black…MYstory

Paris has long been on of my favorite Hip-Hop artists. He has never shied away from the controversial and has always been willing to tell the truth as he sees it.

While he has addressed issues of racism, police brutality, social justice, politics and world affairs, he has, also, been highly critical of black-on-black genocide, the disrespect of black women and black rap artists turning rap into a minstrel show.

So, in the aftermath of the Imus flap, the question about rappers disrespecting black women came up, as well. While making no excuses for the music of these rapper, Paris cuts through the b.s. and breaks down how Corporate America is indeed driving this negativity. I’ll let his words speak for him:

The argument is often made by Russell Simmons and others that rappers are poets who simply report on what they feel and their surroundings, and that they shouldn’t be censored. As an emcee, on that point we partially agree — we shouldn’t be censored. But balance between the negative and positive needs to be provided, and it currently isn’t. Most artistic integrity is questionable at best. My understanding is that artists are supposed to express what they believe in at all costs (if not, there’s work at the post office). But most don’t, and they mold their approaches to making music based on what they perceive major labels wanting. If Def Jam or Interscope or any of these other large culture-defining companies issued a blanket decree that they would only support material and artists with positive messages then 99% of those making music now would switch up to accommodate. That’s real talk. I’m not saying these labels should (or would), but if they did, gangstas would stop being gangstas and misogynists would stop being misogynists at the drop of a DIME. Many artists are like children, and most will say and do what is expected of them in order to benefit financially. And although there is definite self-examination that needs to take place within the artist community, the lion’s share of the blame falls on the enablers who only empower voices of negativity. Record labels and commercial radio often use the excuse that they are “responding to the streets” and that they are “giving the people what they want.” BULLSHIT. They dictate the taste of the streets, and people can’t miss what they never knew. The fact is that there are conscious decisions made by the big business and entertainment elite daily about what to present to the masses — and it is from those choices that we are allowed to decide what we do and do not like. Who presents the music that callers are invited to “make or break” on the radio? That callers are invited to “vote on” on T.V.? Who decides on what makes it to the store shelves or the airwaves at all? Like I said, life imitates art, and pseudo-black culture is determined by those other than us every day. Walk into any rap label or urban radio station and you can count the number of black employees on one hand.

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What I want to know is, when did the worst in us become normal and accepted? When did it become par for the corporate course that “black man as thug” and “black woman as slut” be business as usual? Major companies now line up to profit from the buffoonery of a few…at the expense of us all. MTV, Viacom, Clear Channel, Boost Mobile, Amp mobile, Chevy, all major record labels and most video games come readily to mind, but there are many others.

I’m not a hater…although I do hate the imbalance in the industry right now and the negativity it fosters. I’m not calling for censorship. You can’t lump me in with the Jesse Lee Petersons and the Armstrong Williamses of the world…bourgeois self-hating black men who demean other black people and profit at our expense. And nobody can say that I’m unqualified to speak on it, since I’ve contributed to the sale of just under 4 million albums independently, still run my own successful counter-establishment label (www.guerrillafunk.com) and have been embracing messages of self-esteem and self-sufficiency for years.

So, once again, when I hear that black people aren’t addressing the madness that passes for Hip-Hop these days, I tell them to quit being so lazy and find out if blanket statements like these are true. I would argue that, most definitely, there are those, both inside and outside of the industry, who’ll tell you otherwise.

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