http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/52343/ This article by Dr. Edward Rhymes originated on the Black Agenda Report. http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=181&Itemid=33 It is one of the most intelligent discourses I've read about the recent controversy over rap music and violence. In fact, though radical, the Black Agenda Report expresses views us white folks seldom get to hear from "the people" themselves. The authors on this site tend to be a bit academic, but that's great, because they actually present good arguments for their points of view. Because of ingrained, historical seperatism in our country, most of us only get to understand the black community's thinking through white-owned, mostly conservative (and mostly racist-driven) news. Not really knowing many black people tends to limit our undertsanding of the Black community. We tend to lump that group together in a way that is often completely distorted. A broad mind should want to peer into its own dark cave corners if it seeks to be illuminated. The Black Agenda Report does just that for me. This article really probes our concern that Black rap music is violent and causing our all our kids to glorify sex and crime. Dr. Rhymes points out the existing duplicity quite nicely. "My assertion was, and remains to be, that the mainstream media and society-at-large, appear to have not so much of a problem with the glorification of sex and violence, but rather with who is doing the glorifying. In it I stated that "if the brutality and violence in gangsta rap was truly the real issue, then shouldn't a series like The Sopranos be held to the same standard? If we are so concerned about bloodshed, then how did movies like 'The Godfather,' 'The Untouchables' and 'Goodfellas' become classics?" Rhymes is not a defender of violence. "Young people, for better or worse, are looking for and craving authenticity. Now, because this quality is in such rare-supply in today's society, they gravitate towards those who appear to be "real" and "true to the game." Tragically, they appreciate the explicitness without detesting or critically deconstructing what the person is being explicit about." He says White men have been crooning about violence for years, but few people took them to task. "The exaltation of drugs, misogyny and violence in music lyrics has a history that predates NWA, Ice Cube, Ice T and Snoop Dogg. Elton John's 1977 song "Tickin," was about a young man who goes into a bar and kills 14 people; Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska," featured a couple on a shooting spree, and his "Johnny 99," was about a gun-waving laid-off worker; and Stephen Sondheim's score for "Assassins," which presented songs mostly in the first person about would-be and successful presidential assassins. Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" and the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (LSD) as well as almost anything by Jefferson Airplane or Spaceship. Several songs from "Tommy" and Pink Floyd's "The Wall" are well known drug songs. "Catholic girls," "Centerfold," "Sugar Walls" by Van Halen were raunchy, misogynistic, lust-driven rock refrains. Even the country music legend Kenny Rogers in his legendary ballad, "Coward Of The County," spoke of a violent gang-rape and then a triple-homicide by the song's hero to avenge his assaulted lover. Marilyn Manson declared that one of the aims of his provocative persona was to see how much it would take to get the moralists as mad at white artists as they got about 2LiveCrew. He said it took fake boobs, Satanism, simulated sex on stage, death and angst along with semi-explicit lyrics, to get the same screaming the 2LiveCrew got for one song. Manson thought this reaction was hypocritical and hilarious. Hmm...somehow I never really thought about that...