Don't Play Me Like That

I have an issue.

It’s with the music that is constantly harassing my eardrums every time I turn on the radio in my car.  

 Since when did mainstream music become so ....
                                                                           ..... completely inane and artless?

I literally cringe every time I hear Nick Minaj’s unbearable baby-voice or Drake’s "gangsta" rap. What happened to the days when rap and hip-hop had lyrics centred on social justice and politics? What happened to rap stars that were actually from the 'hood, who understand the real movement and the concepts behind it?

Nicki and Drake are the ultimates examples of the Great White Cultural Appropriation of Hip Hop. I don’t want to be a hater (e.i. anyone who is jealous and spiteful towards someone because they are richer/more successful/better-looking/more talented than them) but some things just need to be said.

Gross.

Today, mainstream hip-hop artists make music that is designed for affluent people in the 'burbs who have enough money to spend $12.99 on iTunes for their album. Music used to be the only voice for the masses of disenfranchised people living in the ghetto. Now that's been stolen for the sake of a trend. 

Today's hip hop artists would not be so bad if they were honest with themselves about where they come from and who their audience is; I really have no problem with a wanksta from the suburbs who wants to rap. But be real. Just own up to the fact that you have no street cred. Admit that you've taken rap out of it's original context. 

Don’t pretend to talk in Ebonics, wif all da bad grammar, when in reality you were raised by an upper-middle class white family. It is disgusting that hip-hop and rap on today’s mainstream radios actually claim to have a connection to the roots of hip-hop. 

Listen, the most “gangsta” thing Drake has ever done is buy a bag of weed with his Bar Mitzvah money. Since when are Canadian Jews from upper-middle class Caucasian families in touch with the heat on the street? (This is similar to the media phenomenon claiming that Obama is from Chicago; since when does working somewhere make you "from" there? He was raised in Hawaii/Indonesia, went to college in New York and only in his later years moved to Chicago.)

I guess Chris Brown agrees with me that Drake is a wussy. The two hate each other and brawled once at a night club, and were later offered a million dollars each to officially duke it out in a boxing match. Since Chris Brown can't hit women anymore he had to decline.

The Queen Bee, one of the last living REAL rap artists. 

Child actors like Drake have stolen hip-hop away from its rightful voice. It’s been taken away from its original context, raped of all meaning, and regurgitated to the public because of the infectious beats. The only prerequisite that seems to have remained is that any artists representing this genre be black, or at least half-black. Nothing of the original struggle, racial and social issues are there in the lyrics. 

And people listen to this music -- with its endless and repetitive references to booty-shaking, clubbing, drugs, fame, reckless money-spending -- and scorn “that black music.” 

Hiding under the guise of the African-American subculture to deflect criticism, (mostly white) CEOs of music companies can produce scandalous, sex-obsessed, drug-infused hip-hop music that sells with less of the scandal. When cute lil white girl Britney Spears wears a sexy schoolgirl outfit in a music video, people were horrified! But when Lil Kim talks about how she can "make a Sprite can dissappear in her mouth" people don't even blink.

(NOTE: I am in no way hating on Lil Kim. She is one of the few original players out there who truly reps her hood and remembers where she came from. 15 years later, she's still the one and only wicked Bitch of the East. The Queen Bee is among the most talented female rappers in music history. And she never went all diva -- she even did time in jail trying to protect her friends in court. Loyalty). 

But .... stealing things from other cultures is good for sales. In exchange for appropriating the once-dignified music of a minority race and selling your soul to the devil, of course. 

Here's a cool video of Drake getting a cap in his ass when he was an actor on the homosexual children's show Degrassi: