From Black Music to Crack Music: What Happened to Hip Hop?

Paul ScottThis is Black Music Month and just like clockwork people will ask the age old question, what happened to Black music, especially Hip Hop? However, like previous Black Music Months, June 30th will find many scratching their heads, filled with more questions than answers. However, the real answer is quite simple.

 Black music got hooked on crack.

 Following the death of college B-ball superstar Len Bias, in 1986, a great fear struck America . There was a new drug on the street that was gonna turn the hood into a kingdom of the walking dead. As Public Enemy put it , an eternal “Night of the Living Baseheads. “Worst than that they would spawn a horde of crack babies who would be destined to become career chain snatchers and riders on the prison revolving door. And since mainstream America was just getting turned on to Hip Hop, the destinies became intertwined.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyR09SP9qdA

 Well, a recent study has proven what many already knew. Don’t believe the hype.

 In an article published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The idea of the “crack baby” has been exposed as myth. Although, the authors concede, that like with any drug, crack is not the best thing to put in your body, especially, while you’re pregnant., social factors such as poverty really play a greater role in determining the future of children.

 But what about the music that was supposed to represent the mentality of the “crack babies”. If the crack baby syndrome was a myth, the music must be fictitious, as well.

 Let’s be clear. There is no denying the devastating effect that the drug trade has had on the ‘hood, from the heroin explosion of the 70’s to the crack epidemic of the Hip Hop era. And the music of the periods served as soundtracks to the misery, from Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” to Biggie Smalls’ “Ten Crack Commandments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlvfYvgKL5Y

 According to Seeka tha Teacha, captain of the Hip Hop Liberation Army ,” Crack cocaine was introduced to Hip Hop for the purpose of destroying families and the well being of urban communities. It made drug dealers look rich in the eyes of the youth who were exposed to poverty.”

DMX

DMX

However, in this case, we are not talking about the glorification of slangin’ rocks that has permeated rap music since the late 80’s. That issue has been the subject of too many articles , books and documentaries to mention. Nor are we talking about the real life drug issues that have destroyed the careers of artists from Billie Holiday to DMX. Thus, murdering the message and the music.

 The point here is how the whole idea of “crack music” is based on the media perpetuation of the crack baby (prenatal cocaine exposure) myth and the pathological behaviors associated with it have effected Black culture. And more importantly, how the stereotypical images associated with crack have affected our youth.

 Some believe that the media hype around selling and using crack was really a self fulfilling prophesy. And if you pump crack pipe dreams in the heads of children, they will gravitate towards that even if they ain’t bout that life.

 According to a recent Time magazine article , Dr. Maureen Black , professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine says that “once you label a child that way…there’s no hope for the child. “

 Durham NC substance abuse activist, Shareef Hameed, agrees saying that “crack baby became part of the American vernacular.. It was like labeling someone before they even got started.”

 Hameed says that the signs of crack addiction are nervousness , paranoia and aggressiveness, which, ironically, are the same attributes reflected in today’s rap music. It was also rumored to cause ADHD (attention deficit disorder. ) Which explains why the music seems to be attractive to those with low IQ’s and short attention spans.

 Crack rap can be distinguished from Hip Hop by its lack of subject matter and overly simplistic, pickaninny choruses And the music industry has sold the idea across the planet that this is the type of music to which kids are addicted.

 Unfortunately, many Hip Hop fans have bought into this false reality, as well.

 The idea of crack babies has its roots in the negative stereotypes of Black people stretching back hundreds of years with the “small brain theory” which claimed that Black people had small skulls which limited their capacity to absorb information. Not much different than the racist stereotypes connected with Hip Hop.

 So, the crack baby myth is really a socio-political construct, a euphemism for the pathological behavior of some young Black males. The term is not really about a specific drug. In theory it’s about a cocaine derivative but in practice it includes weed, malt liquor, molly or any mind altering drug that is promoted in Hip Hop.

George Zimmerman

George Zimmerman

What should be of major concern is how the crack baby hoax has served to demonize Black men. This is especially important with the upcoming George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin murder trial as the media has already tried to portray Martin as a crack baby only hooked on weed, in preparation for what will become the “Trial of the Century.” Also, of note is the recent media fascination with Chief Keef and his recent exploits including accusing a security guard of racist mean muggin’ when he was allegedly busted in a hotel room smoking marijuana.

 Like any addiction, the first step to overcoming crack music addiction is admitting that you have a problem. We must admit that it hasn’t been crack that has had the most far reaching effects on the Black community but “crack music” that has propagated a hoax.

 Unfortunately, a whole generation has gotten high on the hype.

This Black Music Month Hip Hop needs a detox.

 It’s gonna be a long hot summer, socially and politically for Black people and we need our minds sober and ready for action.

 Like Pac said on Revolution:

“Can you imagine the damage we could do if we weren’t high?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2czWfoF9bv0

TRUTH Minista Paul Scott can be reached at info@nowarningshotsfired.com Follow on Twitter @truthminista

Check out Militant Minded Radio every Tuesday at 9PM EST http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/page/militantmindedradio

Minista Paul Scott: Plies Why they Really Hate You

Plies: Why They Really Hate You
The Education of Algernod Washington
by Paul Scott

Like many of the commercially successful rappers coming out of the South, a release from Plies usually guarantees heavy radio and video play. However, I doubt that his latest release is going to be welcomed with open arms by the powers that be.

Last week, Plies, born Algernod Wahington, released one of the most thought provoking videos to come out of the “Dirty South” since the days of Outkast and the Goodie MOB called “Why U Hate ?” The song and video, which features the artist rapping with a noose around his neck , poses the question, “what is white America’s beef with black folks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Ber4-pfKI

Although the self proclaimed “goon’s” sexually explicit songs such as “Becky” and “Bust it Baby” have received heavy airplay, one has to wonder what reaction “Why U Hate ” will get from Hip Hop radio stations and video programs like BET’s 106 and Park . The concern being, it might inspire Plies’s fellow goons to begin to conduct in-depth analyses of America’s race problem. In other words, it might make people think.

Will radio play Plie’s socially conscious song ‘Why U Hate?’

The question that Plies has posed is complex and can be answered on many different levels. However, to get to the root of white hate you must go back thousands of years. According to Canadian writer Michael Bradley, in his book “The Ice Man Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man’s Aggression, the problem stems from the hyper-aggressive nature that the European developed as a survival technique for coping with a frigid climate. This led to their need to conquer the whole planet.

Also during the Transatlantic slave trade the Europeans used the myth of racial inferiority to justify slavery. After the Civil War, according to WEB DuBois in his book, “Black Reconstruction,” Northern industrialists and members of the Southern aristocracy (the planters) manipulated poor whites into hating the newly freed “slaves” in order to exploit them.

It must be noted that much of the hatin’ on black people is based on fear. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing author of “The Isis Papers” has suggested that Caucasians have a fear of genetic annihilation; believing that eventually ,through the amalgamation of the races, the white race will cease to exist.

Also there is the fear of “the big pay back” where African Americans will seek revenge on whites for the atrocities committed against them. Over 200 years ago, as Bradford Chambers writes in “Chronicles of Black Protest,” Thomas Jefferson predicted that the “deep rooted prejudices of whites” and the “10 thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained” would produce a division that “would probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race.”

Also, black psychiatrists William Grier and Price Cobbs wrote in their 1968 book “Black Rage,” “long after slavery, many whites are haunted by a vision of being oppressed, exposed to the whims of a powerful cruel black man.”

It must also be noted that this fear also influenced public policy, as during the Civil Rights/Black Power Era, FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, set up COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) to prevent the rise of a “black messiah” that could electrify the youth. Which leads us to why “they” hate political Hip Hop, since it has the potential to convert rap fans into revolutionaries.

However, white America does not really hate “gangsta” rappers like Plies; she created them. What they fear most is Algernod Washington, the business man who is rumored to have been valedictorian of his high school class and a former college student; the proverbial “fear of an educated black man.” The Plies’s of the world are just thugged -out versions of Frankenstein’s monster who have been programmed to never turn on their masters.

That is until one of them is deprogrammed and starts making songs like “Why U Hate ?”

For most folks, Plies is an unlikely candidate to spark the Hip Hop revolution. However, the same might have been said about Detroit Red before he became Malcolm X or Eldridge Clever before he wrote “Soul on Ice” We must also remember that many black leaders from Abubadika Sonny Carson to Bunchy Carter and John Higgins were former gang members. Even one of the fathers of Hip Hop, Afrika Bambaataa was a gangsta at one point.

As Jabari Natur, chairman of Solvivaz Nation said “The spirit of Black Liberation is in all of us. ” This is a chance for something to blossom in the millions of people who will watch the video.”

What Hip Hop needs is a movement to raise what the late chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, would call “antagonistic contradictions.” We must aggressively question radio stations who will play Rick Ross‘s “BMF” every five minutes but refuse to play “Why U Hate.” Since many DJ’s claim to play negative Hip Hop because “that’s what people are requesting” we should immediately start calling and tweeting radio stations, asking them why they aren’t playing Plies’s song. That way we can monitor the tweets and expose Hip Hop radio’s hypocrisy.

Perhaps this is a one shot deal for Plies and next week he’ll go back to being “the thug you love to hate. Time will tell.

But as Kwame Ture once said, “Every “negro” is a potential Black Man.”

I guess that goes for goons too…

TRUTH Minista Paul Scott can be reached atinfo@nowarningshotsfired.com or (919) 451-8283

original article: http://nowarningshotsfired.blogspot.com/2010/10/plies-why-they-really-hate-you.html

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