Imus, Hip Hop and The Corporate Music Industry
The Don Imus Incident brought out a lot of anger toward Hip Hop. In reality hip hop culture plays a very small role in the Imus controversy - Don Imus probably isn’t a fan of Snoop Dogg, and most Black folks didn’t know who he was until the controversy erupted - but his remarks inflamed the long standing debate that similar language has gotten out of hand in popular music.
Oprah even got into the act by devoting two shows to a town hall meeting where Russell Simmons and Ben Chavis (representing The Hip Hop Summit Action Network), joined by Common and Warner Music exec Kevin Lyle, were confronted by a host of detractors including longtime hip hop-hater columnist Stanley Crouch and a group of Spellman college students who appeared via satellite. The hip hop panel promised to convene a summit with the corporate music industry to discuss the problem and develop concrete solutions. That summit, held at the home of Warner Music’s Lyor Cohen, ended with no press conference and no statement about what was or was not accomplished. And no one is surprised.
The corporate media and the major labels who market the small percentage of music that is heard on most radio and video outlets should be held responsible for the content that they push on the public. Bay-area emcee Paris put it best in a post on GuerrillaFunk.com when he said:
The argument is often made by Russell Simmons and others that rappers are poets who simply report on what they feel and their surroundings, and that they shouldn’t be censored. As an emcee, on that point we partially agree — we shouldn’t be censored. But balance between the negative and positive needs to be provided, and it currently isn’t.
Most artistic integrity is questionable at best. My understanding is that artists are supposed to express what they believe in at all costs (if not, there’s work at the post office). But most don’t, and they mold their approaches to making music based on what they perceive major labels wanting. If Def Jam or Interscope or any of these other large culture-defining companies issued a blanket decree that they would only support material and artists with positive messages then 99% of those making music now would switch up to accommodate. That’s real talk.
Back in the late 80s when Public Enemy (P.E.) and X-Clan were selling massive amounts of records, everyone wanted to be like them. White kids were even wearing red, black and green Africa medallions. That changed when the corporations and many rappers misunderstood the content and the public reaction to NWA’s Straight Outta Compton. Released in 1988, it was the first album to reach platinum status without radio airplay. Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E unleashed a maelstrom of controversy with hardcore tales of Black urban fury, a menacing gangsta image and the controversy over their name - Niggas With Attitude.
Just as rappers and the industry jumped on a “conscious hip hop” bandwagon after PE’s 1987 classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the gangsta rap bandwagon turned into an overcrowded subway train when NWA blew up. And the corporate music industry was too happy to oblige.
Where Public Enemy was talking revolution, gangsta rappers were content to describe the conditions in their crack infested neighborhoods. PE and X-Clan charged listeners to make a change in the world. Gangsta rap looks around and says “this is messed up how we’re livin’” or alternately “I love this ghetto lifestyle”.
For almost 20 years now the corporations haven’t looked back. The last decade has seen a resurgence in so-called “conscious hip hop” with the likes of Mos-Def, Talib Kweli, and dead prez. These acts have strong cult followings but can’t get the radio or video play that would turn them into superstars. While MTV and BET rarely ban videos for sexual content, they refused to air dead prez videos because they were “too racial”, and edited the Kanye West clip “All Fall Down” when he said “Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack/ And a white man get paid off of all of that”.
The corporate industry fails consumers by presenting only a small portion of the vast horizon of hip hop. They pitch the sex and violence and ignore the intellectual, the spiritual, and the political. They promote a culture of consumerism and escapism so the Black and white consumers of hip hop buy more stuff, but don’t work to change the world for the better. Corporations could take the lead, not by censoring misogynistic hip hop, but by simply marketing a balanced view of the culture.
But of course, none of us should hold our breath waiting for that to happen.
