Yes well, all very clever, but there are two fundamental problems with this. For starters, the song wasn’t written by Jay-Z (a fact he either didn’t reveal, wasn’t known or was excluded from the article), so the supposed ironic trick actually belongs to fellow rap stars Ice T and Bun B.
The second – and far more relevant issue is this: Jay Z’s material is frequently derogatory to women and often accuses them of attempting to seduce him in order to steal his wealth. Beyonce excluded, presumably.
"Many chicks wanna put Jigga fist in cuffs
Divorce him and split his bucks
Just because you got good head, I'm a break bread
So you can be livin' it up?"
Jay Z, Big Pimpin’
The interview was conducted by Simon Hattenstone and it wouldn’t have taken a few minutes of his journalistic time to expose the hypocrisy in Jay-Z’s argument, but this wasn’t his tack. As is so frequently the case when white middle class media types rub up against rappers, he was busting a gut to show how Hip-Hop is largely misrepresented and its content misunderstood.
Sometimes, of course, this is true. KRS1 is a rapper who has spent most of his career producing intelligent songs which challenge the excesses of his contemporaries. Miss Dynamite also used a lyric to question rap’s love of diamonds, when so many of these gems are produced by impoverished and imperilled Africans. But these instances are very much the exception.
Many rap recordings are riddled with aggressive misogyny, an unhealthy glamorisation of firearms and a depressing tendency to equate money with achievement. Unfortunately, this is an inconvenient truth for the broadsheet hack attempting to acquire street credibility by praising a particular Hip-Hop artist and who, by overlooking it, betrays an inverted snobbery.
If another musical genre (let’s say a strand of Heavy Metal) leant so heavily on such reactionary philosophy, it would surely be roundly and rightly condemned by the liberal media. When it is released by a former gang member from the Bronx or South Central LA, it is somehow transformed into street poetry and induces much head nodding and chin stroking. Indeed, a great many Hip-Hop artists have latched onto this notion, attempting to explain away the promotion of physical and sexual violence as social commentary. Sorry, but I simply don’t buy this.
"Fatal attractions is mad real
Last bitch I deaded got mad and swallowed 50 Advil's
They say money make the world go round
Material things make a hoe go down"
50 Cent, After Me Chedda
This lyric is not a commentary of any sort. It is the juvenile spewing of an emotionally backward idiot, but it is so rarely described as such, its passage into the cultural mainstream is almost entirely unhindered. This fawning and forgiving by the commentators of the left leaning media is similar to the slack jawed sycophancy one sometimes sees in those enchanted by highly attractive but reprehensible members of the opposite sex. And it’s just as pathetic.
None of this would really matter if Hip-Hop had no traction, no profile, no influence. Somewhere in this sorry world lurks a band called Skrewdriver who are really no more than racist skinheads. They’d like to think otherwise, but they are no threat to anybody, as they are almost universally ignored. Hip-Hop is very, very different. Rap acts account for an enormous proportion of the music industry’s income and most of that revenue comes from young men. While I am sorely tempted to resist the connection between any music form and bad behaviour (I had to undergo all that with punk), I see evidence of Hip-Hop’s (or at least some of its purveyor’s) negative influence in many places. The prevalence of guns in some urban estates, the rise of gang related assaults, the attitude of some young men to crimes like rape – all have echoes in the songs of enormously rich and spectacularly popular Hip-Hop stars.
Now, it would be a fool who claimed any youth movement accounted for all society’s failings, but if a disenfranchised young man admires artists claiming their aggressive criminality and shoddy treatment of women have led to success; and that success is illustrated by their gaudy displays of monetary wealth, what conclusion is the kid supposed to draw?
I must emphasise, I am not in any way flirting with the notion that black men are corrupting white children. That would be vile and completely untrue. This is absolutely not about race: Eminem’s raps frequently feature him fantasising at length about murdering his ex-wife, after all. Neither am I siding with the right leaning press who would seek to ban something as innocuous as a micro-scooter as well as most rap recordings. Censorship is the last resort of the coward and is as dangerous as a style of music advocating the ownership of automatic weapons.
However, I would be very keen to see journalists with access to high-selling music stars have the cojones to criticize and challenge infantile, dangerous bile wherever they find it. Rather than getting all dizzy and excited by the presence and heady edginess of deeply credible (but terminally unpleasant) recording artists like the currently incarcerated Lil Wayne. For everyone's sake.
"And the E is for ever elegant Erica
a sweet red bitch we used to call her Miss America
I aint gon lie now
Erika is a dog"
Lil Wayne, Alphabet Bitches
Magnus Shaw, December 2010
