I was listening to the Ricky Smiley morning show the other day on my way to work and I was pleased with the conversation for that segment. I don’t listen often so I don’t know who said what or who is who, but they were discussing the recent comments made by Gladys Knight on Hip Hop music today.

“Well, it’s been good as far as giving young artists an opportunity to get out there. But, it’s been bad, in my opinion, as far as the quality of the music and the stories that they tell. It’s one thing to be raw about your history, but they took it to another level and it became vulgar. It has not elevated our industry musically, and it definitely has not elevated us as African-Americans, because we show disrespect for our partners, men and women. I believe we have lowered our self-esteem with these performances and presentations.”

Now first of all let me say that I agree to a certain extent! Not all hip hop is like this however. Several of the radio hosts agreed as well but it sparked a conversation on what Hip Hop was doing to the minds of young people today. I believe Ricky made the comment that when his children are in the car and strong-language hip hop is playing their entire demeanor is different. Conversely when gospel or anything smoother and milder is playing, they themselves are calmer and more well behaved. Other people agreed to have experience similar effects with their children and even with themselves. I think we all have those playlists that are designed to get us “crunk” or wake us up in the mornings, motivate us, or help us chill out. I know that back in the day my “Crunk” playlists were filled with Lil’ Jon, 8 Ball & MJG, and a slew of other rap artists, so clearly that point is logical. Likewise my “chill” mixes are composed of lots of Blue Six, 4 Hero, Sade, and the like. However, if music has these types of effects on our mature, more developed minds imagine what it’s doing to our children.

Just something for you to chew on.

The other major point they made was that while a lot of Hip Hop is vulgar and ugly today, that’s not the end all be all of the genre. There are PLENTY of great artists out there but they just don’t get the exposure. I was really taken aback that the RADIO station was talking about this when they are the ones that have a lot to with who and what gets played. This began the political conversation of the cycle of music. The radio plays what the people want to hear, but the people want to hear what’s hot on the radio. Which came first?

While I understand that party tracks were always hot, that doesn’t necessarily account for the high amount of ignorance going on today. Even back in the 80’s and early 90’s when Gangsta Rap was really making waves, there was still a story to it. A real one. Now we have Young Joc rapping about a life that he really doesn’t know. Or Plies making the most silliest songs when we KNOW he knows better. I believe that today’s society is used to being fed. Consider it lazy. We eat what you place in front of us. If more meaningful or at least musically intricate artists got more airplay you would see a stronger demand for that. Bump the people that say “no one wants to hear good lyrics anymore” they have their own agenda. It’s cheaper and easier to put out a track that took 10 minutes to engineer than to put out one that had actual hard work go into it. Those are the same people that took the news off of BET because “Black people don’t care about the news.”

Listening to the radio personalities pretty much say these things was refreshing yet disgusting at the same time. They pretty much admitted to being the perpetrators of bad music today and the reason the face of Hip Hop is looking more and more twisted, yet they were also unwilling to do a darn thing to change it. Again, I realize this is all a game of politics. The heads of these businesses only see the bottom line, not the social responsibility involved, but that to me takes us back to greed. Instead of setting up our own shops and doing our own thing including what’s best for our people, we need the money of the “big men on top” and we play by their rules. Now I know many people feel like it is not their job to babysit and raise other people’s children. I agree, but I personally have a heart of service and responsibility to my community. The same community that keeps our media outlets running to begin with.

Funny thing though, this morning I was listening to the radio again just to see what was going on and a Gucci Man song came on. I thought “Oh this beat is catchy” and I almost thought that I could like the song simply because there was no way I could actually make out what he was saying. LOL Like seriously, he could have been talking about chopping up babies and sending them to China for all I know, but in my mind he was discussing Health Care Reform and the national debt.

All I’m saying is we need to start holding each other accountable. Let our media outlets know that we don’t want the BS anymore, and maybe we can get the message across to them and the artists. I’m all for fun tracks, but you don’t have to reduce every woman down to a hoe you can do drugs off of. Let’s do better.

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