All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances —William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Sitting at a bar one night, embedded in a conversation about Hip Hop and how it has become a commercialized pool of ignorance that no longer holds relevance, a female patron was attempting to explain to me that it’s all metaphors and that what some artist was saying was not what they really meant. In my attempt to bring her over from the dark side, I let her know that I understood exactly what she meant but that it still didn’t make the message easy to digest. Take for instance the quote from above so eloquently spoken by Shakespeare. He’s not saying literally that the world is a stage. He’s simply comparing the world and the stage to get across a message about how the world works and the people in it. I was using Lil Wayne’s lyrics from “Every Girl” as an example: “I wish I could fuck every girl in the world.” I understand that it may be a metaphor, but it doesn’t stop it from being misogynistic. Why an “artist” would want to even speak those words knowing that he or she has a mother, sister, aunt and grandmother totally stomps me. Have we gotten to the point where we will defend ignorance against common sense?
I think about rappers as modern day poets; and it used to be that lyrical content discussed everyday life in the projects and the black community. Hip Hop was an outlet for young black Americans to let their problems and concerns be heard. In the 1980s, it really began to grow with the release of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message.” Themes of violence, religion and economic struggles were often spoken about. Now we talk about wanting to have sex with every girl in the world. I mean what does that have to do with tea in China?
The unemployment rate in the black community is still at 14 percent and the dropout rate for black males nationally is 50 percent. So why not talk about the many injustices that still exist in the community and how we can bring about some type of solution to all the madness? I don’t have a problem with the hustle part of the business but I don’t believe you have to sell your soul, metaphorically speaking, to gain the world. I feel that our generation is at a crossroads and we are going to either set a path of destruction or set a path of enlightenment and intelligence. I hope for the latter. I hope that these “artists” look at the person in the mirror and remember from whence they came.
Like food, music feeds the body good or bad vibes. If you eat nothing but fast food and never pay attention to your health, what do you think the chances are of you dying from a self-inflicted wound? I love to say you are what you eat. Well, in the case of music you are what you listen to. When I make that argument, most people explain that “Oh, I’m just listening to the music. I like the beat.” But just because you are focused on the beat doesn’t mean that the words are not being imprinted on your brain subliminally; it even happens to me. While at work in my cubical, I try to block out the Rihanna song that’s so annoying. You know which one I’m talking about, “Hopeless Place.” Yeah, that one. I find myself singing that song. Music has an effect on us and our mood. When we are down and going through the pits, we put on the blues. When we are in love, we put on a nice ballad. Well check this out: Virgil Griffith, the creator of Wiki Scanner and a grad student from Caltech, did a study based off SAT scores. He found that students that listened to Lil Wayne averaged an 889 and students who listened to Beethoven scored on average a 1371. Frank Sinatra, Linkin Park, the Grateful Dead and OutKast were all at about 1116. Music affects us all on a daily basis, so listen to music that will cause you to consciously think.
Children always try to emulate the images they see on tv. I know this first hand from working as a substitute teacher for a few years. I have seen how the little ones all the way to the high school students will walk around like they were Lil Wayne, trying to be him. And that’s another thing that we are missing in hip hop nowadays: artists that understand that no matter whether or not they want to be seen as “role models,” that some kid that has no one to look up to will see them that way. You hear most of these idiots say stuff like “I ain’t no role model.” We are getting our modern day poets off of the stupid bus, the dumb following in the bus behind. Some of these students can’t even speak proper English but they can spit back verbatim all the lyrics of the latest song of ignorance. I know people will say that it’s not the responsibility of the artist to raise the child– and I truly understand that– but what happened to the saying “It takes a village to raise a child?”
As an artist myself I feel a responsibility to my listeners to give them an experience that leaves them refreshed and encouraged. I’m a singer and percussionist that takes being called an artist and musician seriously. We are given this gift to inspire through our words and sounds. As artists, we can either help the situation or hurt it. Back when segregation and Jim Crow ruled the South, many black artists took a stand not to play any place where whites and blacks were segregated. They took a stand for something they knew in their hearts was wrong. I’m sure a lot of people didn’t like that and probably hated them for it but sometimes you have to do things for the greater good. Artists these days are narcissistic and only care about their bottom lines, oblivious to the fact that they can’t even see the effects of their actions.
Nonetheless, they do have a right to be idiots and you as a consumer don’t have to purchase or support their products. Start supporting artists that want to do good for the community. Know that the community will benefit from the purchase of the music. I’m not talking about giving out turkeys either, because you can teach a man to fish or you can give him fish. I think we all know the difference by now. Invest in those that invest in us.
The time for us to act is now. Let us set a path of consciousness. Bring back Hip Hop that means something and not the Hip Hop that talks about money, cars, clothes or other materialistic things. We could live in a place where the artist actually cares about the words that they speak, knowing that somewhere some child just may be listening. If you still don’t get it, then I leave you with these words from one of my favorite true Hip Hop artists, Dee-1: “Ancestors of ours are screaming from the grave / Cause physically we’re free / but we some mental slaves” So what do you think?
Sam Davenport is the founder of Life Records (and a part of ANTIGRAVITY’s distribution team). You can hear his single, “The City is Back,” featuring Wendell Pierce, the Hot 8 Brass Band with Big Al, Caesar Parkway and Dee-1, at liferecordsnola.com.
