When will we get to a point that sexism is on par with racism?

In the same way black youth co-opted the N-word that had been used to deride them – they glamorized the ghetto that had been afforded them. They’ve been playing the cards they were dealt to full tilt – no matter that the dealer was using a marked deck.

“Considered a fool ’cause I dropped out of high school
Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood
And it’s still all good”
-Biggie Smalls

Biggie’s response to his critics was that he was simply a narrator telling a true story and “you can’t hide reality.”

Well, as a humble blogger, I gotta be real, and the reality is different now than it was in 98 – at the height of hip hop.

“Everybody sound the same, commercialize the game
Reminiscin’ when it wasn’t all business
If it got where it started
So we all gather here for the dearly departed”
-Nas from his song and album “Hip-Hop is Dead.

Barak Obama is the both the end and the fruition of hip-hop as we know it. It’s a time for change in music as well as politics. Hip-hop will still fuel music for years to come, it just won’t be driving the car (Bentley).

I’m glad Chris played the song Jai Ho. Because it’s a good example of where we are going. Music make up of as many parts as Obama himself.

Oh yea, Biggie said that his secret was playing old smooth tracks for the adults, layered with new lyrics that the youth can relate to. Here is an example of Ice Cube doing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4RY-eJgHHs

You guys never got to Nas. He is unbelievable. Nas stand out as an unavoidable leader in the genre who really might join Ellington, Davis and the other greats who have earned posterity. It’s something like listening to folk music without Pete Seeger to not get a hold of this album. I recommend Illmatic Nas’s debut. The subject matter is familiar, but Nas’s distinctive voice is journalistic, a chronicler of a rough neighborhood in Queens in the early 1990s. More recently when Nas teamed with his Dad renowned Jazz player Olu Dara for Bridging the Gap Nas made clear his love, embrace and living appreciation of the musical cultural continuum that Hip Hop arises from. “The blues came from gospel, gospel from blues Slaves are harmonizin’ them ah’s and ooh’s.” That is history, education and living communion.

Thanks for another great exploration.

I was thinking of Emerson’s resonant line in Self-Reliance:

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.”

I think this is the feeling behind Adam Bradley’s case for Hip Hop. No?

I’d say if the “art of genius” sobriquet is applied as in the cited examples and primarily to the music of CB or Miles’ compositions then I doubt that today’s rhythmic sampling or remix ganks would hold up in comparison. If the art is to be standalone poetry, possibly, though the grandeur of the English language is infinitesimally represented in the genre. The strong rhythmic component lends itself to trance dance and occasionally I find the sampling interesting (Jump Around etc.) but monotonous.

If it is to be hailed as a hybrid art composed of violent images and rearranged samples meant to provoke and engender the gamut of emotional reactions then it could be considered ART (Hi Potter) but such ART is created in the ear of the behearer and IMO doesn’t evoke the artistic emotions in me (and I’ll wager many) that Basie or Miles does.

It is of passing interest (at least to me) that Miles Davis’s final studio CD, Doo-Bop was a Hip-Hop flavored offering (I kinda like it – but it is far more harmonically musical than modern Hip-Hop) and if he’d lived long enough, it’s possible that he would have changed jazz music once more from the 4 or 5 changes he already pioneered.

Peace to ALL,

Jazzman