The Nappy Diatribe

VH1's Hip Hop Honors: A Networks way of apologizing for Minstrelsy

Posted 10/08/2007 at 6:37 PM  |  3 comment/s

If some down-on-his-luck writer one day decides that helping a deviant bastard like myself pen an autobiography as their last stab at a writing career before getting a regular 9 to 5 like "normal people", no matter how much they may object to the title - the chapter detailing the sordid events of my childhood has to be named "Break-dancing, masturbating to Lisa Lisa videos, and my Homeboy Chris". Recklessly spinning on cardboard and rubbing one out to a sweet pair of puerto-rican mammaries aside, Chris was the best buddy a guy could have while negotiating the turbulent waters of my formidable years - a decade plagued with verbal abuse, a crippling stutter, and an addiction to late-night snacking that still causes a brother to sporadically check my pulse during those fleeting moments when I'm engaged in some serious hardcore fucking.(Ok, masturbation) Whenever I was depressed over something my old man had said to me, Chris was there acting as my emotional cheerleader - he thought that my old man sounded like Red Foxx so he would do impressions of the comedian, the memory of a 10 year old white kid speaking with a raspy voice while reciting "You really gotta wash Yo ass" jokes still amazes me to this day. We had a B-Boy crew where we would battle other kids for breakdance supremacy, granted, if they happened to beat us we'd proceed to punch them in the face then attempt to smother them with their own cardboard mat - but that's neither here nor there. If one of us happened to win a fight that we were in, it didn't make any fucking difference - the other one would usually walk up and mercilessly kick the defeated kid while he still lay battered on the pavement, sarcastically saying something like "What in the fuck were you thinking?!!" Like most childhood friendships we started to drift apart once we reached junior high, he started to hang with the heavy metal kids who wore jean-jackets that wreaked of nicotine - and I gravitated to the individuals who prayed to the alter of Rakim, and pubescent females who sported MC Lyte hairstyles and door-knocker earrings that I desperately wanted to expose myself to. But the both of us recognized how important our friendship was, so we salvaged it by shooting hoops and talking about Hip Hop every Saturday at this crummy basketball court behind a local church - a routine the we reenacted religiously all through high school.

So you can imagine how shocked I was when I learned from one of my friends that Chris was hanging with a group of local skinheads - that was another thing that I needed to worry about before I started college, book fees, my class schedule, and one of my dearest friends wanting to wipe the black race off the face of the earth. When I went over his house to see if he had indeed decided to shave his head and masturbate to Mein Kampf, my inquiries were answered when I pulled up and saw a man on his front porch wearing dock-martins and utter disgust on his face - only to see Chris finally emerge from the house saying "HumanityCritic, Go-the-fuck-home!!" in a stern voice. As I approached my old friend, openly wondering why he decided to align himself with such a rogues gallery of douchebags, reminding him that I know his mama and that she didn't raise him to have such vitriol flowing through his blood stream, suggesting that he should go and listen to "Paid in Full" and forget about this "whole Neo-Nazi nonsense" - thats when his boy sucker-punched me and called me racial epithets that would make the screenwriters of "Mississippi Burning" blush like school girls. As the both of us tussled and I tried to choke the life out of him with his suspenders, Chris pulled me off of his goose-stepping buddy and said something that absolutely broke my heart at the time - "Get out of here nigger before I get my shotgun - we were never friends!!"

The look in his eyes was as foreign to me as telemundo or Asian vagina, it was akin to him being bitten by a vampire and everything about him changing but his physical appearance - so I slowly walked to my car without looking back, mentally closing the door on that friendship since being called the "N-Word" when its not a term of endearment from a black person is sort of a deal breaker. Fifteen years, a beer gut, and a distaste for post coital snuggling later - I hadn't even come across Chris in passing, only momentarily thinking about him whenever one of my friends would ask me about my general distrust of the human race. That was until, I ran into Chris at a Hip Hop show a few months back.

Even though he approached me with seemingly nothing but remorse in his heart, telling me that the incident at his house has haunted him all these years, breaking down to me how he had changed his life years ago and how he strongly rebukes the time period in which he was a skinhead - I still looked at him like he had just taken an extremely busy shit in the middle of the club, walking away as he screamed "I guess repairing our friendship its going to take some time!!" I've seen him at a few shows since them, experiences littered with his apologies with Hip Hop serving as the score to our nonexistent friendship - even finding myself answering him back when he asked me whether I heard about some underground Hip Hop group that he likes. Even a cynical bastard like me knows that a person changing their ways is indeed a possible feat, but at the end of the day I'm not fucking with Chris - I don't care if we both agree that Blue & Exile is the unadulterated shit or not, the fact that he chose a bunch of hate-mongers who worked out their daddy and latent homosexuality issues through hate over a ten year friendship is a hell-worthy trespass in my book.

I'm staring to think that VH1 is the human embodiment of my childhood friend Chris as of late. Listen, I know that the Hip Hop Honors programs pre-dated shows that undo the civil rights movement like "Flavor of Love", "I love New York", and "Charm School" - but with all the Hip Hop specials and documentaries that VH1 has played in the run-up of tonight's show, I'm beginning to think that a show honoring legends of Hip Hop past has turned into a televised apology from a network unapologetic for promoting racial stereotypes. I know what some of you are thinking, "Isn't it a risky move for you to diss VH1, being that your employer's 'Vibe Soul Awards" are being broadcast on that same channel?": Answer: No. Vibe knew I was a loose cannon when they brought me on board, a man that stands behind my convictions - a chubby scribe who recites the words to O.C's "Times Up" like it was bible scripture before I compose blog posts so it reminds me to never compromise my core principles. Let me also make it clear that my condemnation of VH1 doesn't reflect on the artists being honored tonight, A Tribe Called Quest, Whodini, Snoop, and the movie "Wild Style" are worthy honorees - even though honoring Missy is somewhat of a dandruff scratcher, and giving love to the "New Jack Swing" is akin to celebrating the pet rock or bell-bottom jeans.

But at the end of the day I feel the same way about VH1 as I do about my childhood friend, no matter what sentimental Hip Hop heart strings they tug at - I can't forget about the previous disdain they had for the millions of people who look just like me. Will I watch tonight? Yes. Vibe now knows that the man they brought on board routinely urinates on his convictions - a chubby scribe who needs to start reciting the words to Nas' "Oochie Wally" to remind me that compromising my core principles is one of the things I do best. What can I say, seeing Tribe sort of trumps my desire to take a stand - particularly tonight.

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