We need more Hip Hop like this Vinnie Paz ‘End of Days’..returns us to Hip Hop being prophetic.. I wanted to contrast that with the new video by Gucci Mane, because I think it hammers home the point of where we’re at in 2010 and what sort of challenges we have before us..Both videos underscore reflect stark realities that exist in our communities..Question-Where do we go from here? Are we being Hypnotized?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWgVhg0d2bg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Q4s_ZdvAQ
Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner
Both of these videos may be dope to their perspective fan base but they are equally disturbing and actually represent the hypnosis going on in two extremes. Ironically the people behind the promotion of both extremes are the same people. The same people who benefit from the coonin are the same people who benefit from the overzealous conspiracy types. It’s like this; If anyone is 100% behind any of the content from either paradigm they are either drinking the red kool-aid or the blue Kool-aid.
My suggestion is to get a tall glass of water and flush your system. You are what you eat or what you drink in this case. As far as hip hop it will forever represent content over-exaggerated but when a person has a clear mind they will be able to extract the most useful and beneficial content that effects them. B-u-t at the end of the day it’s entertainment don’t get it twisted.
Where do we go from here? It depends on who “we” are talking about because 85% of the people are easily lead in the wrong direction and hard to lead in the right. This won’t change except for the fact that those 85% will follow the cyclical seasons as usual. Many will come and few will be chosen and those who are chosen choose themselves.
Allah
I think that it is absolutely amazing that I was almost totally unable to watch the Gucci Mane vid after the Vinnie Paz piece. I experienced repulsion toward the Gucci Mane video that was fueled by my having seen the Vinnie one.
If this teaches anything it shows what must be done to deal with and hopefully eradicate the hegemony these nasty ass psuedo hip hop nigguhs got on the rap game and the audience’s psyche.
But something else came through just as strong: I am already repulse by Gucci Mane, however the chances of me grinning and bearing a look at his video would have been higher HAD I NOT WATCHED AND LISTENED TO VINNIE’S JOINT FIRST! So big ups to Davey as usual and let that be a lesson to sucker DJ’s everywhere – your playlist can either aid and abet this bullshit or you can tighten up your rotations to include what the people need to hear.
Believe me, the people will still come hear and see you if you do.
Any questions?
You can’t take either one of these videos seriously. Gucci Mane will be the first to say what he does is just for entertainment if he is ever asked to be accountable for his actions while the other guy probably believes all his outrageous conspiracy theories.
@Adia: I think that what the Vinnie video does is prompt an investigation into things that are far more relevant and worth researching and getting the answers for than that Gucci Mane, trap house garbage. Conspiracy theories? Hmmm…maybe, but what is the Gucci Mane stuff but a conspiracy in and of itself?
The definition of Hip Hop, though debateble, encompasses many things. As it relates to music, to me, Hip Hop is that which aims to educate, inspire, and/or uplift the listener. I feel that true Hip Hop, at a minimum, is supposed to stimulate the listener’s consciousness and inspire him/her to reach for higher levels in some way. With that being said, the biggest difference I see between the two videos is in the assumed intent of the two artists.
Without siding with either video, Vinnie Paz seems to be trying to educate the listener and stimulate thought. The object of his intent seems to be the uplifted consciousness of the listener. Whether we agree with his theories or not, he believes them. So it stands to reason that in his mind, he’s looking out for the masses.
Conversely, Gucci Mane’s intent seems to be more self-serving. The picture that his words paint combined with the images he shows with them initiate with and all seem to point right back to him. The obeject of his intent is himself. He’s not even saying “You can do this too” (though that would be another topic all together). He’s basically saying “Look at me!!! Look at Me!!!” So even if one were inspired by his video to reach for higher levels, to me it wouldn’t be because that’s what Gucci Mane was intending to do. He’s not looking out for the masses. He’s looking out for himself.
At the end of the day though, it’s just songs and videos. It’s all entertainment. So the question should then be “What do you allow yourself to be entertained by?” A THOROUGH analysis of that question might prove to be benificial for all!!!
Lots of ways to answer those questions Jubiq..although i think Vinnie might not see his song as entertainment.. i think that says alot if is gets reduced that..
Davey, that would depend on the listener. That’s why I posed the question. To truly address it, one would have to completely and honestly anaylze what they take in, and then answer to his/herself why they take it in. At the end of that process, where they stand will speak volumes one way or the other. At that point “where we should go” will also become clearer.
On Vinnie, I agree that his intent is not to entertain. I’m just saying that entertainment is the vehicle that he’s using to relate his message. Hopefully, he will stimulate the consciousness of some one way or the other to at least look further, and gain more knowledge.
@Jubiq: Spot on with the comparative analysis of the two vids. Even Diddy and Mase “suggested” that YOU CAN HAVE IT TOO AND YOU SHOULD WANT IT. That Gucci Mane video is just a small collection of narcissistic nursery rhymes ensconced in greedy booty pictures.
Is the comparison an argument about or against capitalism? Do you agree that Hip Hop was originally KUUMBA Culture, which is about taking whatever we had (two turn tables for example) and creating something new and powerful to address the evils of the current regime?
I was always against the hedonistic me now-ness of bling rapping because it encourages the cut throat culture which has the hood under siege from within and with out. Of course Dave hits on something else when he says that “Vinnie might not see his song as entertainment” and that this would say a lot if (Vinnie’s piece) gets reduced to that. Does every piece of art coming from Hip Hoppers have to be didactic?
Could it just be about libatin and celebratin’? That’s a different discussion altogether but if this is about the cultural and artistic value of each of those two videos? The buffoonery of the Gucci Manes in the rap game who get all the juice are simply debilitating garbage and smut purveyors who I am chanting down.
I personally have no use for the crap and pieces like Vinnie’s video just highlight for me the need to just turn that shit off before it goes three bars. Vidoes like Vin’s show me how friggin complacent I, MYSELF have gotten in lowering my standards. I probably would have watched the Gucci Mane video IF IT HAD BEEN SHOWN BY ITSELF and not with the Vinnie one. I have, in essence, been fraternizing with inferiors and I feel slightly ashamed of myself, though now, because of this comparison, I will be a lot more vigilant.
this is why rap music went to crap a long time ago.
seriously Vinnie Paz? haven’t listen to any of his stuff in last couple years but unless he’s changed a lot he makes lots of songs for entertainment. Or maybe he does love murder and hate ‘fags’. Not exactly a great example for all to see, plus at least some of the stuff he says in the song is conspiracy theory at best, much of it is relevent but when you just throw it all together I think it lessen the truth in the things he does say that is right. I totally agree that media sucks but if he just got rid of like 10 percent it would have more impact to me.
What about these two videos?
http://www.steadybloggin.com/this-is-the-life-project-blowed-documentary-on-hulu/
For the last two weeks I’ve been listening to country music whenever I’m in the car. I never think I’d say this but right now commercial country music is realer than hip-hop. The things they talk about are real life from an adult perspective. They kick out a lot of realistic concepts; some sad, some funny; some just whatever. It’s like free expression. Yeah the beat is almost nonexistent and the temp is slow, but what’s coming out lyrically matches my experiences more than what I hear on commercial hip-hop.
First time in my life I ever paid it any attention to country music I like it’s sincerity. Hip-hop is missing that.
LMAO @ Flavorblade! The auto-tune craze has it’s roots in country and western. Good comparison. Is something else on the horizon to take the place of Hip Hop? Is rap still hip hop? Do you like Doobie in your funk? Be Bop is the next incarnation of hip hop, which is to say Bop will re-invent itself as something else as soon as nigguhs start to Be or keep getting Bopped! Isn’t country and western the blues for poor white trash aspirants to the middle class?
Thanks Ali Baba. I agree that the egotistical, materialistic baffoonery is what seems to get the most attention these days. This is the type of thing that happens when a sociey become desensitized to a plethora of evil. Over time, values and priorities become skewed and compromised. But if people actually pay attention to what they take in, they may see and subsequently demand something different.
I wasn’t addressing capitalism with the comparison, though I see where you could go with that. I was just trying to stimulate the idea of paying close attention to what you ingest. As for the origins of Hip Hop, I guess it depends on how far you want to break it down. I’ve heard arguements for everything from Kool Herc to Cab Callloway to the KUUMBA culture and about twenty other people and places. But for me, all music is just a manipulation of the drum and seven notes.
I don’t think that all Hip Hop songs should be didactic. However, they shouldn’t be void of redeeming value or aimless either. You could have a hot party record without promoting drinking and smoking, a dance song with a video without t & a everywhere, or even a relationship joint without all the sexual references. To me, adding all that extra hype goes against the spiritual essence of what Hip Hop is supposed to be about and points to something more sinister at hand. But that truly is another topic within itself.
I feel that all artists should be free to make whatever type of Hip Hop they want. I’m just saying that you reep what you sow, and that goes for artists as well as listeners. Those led by a righteous spirtit will promote and look for righteousness. Others will promote just about anything (righteous or not) as long as there is a paying audience wiling to ingest it. Where a person stands can be very revealing of where their heart is.
This is what happens when you never leave your neighborhood… although I am partial to the Vinnie Paz one…
@Jubic: WORD! You laid down for me what was prolly the last and most disective thread of this entire “string”.
Peace out to Davey for dropping this science, and to you Jubic for drawing the lines clearly on this. Alas, we find ourselves at the precipice of the intended topic of this discussion: When it comes to this thing called Hip Hop, where do we go from here?
Hopefully everyone participating in this discussion can share in the sentiment I hold which is that, had it not been laid down today like it was, we would not be able to agree on a here to go from.
Until we get wherever “there” is, my modus operandi and slogan is and will remain: “Kill the Rap Game! Long live Hip Hop!”
Glancing at the “Vinni Paz” video, I think it just lends to the same confusion it assumes to be pointing out. It’s just pointless fear mongering making young people stupid.
The other video I couldn’t really understand. The guy rapping seriously sounds like he has some kind of learning disability.
@ Leave the Past: Wow! I guess you just don’t get it. Young people are always trying to decpher the confusion they see around them and this is what points that confusing shit out. That’s hip hop: The young and boisterous spitting back the regurgitated garbage they have been fed in a savvy way and WITHOUT FEAR.
Can’t understand what’s being said by the other guy? Hip hop allows for fools with learning disabilities to move forward and make a lot of money anyway. Gucci Mane is just one in a long line of people like that who have overcome near insurmountable odds to “be successful” and that’s also hip hop.
Unfortunately, in my estimation, what Gucci Mane represents is the elusive pursuit of “The American Dream”, a picture in the mind of all youth here in this country (USA) that just cannot be attained without SELF IMPROVEMENT. The image he projects serve only to exacerbate the mass neurosis and bottom feeding that Vinnie was talking about.
To Gucci Mane and his ilk’s credit, artists have always explored this topic – What is the American Dream – with varying levels of success. Herewith a listing of some of them gleaned from, yep, wikipedia:
Is the American Dream a reality or myth?
The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for overinflated expectations. Some commentators on the left have argued that despite deep-seated belief in the egalitarian American Dream, the modern American wealth structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities between generations. These commentators note that advantage and disadvantage are not always connected to individual successes or failures, but often to prior position in a social group.
Meanwhile writers hostile to the middle class life style have often ridiculed the pursuit of the Dream. Historians have pointed out that failure is a very common experience in America.
Recent research suggests that United States have less social mobility than the Nordic countries and Canada. These authors state that “the idea of the US as ‘the land of opportunity’ persists; and clearly seems misplaced.”
In the 1920s numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, satirized 20th-century materialism in the chase for the American dream. In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote the play “Death of a Salesman” in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit. Hunter S. Thompson’s depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream a dark view of the search for the American Dream in the early 1970s after the collapse of the counter-culture movement.
Many counter-culture films of the 1960s and 1970s explored the topic of the American Dream. One such film is 1969’s Easy Rider, in which characters make a pilgrimage in search of “the true America.”
American comedian George Carlin joked that “it’s called the American Dream ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Casting Crowns have a song entitled “American Dream” on their first album, expressing the negative effects on family life of the pursuit of material wealth and power.
When a rapper who is as inarticulate with a pitiful knowledge fund as Gucci Mane becomes a star you have to look at the young cats and how they value education and learning.
I think this generation out now those 12 to 24 year olds don’t value learning and self education as much. The average dude that’s 23 has more video games than he has books on his shelf. Children who are naturally interested in learning, have caved in to the anti-school mentality by the time they hit middle school.
When the older teenagers get around themselves and talk it’s a lot of mumbling about mundane things. When one of them challenges anothers thinking; it’s usually greeted with “shut up bitcch.” They don’t explore intellectually, they just stand pat with what they know by personal experience. A lot of them are undersocialized and have serious trouble trying to communicate with anybody outside of their peer group. When I was coming up being able to get your point across was seen as valuable. Whomever in the crew that was the best at it in certain situations was the one who did the talking. I was always good when the police showed up. Rocky was good when we needed to get in somewhere.
Marijuana which cuts your adrenaline and ability to organize abstracts i.e all together told – ambition; is smoked heavily. My generation shared two joints all night, a bottle of liquor and you had you own 40 ounces, weekend night. You might puff on and off on the same joint to yourself during the week. These new cats is smoking it by the blunts all day, every day.
So you ask how can a rapper like Gucci Mane be successful. He’s on that level.
Vinny Paz first time I’ve heard of him. I think he went overboard for attention. For entertaining conspiracy theory, hot flows and beats check out the Non-Phixion album The Future is Now.
What great comments. Davey the juxtaposition of these two videos is mind bending.
I too am partial to the Vinnie Paz one, but after reading the comments here it opened my mind to the fact that both are equally far fetched in their own ways.
That been said, Vinnies does make you think and potentially challenges your world view. in another words to me that is “art”, genuine in its origins.
Gucci its just lowest common denominator trite bullshit. A fact in all music made for larger commercial appeal. Be it rap, rock or pop.
I suppose one could draw a comparison of Rap becoming a parody of its self much in the same way hair metal became hugely cartoonish in the same way.
Great discussion !
“I suppose one could draw a comparison of Rap becoming a parody of its self much in the same way hair metal became hugely cartoonish in the same way.”
It already has, It’s become like the ghetto olympics scene in. I’m gonna get you sucka.
Trapped in a human ant farm the question of where we go from here is as prolific as it is open ended. There is a great price to attaining total awareness and unfiltered truth. There is a total 360 degrees of realization that we collectively must digest thoroughly in order to truly see the truth behind what steers our collective conscious. It is true that we are hypnotized but to truly understand how deeply we are would require a total upheaval from our system of government, society and beyond.
Anything that we do to contest what we’re up against that takes place underneath this corporate umbrella, this shroud of democracy will be easily attached to it and dismissed. The techniques being used against us are an amazing result of many centuries of social and psychological observation. Constantly distracted, perpetually in conflict, our indigenous selves enslaved by global corporatism who continues its reign of global superiority.
Question the institutionalization of all things spiritual, philosophical and educational. Demand that no man or woman put their face at the head of the pulpit to represent a belief or way of thought. Realize your true and unique power as a receiver, a being of light encased in a physical shell with a purpose that can only be understood inward requiring the total dismissal of the “noise” that surrounds us. Allow no one or thing to make you forget that you and that which powers you are in control of your journey and let nothing further stand in your way.
Total realization of all things true is the only key that would unlock the answer to the question of “where do we go from here?” Once that realization continues its tsunami-like decent across borders we will then be left with a very simple choice: either accept the truth that we live in today or demand that the lies eradicate what we believe to be true. Our failure up to this point is that those who have been aware have chosen to rage against the machine, in order to truly defeat what stands before us we must rise above the machine.
Vinnie is the real deal. In his defense that is not the video for the song. It’s just some fan made you tube crap with clips from old jedi mind videos mixed in with footage. It’s a testament to his fan base that there’s so many of those out there. Look for the JMT song “Uncommon Valor” it’s a hell of an anti war song.
On a personal level Vinnie Paz was in Buffalo a couple months ago. The show was great but they went on so late that people were demanding refunds. Afterwards Vinnie and the promoter had a disagreement about whether the show was a sell out or not since refunds were given. Vinnie handled it exactly how you’d think he’d handle it based on his lyrics. He punched the promoter starting a fight and getting hip hop banned from one of the best venues for music in Buffalo. So while I agree he’s good for hip hop as a whole he set it back in my home town. We all know how hard it is to get clubs to allow hip hop, when we do get a chance it’s a one strike rule.
BTW – Did VP just say Obama was created in a test tube by Masons? That can’t be true, if those mofos made him he would have been 100% white 😉
To B_lo Tim: If it is true, then it would make more sense for him not to be white. Remember, at least 75-80% of the worlds population is of color. So if those “mofos” are out for world domination (NWO), then the face of their puppet would have a better chance of getting global acceptance if he were of color. They know that the world won’t follow a white leader. White people follow white leaders for the most part. So from a global perspective, a white leader probably wouldn’t work out so well. In America and conuntries like it, it works. However, predominatley white countries make up a small percentage of the world’s population.
But remember I said: “If it is true”. ~_~
Oh, and Happy JUNETEENTH everyone!!!!
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