King is writing about hip-hop lyrics, as you all know, and I wanted to add another point to the argument. King is writing his paper as a response to a couple of articles by Bill O'Reilly, who argues that the violent content of hip-hop lyrics is affecting children by weakening their moral fiber and possibly contributing to violent behavior.
This post was inspired by my recent purchase of "Millenium Hip-Hop Party," one of those random compilation CDs you can find at Cheapo Discs for six bucks. The disc contains hip-hop songs from the late 80s and early 90s (high school for me!), and I thought of King's topic as I listened to songs like "It Takes Two" by MC Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, and "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone Loc. At first, it struck me how different the late 80s/early 90s content was from what we hear now. For example, compare the lyrics to "Funky Cold Medina" to "What's Your Fantasy?" by Ludacris (an artist singled out by Bill O'Reilly). The Ludacris song is much more explicit.
But then I remembered: Hey, it's not like we didn't have explicit content back then. Heck, we had 2 Live Crew, NWA, DJ Qwik, and plenty of other choices. The difference as I see it is that the radio doesn't censor nearly as much as it did when I was in my early teens. I remember when the radio stations substituted "love" for "sex" in the songs "I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd and "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. It seems to me that the explicit content is more in the mainstream now than it was in my formative years.
But here's the really important point I want to make: It irritates me to no end when people like O'Reilly talk about hip-hop as though it's one thing with only two topics in the lyrics -- sex and violence (oh, and maybe drugs) -- when there's so much more to it. What about the critiques of American culture found in "I Can" by Nas and "Why" by Jadakiss? What about beautiful love songs like "The Light" by Common?
As you can tell, I love hip-hop, and I have plenty to say about it, but I'll stop and let King do the rest of the talking.
Well, you have put yourself in a different light with me. I like the fact that you are well rounded. I wouldn't want to try and relate with someone who doesn't even know hip-hop.
Posted by: King James at October 21, 2004 12:04 AM