[lbo-talk] pomo cultural lefties who valorize the poor

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 28 13:42:28 PDT 2005


Charles B:

I have, though, said on this list that I consider Gangster Rappers to be the Children of Reagan. The rightwing themes of gangster rap are also the result of capitalist record companies choosing the bad rappers over the progressive ones. It's sort of like the Bushes choosing Clarence Thomas, Condelezza Rice and Colin Powell, who are politically "misrepresentative" of a Black population that proportionally has more progressive types than the norm. Gangsta Rappers' politics are atypical of Black people as a whole. There is widespread criticism of gangsta rap from the Black people.

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This is so brilliantly true that I nearly spat out my water in happily shocked recognition as I read it.

The problem is, the only people who can clearly see this are those who:

a.) don't have a brief against hip hop simply for being hip hop (and not some other form)

b.) are familiar with the history of the genre and know that a celebration of capitalist nihilism was not there at the start

c.) understand that the music industry acts as a filter, presenting only what it thinks will sell. People choose from that subset and are never, unless they're intrepid and plugged into new music culture, exposed to the full selection

If, for example, you listen with open ears to De La Soul's *Stakes is High* you'll learn that many veteran or *old school* rappers are completely aware of the near total destruction of creativity in their field by the dominance of capitalist music enterprises who've shut them out from major distribution and marketing channels.

But on the other hand if, like our Woj, you just don't like rap and have (as seems to be the case) no knowledge of its history, you're ready, willing and able to believe that the mostly insane rants coming from people's car radios -- depicting a hellish world of endless SUV chases, rough sex and gun fights -- is all there ever is, was or will be from hip hop.

Which reminds me of that brief discussion of computer culture we got into a few weeks ago. As I recall Woj, you compared most users to monkeys who mindlessly respond to bright, colorful symbols after rudimentary training.

This was so far removed from my observations of the dynamic ways millions of people use digital technology -- some even going so far as to re-engineer devices for their own purposes, as has happened incredibly fast with Sony's recently released PSP -- and knowledge of the computer age's past that I could only stare on in wonder at an astoundingly one dimensional description.

Good god, things are quite bad indeed; no one should deny this. But everything that displeases or falls short of rosy descriptions (the way the computer age is far less than what boosters claim but much more than what you appear to believe Wojtek) is the result of sloth, stupidity and ignorance.

.d.



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