Wednesday, June 14, 2006

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.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

i am glad you posted this. people fail to realize that the US govt, state and local ones as well, did not concede until Blacks picked up the gun when the Panthers came around. that is when we saw real change. when several black politicians came to power in the 70s, they used the Black Power mantra...

i think Chuck's idea is representative of this

Anonymous said...

Apparently they need to come back to Arizona and smack these bytches across the mouth with a steel beam because even now Martin Luther King's birthday isn't really celebrated here. I'm still using my vacation days in order to honor the man who pool for me to get the kind of jobs that I've had. Dayum... By he time I leave Arizona won't be a day too soon!

The sad part about this B.S. is that what they are calling rap (and a backslap for those who call dumbasses like 3-6 Mafia hip-hop) has made most genuine hip-hop heads ready to give up! As it stands, CD sales are already down due to P2P sharing and people like Common, Mos Def and them do not see their share of radio play. It also seems that the kids who are growing up now have either veered away from the hip-hop/rap genre entirely or have forfeited real lyrics for the hot yet ignorant gruntings of "rappers" like Little John and the Ying Yang Twins.

So now I'm wondering.... where do we go from here???

Anonymous said...

Apparently they need to come back to Arizona and smack these bytches across the mouth with a steel beam because even now Martin Luther King's birthday isn't really celebrated here. I'm still using my vacation days in order to honor the man who pulled for me to get the kind of jobs that I've had.

The sad part about this B.S. that they are calling rap is that most of the genuine hip-hop heads have almost given up. CD sales are already down due to P2P sharing and people like Common, Mos Def and 'nem do not see their share of radio play. It also seems that the kids who are growing up now have either veered away from the hip-hop/rap genre entirely or have forfeited real lyrics for the hot yet ignorant gruntings of "rappers" like Little John and the Ying Yang Twins.

Now I'm wondering.... where does that leave us???