ABC (Australia) Radio "The World Today" Tuesday, 7 October , 2003 12:44:09
Reporter: Rafael Epstein
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Popular music has finally recognised its roots. For the first time since the dawn of rock n' roll, none of the artists in the top ten singles charts in the United States are white.
For more than half a decade white musicians have been appropriating black music. Now with rap and r'n'b dominating music around the world, black musicians for the first time hold every spot on the most important barometer of popular music, the top ten singles in the American Billboard music charts.
Rafael Epstein prepared this report on the music that still mystifies and frightens parents.
(Excerpt of Beyonce Knowles song 'Crazy In Love')
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Beyonce is the one woman among eight men and a group that's achieved a landmark in American music. But it's largely going unnoticed in the country that invented rock n' roll.
(Excerpt of Beyonce Knowles song 'Crazy In Love')
STEPHEN IVORY: It's pretty much going unnoticed. Black music has been such a dominant force in American culture for so long that, you know, I think Billboard had to actually point it out before we said, oh really? Wow, that's amazing this week. I mean, it's just pretty much going unnoticed.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Stephen Ivory is a Los Angeles music writer who works for outlets like National Public Radio and the LA Times.
STEPHEN IVORY: Well, it was just a matter of time that, you know, the top ten would be fully black artists, and that's not simply because, you know, black music is such a force, it's also because so many people like black music.
I mean, when you look at who is buying hip hop in America today, it's probably more white suburban kids than there are blacks actually supporting the music. Black acts such as 50 Cent, DMX, people like this – acts that are foreign to, you know, many people over 40 – these people have routinely been debuting at number one on the charts. So it was only a matter of time.
(Excerpt from 50 Cent song 'In da Club')
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: The rapper 50 Cent is the paradigmatic modern music star. His parents were killed as he grew up in Queens, New York. The 26 year-old's been stabbed, involved in feuds, and he survived being shot nine times three years ago.
His album is called Get Rich or Die Trying, and he's just bought a 61-room mansion in Connecticut, previously owned by boxer Mike Tyson. His award-winning album is adorned with images of guns, bullet holes, drug money and pictures that show 50 Cent is no stranger to the weights room in the gym.
STEPHEN IVORY: I think that's just one part of black music, and I don't know that it's actually part of the music to be shot at or to have gone to jail or to have been involved in some sort of crime.
In the beginning I think it served as some sort of medal of honour. But, you know, it certainly does help to some of the hip hop audience that these people have lives that mirror the music that they sing about.
(Excerpt from 50 Cent song 'In da Club')
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Now 50 Cent, and others like P Diddy, Black Eyed Peas, Ludicrous and Ashanti have made music history. But they still need gates opened by white people. 50 Cent's only a star because he was plucked from the obscurity by another major star, who's white.
(Excerpt from Eminem song 'Lose yourself')
Eminem typifies what music used to be about – white musicians using black music to sell records. He's white, but he speaks, dresses and sings like a black man.
STEPHEN IVORY: The American black music lover is like the American black person pretty much, he's a forgiving person, and if it's good it's good. I've been surprised that Eminem has been so well received by the young black music community.
I must say that there is also the thought that Eminem is just another Elvis – someone who loved black music and came along and exploited it in his own way and has made tons of money from it, doing it not as well as the people who influenced him.
(Excerpt from R Kelly song 'Ignition')
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: But there are things that unite all the artists in the top 10 – their sexy and violent imagery. It prompts most parents to say, I can't believe they're doing that, and the lyrics – at least to my ears – are often impossible to decipher.
But then, Frank Sinatra's first music was described as fostering, quote "almost totally negative and destructive reactions, sung, played and written by cretinous goons".
I'll leave the last word to a music historian, who wrote "rock defines a classless and ostensibly colour-blind universal form".
True, it's the product of the coldest sort of commercial calculation, but it also embodies a not ignoble vision of a nation transformed, of mind and body, black and white, dancing the same dance, moving to the same beat, as kids en mass join in their own brand of Dionysian revelry, watered down and trite, but genuinely uplifting all the same.
(Excerpt from R Kelly song 'Ignition')
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Rafael Epstein with that report.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s961802.htm