Food, Hip Hop, and Guns in the News Today
This cartoon in the New York Daily News caught my eye today. Is this racially charged, or is the hip-hop gun violence the modern day blackface? The newspaper put itself out on a limb today.
The same newspaper noted that the landlord of New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97 has banned "Posses" from the building. Is this racially charged discrimination, or just reasonable safety precautions?
In other news, McDonalds is on the offensive about the health value of its food. Apparently, Americans are fat not because they eat at McDonalds, but because they are lazy coutch potatoes, or in other words, they don't exercise enough. Daily News columnist Michael Daly blasts the company, citing Bill Clinton and numerous McDonalds executives as being examples of their folly. Whether you like McDonalds or not, this is one column worth reading. McDonalds, to its credit, does have an extensive Q&A of related subjects available on its website.
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posted by Nominal Me | Wednesday, March 09, 2005
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2 Comments:
Before I answer your question about whether the landlord of Hot97 is right for banning "posses". I must rant a little.
First off the term "posse" is as new as the term "fresh".
I think the cartoon is dead on.
Think about who buys the records. Young white teens. Now think about what these (majority black)rappers are talking about on these records.
-having sex with strippers
-talking about cars, clothes, and jewelry
-shooting people
To put it simply these black rappers are selling what white people fear and fantasize about, back to the young white audience. That's why only few positive rappers get major record deals.
The record companys know their base market (read: young white teens)wants to see the new ministerial show so that's what they push.
There are a lot of guys who are twice as positive as Kanye West but the problem is they don't get the proper attention.
Now to answer your question
Is this racially charged discrimination, or just reasonable safety precautions?
It's a safety precaution. It makes as much sense as this analogy:
Say this was the 70's and Led Zeppelin trash a Hilton suite. So the next week the Who want to stay at the Hilton but they can't cause they are an English band and we all know how rowdy those English bands are, so they get banned from the Hilton cause of what Led Zeppelin did.
What people don't understand is that these guys who are in the artist's "crew", "posse", "entourage" or whatever you want to call em are the guys the rapper grew up with and the guys that had his back when they were struggling. They serve a purpose, to remind the artist of his roots.
Sometimes this can be a problem when you have guys who are friends of friends of the rapper and that's when trouble ensues.
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