I encourage everybody to watch the video I've embedded below. After that, please check out the website of the artist: www.notarapper.com
This video aired as a PSA on BET. I'd like for as many people as possible to comment on it using my blog as a posting board. I will post the comments that come in from readers and then extrapolate major issues from them.
1 comment:
Funny, well-executed parody of a lot of commercial hip-hop - mindless, repetitive barking. Sounds like the artist is annoyed with something I know you and I have been annoyed with forever: the state of commercial entertainment and the way the masses will consume any drivel emptied onto their plates, with no patience for anything thought-provoking or challenging. ("I usually do songs with hooks and concepts and shit, but fuck that man, I'm trying to go blacker.")
As for the lyrical content, seems pretty straightforward. He's fighting against the ills of black urban society, and he's calling out the hip-hop industry's glamorization of an inner-city culture he considers rife with problems, including issues of literacy, parenting, financial responsibility ("buy some land, fuck spinning rims"), health and hygene.
I imagine he views these social problems as ways that an underprivileged class helps to keep itself oppressed, and thinks that commercial hip-hop works as a tool to that end. It's hard to disagree with the sentiment--who doesn't benefit from literacy, strong family ties, physical well-being, and land ownership? It seems to be his opinion that black urban culture is especially lacking in these areas, and that commercial hip-hop, like most commercial art these days (or so it often seems to me), encourages vapidity and reinforces the status quo.
It also appears that he is trying to knock down the glamorized self-image a lot of rappers put forward. "You're a tough guy? You're too cool for school? How about this: you're uninformed, you're a shitty parent, and your breath stinks." Snotty. Reminds me of Pavement.
It's also interesting how he uses the form to criticize the form (I'm assuming that's what caught your interest?), and airs it on a channel that might reinforce some of the images he's fighting to destroy...
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