The Nappy Diatribe

IT'S JUST A FRIENDLY GAME OF BASKETBALL

Posted 03/30/2007 at 9:51 PM  |  3 comment/s

Stop treating Hip Hop like bell-bottom jeans or the fucking pet rock!!

I realize that I'm getting old. The greyness rising from the hair follicles on my face is evidence of that, as it spreads at an alarming rate like an untreated cancer or the legs of that prostitute I once lost my precious virginity to. Losing the gut that hangs ever so slightly over my belt has become increasingly difficult with age, so much in fact that I've been reduced to finding dates in the most awkward of places like gyms and over-eaters support groups just to get laid. I physically get winded a lot faster - usually effortless tasks like playing lock-down defense during pick-up basketball games and three minutes of intense hardcore fucking has become quite the heart-racing endeavor. Even though I've always been forcefully vocal about my likes and dislikes, always feeling that a person's interests determine whether or not you are a stand-up individual or a steaming pile of cat-crap, I've become even more cantankerous with each passing year. It's as if I've become the human embodiment of "Statler & Waldorf," those two old guys on "The Muppet Show" who do nothing but constantly talk shit with reckless abandon from the confines of their balcony. More accurately, the ways the music that I love has been continually desecrated, with me longing for the glory days when people took pride in their craft. It is this writer's belief that I have officially become my father.

Even though at one time I regarded my father as an old coot who was a couple of years shy of visiting the glue factory, I can completely understand his critique concerning R&B during the late '80s and '90s. Sure, I could be found serenading some young lady with my out-of-tune rendition of "Candy Girl." If I had a quarter for every time I nervously dry-humped a girl to "Can You Stand the Rain" I'd be on one of those Forbes money lists, but even the most objective observer can admit that those gentlemen from Boston couldn't hold the proverbial jockstraps of some of their predecessors, like The Four Tops or The Temptations. As much as I loved grinding on some unknowing man's daughter to the begging sounds of Keith Sweat during one of the many High School dances I attended, and as much as his songs were an integral part of my teenage years, to put him in the same category as the likes of Al Green, Otis Redding, and Sam Cooke is a sentiment that at the most will get you beaten the fuck up, or at least invoke school-girl giggles from the roughest of criminals. But my father would also admit, grudgingly, that times were indeed different and that he had to accept the "changes in the musical tide" as he would so succinctly put it.

Which brings me to Hip Hop, whenever I talk about the declining state of Hip Hop to people, how individuals who fashion themselves as "Emcees" have purposely put lyricism on the backburner for financial gain and to cater to an illiterate populace, and how fans and critics constantly apologize for what I call "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Hip Hop, I'm usually confronted with asinine arguments like "Hey HumanityCritic, Hip Hop is evolving!" and how "Not everyone has to be lyrical, you know!!" Granted, the owners of such arguments are individuals with so little taste when it comes to music that it wouldn't shock me if they plugged their collective noses while playing their favorite CDs. Sometimes, just sometimes, a person uses that same "changes in the musical tide" argument that my father once used while talking about R&B, the biggest difference is that you can't treat Hip Hop like it's the "pet rock" or fucking bell-bottom jeans.

Hip Hop is like basketball to me. Sure the players might be stronger, taller, and the shorts that they wear no longer sporadically expose a testicle or two, but the one thing that hasn't changed since Dr. James Naismith invented that beautiful game in the winter of 1891 was that having skills has always been a prerequisite. Even though a couple generations separate the likes of Bill Russel and LeBron James, they can both watch tapes of the others' era and pick out the very best players on the court, both appreciating the game equally even though they're unfamiliar with the era that they are watching on an athletic level. Hip Hop was also founded on lyrical skill. The one thing about R&B singers is that they could go an entire career without writing a solitary word of any of their songs. The great thing that separated MCs from everyone else is that being mighty with the pen was a necessity in order to get any sort of recognition or acclaim.

Now in the age of what I earlier called "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Hip Hop, with all the shucking and jiving, and perpetuating the worst stereotypes imaginable about black folks, it's got me rather paranoid. Paranoid to the point that I secretly think the black fans who like that kind of shit are the same kids who thought getting good grades was "acting white" back in the day, individuals who I feel wouldn't know a well crafted sentence if they were ass raped by Ernest Hemingway's homoerotic ghost. This may be wrong of me, white fans can love Hip Hop more than anyone, but sometimes I feel that the white fans who love that dumbed-down Hip Hop are just passive aggressively laughing at black folks in the comfort of their own public head-nods.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the problem with the new artists is that they don't know their history, you ask them who Kool Herc is - fuck, ask them who Kool G Rap is for Christ's sake, and they look at you as if you've just asked them to give you the square root of something. It's a shame that many of today's rappers have taken a solemn oath to ignorance, even the dimmest NBA player knows who Wilt Chamberlain is, the lack of foundation that I've witnessed is as preposterous as a basketball player who doesn't know what double-dribbling is. That my friend, is foul.

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