<HTML>In a message dated 6/24/2003 9:27:48 AM Mountain Daylight Time, wideye@earthlink.net writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">before you go off generalizing hip hop as "macho nihilism" try to listen something other than the top 40 marketed crap that seems to encompass your worldview of the genre.  as a starter i suggest you pick up some arrested development, blackalicious, or jurassic 5</BLOCKQUOTE> Amen.  May I also suggest anything by Dead Prez, and Sarah Jones's recording of her poem "Your Revolution (will not happen between these thighs)"--and the entire Boogie Down Productions collection?  And there is also a compilation, "No More Prisons," released by Raptivism Records, that is quite simply the best hip hop I have ever heard.  There is, of course much more.  Most conscious hip hop actually offers an on-point criticism of the "macho-gangster-hit-my-bitches" hip pop.  stannard</HTML>