The wordsmith behind the 2 Live Crew for hipsters act, Spank Rock hasn’t done much for me since 2006’s debut record. A party starter of an album, really, where pressing play and letting it ride made people put their hands up, BUMP, and shake it.
The dirty-minded MC, who has been stagnant as of late, appears on NYC’s punk band with a twist Japanther’s Radical Businessman. Before, the poet uttered lines like shake it till my dick turns racist, and now, he spits 1, 2, 3, 4, fuck the cops! Have these past few years turned our hero angry and not interested in dirty scenarios?
Let’s hope not. Experience Radical Businessman….
“Have these past few years turned our hero angry and not interested in dirty scenarios?”
What a disappointing and typical neanderthal white boy response. As anyone knowledgeable about music and rap would tell you, the foundations of the genre are inherently political– or “angry” as you unfortunately term it– and talking about “anger” at law enforcement is a noted part of the tradition (not a deviation). Unfortunately, the genre has often been plagued by white wannabe-hipsters who look to hip hop to ONLY provide them with hyper-sexualized lyrical content and aren’t intelligent enough to comprehend the broader social messages as well.
Were the foundations of “rap” really political? Was “Rapper’s Delight” angry? Huh, I’m confused? The Fat Boys weren’t angry, and the only reason why the Real Roxxxane was upset, was because the ‘boys’ left her out of the hip hop scene. Grandmaster Flash was just consumed with “Girls Loving the Way He Spins” and Kurtis Blow loved “Basketball!?” What a douche! Maybe this newcomin’ neanderthal needs to search deeper into the “roots” of “rap!” Rap has grown inherently angrier over the last 20 years. The main problem with rap is that there are no longer any messages at all! The industry is plagued by bullshit about dance floors and cocaine, that is the problem! FYI-when you write a song about having pussy put on your face, you aren’t trying to send a social-political message!
Afrankl2, I think if you read the original poster more carefully, he or she is not saying that rap and/or hip-hop has not been consumed by sexual lyrics, etc. At least that’s my interpretation (MusicFan, please feel free to correct me if that’s not the case). It is an obvious point that rap and/or hip-hop is sexual in content. However, sexual content can co-mingle with political content. Rather, it would seem the poster is making a point of Dave’s bemoaning of a political turn in one artist’s work as highly problematic and ignorant of the roots of the genre. Also, characterizing political content as “angry” is at best demeaning and, at worst, racist– reflective of a common tendency of those in power to characterize the struggles and legitimate claims of marginalized groups as illegitimate.
Let me try to clear up your “confusion.” It is highly simplistic to characterize the roots of the genre with the cliched example of “Rapper’s Delight.” Also, your point that “Grandmaster Flash was just consumed with ‘Girls Loving the Way He Spins’” is completely ill-informed and inaccurate. A simple search of Wikipedia and basic knowledge of the artist acknowledges Grandmaster Flash as releasing the “first sociopolitical rap song”– 1982’s “The Message.” For for more support, please consider the work of artists such as Public Enemy, Ice-T, etc.
There is a rich vein of academic studies and literature that document quite well the political nature of the genre. For example, while not all rap today is necessarily political, in a 1992 article published in Popular Music and Society, Judith McDonnell argues the foundation of rap is “the expression of a politics of resistance.” Accordingly, she notes, “controversy has always meant profit for rap” (McDonnell, 1992). For example, in the early 1990s, rapper Ice-T stirred up a flurry of controversy with his album “Body Count,” which featured the song Cop Killer. When the Fraternal Order of Police called for a boycott of all Time-Warner products in response to the song, sales of Ice-T’s album increased by 300 percent (Eichenberger, 1992).
While part of Ice-T’s ability to obtain commercial success with his political lyrics had to do with the nature of his political argument, part of it also had to do with his chosen musical genre and its audience. Hip-Hop’s foundation is protest (Stapleton,1998). “Cut out of the public debate, marginalized groups develop their own resistive or hidden transcripts,” Katina R. Stapleton wrote in “From the margins to mainstream: the political power of hip-hop” (1998). It is this desire to create a resistive transcript that brought about the birth of Hip-Hop. As Rap elder Chuck D of Public Enemy said, Rap and Hip-Hop are the “Black man’s CNN” (Stapleton, 1998).
In addition,as a PhD candidate who studies media, I have completed an extensive content analysis of 400 songs that appeared on the Billboard charts from 1965 to 2004. Comparing a total of seventeen genres, my research reveals Rap/Hip Hop to be by far the genre where political content is most likely to appear, overwhelmingly dominating the next genre by more than 20 percent.
If you or Dave (or anyone else reading this) wish to learn more about the topic, a good place to start would be the film “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.” I’ve used the video in the classes I teach at the University of Colorado and it does an excellent job of explaining the well-documented political roots of rap and/or hip-hop. The sources I mentioned above would also be helpful if you care to explore the issue further.
Hehe, I should write something since I transferred my shock at Franklin’s reply earlier to Theresa and riled her up, since I was myself. Perhaps, it started with Rep. Joe Wilson tonight. While the first comment might have been harsh, I thought it identified many issues in the original post. I only wish I could stir up such sentiment–I tried with my Vampire Weekend diatribe.
Franklin, your statement about Grandmaster Flash really pissed me off though, plain and simple. While I hardly consider myself to have more than below-average knowledge of the socio-political history of hip hop, I have taught two courses that addressed the political importance of hip hop. While it’s of course not all political, just as you can’t say all blues was touched by slavery, it’s still inherently political and a means for the disenchanted to challenge and address the political roots of everything from ghetto life to police profiling. To write that Grandmaster Flash was “just consumed” with women is ignorant at best, racist at worst. As Theresa mentioned with “The Message,” the song includes the following lyrics (not to even mention the famous chorus): “God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too/Cause only God knows what you go through/You grow in the ghetto, living second rate/And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate….But then you wind up dropping out of high school Now you’re unemployed, all null n void/Walking around like you’re pretty boy floyd/Turned stickup kid, look what you done did/Got send up for a eight year bid/Now your man is took and youre a may tag/Spend the next two years as an undercover fag/Being used and abused, and served like hell/Till one day you was find hung dead in a cell/It was plain to see that your life was lost/You was cold and your body swung back and forth/But now your eyes sing the sad sad song Of how you lived so fast and died so young.
P O L I T I C A L !
With regard to Roxanne Shante, it’s sexist to call one of the most famous answer songs simply about female angst, or your more gendered “complaining.” Here’s a good article with Beyonce explaining, “it’s our turn to demand respect.” http://articles.latimes.com/1999/jul/18/entertainment/ca-57139
The commercialization of rap and hip hop and its sexism is but a piece of a much larger history that is hugely political. I didn’t think such a basic issue would be debated, especially here.
I LIKE TURTLES
wow, pretty involved for a Spank Rock video post lol. i’m playing. seriously though, anyone who disregards the political / social conscious side of rap is deeply misinformed. Look up the following songs and albums for a brief history:
The Message – Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
Six In the Morning – Six In The Mornin’
Fuck The Police – NWA
Amerikkka’s Most Wanted (entire album) – IceCube
It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold us Back (entire album + their entire catalog) – Public Enemy
u guys are trippin way off topic .. Spank Rock is awesome. why can’t a rapper be human and express multiple emotions without disrupting peoples’ view of what they’re “supposed to be” talking about. can’t we talk about “B.o.o.t.y.” AND “1,2,3,4 Fxck the Cops?” without confusing people??? i thought we were more sophisticated than just stickin to ONE aspect of rap .. C’mon folks, give Spank Rock some room to do HIS thing .. here’s a few “other” sides of dude, peep!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ONvi5SFR8I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_MhebfzmR0
Trixta, I don’t think anyone was “trippin way off topic.” In fact, many of the comments posted make the exact point you do– that, as an artist, Spank Rock can produce many types of content, from the political to the sexual. Dave’s original post was the one that acted as though his recent work was not appealing, not the comments.
Nothing was between the lines. I don’t like this song.
MiS sees an update on Sunday!