i was going to put this in the young thug thread but i think it deserves its own thread. the whole interview is worth a read (his new perfect hair album is really good too) but this quote stuck out to me. i hear this from a lot of old rap fans and wonder why they still expect or need rappers to say something about politics. personally i just wonder if they havent grown up yet. but then i have come to think that a lot of rap is immature and deeply dysfunctional at heart so i do worry about anyone looking to rappers for advice on how to live their lives. if rappers/celebs in general are the people you look to as your one-stop-shop for the bigger issues in life, then perhaps something has gone wrong.

http://www.factmag.com/2014/09/16/busdriver-interview-stop-using-rap-culture-against-us/4/

There’s been a lot of ‘where is hip hop’ bandied around after the events in Ferguson, arguing that the music which carried such power for the black community decades ago is nowhere to be seen today when these problems surface again. But is there really anything that hip hop can do or say?

There is. I saw Killer Mike on CNN and I thought that was one of the best appearances that a civilian has made on the subject. He killed it. I saw Kweli argue with Don Lemon. So I guess hip hop is there. I don’t know… this is shit. I don’t think people understand how big this problem is. Where is hip hop? What kinda weak shit is that to say? Black people don’t want to deal with this, do you understand? Hip hop is where it’s supposed to be: making money, maintaining its role. If you want black leadership, that hasn’t been in hip hop in a long ass time and there is no evidence that’s going to change. People can’t say that and shame black artists when the shit is so market driven that you’re not going to hear Jay Z say anything, he works for Samsung. They don’t want to radicalise their image. When people say that shit it’s dishonest. See what’s really going on and think about it. Of course they should be saying something but they’re not going to cos they’re businessmen. It might become a topic when it’s really a hotbed issue, but that’s it. That’s it.

People acting like ‘oh why isn’t he saying anything’ is the problem. People are asking questions as if they’re not the problem. What about hip hop? What about entertainment? Fuck entertainment. Entertainment is bullshit, just cos there’s ten millionaires who are black… when people use those as examples or call to those figures, that’s wrong. That’s just the black people you see, and you call on the black people you see to help the black people that you see over there. That’s bullshit. There are black people everywhere. Scientists, doctors, everything. Call on some other black people, call the ones in charge of economic changes, call them. Fuck movie stars.

Stop using rap culture against us. I would never say that. “Where is hip hop?” It’s immature. It’s what a 15-year-old would say. It’s infuriating. Have you seen the footage of the homeless man beaten to death? It was in Fullerton, California. It’s utterly terrifying. You watch people pile on him, crush his sternum and crack his face open as he cries out to his father. It’s really disheartening. I point that out because people tend to think of it differently when it’s a white guy. He was homeless but he was white. Did he cry out, “where is hip hop?” No he didn’t. He cried for his dad. Because it’s about people, not about niggers doing nigger shit. Where is hip hop? It’s so crazy to me. You guys don’t get it and that’s why they win. They divide the working class, you’re white, you’re black. But none of y’all got jobs though. It’s like… ugh.

And that incident is just footage. I’ve had friends see people killed in front of them. And that’s something else. Killing people is the extreme, it doesn’t happen all the time. What happens all the time is getting cited, getting pulled over, getting fucked up. Oh you have no licence? Oh you got put in jail? Oh you’re in jail so you lost your job? Oh shit your kids don’t like you? So you start smoking crack or meth, oh you didn’t get to live out your dreams so you move out to Tucson and get a shitty job and kill yourself. You know? That’s what I’m talking about. Depression. Modern depression, the shit we all go through. It’s so brilliant how they deal with it. “Oh. I’m making it!” No you’re not.

anything

because he's a rapper & who gives a fuck what he's talking about in this rambling incoherent piece of doo doo

now this next statement isn't addressed to Busdriver but the young lady that started the post

the funniest thing is how quick y'all are to be like KEEP POLITICS OUT OF MY HIP-HOP but then when someone is critical of the destructive lifestyle promoted by so many rappers your capes come out

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steamrollin'

It's not immature to expect grown adults to have an opinion on issues that are impacting the, and millions of others like them, whether they are scientists, Drs, rappers or whoever

And he said they won't say anything because they want to continue making money. Well that's precisely why people want to hear what they have to say.

Dude barely had a coherent idea in this screed. *thumbs down*

Dumb shit.

It sucks to find out listening to a song about something doesn't count as being informed.

i hear this from a lot of old rap fans
>and wonder why they still expect or need rappers to say
>something about politics. personally i just wonder if they
>havent grown up yet. but then i have come to think that a lot
>of rap is immature and deeply dysfunctional at heart so i do
>worry about anyone looking to rappers for advice on how to
>live their lives. if rappers/celebs in general are the people
>you look to as your one-stop-shop for the bigger issues in
>life, then perhaps something has gone wrong.

But looking to various art forms for insight into modern problems isn't a weight that only adolescents have to carry.... it's part of what makes art work. (It's also what helps to make art timeless.) So yeah, if we are willing to reduce hip hop to entertainment only, then looking toward hip hop as a form of meaningful commentary is absolutely immature. But if any part of us wants art to be more than entertainment - and to be *treated* as more than entertainment - than there is nothing adolescent about at least desiring more from people who dare to call themselves artists.

The busdriver quote is interesting but confusing (granted i haven't read the interview yet, so maybe it works more in context). But it sounds to me like he is basically granting the above, although he is consciously testing that ambiguous space between the could and the should by saying that: a) hip hop *can* do more than it does now; b) it is not surprising, granting the current state of both hip hop and modern entertainment, that it does not; and c) there are limits to what hip hop can offer in these situations. I would go with all of that, although I'm not sure that the example of a beating of a homeless man is an especially realistic analogy/metaphor/whatever one wants to call it for the limits of hip hop or art...

*shrug* It's a dead horse subject but that gains new life from some of the shit that's been hitting the news lately...

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

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steamrollin'