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.