The State of Hip Hop
From AllHipHop dot com:
Hip-Hop has many detractors, but the Honorable Louis Minister Farrakhan is not one of them.
While rap music is under an unprecedented attack in America by an older generation that popularized a number of questionable words, including the dreaded "N word," the Minister Louis Farrakhan is standing by Hip-Hop music while challenging rappers across the Earth.
While many point fingers at the our rappers, the Minister has recognized the power that rappers hold all over, even when the microphones are off.
AHH: What do you think of the current state of the rap industry?
Minister Farrakhan: The record executives don't give a doggone about right and wrong. They will make you a multimillionaire calling your women the B names and the whore name. And using MF and using the N Word. Because they want to promote our degradation and make it so lucrative to do it that you have a reluctance to change, even though the people are hungering and thirsting for something better. And so when Kanye West said "Jesus Walks," it became a hit and it's because there's a thirst and a hunger and most of the rappers don't know that there's a vacuum of leadership in the Black community. The Black people are not listening to their preachers. They’re not listening to their politicians, they’re listening to their rappers ... If you came into unity and stopped using the N word and saw what that N word does to you psyche. God said he made us in his own image and likeness. And in The Bible, it says "Ye are all gods children of the Most High God." It didn't say "Ye are all dogs, Children of the Most High, dog.” So instead of seeing yourself as offspring of God himself, you are now calling yourself the offspring of a dog. "Yo dog, what's up dog, that's my dog." If you are a dog, then your mother is a B and you are the son of a B. Stop it. That language has to stop. The thinking that follows that language has to stop. And then the violence between us as a family will also stop.
AAH: I think there's a backlash coming against the Hip-Hop community. How do we deal with it? They put out these negative images that the majority of people in Hip-Hop music have been complaining about for sometime now. Now they’re blaming us. But they’re already feeling the financial impact of it: no one buying CDs. What would you like to see rappers do?
Minister Farrakhan: The backlash that is coming is created. And it's created by the same forces of our image in the first place. Those forces see that we are taking their children from them. The majority of those who buy Hip-Hop records are White, not Black. So if the White youth that are buying Hip-hop and are in love with Hip-Hop, then become a part of Hip-Hop culture, then White people feel they are losing their future generations to the Hip-Hop culture. They’re afraid that if the Hip-Hop genre begins to recognize its power and begins to educate and motivate, young people all over the planet, you can take people away from being brutalized in war. Look at those who are dying in Iraq today on the basis of a lie: 18-19, 20, 21, that's the Hip-Hop generation. So if the Hip-Hoppers decided to tell them, "why fight? On the basis of a lie? You're not fighting to protect America, you are fighting for the greedy to gain access to the second largest oil reserve in the world.” What they see is your power. And now they want to reclaim their children, so they want to make the enemy now Hip-Hop. The enemy is not Hip-Hop. They asked on TV if Hip-Hop was art of poison. Hip-Hop is art that has been poisoned. You cannot say that Public Enemy was poison, except to those who love White supremacy. You can't say that KRS One and Big Daddy Kane were poison; that was art.
They took the spoken word and started educating the people. And those who are wicked saw what they were doing and did not want our young people educated in that. And they were making millions, sometimes out of the trunks of their cars. They had their own system of distribution. So the big boys said, "Wait a minute, we have to cash in on this." But they didn't want conscious rap. They wanted gangsta rap. So the more you promote gangster rap, the more you promote guns, the more they can sell prisons on the stock market. Cause they know they are going to fill it with the brothers and sisters from the inner-cities. If they want to know what poison is, let's go back to Hollywood. It is Hollywood that is undressing women. Hollywood in the early days would never show a sex scene but today, you can't find a movie where there's not some torrid love scene. That's poison in the movies, magazines, poison on the radio.
And so Hip-Hop is a reflection of the poison, not the architect of the poison. There's an antidote for poison. All we have to do is apply the antidote and gradually clean up our lyrics. And Hip-Hop will lead the new generation out of the hellish condition into a condition that promotes the good and brother hood, not only of us, but the brotherhood of the human family.
Hip-Hop has many detractors, but the Honorable Louis Minister Farrakhan is not one of them.
While rap music is under an unprecedented attack in America by an older generation that popularized a number of questionable words, including the dreaded "N word," the Minister Louis Farrakhan is standing by Hip-Hop music while challenging rappers across the Earth.
While many point fingers at the our rappers, the Minister has recognized the power that rappers hold all over, even when the microphones are off.
AHH: What do you think of the current state of the rap industry?
Minister Farrakhan: The record executives don't give a doggone about right and wrong. They will make you a multimillionaire calling your women the B names and the whore name. And using MF and using the N Word. Because they want to promote our degradation and make it so lucrative to do it that you have a reluctance to change, even though the people are hungering and thirsting for something better. And so when Kanye West said "Jesus Walks," it became a hit and it's because there's a thirst and a hunger and most of the rappers don't know that there's a vacuum of leadership in the Black community. The Black people are not listening to their preachers. They’re not listening to their politicians, they’re listening to their rappers ... If you came into unity and stopped using the N word and saw what that N word does to you psyche. God said he made us in his own image and likeness. And in The Bible, it says "Ye are all gods children of the Most High God." It didn't say "Ye are all dogs, Children of the Most High, dog.” So instead of seeing yourself as offspring of God himself, you are now calling yourself the offspring of a dog. "Yo dog, what's up dog, that's my dog." If you are a dog, then your mother is a B and you are the son of a B. Stop it. That language has to stop. The thinking that follows that language has to stop. And then the violence between us as a family will also stop.
AAH: I think there's a backlash coming against the Hip-Hop community. How do we deal with it? They put out these negative images that the majority of people in Hip-Hop music have been complaining about for sometime now. Now they’re blaming us. But they’re already feeling the financial impact of it: no one buying CDs. What would you like to see rappers do?
Minister Farrakhan: The backlash that is coming is created. And it's created by the same forces of our image in the first place. Those forces see that we are taking their children from them. The majority of those who buy Hip-Hop records are White, not Black. So if the White youth that are buying Hip-hop and are in love with Hip-Hop, then become a part of Hip-Hop culture, then White people feel they are losing their future generations to the Hip-Hop culture. They’re afraid that if the Hip-Hop genre begins to recognize its power and begins to educate and motivate, young people all over the planet, you can take people away from being brutalized in war. Look at those who are dying in Iraq today on the basis of a lie: 18-19, 20, 21, that's the Hip-Hop generation. So if the Hip-Hoppers decided to tell them, "why fight? On the basis of a lie? You're not fighting to protect America, you are fighting for the greedy to gain access to the second largest oil reserve in the world.” What they see is your power. And now they want to reclaim their children, so they want to make the enemy now Hip-Hop. The enemy is not Hip-Hop. They asked on TV if Hip-Hop was art of poison. Hip-Hop is art that has been poisoned. You cannot say that Public Enemy was poison, except to those who love White supremacy. You can't say that KRS One and Big Daddy Kane were poison; that was art.
They took the spoken word and started educating the people. And those who are wicked saw what they were doing and did not want our young people educated in that. And they were making millions, sometimes out of the trunks of their cars. They had their own system of distribution. So the big boys said, "Wait a minute, we have to cash in on this." But they didn't want conscious rap. They wanted gangsta rap. So the more you promote gangster rap, the more you promote guns, the more they can sell prisons on the stock market. Cause they know they are going to fill it with the brothers and sisters from the inner-cities. If they want to know what poison is, let's go back to Hollywood. It is Hollywood that is undressing women. Hollywood in the early days would never show a sex scene but today, you can't find a movie where there's not some torrid love scene. That's poison in the movies, magazines, poison on the radio.
And so Hip-Hop is a reflection of the poison, not the architect of the poison. There's an antidote for poison. All we have to do is apply the antidote and gradually clean up our lyrics. And Hip-Hop will lead the new generation out of the hellish condition into a condition that promotes the good and brother hood, not only of us, but the brotherhood of the human family.
posted by Mortal Thoughts at 7:32 AM
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