"Politics is work. Hiphop is music. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever “going,” we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn’t “concern” us in the least." —John H. McWhorter, author of All About the Beat: Why Hip Hop Can't Save Black America
"You can't listen to all that language and filth without it affecting you," —C. Delores Tucker
"Our culture has been overwhelmed by the adolescent cult of rebellion that emerges in a particularly stunted way from the world of rock 'n' roll. That simpleminded sense of rebelling against authority descended even further when hip hop fell upon us from the bottom of the cultural slop bucket in which punk rock curdled. Hip hop began as some sort of Afro protest doggerel and was very quickly taken over by the gangster rappers, who emphasized the crudest materialism in which the ultimate goal was money and it did not matter how one got it. The street thug, the gang member, the drug dealer and the pimp became icons of sensibility and success. Then the attitudes of pimps took a high position and the pornographic version of hip hop in which women become indistinguishable bitches and hos made a full-court press on the rap "aesthetic."" ―Stanley Crouch, columnist for the New York Daily News
"A very shallow, coontastic musical genre (95% of it, at least) which utterly runs the once-rich black American culture into the gutter, taken a group of people from being America’s best dressers to grown men showing their underwear as a prison homage, promotes ghetto thuggery/murder/drug dealing/hoing as “quintessential” blackness, is misogynistic and objectifies women, influenced so many kids that now their every third word is a cuss word or the N-word, promotes rabid colorism and anti-black-women views in its videos, rampantly steals the beats of real entertainers, serving prison time is considered a badge of honor among rappers, and it lyrically has virtually nothing to offer except the same retarded ignorance." —Shay Riley, editor of Booker Rising
"We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent." —Jason Whitlock, former columnist of the Kansas City Star
"The gangsta attitude in the music of Dr. Dre or Snoop Doggy Dog is totally different from these other types of rap. They accept the situation as it is. Their general idea is "if you mess with me, I'll kill you." There does not seem to be a call for social change." —Bill E. Lawson, associate professor of philosophy at theUniversity.
Politics and Rap Music
Epic mashup of politicians making awkward references to rap music. Enjoy! And tell us if we missed any good examples. [Video by HuffPost's Hunter Stuart]
