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Vigalantee Spits Freestyle: Positive hip hop in full effect

Vigalantee is one of my favorite artists. I also know this brother personally, and his skill is off the hook. I was incredibly impressed with his knowledge and understanding of hip hop. When we talked, he was able to take it back 15 years to whatever topic I brought up, whether it was NWA, Ice Tea, 50 Cent or Kurtis Blow. There are few greater students of hip hop and more intelligent brothers than this one. So, I wanted my readers to get a chance to see some seriously positive and conscientious hip hop. He's one of the best.

Hip Hop vs. America Part 2: Oprah Winfrey, Ice Cube and Corporate Hip Hop

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by Dr. Boyce Watkins
www.BoyceWatkins.com
www.YourBlackWorld.com


Some people think I hate Oprah Winfrey. I don’t. Actually, I love Oprah. Not the way my grandmother loves her, for that would be technically defined as cult worship. I love her the way I love Black Enterprise Magazine or really good Chinese food. Oprah inspires me, intimidates me and makes me really curious about the benefits of good, strong Tupperware.

The reason some people think I dislike Oprah is because I felt the need to critique her. Being engaged in critical social commentary in a media of black and white is like being an abstract artist in a comic book club. If you criticize someone, you are officially defined as a critic. You don’t dare use terms like “but on the other hand….”, for that’s the part of the tape that gets played during the commercial break. I even critique my mother, and I really love my mama. There is a ying-yang in everything, and Oprah is no exception. Remember: Her name is Oprah Winfrey, not Jesus Winfrey, but my grandmother might not agree.

The source of my Oprah critique came during her “Town Hall Meeting” on Hip Hop. On this particular show, Winfrey decided to assault gangster rap for its sexist imagery and violent lyrical content. I know gangster rap well, as the rapper Ice Cube (Co-founder of the group NWA) was my own personal Oprah Winfrey during high school and college. Everybody needs an Oprah, especially angry black men. There was something about the energy of NWA’s music that made me feel strong and liberated. Ice Cube’s song “F*ck the Police” was the most notorious of his collection, describing anger in LA about police brutality. With Rodney King happening just 3 years later, the song turned out to be downright prophetic.

But Ice Cube has some other work that is not so cool. Yes, he was young, but there is no excuse for the sexist content of some of his music. Years later, after Cube’s family movies have made him into an Crip-walking Bill Cosby, Oprah still has a legitimate grudge against him for songs he made 15 years ago. Ice Cube’s nasty response to Oprah, as well as backing from his gangster rap grandchild 50 Cent, led to Oprah’s Town Hall Meeting on Hip Hop.

During her attack on gangster rap, The Almighty Oprah chose to structure the judge and jury in her own psychological image. Not one guest in this so-called dialogue on gangster rap was actually a gangster rapper. The rapper “Common” was invited, but that’s like inviting Winny the Pooh to represent the Legion of Grizzly Bears. The conversation was rigged and counter-productive from the start. As a fan and critic of Hip Hop, I was disappointed. As a finance professor, I was annoyed that everyone seemed to forget that Hip Hop, in the form seen by most of America, is a corporate phenomenon. In this game, the “playas” are actually the ones getting played. One can’t discuss the War on Terror without mentioning President Bush, and one can’t discuss the challenge to gangster rap without mentioning the labels that provide financing, marketing, packaging and distribution of the final product. Without corporate America “slanging” the product or suburban kids clamoring for it like dope addicts, commercialized gangster rap would be about as socially significant as MC Hammer’s little brother.

Here are some points on what Oprah “Jesus” Winfrey was missing in her Town Hall Meeting on Hip Hop. First, commercialized Hip Hop is not the same as Hip Hop itself. Connecting the two is like comparing Hollywood blockbusters with Broadway Theatre. Sylvester Stallone couldn’t find his way to Broadway with a GPS, but he did quite well in Hollywood. The same is true for some rappers who experience commercial success with music that is about as entertaining as an actual commercial. Many such artists do not, for one second, reflect the essence of Hip Hop music.

Secondly, Oprah is a capitalist. She knows full well that the most visible face is not the most powerful one. To think that the nature of commercialized Hip Hop is controlled by rappers is to assume that record label executives aren’t standing behind the rapper with a machete over his head. Any rapper who deviates from corporate expectations will be replaced by someone who follows the company line. There are a slew of positive artists trying to get record deals, and they aren’t getting signed. The rapper E-40 said it best with his song “They’ll Find a New N*gger Next Year”. In this song, he explained that when artists get out of line, they get replaced. Perhaps Oprah should “get crunk” and listen to more E-40, he’s really good.

Again, I am not here to beat down Oprah, as some thought I was doing on CNN. I must confess that Oprah has done a lot more for the world than Ice Cube or 50 Cent. At the same time, Oprah’s anger at the sexist lyrical content of rap artists should not lead to a blanket indictment of the genre, nor should it mute the rights to cultural expression of gangster rappers. The same way that Oprah’s story is one of abuse, challenges and triumphs, the same is true for the rapper 50 Cent. Both stories are products of the black experience, and both stories deserve to be told.

The attack on gangster rap reminds me a lot of the War on Drugs during the horrific years of the Reagan Administration. There is a difference between really wanting to solve a problem vs. venting your frustrations and pretending to solve the problem. Reagan’s decision to arrest tens of thousands of black men while allowing the CIA to let drugs into the country through the back door was a vent. Oprah’s decision to go after rappers without having the courage to go to the source of the problem is like beating up the smallest kid in the class because the biggest kid took your lunch money. Although record labels control the marketing, content, distribution and production of gangster rap, Oprah wouldn’t dare go after the labels themselves. The very same corporations that own the rappers also own a piece of Oprah and the kids who buy the music on i-tunes are the children of her soccer mom audience.

Don’t get it twisted, everybody’s a slave in the rap game. Oprah hasn’t yet begun to open this Pandora’s Box.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of “Financial Lovemaking 101: Merging Assets with Your Partner in ways that feel good.” For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.

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Dr. Boyce Watkins, Wendy Williams and Roland Martin debate the beef between Oprah Winfrey, 50 Cent and Ice Cube on CNN.

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Hip Hop, Rap and Rappers: The Best Scapegoat in America

Hip Hop Vs. America Part 1 - Hip Hop is not the cause of America's Social Ills

by Dr. Boyce Watkins
http://www.boycewatkins.com/


I get a kick out of hearing conservatives describe hip hop as the bane of their existence. Rap music is nothing but a scum-of-the-earth product that lies in the center of everything that’s wrong with Black America. It’s the reason crime happens in black communities, why girls get pregnant, why brothers get shot, and why black men are in prison.

They explain to me, using $50 dollar words earned in some graduate school class, that hip hop is to blame for all of society’s ills. Rap music is Exhibit A in an open-and-shut case proving that all young black people are sh*t heads headed to hell in a hand basket.

How creative of us.

One of the oldest traditions in the world is for old people to look at young people and believe that they’ve lost their damn minds. When Jazz was the hot new form of expression, there were parents everywhere screaming that their kids were possessed by the devil. When Elvis swiveled his hips, parents had aneurysms everywhere. Rather than respecting the energy and creativity that young people bring to the world, we would rather knock them upside the head and tell them they are worthless. This goes double for the hip hop generation, who has the misfortune of being part of a community that has a 400 year old list of problems that they conveniently blame on a 30-year old social movement.

Rappers are not the reason so many black men are in prison. Our prisons are full because there are corporations that now have a direct financial incentive to incarcerate people and use their cheap labor as a modernized form of slavery. There is study after study proving that black men are given longer sentences for the same crimes, more likely to be incarcerated for those crimes, and consistently disenfranchised from society after paying the price for those crimes.
Yes, personal responsibility plays a role, but we must first have the personal responsibility to stop pushing all of our problems onto the rappers. Hip Hop didn’t create our broken justice system, and when NWA said “F*ck the Police” in 1988, the LA riots proved that they had a good point.

Rappers are not the reason that our school systems are underfunded: the lack of funds results from the fact that schools are supported from the tax base of the communities around them, and black people don’t have any money. Perhaps better school systems would not give rappers so many bad educational experiences to rap about.

Rappers are not the reason black people are poor. We are poor because there is a 400 year tradition of excluding African-Americans from the ability to pass wealth down to our children. Why don't we write a rap lyric or two about the poverty in America.....Oh, many hip hop artists already do. Addressing socioeconomic inequality might provide hip hop artists with positive inspiration, rather than the despair that so readily fuels their creative talents.

Rappers are not the reason there is so much crime. To blame hip hop, a form of entertainment on urban crime is like blaming Hollywood for the crime that takes place in America. If music has a hypnotic effect on the mind, leading to violence, then one must certainly argue that the image of violence in film has a much stronger impact. There were violent films long before there was ever a violent rap song. Additionally, the annual budget our country spends making violent movies far outweighs the money spent recording violent rap lyrics.

Racism and oppression are evil diseases that lie within the very fabric of America’s social infrastructure. The notion that these 400 year old demons are the result of 30 years of hip hop is nothing more than the standard scapegoating used against oppressed people in many societies. To blame hip hop for the state of black America is like bulldozing down a man’s house and then blaming the destruction on the fact that he spills milk at breakfast.

Hip hop teaches us to keep it real. Common sense will teach us how to keep it REALISTIC. We must do a little bit of both to get to the root of our problems and come up with effective solutions.

Hip is not to blame.

Dr.Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” He makes regular appearances in national media, including CNN, ESPN, BET, CBS and Good Morning America. For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.