thought some ppl here would find this interesting...
http://music.guardian.co.uk/urban/story/0,,2158038,00.html
You are what you own
Rap doesn't undermine social values, but does suggest that flaunted wealth means success
Dreda Say Mitchell
Wednesday August 29, 2007
The Guardian
If the nation's youth are going off the rails - and a flip through the newspaper archives suggests they have been since the 1950s - then clearly something must be to blame. The usual suspects are, in no particular order, capitalism, liberalism, consumerism, and family breakdown. But particularly after the shooting of young men at the Notting Hill Carnival on Monday evening, the debate inevitably turns to music.
Ask any youth in our cities, irrespective of ethnic background, about rap and you'll get a roll of the eyes - they're more than familiar with this argument - and you'll be told you're taking it too seriously, it's just showbiz. No one's embracing a gun and gang culture because of anything they've seen on television or heard on their MP3, there are other forces at work. Nor, sadly, do they think there's much anyone can do about it, it's just "how it is".
Music, along with many other factors, helps to set the tone for what is considered acceptable behaviour in our society. But there's no doubt that our "culture" in its broadest sense legitimises, or otherwise, certain actions or attitudes. Music does form an important part of youth culture, so it's a fair question to ask whether music has an influence. But it's always been easier to assume there's a link than actually demonstrate one. Few people now would want to blame poor old Bill Haley in Rock Around the Clock for teenagers trashing cinemas in the 1950s, but people certainly did at the time.
Rockers have had their day as a threat to the nation's young. If you're bang up to date, you're blaming rap, specifically gangsta rap, for guns and gangs. And at first sight you might seem to have a point. When news crews shoot footage of the latest tragedy on our streets, the youths involved look like characters from rap videos, they use the same slang and they seem to echo the same attitudes. So is it case closed?
But rap is not homogenous - there are individual rappers and the music they make. Some of the music is so relentlessly "positive" that it would get the thumbs up from any worry coven. At the other end of the spectrum, there's no denying that a minority of rappers, often under commercial pressure to be "badder" than the rest and believing their own hype and publicity, do end up in murky waters.
In fact there's very little violence or guns in mainstream rap. Spend an evening watching rap videos (and it's difficult to believe that many people who worry about it actually have) and a fairly standard image starts to emerge. There'll be the stars by a swimming pool, in a fast car or a flashy club, wearing designer clothes and jewellery, surrounded by a half a dozen, purely decorative, "honeyz." The message (in as far as there is one) that you'll pick up from this is simple - that if you're not loaded, you're not happening. And it's not hard to see why record companies and other corporations don't have a problem with that, because that's exactly what they believe too.
The real problem with rap is that far from undermining society's values it's reinforcing them, and the most fundamental of all our society's values at the moment is that you are what you own. Commercial rap's money and success ethic won't do any harm to middle-class youth; they have access to the professions and property where they can participate in it. For working-class youngsters, taught by our culture since the 1970s that they're losers and failures, it's part of a profoundly poisonous cocktail of attitudes. Pride and self-respect are at the heart of this debate and it's the lack of those, or the wrong sort, that's really driving the violence on our streets.
Respectable society expects those involved in street culture to start taking responsibility for what they do, and change their behaviour and attitudes. No argument there, but it's equally true that the rest of us might want to think about taking responsibility for what we do, and changing the behaviour and attitudes that creates the environment our youth live in. In Britain in 2007 though, that's an unfashionable attitude. Most of us think we're stuck with the society we've got because "that's how it is ..."
· Dreda Say Mitchell is the author of Killer Tune, published by Hodder
www.dredamitchell.co.uk
http://music.guardian.co.uk/urban/story/0,,2158038,00.html
You are what you own
Rap doesn't undermine social values, but does suggest that flaunted wealth means success
Dreda Say Mitchell
Wednesday August 29, 2007
The Guardian
If the nation's youth are going off the rails - and a flip through the newspaper archives suggests they have been since the 1950s - then clearly something must be to blame. The usual suspects are, in no particular order, capitalism, liberalism, consumerism, and family breakdown. But particularly after the shooting of young men at the Notting Hill Carnival on Monday evening, the debate inevitably turns to music.
Ask any youth in our cities, irrespective of ethnic background, about rap and you'll get a roll of the eyes - they're more than familiar with this argument - and you'll be told you're taking it too seriously, it's just showbiz. No one's embracing a gun and gang culture because of anything they've seen on television or heard on their MP3, there are other forces at work. Nor, sadly, do they think there's much anyone can do about it, it's just "how it is".
Music, along with many other factors, helps to set the tone for what is considered acceptable behaviour in our society. But there's no doubt that our "culture" in its broadest sense legitimises, or otherwise, certain actions or attitudes. Music does form an important part of youth culture, so it's a fair question to ask whether music has an influence. But it's always been easier to assume there's a link than actually demonstrate one. Few people now would want to blame poor old Bill Haley in Rock Around the Clock for teenagers trashing cinemas in the 1950s, but people certainly did at the time.
Rockers have had their day as a threat to the nation's young. If you're bang up to date, you're blaming rap, specifically gangsta rap, for guns and gangs. And at first sight you might seem to have a point. When news crews shoot footage of the latest tragedy on our streets, the youths involved look like characters from rap videos, they use the same slang and they seem to echo the same attitudes. So is it case closed?
But rap is not homogenous - there are individual rappers and the music they make. Some of the music is so relentlessly "positive" that it would get the thumbs up from any worry coven. At the other end of the spectrum, there's no denying that a minority of rappers, often under commercial pressure to be "badder" than the rest and believing their own hype and publicity, do end up in murky waters.
In fact there's very little violence or guns in mainstream rap. Spend an evening watching rap videos (and it's difficult to believe that many people who worry about it actually have) and a fairly standard image starts to emerge. There'll be the stars by a swimming pool, in a fast car or a flashy club, wearing designer clothes and jewellery, surrounded by a half a dozen, purely decorative, "honeyz." The message (in as far as there is one) that you'll pick up from this is simple - that if you're not loaded, you're not happening. And it's not hard to see why record companies and other corporations don't have a problem with that, because that's exactly what they believe too.
The real problem with rap is that far from undermining society's values it's reinforcing them, and the most fundamental of all our society's values at the moment is that you are what you own. Commercial rap's money and success ethic won't do any harm to middle-class youth; they have access to the professions and property where they can participate in it. For working-class youngsters, taught by our culture since the 1970s that they're losers and failures, it's part of a profoundly poisonous cocktail of attitudes. Pride and self-respect are at the heart of this debate and it's the lack of those, or the wrong sort, that's really driving the violence on our streets.
Respectable society expects those involved in street culture to start taking responsibility for what they do, and change their behaviour and attitudes. No argument there, but it's equally true that the rest of us might want to think about taking responsibility for what we do, and changing the behaviour and attitudes that creates the environment our youth live in. In Britain in 2007 though, that's an unfashionable attitude. Most of us think we're stuck with the society we've got because "that's how it is ..."
· Dreda Say Mitchell is the author of Killer Tune, published by Hodder
www.dredamitchell.co.uk
