Quote:
Originally posted by Pretty Little Flower
It's both depressing and it isn't. I mean, it is depressing for all the reasons you mention. But there is also the fact that intelligent, conscious hip hop (both black and white) can come to places like Minneapolis and finding a strong and avid fan base and hip hop community. It is a white audience, but at least it pays the bills and allows these rappers to travel and be heard in the Midwest. And if it were not for local rappers like Atmosphere and Brother Ali (mentioned in the article), I probably would not know about Mr. Lif and the Perceptionists and lots of other underground hip hop. But it is definitely weird to go to a Coup or Dead Prez show and have the audience be overwhelmingly white.
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Honestly, that sounds so strange that I would like to experience it. It is good and bad. It's good that these guys have an outlet and an audience and market (aside from bootlegs). And it's good that it seems pockets of a generation of kids are open to some pretty heavy, political, inner-city stuff -- open minds and all that. At the same time, I'm not all that thrilled that white people (and fewer and fewer black people) have so much influence from top to bottom (commercial to underground, depending on which you think is the top) on the direction and content of hip hop.
Used to be hip hop, even the commercial kind, was made up of an array of styles and sounds, from the politically conscious, to black pride, to party music to a more gritty, street sound. Now it's mostly homogenous crap. Great beats used to rap about some glorified, exaggerated take on the black experience.
Yeah, I'm old, but what the fuck. Shit done changed.
TM
