Truthfully that whole "the FBI started hip hop to keep us speakin bad english and ghetto is one I first came across like 9 yeasr ago, but it becomes scarily possible when you look at the development of hip hop as a commercial concern.
I mean, think about it, modern commercial rap is about being a thug or being a clown and has been since it became commercially viable. The people that had complete financial control over the production and marketing of hip hop, and still do for the vast majority of the market, and even now that we have a few black folk with some clout, (LA Reid, Babbyface, Jigga, JD) they have it cos they came up ina structure controlled by the same old rich white men and now these black folk have to partner with the whiteys, to make the whiteys palatable to the growing black market and the white liberals.
The largest market for hip hop has always been the white middle cla** and remains so, and until US rap breaks the Chinese market (heh, heh, slim and none are the chances there) this will stay the same, cos even tho theres f***loads of us black folk, more than 90% percent of us still live below the international bread-line. And as far as the peeps marketing rap where and ARE concerned, the general buying public is not looking to see black peeps as intelligent, aspirational human beings, cos then all the genocide and discrimination and colonisation start looking awfully criminal and make whitey uncomfortable. So black peepl need to be kept in the bracket where we are pack animals and light entertainment.
Think about it, any "black film" where the peepl are your avwerage middle cla**, working hard to come up, attending university, just partaking in the "AmeriKKKan Dream", is automatically relegated to dvd limbo, they get distributed nowhere, for the first time more "concious" rap is coming up and appearing in more "commercial" arenas....but think how long hip hop has been around and ONLY NOW do black peepl have enuff power to make anything resembling significant impact.
The peepl who buy rap cds WANT and NEED black peepl as dirty thugs who don't have any dreams outside of dealing drugs, playing ball and maybe becoming a preacher. It doesn't matter that Jigga or JD or Diddy or (even) 50 are astute businesspeople who recognise their market and produce what they know the market wants. The market doesn't want to see that, they want a tattooed, scarrred former drug-dealer who still has connections to the underworld who talks about killing peepl and the small meaningless material things he's got because he cant have emotions and worries other than where his next bottle of Cris is coming from.
If you're a real person who raps you ahve to rap about what you know, in other words your life and your daily goings-on and then your listener would have to face their daily goings-on and they trying to escape.
The corporates don't want peepl facing their daily shit cos then they might turn introspective and thoughtful and they might realise they DON'T actually NEED OR WANT all those things they waste their hard earned cash on. SO rap is what it is, and no amount of whining about how your "real" shit is going to change it means a DAMn thing, the person who receives what you do has to have made the decision to think way before they listen to your tracks.
Thats my word
