Vulgarity as an art form

Here are links to Biweekly Commentaries that offer some truths about the gross noise called "hip-hop."

The rap contagion
With a population of females who enjoy the degrading lyrics and pornographic images of women as worthless, throw-away objects of pleasure, it's no surprise that the meeting, intended to "debate" the controversies surrounding rap, devolved into chaotic shouting matches.

Staged alienation
McWhorter recounts the recent murders of several of these rappers with names like Camoflauge, Freaky Tah, and Jam Master Jay, observing that "The most popular music in black America presents a grim, violent, misogynist, sybaritic black male archetype as an urgent symbol of authenticity." He asserts, "In the hip-hop world, 'keeping it real' is everything, and the gutter is considered the 'realist.'"

The demented scribblings of hip-hop
Hoping to form a movement that spreads, these optimists have come together to influence listeners to turn off their radios "until stations open their playlists to more conscious and uplifting music." They are taking their case to managers of radio stations and accuse such stations of being geared towards "romanticizing the thug life."

Rappers summit
Black politicians and the various civil rights notables, as usual, are not leading but, instead, are following in the tracks of these vulgar music makers, in order to cash in on their notoriety.

NAACP stoops still lower
By praising several of the young "rappers" of this musical form for "charting a different course," and by encouraging the convention's audience to do the same, Mfume slapped the faces of all the men and women who have labored to expose to the young the worthlessness of this vulgar form of noisy self-indulgence.