Hip-Hop isn’t dead, but Coonery and Buffoonery are taking the limelight. Hip-Hop since its inception has been fundamentally an art form born out of a northern African Diaspora experience. In many ways Hip-Hop, is the reaction to the death of the Civil Rights movement. Many believe that if Martin Luther King Jr. had not been murdered he was poised to take on the northern more discrete but deeply harmful racism and discrimination that permeated the North. Many of the situations such as inadequate housing, horrible school systems, lack of jobs, and lack of economic opportunities, became the fertile ground in which Hip-Hop was born. Many urban slums during the inception of Hip-Hop resembled Kosovo, and Afghanistan rather than the United States.
What Hip-Hop did was serve as a means of escape, literally, and figuratively coloring the very living situations. Pioneers played records, made songs, and sampled up tempo songs that as basically party music. Unlike the party music of today, the songs then had an urban sensibility that an underling ethos of Hip-Hop.
“Wipe Me Down”, “Ay Bay Bay”, “Crank Dat Souljah Boy” are just examples of what currently constitutes what is being played and used as Hip-Hop. While yes like songs of the past, these are nothing more than party songs with catchy beats. But these songs display a very southern notion of their interpretation of Hip-Hop. Quite frankly, its just bad, none of these songs have any real word play, metaphors, similes, or other literally devices that other times in Hip-Hop artists have employed regardless of the type of songs they song. These rappers also do not display a desire to buy themselves into the signs of wealth currently defining one as successful. Previously a designer label, high end car, and houses which were things that people across the board could relate in their desire to attain. But with this southern interpretation of Hip-Hop there is a lack of designer and a fixation on poor southern signs of wealth, jewelry in their mouth, moderately priced but brightly colored clothing, and revamped cars.
I cannot say this new southern interpretation of Hip-Hop is going to be regarded highly in retrospect. I just can’t see 20 years from now people playing “Ay Bay Bay” and “Crank Dat Souljah Boy” with the same vigor and love as people play “OPP”, “Rappers Delight”, or any Run-DMC project. But everything serves its purpose, maybe southern Hip-Hop will coalesce a renaissance of Hip-Hop, or maybe it’s the loud obnoxious death rattle.
Just in case you are not familiar with the songs I'm talking about here they are:
We all have habits, modes of behavior, and stereotypes that we try hard not to fit in for one reason or another. Some Whites go out of their way to demonstrate how much they appreciate and love the diversity that is everywhere. While some Blacks disdain foods typically associated with Black people and in turn with being poor, i.e. swine, and chitterlings. The list can go on and on, but what would happen if you stopped fighting something you either consciously or sub-consciously were fighting? Would you be happier, more content, or just be in the same situation that you currently are in. With me, one of the things I’ve been fighting is being associated with Africans, and in turn dating Africans. Part of it stems from my own insecurities about being half African, and my earliest interactions with Africans been very traumatic.
I remember there was this guy who was really enchanted, yes bitches, enchanted with me. He was half Indian, half African, and fully identified with being African and barely ever talked about being Indian. Nothing would ever happen between us, he was married, of course to a half African & half Black woman, with twin boys. I play no one’s sideline hoe, but we would talk. One day we were talking, and he brought up the topic of my problems in the dating scene. So he said that I needed to date an African, well not just any African, one that came from the same “class” as my own African side. His rationale was that my interests are varied and aren’t really tied to the Black experience, and anAfrican man would be a better fit due to their varied interests. I didn’t buy it, because I was not raised in an African environment, I only identify with being African when it’s advantageous to do so.
Recently though I have started to deal with a few, I must admit it does seem easier. Each one of them has a lot more going for them then the average Black guy, but then again none of these are average. Nothing has really come out of dealing with any of them, but it’s been somewhat different. There are those cultural differences that are present, and my eventual disclosure that I’m half African doesn’t really seem to have any effect positive or neutral. So we’ll see how it goes.
