Ed & Dead Prez photo:myspace.com/shannonmccollum

FACEDOWN  IN THE MAINSTREAM: CULTURAL  PIMPIN’ & HIP HOP

By Edward M. Garnes, Jr.

“Think it is when it ain’t all peaches and cream/That’s why some are found floating face down in the mainstream.” –OutKast (Excerpt from the song, “Mainstream” off the album, ATLiens)

Over a decade ago, Hip-Hop theologians OutKast used their southern-fried flow to send an impassioned plea on their seminal track, “Mainstream:” Don’t let a little bling blind your perspective. The prophetic duo – with assistance from play cousins Goodie Mob – exposed the trappings of fame, government corruption, and AIDS via a cautionary rap verse. They knew then what many are discovering now – Hip-Hop’s mainstream coronation would be a welcomed blessing and unforeseen curse.

Hip-Hop, like many other Black cultural productions post-Middle Passage, has been compromised by cultural pimps (record labels, media conglomerates, corporations, etc.) seeking to censor its revolutionary elements while green-lighting destructive buffoonery and giving credence to long-standing stereotypes of Black life. Consequently, artists of substance like dead prez, Jean Grae, and Little Brother rarely make radio playlists.

Consequently, artists of substance like Dead Prez, Jean Grae, and Little Brother rarely make radio play-lists. Little girls dream of being video vixens instead of spinnin’ soft Black songs like Nikki Giovanni. And while outlets discuss whether Hip-Hop is art or social poison, the larger question we must ask is how white supremacy and market forces have altered the perception of a grass roots movement.

Hip-Hop has sadly become a convenient scapegoat for historical inequalities that deeply alter our quality of life. Art ain’t created in a vacuum, and Hip-Hop was originally birthed as an underground anecdote to the psychological trauma of poverty, racism and a range of human sufferings that flow through them. Trouble in Hip-Hop paradise began when artists abandoned the tenets that once defined Black existence (solidarity, social activism, etc.) and began to mimic the values of a corporate system founded on greed, capitalism and individuality.

This abandonment of social conscious is aided by market forces and label heads who care more about profits than prophets and offer million-dollar deals to studio gangstas and anyone willing to drop nonsense over hot beats. Today’s Hip-Hop artists are a small cog in a well-oiled corporate machine that has always used Black sweat, toil and cultural production (remember slavery) to serve its seedy economic interests. So, panel discussions like the one that took place on The Oprah Show  are great for TV ratings, but miss the mark when accountability is solely placed on vulnerable people without power – power that dictates our economy and distributes wealth. In other words, if we convict the rapper, we must convict parents who dropped the ball, elders who turned their backs on the impoverished, corporate pimps who pray for our demise, so called “Black” spokesmen padding their pockets at our expense, and a system of commerce that never gave a damn about Black folks in the first place.

The plight of Black folks is bound to escape the limited confines of many talk radio and lunch room venting sessions. And Hip-Hop, like Black life in general, is wrought with pain and struggle. Art reflects the people and if we want Hip-Hop to change, we have to love ourselves enough to change. Record deals don’t change people, they only give folks a greater platform to be the fools or social activists they already were.

This essay appeared as a special editorial on allhiphop.com. Peace to Chuck Creekmur!!

http://allhiphop.com/stories/editorial/archive/2007/06/05/18136962.aspx

Award winning writer, educator, counselor, and activist Edward M. Garnes, Jr. is the founder of From Afros to Shelltoes: Art, Action, and Conversation, a nationally acclaimed series of cultural productions confronting the social divide between elders and hip hop heads. The 2009 Atlanta Tribune Men Of Distinction holds a B.A. in English Writing from DePauw University and a M.A. in Counseling from Michigan State University . His seminal essay, ” Sweet Tea Ethics: Black Luv, Healthcare, and Cultural Mistrust,” currently appears in Not In My Family: AIDS in the African American Community, a 2007 NAACP Image Award nominated collection edited by Gil Robertson. (www.afrostoshelltoes.com).