Bumpy Knuckles article:
I´M HIP HOP AND YOU´RE NOT!!!
PT. 1
Perfect music is the absence of music,
Perfect people is the absence of human kind, Both are the absence of the Music Business.........
Many of us in the so called culture of hip hop are being faced with the threat of war and destruction. The war that I speak of is so much closer to
us than Iraq, Israel or any of those places that deal with that element on a daily basis and in a greater magnitude than we could ever tolerate. We are facing a war in Hip Hop. I´m not talking about the corny a** battles that rappers get into that fertilize their dying egos, or the battles that djs
get into that made technique turntables the train ticket to many production deals, or the battles between break dancers that have now been renamed choreographers that no longer hit the floor, and lastly I´m not talking about the battles between the graffiti artist that is now the hip hop
publication that sells it´s cover to the highest bidder and has more advertising pages than hip hop information and no tags. I am talking about the war between Hip Hop & The Corporate Structure.
Many people, artist especially are probably saying, this is not a war, this has helped to expand the music world wide as well as give many artist a
greater financial income, etc. etc. yea yea I know all that jazz but unlike many clouded by the tangible bating that has been displayed before us all, the war is not being fought by both sides, it´s only being fought by the Corporate Structure. I guess that would make it not a war in that respects but an ambush. The method of strategy is and has always been to buy them out then stomp them out. How many Joint Venture Deals have been lost and as part of a contractual agreement the CEO of the label has to leave the deal without the artist he came to the table with. Where is the Investment of the Corporate Structure when everything they spend is recoupable before you see a red cent. I know that everyone and their mama knows about advances, so I won´t remix that song again, but bigger than all of that, take notice to the attitude that the Corporate Structure has helped to create in the minds of the artist they sign.
Getting a record deal is now more about cop and blow then creating and developing the writing, production and performing abilities of an artist that comes through the door with rough edges. In that respects, where is Barry Gordy when you need him. Hip Hop music is a raw form of beats and rhythmic poetry that has been like many music art forms before it, sliced & diced into sub-titles in order to create in the mindset of the artist that
he is somehow not like them. Just one of the many forms of Divide & Conquer used to weaken the infrastructure of hip hop music. Let´s face it, nothing sharpens sight like envy. That is the perception, to create the idea in the mind of a rapper that he is a star or a mega star and is on the level of the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, which would create envy and jealousy from the less fortunate artist, which in turn crates the eyes on the prize mentality in allot of little niggas in the hood that realize that crack is more risky then rap. Sound like an ambush to me. Not convinced yet? Ok. Let´s look at the set up and undertone of Hip Hop Music from it´s beginning.
The music has always reflected in some way shape or form, the goings on in the hood. Emcees spit about what they see or hear going on in their
surroundings in the inner-city. In turn, that message is spread between neighborhood through tapes and live shows, meanwhile totally in infant form, is oblivious to it´s power. This music in the likeness of jazz and the original rock & roll was about culture. Culture is everything. Culture is
the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we communicate. Wearing the disguise of culture, many have been sent to internally destroy a culture. How do we know who is really with us and who is not? The budgets are very high these days and many of us come from poverty, so we all want to earn enough money to pay off mamas house and drive a nicer car and wear better cloths etc., so the cards are placed before you, pick one and don´t let me see it, ok put it back into the deck and I will shuffle the deck and in 10 seconds, I am gonna pull your card. The path of silence leads to the pit of deception and being deceived is what is being done to the Hip Hop Culture. I mean, let´s look at what is currently happening in our circle.
Hip Hop music has crossed boundaries in great magnitude far beyond any other music. It has lured the white teenager as well as every other culture into a total emulation of the African American personality. White kids especially because of their rebellious attitudes have become lovers of Hip Hop music based on it´s original firey and direct message, like the rock and roll previously adored by them in the 80´s with Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen, Judest Priest, Iron Maiden just to name a few. Hip Hop was responsible for the homicides of many of those groups, or was that what we were made to think? Well let´s look at it like this, how can Hip Hop really be credited for destroying Rock Music when many if not all of the groups previously named still sell out major arenas around the world, still are very relevant to major award shows, hosting, presenting, performing etc. Many of these groups still control their merchandise sales and ticket prices. The clincher is that these groups range now in age of late 30´s, 40´s and in the case of the legendary Rolling Stones 50´s & 60 years old. Now, let´s look at Hip Hop.
Unlike Rock Music, Hip Hop has a wider cultural range of listeners. It´s effects are expressed even deeper as you can see, not only in the dress code but the language and ideas of the individual. In the late 70´s and early 80´s when hip hop was green and had not reached a major audience, it was confined to the ghetto and never believed to be even considered music. During the birth of MTV to see a black face on their network was equivalent to seeing a black face on an album cover in the 50´s and 60´s. Slim to no chance. Yet it did not stop the movement. Then hip hop was not allowed radio air time like the music before it, still never lost it´s momentum in the streets. I mean why would anyone want to hear tales of the ghetto other than those of the ghetto. It´s kinda like asking why would the slave master attribute royalty to those he kidnapped from royalty, that is another subject, but still relevant.
The word Perception, a noun means, the act of perceiving, which a derivative of the word precept also a noun, meaning a recognizable mental impression. The mental impression of hip hop was that it would have no longevity and that seed has been more effectively planted into the minds of the people who created the music. This is evident when we hear people that buy the music, make the music, play the music or have any involvement with the music at all say, that a song that is a year old, is just basically and old song. This is also the same in the life span or the perception of the life span of the actual artist in hip hop. Unlike the Rock Star, he will never see a stage at 45-50 years old and be taken serious. Cop and Blow. That leads me to Motive, a noun that means, the sense of need, desire, fear etc. that prompts an individual to act. What is the motive of a major label signing an act that they previously would not have signed, or the motive of MTV playing the video of an artist they refused to play before and on and on and on. The fear was that if the Corporate Structure did not get control of this new fresh rebellious sound called hip hop, it would become truly the demise of American Music. The Corporate Structure put the plan in motion and handed out more then we already had, which seemed to be allot and like the ritz cracker to the starving man, we ate it. At the same time setting up it´s growth within their market of popular music and pipelines creating a bigger platform to slaughter the art form. In the same respect still unable to stop the music from filtering into the minds of white American kids, meaning now that they will destroy many of their own in the War between Hip Hop and the Corporate Structure. It´s always been the savage mentality of the Corporate Structure I mean have you ever heard the commercials that say, "we are an equal opportunity employer, we hire all minorities and women," this includes the women that are married to the men that make up the Corporate Structure. The hungry animal will eat their own for sake of survival.
Hip Hop is about us being on the same page with one another for the sake of expanding our music into power for us. No race, no creed, no time for no bullshit.
I´m Hip Hop And You´re Not!
Bumpy Knuckles.
"THA KONEXION" JUNE 2003 on BBE Records
http://www.bbemusic.com/index.pl[ This message was edited by: fahfee on 20-04-2003 14:30 ]
