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I wish for you good music for your life I admit it, I am one of the few remaining holdouts who despise rap, or hip-hop, which seem the same to me. I won’t even concede the point of calling it music. The cultural decay of rap aimed at our kids is hard to miss unless you are willfully blind to the thug and prison culture, denigration of women, violence and anti-social message it promotes. Some would call me racist for my disdain of rap because this so-called music originated in the black community, but I don’t care where it came from and it has spread across all races everywhere. I tell my 10-year-old daughter Melanie I don’t want to hear her listening to rap. If you are my age you might think that our parents did the same thing, trying to stop us from listening to Elvis or the Beatles, and the tide of rap is just as impossible to stop. You would be right, but as a parent I have to do what I can. Melanie asked me one night why I am so opposed to rap. I said, “Let’s turn on a rap channel on our satellite TV and see what it looks like.” We did just that and immediately saw grown men dressed like buffoons, surrounded by fawning slut-chicks dressed in nearly nothing, all dry-humping their way through sneered street-tough lyrics that would make a rock-n-roller blush, guns in their belts and threatening what they would do to their adversaries. How uplifting. I explained to Melanie rappers build a tough image and dream up their own names like 2-Pac, Snoop Dog, Fifty Cent, Eminem, Ice Cube, L.L. Cool J., Puff Daddy, Big Daddy Kane, Big Ed, Big Kap, Big L, Big Mike, Big Noyd, Big Pokey, Big Shug, Big Tymers, Lil’ Cease, Lil’ Italy, Lil’ Kim, Lil’ Keke, Lil’ Jon, Lil’ Ric, Lil’ Rob, Lil’ Slim, Lil’ Soldiers, Lil’ Troy, Lil’ Wayne, Lil’ Zane, Dr. Dre, Beatnuts, Dead Prez, Three 6 Mafia, Mos Def, Busta Rhymes and Uncle Kracker, just to name a few. Melanie told me she didn’t like what we saw on TV and my heart nearly stopped; maybe she would dodge this bullet fired toward her generation. Then she asked me, “But they do rap at my school, and even at some churches!” I know, good people everywhere try to accommodate what they perceive as black culture. But for me at least, enjoying innocent versions of rap is merely climbing aboard a slippery slope. I understand the white guilt carried by America as a whole over a long history of mistreatment of blacks, but I don’t think we do any favor for the black community now by stretching to embrace rap. It is our young black kids who are in most jeopardy, I believe, as they are tempted to follow rap celebrities who glorify a lawless and immoral street and prison culture, treat women as whores, cops as evil targets, education as a sellout and, by the way, trample the English language. A few years ago the Oakland School District in California held a competition for students to translate rap. The winner translated lyrics from the song, “One More Chance,” from the album “Ready to Die” by rapper Notorious B.I.G., who was murdered at 24 years old, but the lyrics are far too profane to print here in a community newspaper. You might wonder, as I still do, why a school would undertake such a project. But there is something more, beyond the polluting effect of rap on our culture in general, that bothers me. I want my kids to discover the joy of having their own music when they are young, even if it shocks parents a little as it is supposed to do. Remember when we discovered the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Peter Paul and Mary, the Mommas and Poppas, Neil Sedaka and so many others that we can still enjoy in our graying years as something that bound us together in our youth? I want that for my kids. I want that for all kids of all races, it is a glorious part of growing up, too important to fall into the trap of rap. I think this for my kids. “No matter what I say it is up to you to choose your music. I wish for you good music, deep music with a message that strikes an inner chord, strong music that wraps around you and thumps through your whole body and makes you jump and twist and move with abandon. “I hope for you songs about life and love, sweet music that makes you stay very still with your eyes closed to blissfully absorb every note of the melody and harmony. “I hope your music becomes for you and your friends a source of delightful binding together, a shared cultural center you can return to again and again for fond memories of youth. “I hope you select music that makes you an even better person than you have already become. I hope for you good music. “Some day you may sit with your own children before their music arrives to shock you, listen with them and tell them with pride, ‘This was our music.’ Choose well.” login to post comments | Terry Garlock's blog
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