not to lose their head.
(Ha ha ha ha. Ha)
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