Video of the Day: Public Enemy "By the Time I get to Arizona"

In a nutshell, this song pretty much sums up how I feel about Hip Hop right about now. Follow my analogy. When this song was recorded, Arizona had refused to recognize the Martin Luther King Jr holiday. Outraged, like many of us were, not only did Public Enemy decide to express they disapproval in song form, they had a video where they get the whole crew together and kidnap the elected officials of Arizona to get their point across, equipped with heavy artillery and Flava Flav to boot. Some people were offended that they would take such a militant and proactive stance, especially since the man who's holiday they were fighting for was famously non-violent, who had a "turn the other cheek" attitude. I understood that argument, but disagreed, because sometimes you just need to smack a motherfucker directly in the mouth to get their attention. If that doesn't work, slap the fuck out of the their loved ones, whoever, anything to let them know that you mean business.

That is kind of the way I feel about Hip Hop. Fuck all the niceties, forget all the "we should be more receptive to other forms of the art form" garbage, openly reject that notion that you are wrong by calling something "real" or "fake" because doing so insists that you think your opinion is better than everyone else's. What's wrong with that exactly? We need a little Hip Hop elitism nowadays, let the rappers who can't put two coherent sentences together know how you feel about their subpar brand of bullshit, be assholes I say, no more fucking Mr. Nice Guy, because that attitude is what made Lil John a household name, and has people thinking that Young Jeezy has any lyrical ability whatsoever. Long live P.E.