You don’t have to be a member of the “I owe RIAA my first born” club to understand that they’ve had their fist up the music industry’s you know what for years.
August is “Ban Major Labels” Month [PC Mag]
It used to be an unspoken rule in hip hop that you HAD to be authentic. You couldn’t talk about anything if you hadn’t lived it. But now, it seems as if “image” is worth more than the truth. If you have the flash (cars, jewelry, the clothes and the hoes), nothing else matters.
Everyone seems to have sold kilos and no one was just a regular Joe Schmo before their rap careers took off, or before they got down with a team that co-signed that they were the next big thing in the game. It’s more acceptable nowadays to lie to everyone — your team, your fans and to yourself — than to actually stay true to yourself. Now, while rappers lying about their pasts is nothing new in hip hop (remember Vanilla Ice & his homemade thuggish bio?), it’s becoming more prevalent.
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Here’s what Immortal Technique has been up to lately. Lest, we forget that people still talk about things that matter. Skip to 1:45 for the bars.
“Three things taught me conservative love: Jesus, Ronald Regan, plus Atlas Shrugged.”
-Young Cons
According to a June 10th, 2009 broadcast on Fox News, The Young Cons is a rap duo made up of politically minded Dartmouth basketball players. They have been touring the conservative hot spots and television broadcasts for the last week, including Fox & Friends and Huckabee. Their apparent aim is to dissuade people from the belief that liberalism is the younger, more hip movement.
I’m pretty sure this video will do the trick.
Pictured above: Soulja Toy and Chuck Hamlet
Today’s hip-hop landscape looks a lot like the lunchroom at an urban high school. What began as one thing, has grown into another, much bigger, more fractured thing altogether. While the casual observer might look at the rap genre as one thing, the more dedicated listener will note the distinct sub-categories that the music has to offer. Each category, while separate, will contain a bit of overlap for two reasons. First, each artist is influenced by the art of their contemporaries and predecessors. Secondly, what makes the product that each artist creates palatable for large audiences are the cords of similarity within the biographies of the entertainers and their fans. These shared experiences, stories, and viewpoints are the intangible elements that create the culture of hip-hop.
Here are the categories and their most notable figures: Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Steele may soon be required to hand over his token black person card if he doesn’t stop this nonsense hip-hop outreach that’s brought him under fire with the GOP. Steele has been trying to lure minorities into the Republican Party, but only if Rush Limbaugh and Joe the Plumber promise not to chop off his nuts. Republicans have lots to say about Steele’s attempt to sell conservatism to hip-hop, and none of it is pretty. Here, here, take a peep:
North Carolina’s national committeewoman, Ada Fisher:
“I don’t want to hear anymore [sic] language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn’t going to win us any votes and makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish.”Joe the Plumber:
“Unfortunately we have a chairman up there who wants to redefine conservatism; he wants to make it hip hop, put it in a new package and sell it,”
Klansman Katon Dawson, who lost the RNC Chairmanship race to Steele, aka the man who said that desegregation was the worst thing that ever happened to him, is supposedly calling for a no-confidence vote to overthrow Steele from the White Party, since he’s apparently failed in his 5 weeks as RNC leader. Forget Steele and all this weird stuff about engaging a more diverse crowd, Confederate General Dawson is exactly what the GOP needs to move the party right back into 1902.
