i feel that I am being haunted
i feel more black women are being flaunted
Since the death of hip-hop, true emcees are taunted, and daunted with slave man dummy dollars to dumb it down.
Kings with broken crowns, puppet clowns for the pounds,
Since the death of hip-hop, all we have become are dancing clowns.
No true music! No true voice! No true message! No true choice!
Only silent voices to represent our wandering souls and the blocks that we stroll,
Our very own music is now the ghost of our own lost quiet souls.
No more boom bap! Original rap! Only crap! That’s way too loud enough!
Thoughtless rhymes over a beat create thoughtless sounds,
But if hip-hop was alive, it’ll be a three strike prisoner of a vision, stranded on the corner of a newfound town searching for a new sound
Rest in peace! My condolences!
- John Charles Reedburg (CEO/PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE-PRODUCER)
I haven’t heard any great rap since the death of HIP-HOP on March 09, 1998!
What is all this bull crap that I hear on the radio? Why isn’t there anymore soul in hip-hop? Growing up, I listened to groups like Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Big Daddy Kane, and so forth who discussed issues like police corruption, racism, sexism, self-respect, safe sex, and uplifting the Black community within their music. Now I turn on Hip Hop stations and hear the same formula: gold/platinum chains and teeth, hoes, bitches, guns, killing, and partying.
Now while I will proudly challenge you to a Soulja Boy dance-off and know that Afrika Bambataa and Kool Herc were making party music back in the late 70s and early 80s, why did dance music have to become so vulgar? Nowadays, songs with excellent beats make it almost mandatory for women to be called out of their name, regardless of whether they deserved the title or not, and somewhere along the line, there had to be a line about being affiliated with some gang, crew, or shooting someone. Why? When did the Hip Hop community decide that we didn’t have anything else to talk about?
We can blame it on record labels, but the fact of the matter is no record label is taking a whip to anybody’s backs and making the stereotypes come flying out of these rappers’ mouths. Record labels want to make money just like rappers do, and when they see that phenomenal and intelligent albums like Jay-Z’s “Kingdom Come” made less money than Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” album, that tells them that stereotypes sell. So what do they ask for?
More ignorant, stereotypical music. I hear people complain that the majority of negative music is being purchased by white people who already believe that black people are negative. However, when I walk into a predominantly black club, I’m more likely to hear Lil’ Wayne rapping about licking lollipops than I am to hear a Lupe Fiasco track debating record labels who want him to “Dumb It Down.” So who is really buying the music?
