In response to Beyonce telling women they are B–tches and to bow down and Rick Ross rapping about date raping someone, there are some who tried to explain that we should leave such artists alone and that they have FREEDOM of SPEECH.. Lets get a couple of things clear..
If you are pushing oppression and have multinational corporations with million dollar budgets and vast resources, promoting destructive messages then YOU ARE NOT an artist.. What you are is a worker…You are a lackey for corporate interests and should be seen as such.. You are no different then Ronald Reagan when he used his acting skills to be a spokesman for General Electric..In this case you are a spokesperson for oppression. Your creativity and artistic talent is being pimped out for repression not liberation..
Spokespeople and workers for oppression look for huge paychecks, cheap fame and an ostentatious lifestyle so they can bury their shame, ease their guilt and distract us from the fact that their souls were sold and their principles forever compromised. A corporate lap-dog will make excuses for having their talent and art be marketed for young minds and used destructively. They’ll tell you about the importance of ‘sales’ and ‘staying relevant’ or how parents should raise their kids.. These are corporate talking points all designed to avoid responsibility.. It doesn’t change their wrong doings of spreading corporate poison and using ‘art’ as the validating vehicle
This is not about telling artists they don’t have freedom of speech or there is one particular party line they gotta adhere to..This is about waking up folks and making it very clear who’s imperialistic interests some who call themselves artists are furthering..It’s about shining a bright light on the deep pocketed nefarious forces behind the work being hawked to the masses..
Are you in the business of saving souls or selling souls? Are you leading us on to the plantation or off? Time will tell the side you choose to represent…
Davey D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwFN9f8q5g0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHnUFpCeGxQ
Earlier when I posted this.. I got an insightful response from former BLA (Black Liberation Army) leader and former political prisoner Dhoruba Bin Wahad..Here’s what he added to my remarks..
I think maybe we should understand how the status of “Race Music” has been transformed in America by a combination of technology, social change, and the corporate globalization of culture. Once “Black” music, R&B, Jazz Gospel, Blues etc, were separate and apart from white corporate and popular music personified by “Tin-Pan Alley” top song listing.
In the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s Our music was patronized and confined (segregated) to our community therefore it reflected our communal reality (faults and all). But after the upheavals of sixties, the rise of the white Hippie “Love Generation” , the urbanization of white supremacist power to control inner city Blacks, mainstream White culture subsumed it’s Black sub-cultural counterpart. This process at once depoliticized Black music, dummed it down to nursery rhyme like songs (almost every popular Rap track, gangster, or “Dirty South” song sound like nursery rhymes appealing instantly to the adolescence generation that was never really taught what growing up means- but more importantly changed the nature of community musical introspection into gross expressions of sex, violence, money, and the values of misogyny.
Hence acting and behaving as backwards Niggers is acceptable.. authentic, the “Hood”. What we used to call “country” (Gold grillwork dressing like a clown in a bad circus act, is now glorified in videos and on stage) because the money corporate America can generate from ghettoized entertainment serves not just they’re bottom-line, but also the promotion of American values, mystique and material wealth – and most importantly the place of the Black man/woman in the overall scheme of things, we have the artists we do today making millions.
I may be wrong, but the last time I looked, white youth were the major consumers of Hip-Hop music and related paraphernalia. White girls don’t consider themselves “Bitches” in the street sense of that odious term – so what Beyonce says in this respect doesn’t resonate with them – what resonates is her outfits and style, so its not unusually for folks to admire stylish assholes, or that an entire generation of young Black women in the “Hood” have raised and are raising a generation of Shanniqa’s and children named after their Moma’s favorite perfume or club drink or luxury car. What does it say about one’s class status and values when waking up in a new Bugatti is a dream come true?
Reblogged this on redpilldreams's Blog.
I love you. You be straight up on point. Replicate more of you. Love and light to you brother!
This applies to many rock musicians as well, and other actors and performers. The unelected corporate-government of this country exploits all of them to maintain the status quo of inequality and injustice because it serves their purposes and their bottom line.
Reblogged this on Carl Lundgren for City Council.
Reblogged this on African Origins' Weblog and commented:
This post is originally from Davey D. Great piece about some of these destructive voices in the media!
Most excellent. Could not have said it better. Peace and Blessings to you all.
Thank the lord I’m not the only one who feels this way, or sees this!
This article delves into the most un-addressed issues in the Black community; I appreciate your writing it! Thank you!
I couldn’t help but wonder how the forefront of black music could go from protest song, to empowerment song, to ‘coochie-popping.’ It seems a surreal sequence of events, and indeed it is.
WORD!!!
I think Davey D is little late to the party on this one. Everything he’s complaining about at this point is simply called “normal”. The so called “conscious” artists he champions are really just using similar tactics leveraging the psychology of tribalism, under education and teenage angst to make a buck as well…or even worse, they actually believe their bullshit. So it’s really a full court phenomena.
So true.
Born in 1940, I lived through segregation (when we colored people were robbed of our humanity), through the Civil Rights movement (when we Negroes fought to regain our humanity), through the Black Power era (when we Black people determined that our humanity will never be taken again); but because we gave the responsibility of teaching that legacy to the oppressor, this generation is ignorant that we came so far out of collective unity. The oppressor advocates individuality, not collective community, which has infected a generation the oppressors endorse and reward financially. You never hear successful entertainers criticized the oppressive conditions in the “hood”. Poverty in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world is criminal. The mis-education of our children is criminal. The denial of decent medical care is criminal. The high unemployment among Blacks is criminal. In fact, I would say these conditions represent violence against our communities. Don’t forget about Lil Wayne who committed blasphemy when made a joke of the KKK murder of Emmitt Till. And Davey D comparing the spirit of the L.A. Lakers (an NBA basketball team who may not make the championship playoffs) with the humanitarian spirits of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Your criticism is right on time, but it’s like the pot calling the kettle black.
White women love using the world “bitch,” matter of fact there is a very popular book titled, “Skinny Bitch.” Typical tactic to kick up dust as a way to throw the focus off of the real issue of the unwillingness of each of us to take responsibility for believing that “it was possible to secure a moral end through immoral means.”
I very much agree with Davey D on this subject and IMHO, there is a sinister underpinning to the impact that corporate lackism has on the youth and community. This is part of the pipeline to prison and we all know the stats…that young black males are a disproportionately high percentage of the incarcerated in this country, and increasingly across the nation prisons are operated on behalf of state governments by private entities/corporations for profit ; the prison-industrial is widespread. It is an imprisonment-for-profit scheme that is heinous and sickening. The messaging in much of this music has a truly destructive impact on the minds, outlook, values, aspirations and development of many of these kids. The whoe $#*% is set up so that they will want to idolize these manufactured media star commodities and emulate their messages that promote lowlife values, thugism, gun violence, violence towards and degredation of women, alcohol and drug consumption, etc. It is part of a matrix of elements. that prep them to wind up in prison. This helps to ensure that the for-profit system will have an endless supply of prisoners. I saw this in action right next door to my home here in Oakland: a while back I started noticing that my 19 year old neighbor had suddenly begun blasting thugrap every time his folks and little sister left their flat ( a low-income but quiet, stable, caring household headed by his mom and a man was not the youth’s father; they’d been my neighbors for a few years and were good folks.) This went on for a few weeks until one evening I came home to a full-blown OPD TAC Squad action aimed at arresting my young neighbor for the gunshot murder of a 17 year old friend 10 weeks earlier; over a joke he didn’t like. I got that he started blasting that music to bury the pain in his soul under its b.s. message in the weeks after the murder and to reconnect with the idolized thugism that made him feel empowered to jammyblast his friend over a joke. He is 19 and in prison for a very long time. There are sadly many more stories like this from these streets in my neighborhood. There’s a whole other situation with the young women…girls…and how that plays out and it is heartbreaking. Anyone who says these sell-out artists aren’t part of this system doesn’t really get what is happening and how these tools of oppression are really playing out in the streets. It’s f’d UP! And Davey D speaks right to it.
This post is right on point and must be told! What Bro. Dhoruba Bin Wahad stated is real and makes a lot of sense!
Let us all remember: Just because someone is rapping on the mic does NOT mean they are representing for the Culture of HipHop.
The essence of HipHop is to love, enlighten, empower, uplift, and unite. Many of these entertainers that are considered rappers are NOT doing this, therefore, they obviously have other agendas.
PEACE AND BLESSINGS!
Thanks for posting, Bro. Davey D. !
Love + Thanks 1CE Again. More from me on this issue soon.