as many of you guys know, i'm a hip-hop head. not just some "johnny-come-lately" rapper, but a STUDENT and FAN of the culture, since birth almost. and, i'm sure most of you guys know, i'm NOT a huge fan of hip-hop music as it is right now. recently hosting these rap battles in home city has only aggravated my disgust more than eradicating it. yet for the longest time i had trouble articulating why i feel this way, except that i feel that music is art and some dudes actually paint on the canvas while others just scribble crayons on it. but for some reason, the jokers that scribble on the canvas are getting all the love and the ones who were painting are being ignored.

THEN I SEE THIS.

a beautiful woman by the name of aliya ewing @ hiphopdx.com recently wrote her final editorial as a columnist on the site. so, as a fan of hers, naturally i was sad that she was leaving, but i after i read the article, i understood why.

the way that she described how she felt about hip-hop was THE EXACT SAME THING i was saying for YEARS. good to know i'm not alone in this...


ALIYA EWING:
The other reason for my departure is music itself. In the parenting world there’s this silly ongoing debate about whether or not it’s good practice to praise a child for their scribbled artwork; or if only “good” art deserves praise and a framed center-spot on the refrigerator hall of fame (Give me a second, I promise this all comes full circle back to Hip Hop). I say, if you don’t encourage the child to scribble, s/he will never develop the skills necessary to produce great works of art. But to actually frame the piece may fool the child (and ultimately the viewers) into thinking the art is better than it actually is. My son has tons of scribbled drawings and paintings, but I’ve only actually framed a few that really are visually interesting and appealing. If we frame every scribble it becomes a lose/lose situation. The child is under the very comforting delusion that they’ve reached a meritable level of talent, making it harder for them to push through to their actual full potential, and the viewers are left confused by artwork that falls short of the frame it’s been placed in. In the same way, I’ve learned to think about rap music. There has never been a genre to fall so gleefully, albeit tragically, short of its full potential because of what we as a society have chosen to frame.

If you are still reading this letter, then there’s probably no need for the history lesson—I’m sure you understand all about the commodification of Hip Hop and its downfall thereafter. It’s a topic that has been spoken about by many. Trying to point fingers about who is responsible for the downfall of Rap as art, and the emergence of this hyper-sexual, materialistic, misogynistic, violence-ridden dribble is just as hard as trying to figure out why our daughters and sisters have no self-respect nor concept of true empowerment. We are all products of our surroundings, yet ultimately, responsible for ourselves. So, as my brother Ahmed says, “What came first…the chickenhead or the egg?”

All I know is that the same 20 sub-par songs are being played, ad nauseum, across airwaves everywhere while countless talented artists are left to wonder if they will ever get the attention they deserve—a sort of musical monopoly if you will. It’s not that good music doesn’t exist; it’s that after years of media outlets using up all of the limelight ‘frames’ on undeserving artwork, the masses are confused as to what constitutes meritable art to begin with. They simply don’t know what their missing because it’s never been shown to them. They’ve been tricked, hoodwinked, and bamboozled.

I will say, though, almost everything has its place. As I once mistakenly believed, it’s not about the existence of the so-called “coonish” dances that are accompanying so many rap songs these days, as no-one so much as blinked an eye at Digital Underground’s “Humpty Dance” in the '90s. Truth be told, as a mother, I’d rather have my son on the dance-floor doing the “Stanky-leg” than selling drugs, disrespecting women, or involved in a life of violence. It’s not all about simplistic rhymes either—Slick Rick made a legendary career off of his simple, nursery rhyme-like delivery. It was fun, and it still is—so long as that’s just one small piece of the larger musical offering.

I wish I could remember who told me this, but a friend of mine once said how he noticed that most rap music on the radio/TV is solely focused on what occurs between the nighttime hours of Friday and Saturday: Poppin’ bottles, getting high, meeting women at the club, having sex with the women from the club, showing off your $100,000 car, or getting shot at in that $100,000 car because someone was jealous of your (questionable) drug-dealer status that supposedly rivals that of Tony Montana. Judging by most popular rap lyrics, it’s as if life is nothing more than one big, expensive, intoxicated, violent, commercially-endorsed, sex-filled party. What happens on Sunday? Or Monday? What about the other aspects of life? Don’t mistake it; there’s nothing wrong with a good party, and there’s definitely nothing wrong when that party can be skillfully recounted lyrically over a really dope beat; but it’s time we balance that out with something of more importance—because NOW is an important time.

If you take a minute to unplug from the matrix, and look at what’s really going on in the world after your Ciroc bottle is empty, you’ll see that this is a time of great transformation for us all. The world is evolving…I don’t know about you, but I won’t be left behind. I would, however, like music to start reflecting the countless experiences being felt across the globe. Right now, more than ever, we need our artists to offer us something much more meaningful than a tale of Friday night debauchery or other equivalents of lackluster scribbles on paper. We need our artists to develop, and then reveal to us, their full potential. Right now, we need art worth framing our lives around.

SIMPLY DOPE.

if you want, you can read her full note here:
http://www.hiphopdx.com/in..dex/editorials/id.1437/tit..le.aliya-ewings-dx-farewel..l

LET'S PAINT BEAUTIFUL PICTURES, YA'LL!

aisle holla,
ch.

first off, to all the people who attended last week's MOVE THE CROWD, i feel like i owe ya'll an apology. i, as "the mayor", feel like i let ya'll down.

seriously.

ok, to those of you reading this who have no idea what i'm talking about, i'll explain. MOVE THE CROWD is a hip-hop event that i (along with my dude, dj keith scratch) throw every third thursday in my hometown of salina, ks. it's not a freestyle battle (that's comin' this fall...*cough* BATTLEGROUNDS *cough), but a performance style battle. a rap version of a "battle of the bands" if you will (an idea that i pretty much lifted from the homie weatherwax in atlanta. hey, gotta give credit where credit is due). basically 8 emcees/groups performance 3 mins. of their hottest material and the crowd decides by round of applause (we judge by noise meter).

now first the one we did a while back was PHENOMENAL!!! the energy was great, very positive and, save for one little incident involving a glass window, went off without a hitch. the second one...ehhhh, i don't know, it felt like somethin' was missing. i mean the event was positive and, save for an incident involving one rappers' cd not working and a weird incident involving two girls (which i'll talk about later), also went off without a hitch. so, over the past couple days i've been racking my brain trying to figure out why it wasn't poppin' this go-around...and i think i've figured it out.

no, it wasn't really the fact that it didn't start on time (which was a personal pet peeve of mine) or that it was on a thursday night (friday nights are pretty much booked up at the blue goat for the rest of the year and no other club or place in salina would either hold us or even WANT to hold us). then, i pretty much boiled it down to one thing.

the talent.

i came to this conclusion when speaking with various people who've attended my events about the emcees/groups and everytime i asked them what they thought about the talent, it's pretty much boiled down to, "they were a'ight." when i replied with, "what made them just a'ight?", the response was usually, "they didn't move me." which, of course, defeats the entire purpose of MOVE THE CROWD, doesn't it? come to find out, most of the people i talked to voted for somebody they didn't neccesarily like only because they though the other person or group was worse. so naturally i started thinking back to that night, and, as much as i hate to admit it, they were right! in all honesty, i couldn't tell you ONE hot line or one fresh hook ANYBODY said that night. and though i thought there were some highlights (adamantine getting in the face of tyrant was kinda funny), they were few and far in-between for me, and definitely for the crowd. and i don't think that any of the talent ever involved the people that they needed to involve (aside from their supporters maybe)...THE CROWD. i mean, i've haven't seen a group of people more uninterested in what was going on onstage since al gore was talking about global warming @ the mtv vma's. peep the pic with the rapper named maylman if you don't believe me (check the "MOVE THE CROWD" photo album, trust me, you'll see it)! i think that that pic itself pretty summed up the whole evening. and i'm NOT EVEN gonna go into the whole lip-synching thing...just ask around, i'm sure somebody will tell you about it (if they haven't already).

so this is my appeal to you guys who come to my events looking to have a good time and to hear some good hip-hop music. if you know of somebody who is talented and can rock a crowd and the mic (oh yeah, and is GOOD), please send him (or her...funny how i haven't seen a female emcee come around here yet) my way! because not only do i myself want to hear some good hip-hop, but i'm sure you guys do too, right?

and artists, here's my plea to you guys: in the words of kirsten dunst and gabrielle union, BRING IT!!! i'm dead serious, fam...bring it! don't give me songs that's full of indecipherable rapping ("wacker than blinky blink in the back of the reptar wagon babblin' about NOTHIN'" - canibus)...gimme some beats that's gonna bang out of those speakers (and ya'll know them speakers THUMP out at the goat), gimme a easy hook (c'mon, i know i'm not a huge fan of soulja boy, or any southern rapper but something has gotta be said about them stupid choruses they come up with), or spit some crazy lines that'll have me, keith and the crowd in awe! jump around, get live, hold the freakin' MIC RIGHT (choke the neck of the mic rather than cuff the mic 'cause people can't hear you when you cuff it...trust me, i'm guilty of that as much as the next guy), involve the CROWD. the legendary rakim said it best, MC means MOVE THE CROWD...a lot of dudes out here CLAIM to be rappers, but very few are MC's...there IS a difference!

and last but not least, come with tracks that DO NOT have you rapping on them! i've said this numerous times, but if last week's "lip-synching" episode taught us anything, it's that if you are rapping over your vocals and you are not louder than the vocals on the cd, you will appear to be lip-synching, flat out!!! come with only ad-libs on your tracks, as well as the hook. take pride in your craft, b! don't just come up to my event rapping just to be rapping, otherwise you're wasting my time, the crowd's time, and more importantly, your time. cool? THANKS!!!

i started this whole thing with the intention of reviving the hip-hop scene of my home state (yes, there is a scene out here, for all of my out-of-state comedians) . please don't make me regret this decision...i love ya'll with all my heart, and i hope next months MOVE THE CROWD will be just as successful, if not more successful than the first!

now, before i go, i'll leave you with one last thing:

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"and now it's time for another GOOD IDEA, BAD IDEA..."

GOOD IDEA: congratulating the champion of MOVE THE CROWD by giving him a hug onstage.

BAD IDEA: hugging him onstage TEN SECONDS after the champion's WIFE did the very same thing, causing you to get into a heated confrontation with the wife's friend, who apparently doesn't go for that! *shakes head*

"this has been GOOD IDEA, BAD IDEA."

stay blessed, ya'll!
ch.