VeeshanVault

Join Intelligence Squared for the first ever global debate on hip-hop. Is hip-hop the authentic voice of the oppressed that turns anger into poetry and political action? Or is it a glorification of all that holds back oppressed minorities and hinders them from mainstream assimilation?

In the third of our Versus series of debates with Google we’re bringing together some of the biggest names in hip-hop to debate these questions. Some of the speakers will be on stage at the Barbican Centre and others will be appearing on the big screen via the Google+ Hangout technology. We have rappers such as KRS-One, ?uestlove, Q-Tip and Estelle, and renowned US hip-hop intellectuals such as Touré, Michael Eric Dyson, Tricia Rose and dream hampton. We’re bringing over civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson, once a critic and now in the hip-hop camp.

Hip-hop and all it stands for has moved well beyond its black American roots. We’ll also be hearing from John Sutherland, Victorian fiction expert, who is a hip-hop aficionado, and we’re bringing over the Egyptian rapper Deeb who was involved in the Tahrir Square uprising and thinks hip-hop has fostered revolution in North Africa.

[...]

Spang wrote:I recently finished watching this. It's pretty interesting (my initial response to follow). From the website:

Join Intelligence Squared for the first ever global debate on hip-hop. Is hip-hop the authentic voice of the oppressed that turns anger into poetry and political action? Or is it a glorification of all that holds back oppressed minorities and hinders them from mainstream assimilation?

In the third of our Versus series of debates with Google we’re bringing together some of the biggest names in hip-hop to debate these questions. Some of the speakers will be on stage at the Barbican Centre and others will be appearing on the big screen via the Google+ Hangout technology. We have rappers such as KRS-One, ?uestlove, Q-Tip and Estelle, and renowned US hip-hop intellectuals such as Touré, Michael Eric Dyson, Tricia Rose and dream hampton. We’re bringing over civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson, once a critic and now in the hip-hop camp.

Hip-hop and all it stands for has moved well beyond its black American roots. We’ll also be hearing from John Sutherland, Victorian fiction expert, who is a hip-hop aficionado, and we’re bringing over the Egyptian rapper Deeb who was involved in the Tahrir Square uprising and thinks hip-hop has fostered revolution in North Africa.

[...]

I think what's most interesting about this entire debate, is that there was a debate on hip-hop music, a predominantly black musical art form, in the first place, and not, say, country music or death metal, predominantly white musical art forms.

Missing from the panel were any of the wealthy white men who have profited the most from the negative forms of hip-hop music -- the commercialized bullshit that dominate radio, television and film -- wealthy white men who are largely responsible. When hip-hop started in the late 70s and early 80s, the bad, "degrading-to-society" style of hip-hop music was non-existent.

Aslanna wrote:Rap and Hip Hop sucks.

Aslanna wrote:Rap and Hip Hop sucks. So does Death Metal. And (most) modern County music as well. Which is really just "twangy pop" so not even sure how some of it ends up being classified as Country.

Is hip-hop the authentic voice of the oppressed that turns anger into poetry and political action?

Or is it a glorification of all that holds back oppressed minorities and hinders them from mainstream assimilation?

Chidoro wrote:sorry spang, looks like you soaked up all of the white guilt on this board

Aabidano wrote:Throw well meaning(?) parents giving their kids "African" names and ebonics (which seems to be alive and well) into that category too.

[...]

Janice Jackson, another team member who is also working on a Ph.D. in communication disorders, conducted an experiment using pictures of Sesame Street characters to test children's comprehension of the "habitual be" construction. She showed the kids a picture in which Cookie Monster is sick in bed with no cookies while Elmo stands nearby eating cookies. When she asked, "Who be eating cookies?" white kids tended to point to Elmo while black kids chose Cookie Monster. "But," Jackson relates, "when I asked, 'Who is eating cookies?' the black kids understood that it was Elmo and that it was not the same. That was an important piece of information." Because those children had grown up with a language whose verb forms differentiate habitual action from currently occuring action (Gaelic also features such a distinction, in addition to a number of West African languages), they were able even at the age of five or six to distinguish between the two.

[...]

Janice Jackson is especially annoyed and frustrated by commentators who disrespect African-American English by equating it with "street slang or the jargon of the day" instead of recognizing it as a dialect defined by its own coherent grammar and pronunciation rules. "They think it's the hip-hop talk," she says. "Yo baby! Tha's def! Wha' sup? Hip-hop has about as much to do with African-American English as surfer dude or Valley girl jargon has to do with standard American English. If somebody said, 'We're going to teach your kid to speak standard English,' nobody would say, 'Oh my God, they're going to teach him how to say tubular.' But when they said African-American English. . . ."

[...]

Only by moving beyond the deeply ingrained negative attitudes of the past, the speech researchers agree, it is possible to appreciate the multi-faceted subtleties of all human language. "Language is not just a matter of words and sounds and syntax," says Seymour. "It's an identity issue, it's a social issue. It's very complicated."

Funkmasterr wrote:I guess I always assumed there was more culture and less fucking ignorance on this board than there is, clearly. It is kinda odd that I subject myself to it too, since in my real life I would never associate with nerdy white folk that can't stand rap/hip hop and love computers, it's just not my style.

Aabidano wrote:I'll take her word for it, education and assimilation is still the path out.

Showing up at a job interview and only being able to speak surfer dude or trailer park jargon isn't any better.

Aslanna wrote:

Funkmasterr wrote:I guess I always assumed there was more culture and less fucking ignorance on this board than there is, clearly. It is kinda odd that I subject myself to it too, since in my real life I would never associate with nerdy white folk that can't stand rap/hip hop and love computers, it's just not my style.

Yeah we're uncultured ignorant white nerds because we don't like shitty music.. Er I'm sorry.. I meant rap/hip hop. Get over yourself. While I know there are some people out there that can listen to, and like, every genre of music I'm sure the majority of people have a genre they don't like. Heck, You too might even be one of those people that don't like everything.

Spang wrote:

Aabidano wrote:I'll take her word for it, education and assimilation is still the path out.

Showing up at a job interview and only being able to speak surfer dude or trailer park jargon isn't any better.

Funkmasterr wrote:Yeah, the white corporate "You need to talk, act, look and dress our way to make it in life" attitude is one of many changes corporations are going to have to make in the coming years, imo.

Spang wrote:

Chidoro wrote:sorry spang, looks like you soaked up all of the white guilt on this board

Chidoro wrote:exactly how you are seen by everyone but yourself apparently. good find

Spang wrote:

Chidoro wrote:exactly how you are seen by everyone but yourself apparently. good find

Awareness is not guilt.

Chidoro wrote:that doesn't change the fact that you're filled to the brim w/ white guilt

Spang wrote:

Chidoro wrote:that doesn't change the fact that you're filled to the brim w/ white guilt

Show me this alleged fact.

Chidoro wrote:pull out a mirror and look into it already you dope

Spang wrote:

Chidoro wrote:pull out a mirror and look into it already you dope

In other words: You're full of shit.

Chidoro wrote:whatever you say WG

Aabidano wrote:

Funkmasterr wrote:Yeah, the white corporate "You need to talk, act, look and dress our way to make it in life" attitude is one of many changes corporations are going to have to make in the coming years, imo.

Resistance is futile!

Seriously, the people (Juggalos come to mind at the moment) that don't have the ability to conform and function in wider society really don't need to worry about acceptance as they in general don't have the motivation to get a foot in the door.

It's not simply the language, it's the whole attitude and lifestyle that go with it. Not sure I believe it but could certainly see the argument that someone was intentionally using it to "keep the black man down", as opposed to just making money. It's working very well.

The "guns, bitches & bling" attitude is basically incompatible with normal social function outside a ghetto-criminal environment. Things are no different in any part of the world though the faces change.

Spoke with an old friend of my mother's when I was in St Louis last week, she and her husband were born to Alabama sharecroppers. Busting their butts and functioning in society has made them quite wealthy.

Funkmasterr wrote:Tattoos should have zero bearing on someone getting a desk job, even if their face is tatted. That's just one issue as an example, just because someone looks an talks different doesn't mean shit about their ability to perform a job, regardless of what your sheltered conservative white upbringing may have led you to believe.

Funkmasterr wrote:The problem isn't you not liking it, it's you not being able to see, or at the very least articulate, the difference between something you don't like and something that is bad. For instance, I like little to no heavy metal, but I can acknowledge the talent that many of the musicians involved in them have.

Boogahz wrote:What do tats have to do with anything?

Funkmasterr wrote:I don't know your personal experience either, but you're certainly talking like a successful white dude that has zero fucking clue about the people and environment you're talking about.

Spang wrote:Examples of hip-hop music with a positive message and/or knowledge:

Murs - Everything and The Science

The Roots - How I Got Over

Mos Def - Umi Says

Guru - Choice of Weapons

The Coup - Ride The Fence

Reflection Eternal - Ballad of the Black Gold

miir wrote:Are you fucking serious bringing up Snap in a thread rap/hip hop?

That's even more comical than Fair trying to use 'trance' to describe Death Grips.