Friends, enemies, and countrymen lend me your ear…
Someone told me that commercial rap has taken over.
They said, “people don’t care about none of that real hip hop no more.”
They said, “people don’t even know what real hip hop is anymore.”
I disagreed, but I did wondered.
I hear rappers singing like R&B singers on their made-for-radio songs.
These songs are manufactured strictly for commercial sales - singing appeals to a wider audience.
I heard someone say “that’s gansta” on a song that featured Missy ‘Hee Hee Hee Hee How’ Elliot.
Is Missy a thug now?
Now, I know why she’s laughing.
Missy is hee hee hee hee how-ing, because rap music has become a joke.
Commercial rap has seemingly taken over and two choices arrive.
One, accept the status quo. After all, its just entertainment. Right?
This would include letting any song with a danceable beat produced by Timbaland or Neptunes be called Hip Hop.
And let any song with a childish hook that most likely was jacked from a nursery rhyme or an Off-Broadway Show represent the culture.
This would also include letting every clown with money enough to pay his or her way on the airwaves to claim they are the illest.
Letting commercial rap take over would also probably force hip hop, as a culture, to allow anyone with a platinum car, watch, chain, or tooth, with a side order of diamonds claim to be a MC.
Lastly, this would include abandoning the roots of Hip Hop as a culture.

Hip Hop is a culture that never was represented by blinging, Cristal, or a$$-fest videos…

It’s all love right? That’s what most rappers hold on to. Today’s childish rappers have made it impossible to be critiqued. In little kid fashion if you speak negative about a wack rapper you’re labeled a Hater. And we know haters don’t keep it real. The other choice is to keep it right and expose the wackness. Now tell me, which side are you on?

It’s a small wonder like Vicki/why I’m picky. Cause niggas suck like hickeys/and still get to slip their shit in like mickeys. I’m sick of these hater players…

Talib Kweli – Hater Player

The choice is obvious for some but confusing to others. That’s understandable. If you’re told a lie long enough, you may start believing it - regardless of how foolish it sounds. Youth is very impressionable. Little kids walk around trying to emulate DMX, Nas, and Jay-Z. Adolescence would walk around trying to be like Marilyn Manson, if that was all they were exposed to. Thankfully, someone decided Marilyn Manson wasn’t good for the children of the urban community. However, being a womanizing, drug dealer/addict, nymphomaniac Cristal fiend was deemed cool.

My niggas can’t take music. Everybody’s wack to us… so we hate music. Now we’re making hate music...Straight up degrade music...

Camron – Hate Music

So, now someone is stepping up to the forefront to bring music back to the culture and the childlike rappers and record executives have the public labeling them ‘haters.’

If you dislike lyrics that degrade women, you’re a hater. If you notice that beat sounds like all of the past seven songs by the same producer, you’re a hater. If you say so-called Urban radio stations are plaguing the black community worst than television [with exception of BET], you’re a hater. If you don’t hate are you a liker? Does anyone else realize how unintelligent this hater word is?

If you don’t like something President Bush does, are you a hater? If you speak out about the police brutality in your community, are you a hater? If you’re courageous enough to go against all odds and speak up because you’re intelligent enough to realize other people have been hoodwinked and bamboozled, are you a hater?

Like Talib Kweli said, “Reverse psychology got them scared to say when $h#t is wack. At the fear of being called a hater, imagine that?” The only true people who hate are the ones who allow the hip hop community to continue to subjugate themselves. The haters are the ones who have you scared to speak out against oppression. These people have a great love for money, but they are the ones who hate and it’s all directed towards you.

Who’s To Blame?

Don’t blame the artist because they’re just trying to make money. Don’t blame the magazines because they only print what sells. Don’t blame the radio stations, because they only play what you want to hear. Don’t blame the record companies or their executives, because they’re only trying to keep their artist from starving. Sarcastically, I can’t find a problem with anyone listed above.

If you truthfully want to blame someone, blame yourself. If you choose to selectively fight battles. Blame yourself. If you choose not to boycott artist, magazines, radio stations, and television programs that feature these artist. Blame yourself. If you choose to complain about music and then support the same artist or similar artist because you like their flow. Or because that beat is “just so tight yo!” Or because, “Jigga is just so smooth and his delivery is cool and he’s not talking about you because you’re not a ho.” Blame yourself. And if people like the beat so much, why must it be accompanied by degrading and/or cliché lyrics. Why not just dance to an instrumental? Does hip hop culture really need the nursery rhyme hooks to sing along with while your dancing? Does the hip hop culture really think they can’t have fun unless they’re screaming, “Project Chick, E.I. E.I. O, We bout that, or Shake that A$$?”

The reality is everything black isn’t positive. A message that comes out of a Black persons mouth doesn’t always represent the views of the Black community. Revolutions usually start in the mirror.

Again I ask, which side are you on?