RSS
Introduction
Hip-hop is another cultural artefact attracting the attention of Christians working with young people. Back in January, at the five-day intensive university course for Youth Culture and Ministry, Andrew Root, a professor of youth ministry from Luther Seminary in Minneapolis, devoted an afternoon session to the subject. His very effective audio-visual presentation reflected what I now recognize as the received understanding of hip-hop among progressive Black academics teaching at leading American universities.
Root left unexplored the ethno-political dimension of the hip-hop phenomenon. My subsequent journey through the proudly ethnocentric work of several prominent Black hip-hop scholars took me to the front line of the contemporary cultural war on White America. These Black writers describe hip-hop as a primary means by which Americans talk about race. Debates about hip-hop, according to Tricia Rose, “stand in for discussion of significant social issues related to race, class, sexism, and Black culture.†Commercial hip-hop provides “the fuel that propels public criticism of young Black people.â€[2]Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters (New York: Basic Books,2008), 7. Strangely, however, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans such as Andrew Root never ask themselves whether “the hip-hop community†(inclusive of rappers, fans, record companies, and well-connected professors) is friendly or hostile to young White people.
Is Hip-Hop Good for Black People?
While properly repulsed by the violent and crudely sexist lyrics in contemporary commercial hip hop, Black scholars emphasize “the importance of craft, innovation, media literacy, and other practices that have made hip-hop such an enduring and inspiring force in the lives of young people, especially Black youth.â€[3]Wayne Marshall, “Hip-Hop’s Irrepressible Refashionability: Phases in the Cultural Production of Black Youth,†in Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse, ed., The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015): 167–197, 168. Some emphasize the ways in which the gangstas and guns, hustlers and pimps, the bitches and the hoes featured in hip-hop lyrics both reflect and contribute to “the socially and culturally toxic environment†of urban Black and Latino ghettoes. Orlando Patterson, for example, laments “the fact that instead of artistically representing and transcending the realities of ghetto life, under the pressure of corporate packaging, elements of the street and prison culture have now been morphed into hip-hop, so much so that it is often difficult to differentiate the two.â€[4]Orlando Patterson, “The Social and Cultural Matrix of Black Youth,†in Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse, ed., The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015: 45–135, 108–109,100. Others celebrate the creativity of Black youth, from the “compelling aesthetic innovations of hip-hop’s founding figures†to the “countless variations†which they inspired “in the ensuing decades.â€[5]Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†173.
Accentuating the positive, Wayne Marshall observes that Black youth “have consistently proven to be early adopters of new information and communication technologies, and several savvy avatars of the so-called millennial generation have marshalled their familiarity with the digital domain into substantial followings and, in some cases, considerable commercial success.â€[6]Ibid., 192.
(Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†173.) Since its origins in the Bronx in the early 80s, the “irrepressible refashionability†of hip-hop has invited “new participants into an increasingly translocal and mass-mediated youth culture.â€
The commercial success of hip-hop came at a cultural cost, however. While the hip-hop culture was rooted in “grassroots, amateur, local, and independent†activity, its artistic integrity came into question when “new industrial partners from corporate record labels to Hollywood studios†came upon the scene. The result was the “dynamic, if occasionally tense, feedback loop between small-scale and corporate enterprise†that “has animated hip-hop aesthetics ever since.â€[7]Ibid., 173.
(Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†173.)
Most Black scholars view the hip-hop phenomenon as much more than a commercial success story. It represents as well a victory for a vibrant and creative youth culture. Marshall warns that “to ignore or suppress rather than support hip-hop’s uncontainable dynamism, its openness to shape-shifting and syncretism…represents more than a missed opportunity;†it “is tantamount to giving up on connecting with young people at all.â€[8]Ibid., 197.
(Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†173.) It goes without saying that the young people†whose culture Marshall is celebrating are Black.
Academic sociologist, media commentator, and ordained Baptist pastor, Michael Eric Dyson is much more explicit. He openly acknowledges that hip-hop is plays a vital role in the ethno-political rivalry between Blacks and Whites in America. Simply put, hip-hop has been good for the Blacks. In fact, he proclaims, “the hip-hop community has become a dominant African-American institution.†Young Black Americans, Dyson writes, no longer “turn primarily to the church†or “to the civil rights leaders that the church produced…to articulate their hopes, frustrations.†Hip-hop has become a folk religion among Black youth. African-American kids, Dyson tells us, now look to rappers, not the local preacher, to “best vocalize the struggle of growing up Black and poor in this country.â€[9]Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop (New York: Basic Books, 2007), xx.
Professor Tricia Rose at prestigious Brown University is another well-known expert on the hip-hop community. In fact, she grew up in Harlem and the Bronx in the 70s, the child of a Black bus driver and a White legal secretary. Naturally enough, she identifies strongly with Black youth.[10]Felicia R. Lee, “Class with the ‘PhD Diva,’†New York Times (October 18, 2003).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/18/books/class-with-...a.html Not only was Rose immersed in the embryonic hip-hop community during her Bronx childhood but she was steeped as well in the extra dose of racial tension engendered by the refusal of her White mother’s parents to enter the same room as her Black father.[11]Beth Schwartapfel, “It’s All About Love,†Brown Alumni Magazine (July/August, 2009).
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/2310/40/
It may be that her mixed-race background allows her to adopt a more sceptical and nuanced stance toward the religion of hip-hop than we find in Pastor Dyson’s work. Perhaps, too, her White grandparents’ visceral opposition to race-mixing drove her into hip-hop as “a rich alternative space for multicultural, male and female, culturally relevant, anti-racist community building.†Certainly, she is extraordinarily sensitive to the evils of “White racism.†To defend Black people against the evils of In The Hip Hop Wars, Rose roundly condemns the “commercial juggernaut†which has nearly depleted “what was once a vibrant, diverse, and complex popular genre, wringing it dry by pandering to America’s racist and sexist lowest common denominator.â€[12]Rose, Hip Hop Wars, x, 2. While Dyson remains upbeat, Rose worries that commercial hip-hop might actually be bad for Black people. Neither scholar, however, makes any effort to conceal their exclusive focus on the interests and welfare of Black people. Both writers appear to assume that if hip-hop is good for White people, then structural racism and corporate greed must be to blame.
Why then, one wonders, are White Christians engaged in youth ministry such as Andrew Root professionally and personally interested in hip-hop? Because they believe it is good for White people? Perhaps because it is good and/or bad for Black people? Like millions of other White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Root routinely signals his compassion for the marginalized and the powerless. Certainly, hip-hop evokes in Root empathy for the suffering, cruelty, and poverty produced by the socially and culturally toxic environment of ghetto culture. Nor is Root alone in his apparent indifference to the weaponization of hip-hop in the cultural wars waged on WASPs by other racial, religious, and ethnic groups.
Rappers, their young Black fans, and Black activist scholars such as Dyson and Rose all see hip-hop as bound up with the righteous struggle of Black people against racism and White supremacy. In this openly-declared psychological war on White people, the hip-hop community is allied, not always happily, with corporate elites who share their hostility to middle-American White Christians.
Unfortunately, the middle-American White Protestant religious establishment has refused to come out in explicit spiritual defence of their own kinfolk; not even when they are called upon by Black rappers, Black scholars, and Black preachers to repent for America’s original sin of “Whiteness.â€[13]Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 3, 43–44. Michael Eric Dyson writes, lectures, and preaches the gospel of White guilt to what he calls “that ocean of White folk I encounter who are deeply empathetic to the struggles of minorities.†He warns guilt-ridden White folks not to wait for the government to compensate Black people for the sins of slavery and segregation. Rather every individual White person should establish right now an
“[14]Ibid., 197–198; see also, Chris Roberts, “Michael Eric Dyson’s Sermon to White America,†American Renaissance (January 29, 2017).
https://www.amren.com/commentary/2017/01/michael-eri...guilt/
(Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 3, 43–44.)
In such a toxic, anti-White, ethno-political environment, realistic Christian youth workers and responsible parents must face up to the reality of racial conflict. They must decide: Is corporate-sponsored Black youth culture good or bad for White children and young people? Unfortunately, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants typically refuse to take their own side in a fight. We are hopelessly addicted to the ethno-masochistic cult of the Other.
Is Hip-Hop Good for White People?
Among WASPs, Christian humanism and the cult of the Other are more or less synonymous. In place of a political theology capable of distinguishing between friend and enemy, Christian humanism advocates unilateral moral disarmament. Classical political theory once inspired European Christians to act together in the public realm in pursuit of the “common good.â€[15]Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). Political action demands prudential distinctions between the interests of our community and their community—our friends and allies versus our enemies. But, for Root, “the cross is not about our actions.†The gospel is not a “call to ambitious and radical personal action.†Salvation rests “not in human action but in God’s action.†Youth ministry, therefore, ought not to be directed at “the ambitious and the successful.†“The cross,†according to Root, “is not for the whole but for the broken.â€[16]Andrew Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 62–65.
In other words, Jesus Christ died as the representative of suffering humanity at large.[17]Ibid., 102.
(Andrew Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 62–65.) Only after the Son of God descended into the dark pit of death “from which there is no return (or so it is believed) [did] the good news of the gospel†break “open.†Root teaches youth workers that the cross is “a way of experiencing God in the depths of their very existence, alongside their deepest pains and yearnings.†One day, we will “experience God in the fullness of glory and power, but today God is found in the backward and opposite.â€[18]Ibid., 78–79, 73, 68.
(Andrew Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 62–65.) Experience of the cross is personal not political, existential not historical, universal and not particular.[19]Ibid., 109.
(Andrew Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 62–65.)
For Root, this “is good news, because everyone who struggles with nothingness—all who find themselves alone or journeying through great experiences of hell—can be assured that they are swept up in the presence of God.†The “very state of God’s being†has been “revealed in the cross of weakness and suffering.†If God is absent from our prosperous and peaceful White suburbs perhaps we should look for him instead in the suffering souls of Black folk trapped in violent and decaying urban ghettoes. Perhaps young Black people are “already at the cross†when rapping about their “own experiences of pain and abandonment.â€
Black scholar-activists work energetically to promote such out-group altruism among White Americans. For all its flaws, they say, for better or for worse, the hip-hop community is an authentic expression of Black youth culture.[20]Dyson, Know What I Mean, 13. At the same time, rappers make a “growing investment in fashioning their personas (as much as, say, their lyrics).†The move to corporate recording studios encouraged rappers “to collapse their recording selves and their actual selves—all the better for imbuing performances with authenticity, that slippery coin of the realm.â€[21]Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†181. Performers boast about “keeping it real.â€[22]Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 133-148. They rap about gangstas and hustlers, pimps and hoes, guns and violence, they say, only because crime, violence, and prison loom so large in the life of disadvantaged Black youth.
Hip-hop, we are told, is about the generations of young Black men “warehoused†in prisons. Neither Dyson nor Rose pauses to consider whether Black men are more likely to be imprisoned because they commit more crime.[23]See, Edward S. Rubenstein, The Colour of Crime 2016 (Oakton, VA: New Century Foundation, 2016),
https://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22-wpengine.netdna-ssl...16.pdf In his audio-visual presentation, Andrew Root was similarly reluctant to go there. Instead, progressive scholars typically point out that Blacks convicted of the same offence as Whites are more likely to receive a stiffer sentence. Citing such racial disparities, they indict the criminal justice system of what they see as structural racism, if not outright White supremacy.
During a break in Root’s audio-visual presentation, I suggested to a few students that Blacks might receive higher sentences on average than Whites because they are more likely to have prior convictions. A lecturer in mission and apologetics attending the presentation overheard and objected to my interpretation, telling me to check my White privilege. Speaking to virtue-signalling Whites such as that lecturer, Dyson assures them that “politically conscious rappers†offer young Black people “a means to escape suffering.†They help young Black people to expose the “horrible intrusion†of violence, poverty, and disease “into one’s group or neighbourhood, or to grapple with a White supremacist society that refuses to recognize our fundamentally humanity.â€[24]Dyson, Know What I Mean, 76.
Tricia Rose also demands sympathy and contrition from White Americans, calling upon them to face “the ways our nation has orchestrated a war on poor Black people.†She rejects the “claim that Black people have a sexually excessive and violent culture and that they lack proper values.†She insists that “the real sources of self-destructive behaviours†in Black communities can be traced to “centuries of compounded structural discrimination and institutional racism.â€[25]Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 71, 65. White people may not intend to harm Black people, Rose concedes, but the oppressive structural dynamic of American society is driving young Blacks into a dark pit of despair and nothingness.
“White racism,†it appears, is in legal terms a “strict liability offence.†Even if someone neither intends nor acts to bring about harm to another, that person, indeed the entire White race, may be convicted of wrongdoing. White Americans are no longer permitted to plead not guilty to crimes alleged against them or their ancestors. Theirs, in the words of Black’s Law Dictionary, is “liability without fault.†Their “case is one of ‘strict liability’ when neither care nor negligence, neither good nor bad faith, neither knowledge nor ignorance will save defendant.â€
Is Racial Realism Good for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants?
Laying such a guilt trip upon White Anglo-Saxon Protestants already fiercely committed to the egalitarian cult of the Other has not been a difficult sell. As if by rote, Christian humanists routinely recite the platitudinous proposition that “there is no race but the human race.†Incurably naïve optimists, they reject as “racist†any suggestion that there are real, measurable, and intractable differences in average intelligence or cognitive capacity, behavior, and temperament between the major racial divisions (e.g., White Europeans, East Asians, and Africans) or their subdivisions.
But what if such differences exist? What if African Americans score on average one standard deviation lower on IQ tests than American Whites? What if intelligence is a reliable predictor of success and well-being? What if the sort of hyper-masculine behavior exhibited by Black males and celebrated in hip-hop is a function of their high testosterone counts as compared to White and, especially, Asian men? What if Blacks generally have a more impulsive temperament than Whites or Asians? Is it possible that racial disparities in such measures of social and personal well-being are a function, not of racism and White supremacy, but of evolved, hence deeply-entrenched, biocultural differences between racial groups? None of the Black scholars that I consulted for this essay gave the slightest serious attention to that hypothesis.
There is, however, a vast and growing literature (well-known to the growing numbers of young White men attracted to identitarian movements like the American and Australian Alt-Right) which provides ample support for the proposition that the disaster that is contemporary Black America is one largely of its own making.[26]See, e.g., Michael Levin, Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997); J. Phillipe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective Third Edition (Port Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute, 2000); Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele, Race: The Reality of Human Differences (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004). See also Paul Kersey, The Truth About Selma: What Happened When the Cameras Left and the Marching Stopped (North Chaleston, SC: Create Space, 2017). Kersey has written several more books on the collapse of other Black communities into crime, corruption, and decay following the “success†of the civil rights movement: e.g., Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, and Chicago. If so, what we see in the hip-hop community may not be the suffering Black avatar of Jesus Christ but rather a glimpse into the godless heart of darkness. The persistent refusal by church elders and youth workers to combat those who propagate amoral cultural artefacts is not good for White people, young or old.
It is important to note, however, that the evils associated with commercial hip-hop are not the exclusive product of Black youth culture. Young Black rappers have had more than a little help from their putative friends in the Jewish community. Curiously, neither Root nor Black scholars such as Dyson or Rose discuss the contributions made by Jews to the development of the hip-hop community. Other sources, including many rappers, are more forthcoming.[27]See, e.g., “ Even Young Black Hip-Hop Fans Agree with Dr. Duke on Zio Music Control and Degeneracy! DavidDuke.com (January 5, 2015).
http://davidduke.com/even-young-black-hiphop-fans-a...eracy/
See also the comments following this article from a leading hip-hop website:
“Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke Takes Aim at Nicki Minaj,†HipHopDx (January 1, 2015).
http://hiphopdx.com/news/id.31951/title.former-ku-k...minaj#
See also, the You Tube video “Hip Hop Artists state Jews control Black Music,†https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lm_-DbycI
Video Link The story of hip-hop as a cultural artefact will not be complete, therefore, until we consider whether hip-hop is good for the Jews.
Is Hip-Hop Good for Jews?
It is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry. If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national groups…coming to the fore†in the 60s.[28]Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: From Its Origins to the Present (New York: William Morrow, 1967), 483. It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own revolutionary spirit.[29]Kevin MacDonald, “Jews, Blacks, and Race,†in Samuel Francis, ed., Race and the American Prospect: Essays on the Racial Realities of Our Nation and Our Time (Mt. Airy, MD: Occidental Press, 2006), 330–356, 221–252.
Cruse was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or individual self-elevation.†Negroes were relegated to the status of a national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30]Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 57. This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro problem.†Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. “As a result,†Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American Communist Party.â€[31]Ibid., 158.
(Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 57.)
In the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high command.[32]Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 85. The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White power,†a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill. The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson criticizes the “White corporate interests†exploiting Black talent.[33]Dyson, Know What I Mean, 56.
Jews are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly, Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34]See, especially, Michael Eric Dyson and Elliot A. Ratzman, “I Say Yo, You Say Oy: Blacks, Jews, and Love,†in Michael Eric Dyson, Debating Race with Michael Eric Dyson (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 155–174. Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names. But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.
In a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under artists’ rights to express themselves freely.†Interestingly, in the same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.â€[35]Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 154-155. Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.[36]https://www.brown.edu/academics/race-ethnicity/about/staff How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?
After all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop†turns up a wealth of investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular tension†between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons†has accommodated itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by rappers and fans.[37]See, e.g., supra note 25. Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind during the course of the 20thcentury.â€[38]E. Michael Jones, “Who’s Behind Ferguson? The Violent Legacy of the Black/Jewish Alliance,†(2015) 35(1) Culture Wars 14. The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39]E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000).
(E. Michael Jones, “Who’s Behind Ferguson? The Violent Legacy of the Black/Jewish Alliance,†(2015) 35(1) Culture Wars 14.) The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.
Bearing that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip club has long been an integral part of both the music video and business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a complete cross-over into pornography.†Orlando Patterson describes scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive depictions of women imaginable.â€[40]Patterson, “Social and Cultural Matrix,†101. Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography†yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.
Conclusion
Perhaps White Anglo-Saxon Protestant youth workers should swallow the red pill. The salvation of their faith, family, and folk is at risk. Youth workers and young White Christians, generally, must pick up the torch of truth as it slips from the failing or faithless hands of their elders in churches, schools, and colleges. We must believe that the God of our fathers is absent from stable, prosperous, and successful WASP communities only so long as we allow our children and young people to fall under the sinister sway of the synagogue of Satan. That evil influence has destroyed countless Black American families and their communities. We must not follow in their path.
Andrew Fraser is a retired law teacher who has just completed a theology degree at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is the author of The WASP Question (London:Arktos, 2011) and Dissident Dispatches from Divinity School (London: Arktos, 2017).
[2] Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters (New York: Basic Books,2008), 7.
[3] Wayne Marshall, “Hip-Hop’s Irrepressible Refashionability: Phases in the Cultural Production of Black Youth,†in Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse, ed., The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015): 167–197, 168.
[4] Orlando Patterson, “The Social and Cultural Matrix of Black Youth,†in Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse, ed., The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015: 45–135, 108–109,100.
[5] Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†173.
[6] Ibid., 192.
[7] Ibid., 173.
[8] Ibid., 197.
[9] Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop (New York: Basic Books, 2007), xx.
[10] Felicia R. Lee, “Class with the ‘PhD Diva,’†New York Times (October 18, 2003).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/18/books/class-with-the-phd-diva.html
[11] Beth Schwartapfel, “It’s All About Love,†Brown Alumni Magazine (July/August, 2009).
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/2310/40/
[12] Rose, Hip Hop Wars, x, 2.
[13] Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 3, 43–44.
[14] Ibid., 197–198; see also, Chris Roberts, “Michael Eric Dyson’s Sermon to White America,†American Renaissance (January 29, 2017).
[15] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
[16] Andrew Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 62–65.
[17] Ibid., 102.
[18] Ibid., 78–79, 73, 68.
[19] Ibid., 109.
[20] Dyson, Know What I Mean, 13.
[21] Marshall, “Irrepressible Refashionability,†181.
[22] Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 133-148.
[23] See, Edward S. Rubenstein, The Colour of Crime 2016 (Oakton, VA: New Century Foundation, 2016),
[24] Dyson, Know What I Mean, 76.
[25] Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 71, 65.
[26] See, e.g., Michael Levin, Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997); J. Phillipe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective Third Edition (Port Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute, 2000); Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele, Race: The Reality of Human Differences (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004). See also Paul Kersey, The Truth About Selma: What Happened When the Cameras Left and the Marching Stopped (North Chaleston, SC: Create Space, 2017). Kersey has written several more books on the collapse of other Black communities into crime, corruption, and decay following the “success†of the civil rights movement: e.g., Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, and Chicago.
[27] See, e.g., “ Even Young Black Hip-Hop Fans Agree with Dr. Duke on Zio Music Control and Degeneracy! DavidDuke.com (January 5, 2015).
http://davidduke.com/even-young-black-hiphop-fans-agree-dr-duke-zio-music-control-degeneracy/
See also the comments following this article from a leading hip-hop website:
“Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke Takes Aim at Nicki Minaj,†HipHopDx (January 1, 2015).
See also, the You Tube video “Hip Hop Artists state Jews control Black Music,†https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lm_-DbycI
[28] Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: From Its Origins to the Present (New York: William Morrow, 1967), 483.
[29] Kevin MacDonald, “Jews, Blacks, and Race,†in Samuel Francis, ed., Race and the American Prospect: Essays on the Racial Realities of Our Nation and Our Time (Mt. Airy, MD: Occidental Press, 2006), 330–356, 221–252.
[30] Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 57.
[31] Ibid., 158.
[32] Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 85.
[33] Dyson, Know What I Mean, 56.
[34] See, especially, Michael Eric Dyson and Elliot A. Ratzman, “I Say Yo, You Say Oy: Blacks, Jews, and Love,†in Michael Eric Dyson, Debating Race with Michael Eric Dyson (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 155–174.
[35] Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 154-155.
[36] https://www.brown.edu/academics/race-ethnicity/about/staff
[37] See, e.g., supra note 25.
[38] E. Michael Jones, “Who’s Behind Ferguson? The Violent Legacy of the Black/Jewish Alliance,†(2015) 35(1) Culture Wars 14.
[39] E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000).
[40] Patterson, “Social and Cultural Matrix,†101.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Like most, I ended up skimming this rambling article. But it did remind me of an old blog post:
Jun 13, 2015 – Geraldo Hates Hip Hop
I dislike Geraldo Rivera for his fake news reports and war cheerleading, but that is required for all prominent American “newsmen†these days. Yet he recently said that hip hop has done more damage to minorities than racism. This was ignored by the corporate media and Rivera was not denounced and forced to resign because of his minority status. This short clip of his comments deserves national debate. Note the shocked reaction of the interviewer who knows to move on and avoid that subject.
——————–
The great video has disappeared from this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/17/geraldo-rivera-hip-hop-racism_n_6701628.html
But the content remains:
Geraldo Rivera: ‘Hip-Hop Has Done More Damage To Black And Brown People Than Racism In The Last 10 Years’
By Ryan Buxton
Geraldo Rivera doesn’t exactly seem like a pre-eminent authority on rap culture, but he has some very interesting thoughts about hip-hop, which he shared with HuffPost Live on Tuesday.
During a conversation about his stint on “The Celebrity Apprentice,†Rivera got to talking politics with host Josh Zepps, who asked where Rivera falls on the liberal-to-conservative spectrum. Rivera described himself as “militant moderate,†and after pointing out several of his more liberal philosophies, he laid out his problem with rap culture.
“Hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years,†Rivera began. The Fox News contributor then challenged anyone to find “a youngster — a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx or a black kid from Harlem who has succeeded in life other than being the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent that make it in the music business — that’s been a success in life walking around with his pants around his ass and with visible tattoos…â€
Rivera added that the most powerful men in hip-hop are responsible for pushing young minorities too far out of the dominant culture.
“And I love Russell Simmons,†Rivera continued. “He’s a dear friend of mine. I admire his business acumen. At some point, those guys have to cop to the fact that by encouraging this distinctive culture that is removed from the mainstream, they have encouraged people to be so different from the mainstream that they can’t participate other than, you know, the racks in the garment center and those entry-level jobs, and I lament it. I really do. I think that it has been very destructive culturally.â€
I found the video on youtube. Note the stunned white interviewer who decides to move on to other topics.
Video Link
Badly needs proofreading. By the time I got down to the 14th footnote, it was clear that there were missing words and phrases. Please clean it up and start over.
No student of History is astonished to see the bizarre becoming commonplace as the shortest-lived Empire begins its downward spiral.
The Roman example entices comparison with its similitude but it took 5 centuries for them to objectify sex and power to the extent America does now after just…… what time is it now?
It’s the same old song…
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/crime/fl-reg-lauderdale-teens-burglary-folo-20170627-story.html
Wasn’t / isn’t Jimmie Iovine the money behind rap “music’s” hate.
Iovine is a Jew. Shocking, I know.
more:
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Entertainment_News_5/article_8500.shtml
portion:
I have no problem not “connecting” with ghetto black youth. In fact, it is my preferred MO. I stay as far away from them as I can.
Not even sure what exactly WASP means I wondered what Hip Hop is.
Even the oracle wiki does not explain much, I suppose it is one of those things one must have seen to know what it is, as psychotic meant nothing to me until I met a really psychotic person.
But reading al this remembered
Melville J. Herskovits, ‘The Myth of the Negro Past’, 1941, 1958, Boston.
It quite some time ago I read the book, but if I remember correctly I shows that black people in the USA are different, that contrary to popular thought they did take their culture with them from Africa, maybe also genetically.
Behaviour in black protestant churches seems to be one of the examples.
But what an article like this demonstrates again, in my opinion, that the USA is not a melting pot, it is stew.
No, hip-hop is how we are supposed to accept race in America. It’s not so much a discussion or talk as it is a broadcast of one point of view.
Anyone who has ever heard Michael Eric Dyson’s radio program should know that he is not a scholar at all, or a Christian in any real sense. I don’t know anything about this Rose lady, but I imagine the same is true of her, and just about anyone else who studies hip-hop.
The people running the major Christian denominations are destroying their own religion by embracing war and abandoning their flock in favor of others. I see no reason to go to church.
I agree that hip-hop is an authentic part of the black community, and I have no interest in helping or being around a community that elevates such garbage, whether I am hated in that community or not.
How can a whole nation or civilization devote generations of fortune and effort on what amounts to trying to jam a square peg into a round hole?
The article deals with a subject that bores me to tears, but the conclusion is pretty damned good.
BTW, can anyone comment, debunk, or elaborate on this claim?:
Hmmmm… Here’s more…
I too had to skim through it to get to Mike Jones’s accurate assessment–that untalented, dime-a-dozen hip hop “artists” are Jewish cannon fodder in the Jews’ covert genocide against whites of European ancestry in America.
By controlling the media and universities, the former are also able to neutralize powerful, native white leadership by opposing black and Jewish racists with sub-beta, “pajama boy” males of European ancestry, such as Andrew Root. For that matter, most white males in Congress were pre-selected behind closed doors before voters ever heard of them for having this array of submissive traits.
Even Calvinists like hip-hop
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/god-loves-good-hip-hop
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/12-songs-featuring-or-influenced-by-john-piper
Iovine is an Italian Catholic. He graduated from Bishop Ford High in Brooklyn.
Thank you, Wally! It may not be a conspiracy; but there certainly is a pattern.
Not only do the artists get ripped off. Even geniuses such as the radio engineer, Edwin Howard Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio and super heterodyne circuitry were taken advantage of by unscrupulous moneybag greaseballs.
The international Jew is never more at home than when he is putting nastiness and ugliness up on a pedestal, when he is corrupting culture, ruining the arts, or drowning innocence with perversion and corruption
The first comment here calls this a ‘rambling article.’
Ah, the joy of short attention span!
Of course hip hop is cultural poison. It also is not truly new to blacks. There is a long history of black street culture that is filled with verbal violence and sexual preening, and that often led to actual violence. The filth of ‘the dozens’ and ‘the signifying monkey’ and other native black verbal trash was central to the cultural backgrounds of people like Martin Luther King – which helps explain why he off the public stage always used excessive profanity and also why he always talked about sexual seduction, sexual power, sexual acts.
That is who blacks are when they are not ‘forced’ to act at least partly white.
As for WASPs – they made blacks the nation’s sacred cows. This was not done to WASPs by Jews. WASPs began this mess. Jews have figured out how to get rich at the game and survive it. But Jews could not play the game if WASPs had not made it central to American democracy.
This is mental masturbation. The attempt to intellectualize something with no higher meaning than muthaf***er, muhdik, bitch, and gibsmedat is an attempt to elevate a type of noise with no higher qualities to a philosophy. Face it, “crap” is nothing more than “look at me” that your masters recognize has a corrosive effect on your culture and serves to coarsen social interactions. So they raise entire generations on it as “their” music so they will be dumbed down to the level of blacks.
There is some really good hip/hop out there: Saul Williams has been penning intelligent and more thought provoking rap/hip-hop for years. Roots Manuva (Rodney H. Smith) also comes to mind. KRS One, of course. Smaller labels but with a loyal fan base.
Saul Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4XC6dyBWi4
Video LinkThis kind of self criticism Mr. Williams presents would not be welcomed mainstream.
Roots Manuva: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSoceVRGf5k
Video Link
If you listen to only one from KRS One, “Know Thyself” is very powerful. He gives good advice to all races not just his own.
Hip-hop or “rap” is profitable cacophony- the counter-cultural equivalent to “Jewish lightning” in the insurance industry.
“Hip-hop” is spoken word lyrics set to a “beat”.
It is those in the recording industry that promote “rap” to debase the culture.
We are at war with “you know who”…
I read this on another website. I wonder why he calls it hip hop. It’s been called rap since the mid 1980s. I agree with what he said. And why claim its against wasp culture? It’s against all White culture and civilization.
Personally, my biggest concern is H 1 B visas, affirmative action and the invasion by non Whites who are instantly given affirmative action preference There is a big Tesla plant in Fremont Ca. It sounded great, all sorts of skilled well paid jobs. But the employees work for sub sub sub contractors, not Tesla. And most are Eastern Europeans on visas.
Rap is horrible in every way. Let the blacks destroy themselves with it. What I have against the music and entertainment industry is that much of the obscene profits go to AIPAC , ADL, AJC, SPLC, and Friends of the IDF, all anti White organizations.
Pretty sure “Iovine” is an Italian name.
And you’re reading The Final Call now? The Nation of Islam newspaper? Did your subscription to Muhammad Speaks run out?
Wrong. Absolutely.
Stop reading Zionist run Wikipedia.
Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
https://www.evi.com/q/is_jimmy_iovine_jewish_or_italian
http://www.f169bbs.com/bbs/news/164777-you-never-see-dr-dre-without-his-jew-puppet-master-jimmy-iovine-straight-outta-compton-more-like-straight-outta-jerusalem
http://thenetworth.net/jimmy-iovine-net-worth/
Leaving aside a discussion of hip-hop itself, I was fascinated to discover that the short, rhythmic prose we associate with rap music has a history going back to John Skelton in the 1500’s. Some examples of his work:
Or if he speaketh plain
Then he lacketh brain
He is but a fool
Let him go to school.
My name is Colin Clout.
I purpose to shake out
All my cunning bag,
Like a clerkly hag ;
For though my rhyme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rain beaten,
Rusty and moth-eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pith.
see an article here: http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/02/04/poets-john-skelton/
That is not only true, but a sick characteristic of “modern” Western “arts” in general, and too often, “science” (e.g., IQ testing) as well. When such offal has been pushed into our faces 24/7, further degeneration is inevitably self amplifying.
None of this is the fault of Jews alone. In fact, decent Jews are no doubt affected as adversely by the sewage as everyone else.
Not only have Zionists exploited Judaism, but so have a wide variety of money grubbers and decent Jews would do well to continue to stand up to the Synagogue of Satan.
Critics make a living out of promoting certain artists above others. Their verbiage is so constructed to imply that the product is more “intellectual”, “innovative”, “exciting”, or a representation of “genius”. Prior to the early days of rap and hip-hop, lyrics or poetry that consisted of standard rap sloganeering would have been condemned as childish, formulaic, cliched, banal, and with no redeeming social value. However, because the introduction of this primitive and alien noise was deemed useful in brainwashing young Whites, critics reframed it as “authentic”, “visceral”, “vital”, any masturbatory adjective that could elevate feces to the level of “art”. Just like in the way those who must not be named introduced blues, R & B, and rock n’ roll into the national dialogue. Establishing an artistic and moral equivalence with the great White musical forms was vital in the deconstructionism of White culture.
Black culture? What’s that? Is that like unicorns?
There hasn’t been a truly authentic and autonomous black intellectual culture ever since Booker T. Washington’s concept of education and self help was totally displaced by the Marxist concept of victimology that has been most prominently promoted by the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) starting way back in the early part of the twentieth century. Booker Washington’s organization received a significant amount of its funding from white gentiles like Andrew Carnegie. These well meaning gentile contributors allowed the very forceful Booker Washington to run his own organization with few strings attached. That wasn’t to be the case with the NAACP however.
The NAACP is an especially interesting example of how blacks don’t really now control or have ever controlled any of the “acceptable” major civil rights (CORE SNCC) or cultural organizations that supposedly represent their interests. The NAACP never really was a black organization simply because its actual leadership has never really black. Instead it was controlled by those who funded it. If memory serves me correctly, the NAACP’s first five leaders were in fact white Jews and at one time the only black member on its board of directors was W.E.B. DuBois. (The NAACP is also a curious organization because very few blacks are actually dues paying member of it.)
When the NAACP finally succumbed, kicking and screaming, to pressure to allow a back man to head it in the latter years of the 20th century, its Jewish controllers did so VERY unwillingly. When it did did happen, they made sure to only appoint very compliant black leaders and keep them on a very short, but very well paid leash that did not endanger the Jewish interest in promoting victim hood .
Once in a while this didn’t work out. When Gus Savage, the only truly independent black NAACP head, left the plantation several decades ago and said some things that were against these Jewish interests, his dismissal and the character assassination that was used to justify it was truly brutal and savage. He he never recovered his reputation from this brutal attack and he became a non-person, never to be mentioned in the media or given a public audience ever again, (sorta like Mel Gibson in spades.) He was definitely made an example to those who would stray. Since then, any black NAACP director who has strayed even an iota from the victimology ethos was quickly dispatched. Julian Bond was probably its most well known and long serving recent head. He was also known as a compliant “house nigger”, and pseuo-radical who was always careful to get pre-approval for anything he was about to say to the media to protect his very well paid position, just as he had done before while a member of Congress.
Eric Dyson is only one of a long line of well paid black clowns who know that their financial well beings (and in many cases their attempts at getting academic tenure) are totally dependent on toeing the line that his “deep state” sponsors find acceptable. His whole livelihood is totally dependent on getting on TV to publicize whatever books he has written or lucrative lectures he is about to give. He has to play up to what is expected of him to say about gangster rap, which is of course (duh) to approve it. Gangster rap is to be admired because Organized Jewry has deemed that that gangster rap is “good for Jews” because, among other reasons. it keeps blacks angry and therefore on their totally controlled Democratic Party feedlot. Gangster rap also promotes violence which is considered “good for Jews” because it degrades white culture as well as well as black culture at the same time. (The same thing goes for the effects of pornography.) Gangster rap makes white gentiles afraid and increasingly willing to be submissive to authority. Therefore it is inherently good for our masters.
We all already know that gangster rap is bad for society in general and blacks in particular. This is obvious (just like we know that drinking bleach is bad for us) but any discussion is simply not part of the equation. It simply doesn’t matter to those in control. It is totally irrelevant. What is good for us in the majority simply doesn’t matter any longer.
The George Soros sponsored “Black Lives Matter” movement follows the same line. Its only qualification is whether it is good for for certain folks. The main effect of the BLM movement seems to have been that police no longer really patrol in dangerous black neighbors out of fear of being called “racists”. These police now ignore crimes that they used to arrest people for (prostitution, shoplifting etc) therefore making these neighborhoods even more dysfunctional, gang controlled, and unsafe. BLM is therefore a definite detriment overall to the black community but fact that is totally ignored by the our controlled MSM which still praises it.
But that doesn’t really matter because this growing disruption is considered a benefit by the “shadow government” behind BLM of which Soros is actually only a figurehead ( and possibly only a minimal part. You don’t think that greedy bastard is using his own money to fund it do you?) What the shadow government is hoping for a total breakdown of society so they will sought out to restore order but under their total control. Sort of like a twenty first decade version of the CHECKA.
https://radioislam.org/thetruth/naacp.htm
Lots of Jews send their kids to Catholic schools, I suppose?
Good sources you cited there…
“Hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years.” Exactly what does he mean by “racism”? Exactly how has “racism” damaged the lives and communities of black and brown people during the last 10 years? Exactly how have Jared Taylor, Paul Kersey, Nicholas Stix, AR, SBPDL, and other “racists” and their writings and websites blighted and destroyed the lives of “black and brown” people over the last decade? And I wonder if Geraldo thinks of and defines himself as a “white Hispanic” or a “brown Hispanic”?
There is much similarity between Alt Right Troll Culture and hip hop. Alt Right troll culture enables young white men with little regard for propriety to fight back against their dispossession as hip hop once allowed young black men to do so, before it inevitably became commercialized. Also, like hip hop, Alt Right troll culture is extremely crass and pornographic, and is generally disliked by the more traditional WNs and rightists
It even has it’s own edgy songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WXV1PxUiAM
Video Link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3B85zur1jA&t=106s
Video Link
Thanks for the links to the great music, Normie.
Yes, Jews go to catholic schools.
Why I Liked Being Jewish at an All-Boys Catholic School
http://www.houstonpress.com/news/why-i-liked-being-jewish-at-an-all-boys-catholic-school-6717278
I Send My Jewish Son to Catholic School
http://www.kveller.com/i-send-my-jewish-son-to-catholic-school/
My Jewish Daughter Attends Catholic School And Loves It
http://www.mommyish.com/2011/09/28/my-jewish-daughter-attends-catholic-school-and-loves-it-602/
Google search: jews at catholic schools
Iovine is a Jew.
Still owning you.
So now you think there are no ‘Italian’ Jews? Laughable.
Still owning you.
Nursery rhymes, in other words.
The beauty of rap is not having to know anything about music.
Coming from a musical family I thought it smugly hilarious to play and sing in a band. I wrote almost everything in 1-4-5 chord patterns, an insult to real musicians but to the bar scene it’s just magical stuff. The lyrics too, absolutely banal. ” I’m gonna drink you pretty”. Intermixed with some George Thoroughgood. I always wondered if he was doing the same thing I was – having a laugh being vapid.
That was the worst I could do. When I actiually tried, I played classical piano. But rap – it isn’t music. It isn’t poetry. It does not even rise to the level of worm food, in my ever humble opinion. And these guys aren’t joking.
I had great fun with BB King, Bo Diddly, Albert King – they could actually play instruments and sing. Lots of great Jazz men too.
But rap – it represents a decline in civilization. Just look at the lyrics. A celebration of criminal ignorance.
I worked for Iovins family many years ago, and they were the nicest people I ever met. So I think
Wally you are mistaken.
That supports my suspicions about modern “art” as well. Pure garbage marketed to the ignorant, quasi-intellectual droolers who think they’re being kool while being duped and milked.
Video Link
LOL, good choice of ebonics, there, Fiddy.
Video Link
Video Link
Video Link
Doggerel, in one.
Its a shame when a Jew (or WASP) exchange their devotion to God for devotion to communism. Communism always used Machiavellian means in attempt to gain control of its host society. Many Communist leaders have been manipulating African Americans, to socially destabilize American and Christian culture, for at least the last fifty years now. When some African Americans become aware of this, they turn their resentment towards all Jews (thus, answering the article’s question: no, hip hop is not good for Jews, because all Jews are blamed for destructive Communist actions). Then the Communist Jews express dismay that the African Americans are “biting the hand that feeds them”. This is disingenuous, because using a group for political purposes is not synonymous with taking care of them. They want African Americans to be hostile towards whitey, in order to destabilize their host society, but panic when they can no longer control this unruly Frankenstein monster. Jews ruined themselves with communism, then ruined the Blacks with communism, who end up resenting all Jews (along with the rest of whitey). It is amazing that this failed discredited ideology still has enough influence to cause so much damage. What a mess.
I think the 1-4-5 chord progression is a common and widely used standard, so it’s a bridge too far between the obscure slashes, chromatic blobs, and colorful dribs and drabs of modern art, on the one side, and a widely used, and well-liked chord progression that is a long-established standard, on the other:
It’s good to keep in mind Twain’s quip about music that’s better than it sounds. He was speaking of Wagner, but there is also a class of musicians who think that great music has to be complicated music, the kind of music that turns out to be better than it sounds.
Come to think of it, modern art is better than it looks, so there’s that.
I guess the point of posting the video is to compare the music to rap, but I don’t really think there is a comparison. I’m no fan of Ozzy Osbourne, but at least his song is music, and the lyrics make some sort of sense. Rap is just profane garbage, and nobody ever tried to intellectualize Ozzy Osbourne. Say what you want, but the lowest white culture is still light years ahead of rap.
Maybe the point he is getting at is made by Paul Joseph Watson here:
People like Ozzy are harmless showbiz buffoons and everyone knows it. Nobody ever tries to intellectualize him or claim that his music is art. I’ve never heard anyone talk about the healing power of Ozzy Osbourne, but I once worked in a warehouse with a black storefront preacher (he had the old Lincoln Town Car with Clergy stickers, chains, gold tooth and everything!) who gave me an unsolicited lecture on the healing power of rap. If hearing someone half-singing and half-talking about killing cops, hating whitey, killing other blacks, pimping and selling drugs, and doing whatever to bitches and hos to the scratching of records is therapeutic, then I think I have absolutely nothing in common with rap fans and much of the black community.
Hello Andrew Fraser,
It would have been interesting if you would have written more about how Hip-Hop evolved from a genuine youthful black expression/revolt against the decadent and elitist late seventies Disco scene and how eventually it simply devolved into a orchestrated Cultural Marxist revolt against any sort of normative bourgeois values in black culture and music.
Hip-Hop started out with entrepreneurial black DJs holding underground parties for young people who could not or did not want to attempt to get into upscale discotheques, often run by Jews like Studio 54, that catered to often degenerate elites and homosexuals. The first rap hits by groups like the Sugarhill Gang were remixes and samples of hit disco songs like Chic’s “Good Times”.
However, overtime Hip-Hop/Rap began to mock and subvert classic old fashioned 70s R&B, Soul and Funk classics that had a broad mainstream/crossover appeal because of their basically middle class values. A prime example would be B-Rock and the Bizz’s 1997 hit “Just My Baby Daddy” a rip-off of the Earth Wind & Fire/Emotions classic “Best of My Love”, a song that was a wedding reception standard for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Baby_Daddy
Hip-Hop/Rap to many is just a casebook example of a Cultural Marxist degenerate long march against any sort of middle class value in pop culture.
Thanks for the article, the thesis of which may well be true. Going a bit OT but IMHO more interesting, is a thesis in the following link, namely “No, it’s *not* just a movie!”
Found link:
https://worldtruth.tv/mind-control-theories-and-techniques-used-by-mass-media/
Possibly original source:
https://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/mind-control-theories-and-techniques-used-by-mass-media/
I read it all and recommend it, as a lengthy explication of the Bernays haze, amongst other villainies. Enjoy.
wally is owned
http://www.gq.com/story/jimmy-iovine-men-of-the-year-icon
I certainly hope so, (it would almost have to be), but to believe that, I’d like to see some evidence beyond that of what your average 3 year old produces.
Unfortunately the author of the piece refers to corporate manipulation as “mainstream.” Otherwise, it’s a very informative article.
Even movements or styles that are considered marginal are, in fact, extensions of mainstream thinking. Mass medias produce their own rebels who definitely look the part but are still part of the establishment and do not question any of it. Artists, creations and ideas that do not fit the mainstream way of thinking are mercilessly rejected and forgotten by the conglomerates, which in turn makes them virtually disappear from society itself. However, ideas that are deemed to be valid and desirable to be accepted by society are skillfully marketed to the masses in order to make them become self-evident norm. In 1928, Edward Bernays already saw the immense potential of motion pictures to standardize thought: “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.†– Edward Bernays, Propaganda These facts were flagged as dangers to human freedom in the 1930?s by thinkers of the school of Frankfurt such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. They identified three main problems with the cultural industry. The industry can:
1. reduce human beings to the state of mass by hindering the development of emancipated individuals, who are capable of making rational decisions;
2. replace the legitimate drive for autonomy and self-awareness by the safe laziness of conformism and passivity; and
3. validate the idea that men actually seek to escape the absurd and cruel world in which they live by losing themselves in a hypnotic state self-satisfaction.
The notion of escapism is even more relevant today with advent of online video games, 3D movies and home theaters. The masses, constantly seeking state-of-the-art entertainment, will resort to high-budget products that can only be produced by the biggest media corporations of the world. These products contain carefully calculated messages and symbols which are nothing more and nothing less than entertaining propaganda. The public have been trained to LOVE its propaganda to the extent that it spends its hard-earned money to be exposed to it.
https://worldtruth.tv/mind-control-theories-and-techniques-used-by-mass-media/
You missed my point.
I’m not arguing that modern art has much merit–far from it– but rather that the 1-4-5 chord progression is an entirely different ball of wax that does have a lot of merit, and I fail to see why you would disparage it, and in the bargain, mislead Jacques Sheete.
Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so too the proof of the music is in the listening, hence Twain’s quip about Wagner. I would add that the proof of the art is in the viewing. If somebody–art critics–have to explain why a work of art is good, then of course you should ask yourself which to trust: your lying eyes, or the critics?
If a parallel is to be drawn, then Rap and Modern Art do have at least one common thread, and it is African.
I hasten to add that I rather liked the original Hip Hop hit Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang from 1979, but I had heard rapping already before that, in the Central Coast of all places, by 1975. The rapper turned out to be the prime suspect in the theft of our big JBL studio monitors: ‘Never locked the doors in those days.
Anyway, you wrote:
I don’t know why you would disparage the 1-4-5 chord progression as an insult to real musicians, except to imply that well, real musicians go on to bigger, better, and more complicated, obscure, difficult passages or chord progressions, which may make them feel more masterful, but which also may not sound that good. 1-4-5 is a basic and fundamental chord pattern learned by all musicians when starting out, which sounds pleasing to most ears, and which has been the framework for many popular songs.
So you see it is the “insult to real musicians” part with which I am taking exception.
Now, anyone can pick up a brush or pen and make a bunch of random marks on the canvas, and call it art. In fact, during the history of modern art, elephants and various other creatures have been trotted out to create modern art, and these spectacles have even been featured in the popular media.
Bottom line: only a musician can play 1-4-5, but anybody can splatter paint on a canvas, and call it art.
Learning how to draw, and learning how to play a musical instrument are both valid skills that take some effort, practice, and determination–call it ‘hard work’– to produce worthwhile results.
Note that, in the wake of WWII, the newly formed CIA took up the task of promoting Abstract Expressionism–think Pollack’s splatters–as a counter to the USSR’s Socialist Realism.
Tough work, but somebody had to do it, I guess, to keep those Reds in their place.
I take it you are either under 30, or over 70.
https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/rnwmk7/black-sabbath-most-important-band-ever
http://www.theintellectualdevotional.com/blog/2009/10/07/its-hard-to-believe-it-now-but-people-once-took-ozzy-osbourne-very-seriously/
The first link doesn’t work, but the second link is just about the trial over whether or not Osbourne’s lyrics caused a kid to commit suicide. That’s nowhere near the same treatment that rappers get.
Nobody was claiming that Ozzy’s music is high art, or that he is some sort of cultural icon who speaks for the downtrodden. Nobody read genius into his lyrics or actions. He raised the ire of record burners, and that’s not the same having public intellectuals gush over him and ministers, politicians, academics and media types sing his praises. Ozzy had a goofy reality show, but that’s not on the same level as having a major motion picture made of his life, and having it sold as a major cultural event.
“Geraldo Rivera” (actually Jerry Rivers) is a Jew…
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/women-become-more-promiscuous-in-relationships-men-become-less-promiscuous/
That’s laughable.
Iovine is a Jew … I was right.
Hurts don’t it.
So GQ isn’t a reliable source but the Nation of Islam newspaper is?
For some reason this is the only blog post from this site I can’t read on my iPhone.
I obviously haven’t communicated well. I apologize.
My family has some extreme talent, not me – and one at the New England Conservatory right now. He doesn’t even listen to popular music. To call it trite would be an understatement, and it is the attitude of the professionals in the family and people like them that I am conveying.
I’ve never called myself a musician, still don’t. But I did produce two albums and my set list for performances was all songs I wrote myself at the end before I retired.
When young, I did classical piano and viola. Played in an orchestra. But my heart was in combat sports and classical music was quite the bore. I was not talented at it.
In college, I picked up a guitar. I discovered the magic. I thought it was hilarious. Lookit me ma! I’m a rock/blues guitarist!
I had a tremendous amount of fun with 1-4-5 and you can see/feel people just pulling for the resolution… and you give it to ’em. Anyone can jump in and jam, they only have to know the key. The lead riffs off the fret boards from low E to high E are 0-3, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-3, 0-3 .
With zero training and only knowing that much you can find the right fret and blaze leads off any song. With just two lead patterns you can do almost anything.
I’m actually in hearty agreement with you. Me, the underperforming thug, with songs I wrote, played, and produced on the local radio. I’ve played live performances in several different countries, nobody has to know anything but the key and you can do ten minute songs with solos for every instrument, nobody ever having practiced together before.
So I am not disparaging it. It is the professional classical musicians who did, and do – yet any old country boy can pick it up and make people sing/dance along. Isn’t that great? Hence my smugness – lookit what I can do, despite the disparagement of pros in my own family.
But to drop from this to the absolute nothing of rap… Rap does have rhythm, so it is similar to jungle drumming. But I have done group drumming too, it’s a lot of fun, and seemed more of an accomplishment than rap. And without the social costs of rape, drugs, and mayhem.
On modern art – yes. You’ll see Paul Joseph Watson is in agreement with you and that is why I linked to his youtube.
God you are stupid. You are clear proof that Jews are not as smart as they like to think.
I posted numerous sources for Iovine being a Jew.
The ‘6M Jews, 5M others, & gas chambers’ are scientifically impossible frauds.
see the ‘holocaust’ scam debunked here:
http://codoh.com
No name calling, level playing field debate here:
http://forum.codoh.com
I have great respect for classical musicians. However, I find it curious that most classical musicians cannot perform unless they have the sheet music in front of them. As a non-classical non-trained musician, I have taught truly talented classical musicians how to improvise and play songs by the Beatles and other rock performers not using sheet music.
I always wondered why so many rock/pop musicians never seem able to play their recorded music the same live, or even the same way twice. I guess it’s improvisation in some cases, but I always thought it had more to do with not writing the music down to begin with, or not being able to play what was recorded in the studio.
Thanks for your comments, Bob. Anyone with good pitch has a great gift, especially if you can play an instrument.
Music is a universal language that can alter moods, stir the emotions, and get both drunk and sober out on the dance floor. So music is a viable force, or energy.
Baby, you could light my fire.
One big question, topical here, is whether or not music is–or could be–used for social control. This was the general theme of the late Dave McGowan’s Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
McGowan noted a series of weird coincidences where many top pop artists from the 60s and 70s had connections to the military and intelligence services, for example, Mr. Light My Fire himself, Doors frontman Jim Morrison being the son of Admiral George Stephen Morrison, commander of the infamous Gulf of Tonkin destroyers.
So, it’s interesting to discover another side to this story:
http://hugequestions.com/Eric/TFC/FromOthers/Jim-Morrison-update-2016.html
Here’s a sudden segue to Easy Listening to close this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak
So Muzak was used to manipulate behavior, but Rock never was.
Amazing.
There is more…most “top acts” utilize “studio musicians” who are the REAL talent behind the stars.
A good example of this is the Motown “Funk Brothers” who gave Motown their sound, but were never recognized for their accomplishments…the TRUE talent behind Motown. Berry Gordy made MILLIONS while ignoring the true talent…
Another example of this is that of the “Wrecking Crew”…the studio musicians who gave most of the 1960s and 1970s music acts their “sound. They too, were not recognized for their talent and accomplishments.
Studio musicians are the true talent behind almost all music.
THAT is why many live acts do not sound as good as in the studio.
It is interesting to note that in Great Britain, the “Funk Brothers” are well-known by name and instruments, unlike their obscurity here in the USA.
“But what an article like this demonstrates again, in my opinion, that the USA is not a melting pot, it is stew.”
Well put. The former black mayor of NYC, David Dinkins, once described the US of A as a “gorgeous mosaic”. I’m not sure how “gorgeous ” it is as it appears more like a haphazard, formless mass. On the other hand, obviously “gorgeous”, like “beauty”, is in the eye of the beholder. But a mosaic it is–for better or for worse.
You posted numerous bogus sources.
Great post! I hadn’t heard of Gus Savage before, so thanks for sharing his story.
Posts like this, with people sharing informative knowledge that sends me off researching topics to find out more, are why I always return to Unz Review.
Great, when are you moving to Finland?
Let’s not forget those who name their children “Shontavius”, Le Toilet” and “D’ontavius”. We cannot forget another memorable name “L-a” (pronounced La-Dash-a). I’m not kidding. That last name is registered in the Bureau of Vital Statistics (on a birth certificate) in a midwestern state.
With names like that, they are instantly distinguishable on a resume…and instantly throw “affirmative action” out the window…a good thing, I suppose…
One of the greatest indignities of being a US Citizen of English, or whatever other British, ancestry besides, of course, being termed WASPs, is that we have to live in fear of being mistaken for Germans, or German Americans at any rate.