Hip Hop Makes Hillbillies More Loathsome

I got beef with the media. Now, this is something totally different for me, because I usually defend the media’s right to determine what’s newsworthy, exercise free speech, and sell advertising. It’s the way the industry works, if not necessarily in that order, and I’ve always respected that. Until now.

Can somebody please explain to me how a fuckstick like Don Imus can insult a whole basketball team, race, and gender in one statement, and weeks after the incident, hip hop is defending itself? In case you live in Burma and missed it, check this series of events:

1 – Imus blurts an oblivious and clumsy racial epithet, gets appropriately canned and reviled.

2 – The talk shows blow up, Maya Angelou says “all vulgarity is vulgarity.”

3 – Talk radio hosts: “if you condemn Imus, you cannot morally listen to hip hop.” (my favorite examples of this came from white middle aged bloggers and radio hosts.)

4 – Russell Simmons calls for labels to voluntarily bleep certain words from all hip hop releases.

Hip hop has taken so many knocks over the years from so many sources, it’s predictable that it comes up in discussions about race relations. But for folks to draw a line from a hillbilly’s ignorant and public racist insults to Snoop’s right to use the word “bitch” on a record is ridiculous. For starters, record companies know that most people who buy hip hop are white males, so today’s hip hop is largely devoid of racist insults.

But even if Snoop decided to call a white woman a “stupid cracka chickenhead,” for example, it would never be broadcast in public, on the air, and most likely, it would never be about a real, named group of women. Snoop is way too weeded up to come up with that shit.

I think it’s what the bougie writers call context.

And if you don’t enjoy hearing other women referred to as stupid cracka chickenheads, then I suppose you could just not listen to that record. Yes, vulgarity is vulgarity. And we should be free to choose not to hear it on public airwaves. But hip hop artists ought to be free to say whatever stupid shit they want to, and if people don’t have the same passion for stupid shit that this blogger does, then don’t buy it. Communities have a funny way of setting their own standards that way.

So why is the media all on the hip-hop-is-bad tip this month? I guess it’s selling advertising. But this story is not based in truth; it’s based on exploitation of the too-common misunderstanding that hip hop is, in itself, a societal ill. That’s what white boomers have always thought, and God help us, they happen to be running the media and the country these days.

Some of my favorite stupid shit:

Snoop Dogg
Go Away
Tha Last Meal, 2000
My all-time favorite use of the word “bitch” at 3:22. Gratuitous filth throughout.

Black Sheep
Hoes We Knows
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, 1991
Answers, in detail, the question: “Dres, what’s it with you and all those hoes?”

Jay-Z feat. Memphis Bleek
2 Many Hoes
Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse, 2002
Hova’s in on the ho game too, though much more artfully, evident as he advises a young ho to “disappear like Copperfield, go cop a feel.”

Diamond D & the Psychotic Neurotics
Sally Got a One Track Mind
Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop, 1992
Oooh, Sally’s gonna tear somebody up when she hears that right there. Even though she’s a straight whore. Diamond D’s words, not mine…