Townhall Meeting

[ERinger]

Now on V-103 & WAOK discussing the recent occurances of violence within the hip hop community.

The most recent: TI and his enterage involved in a shoot out last night on I-75 in Cincinatti. One person killed and three others injured.

[Pamalicious]

So after all that screaming and hollaring and random thoughts - the music..continues. What a waste of air space.

I think that either there needs to be a hit in the pocket and someone like Frank-Ski just really stop playing and reap the consequences OR stop complaining.

Rap Music is NOT the downfall of the Black Youth of America - it's first their parents and then the community and then the school.

A better forum would be to get some kids from every grade level from pre-school to High School and put some of the big rappers across from them AND more importantly but the producers, distributors and other folks who are the real meat and potatoes and who actually run the game - and put them all under fire from the youth.

Let's call some folks out - let's have a six year old ask: Do you really sleep with all those hoes in one nite and have someone on the hot seat about the imagery, language etc.

I'm tired of Rappers - absolving themselves - if they were all 16 I would say ok, but at this point these cats are in their late 20's and some in their 30's. T.I. got a gang of kids - they showed his momma and three of his kids on TV last nite - so what is his excuse?!

I'm really torn about the whole thing - Freedom of creativity and expression is a person consitutional right - but what about your moral obligation to not bring the civilization down a peg.

And it sooooo easy to just chalk it up to - change the channel - give me a break!

[FAMU]

The only obvious thing for radio and video shows to do, is to boycott any rap song that glorifies drug selling, pimping, killling, guns, rape, etc. If TI did not have an audience to listen to his music, then this killing nor this violent act would have happen.

Again, African-Americans need to take some responsibilty for the damage that we cause in our community. You know, it has been said that the reason that David Chappel (sp) stop production on his show was because he was receiving a lot of pressure from black hollywood (Bill Cosby, Orprah, Spike Lee, etc). I am not sure if this is true, but I wish some of our elite actors, entertainers, and sports figures would speak out. We need men and woman with substance and high moral to lead us.

[Andre98]

I think he left more so because Mr. Charlie with the purse strings, now that the this litle step child actually became a blockbuster, wanted to bring in the starched shirts and take over creative control, and so many Whites who didnt "get" him, didn't even know he was alive, now were laughing at his comedy for all the wrong reasons. Cosby for damn sure ain't that deep to be undercover and cloak and dagger, and I don't think Oprah has the bones for it either. Sidney though, is another story - I just can't see him working with Cos, nor having an effect on Dave. Dave had gotten very comfortable making adecent living and still being able to be a normal guy, walking amongst us with a lot of fuss directed at him. This particular success kicked him up into that idol status that you have to be half or all the way nuts to handle. That Tom Cruise mindset is somewhat necessary.

Anyway back to the volence thing.
It took a while for the general slant of hip hop to be given over to the street element, and these things very rarely get better before they get a whole lot worse. This genre has grown so quickly, and at its core, the packaging and marketing of innercity culture, was bound to have the negative elements look more glamourous than the noble aspects. As long as there is money to be made, it will be there. Even if they are able to raise up the current stars off doing that, that only makes all the wannabes think that hitting it harder, with an even more virilent "fuck you" attitude, is where they'll make their mark. They will always play it off to being a role play, just entertainment. Always using the "look at so and so", to deflect personal responsibility.

And afterall, it is spawned off what works in media/movies/TV/music in general. Let's do just that: Look at so and so. Murder, and/or sex has to be involved in the bestselling movies, and there's room to do all the animated G-rated star laden voiceovers flicks too, because the same audiences that crave the action, want to have their kids pacified, naively thinking their kids are not accessing the same or more advanced levels of explicit media as they are. Italians will never escape associations with all things Cosa Nostra, even if the excuse is to show how un-noble modern day and/or American mob organizations are. Played for drama or comedy, all things italian have been Soprano-ized, if the Godfather/Goodfellas eras missed anything before. There can't be that many Italians that are happy about it. I am a pawn to it too. I may get behind in a bill or two, but one of them damn sure won't be my waste management bill to Ippolito and Sons.

And the gatdamned media! Somewhere around the NYC metro area, there has to be White kids committing crimes! There has to be a White kids on crack, dealing crack to each other, snatching purses, one White teen stabbing another White teen after school. White boys getting White girls pregnant and wanting nothing to do with them. White families on welfare, both as welfare cheats, and as good wholesome families trying to make ends meet and provide for their kids. Right now, somebody is getting their car jacked by a White boy, some James Vanberbeeck looking joker, who is too stupid to not wear his school varsity letter jacket with his name on the back. 10-12 million people 25 mile radius, and on TV it looks like Blacks are doing all the crimes in NYC. In Manhattan I can't turn a corner without bumping into a cop of color, but the classic NY's finest is White - Irish or Italian Catholic, and it's only news if they were fresh off a Black kid's ass. Let them manhandle Rabbi Mendelbaum or whatever, like in Brooklyn recently, and a Jewish mob can take to the streets, burning shit and vandalized cop cars, and most of the news reports called it everything but a riot. One kept saying "near riot". Only a couple get arrested. One newspaper accurately (in my opinion) predicted the chief police commander at the scene's career is over.

Bottomline is, we are far outnumbered by truly underdeveloped psyches, under evolved characters, with levels of ignorance, and capacities for evil and depravity that have no real limit. A few Black men getting shot, hell, a few thousand getting killed on a daily basis is not making a ripple in our national landscape, and with regard to global landscapes like Dafur, Haiti, etc... we can't even imagine what a hard life is like on that level. Things have to get a lot worse around here...