Young Jeezy and Pharaohe Monch were the first two rappers
out the gate with post verdict songs last Monday. I’m not concerned with underground
artists following the latter’s lead, it’s the mainstream acts keeping up with
Jeezy that concerns me. They need to stop rapping about strip clubs, pill
popping, and cars and they need to start addressing the ills of the black
community and work with bona fide leaders to provide logical solutions.
I am tired of the hip hop community refusing to either give or
receive constructive criticism while making excuses for the way things are in
today’s rap scene because it is a disgrace that there is no more originality on
commercial radio today. Rather than defending the status quo, these people need
to listen for themselves. While the worst features of black America continue to
be exported to Africa, Africans—for the time being anyways—continue to reject
materialistic rap music while using rap to address various issues in their
countries and on the continent. Speaking of which, it’s a telling sign that
even artists from the motherland have called out their much richer American counterparts.
Given hip hop culture’s short attention span, it has to seize the
opportunity that it has to reshape how other races should look at us as a race.
If the Trayvon tributes/Zimmerman dissing songs are forgotten a year from now
rather than being a catalyst for change, then rap music will deserve to go the
way of jazz (once prevalent but now treated as a novelty) or disco (its original
form long dormant).
