Tuesday, April 22, 2014
hip hop controversies
Before this assignment I had never heard of Tricia Rose, but now I know she is an internationally respected scholar of post civil rights era black U.S. culture, popular music, social issues, gender and sexuality. She lectures on a wide range of issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality, and art and social justice. She has been featured on many local and national media outlets. She is an incredible speaker and very animated and passionate about the topics she discusses. She is best known for her book titled Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America written on the emergence of hip hop culture. Her book has had great recognition from various institutions. It is considered a foundational text for the study of hip hop. She argues that just hearing the word hip hop today creates images in our mind as to what it is all about. Some of these images may be of well known rappers, drugs, money and sex. She talks about how what we hear in contemporary hip hop creates these negative images and it is all just for ways of making money. Even some well known rappers admitted that they had dumbed down their lyrics in order to make a few bucks. Reading the question and answer section of this reading started me thinking back about Christensen and the "secret education" and how we are taught at a young age how we should view the world. The same thing is going on here with hip hop. The industry creates this image, one that will make them rich, and this is suddenly what hip hop becomes. The value of real hip hop, the underground stuff, gets buried. This kind of also relates to Orenstein in a way. In that reading there was pink and blue, what girls should be and what boys should be. Here there is hip hop and contemporary hip hop, what the music really is and what image the industry has created for money purposes and to gather a following. I am guilty of hearing the word hip hop and seeing the same negative images i mentioned earlier. It actually turns me off from listening to that type of music. It is all the same. I really wish more rappers would take a stand and stray away from this contemporary hip hop image and do some creative stuff again...no need for all the swearing, killing, drug, sex talk. That is not talent.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The music definitely can turn me off as well.. I agree that rappers should try to take a stand and stray away from the contemporary hip hop image.. instead of the sexist, killing, drug crap.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you when you commented that the music and lyrics can turn you off from a song because it does the same for me. I wish one rapper would be brave enough to rap about something different and become famous for that!
ReplyDeleteTanya, I think that you make some really good points here. I too was often put off from listening to hip hop, especially commercialized hip hop because of the popular images that were portrayed in very stereotypical and racist ways.
ReplyDeleteI do however, disagree with both Lauren and Jenna on this subject. I feel as though there needs not only to be a distinction drawn between commercialized and underground hip hop, but with this also needs to come the understanding that views of all rap as bad is just as problematic as the commercializers of hip hop. I know some really good feminists who praise hip hop for conversations of black struggles, feminists who listen to commercialized hip hop and find the good images. I encourage you all to look at my hyperlink post on this. I make a point to provide some good forms of commercialized hip hop which critiques the systems of music and racism.
"This kind of also relates to Orenstein in a way. In that reading there was pink and blue, what girls should be and what boys should be. Here there is hip hop and contemporary hip hop, what the music really is and what image the industry has created for money purposes and to gather a following"
ReplyDeleteGood way to relate the articles. I wouldnt have thought to connect the two. But its true. They will do anything to gather a following and make money..sucks that they have to create shitty music in the process.