Lyrics Legionaires Take On Hip-Hop

1fastdog.

Posted to Music on Sat Apr 28, 2007 at 04:23:08 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Did you see it coming, this red-headed stepchild of Don Imus and Oprah?

Following in the wake of the Don Imus scandal and Oprah's own hip-hop peace talks, mogul Russell Simmons of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, said yesterday that the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets (those would be the b-word, the h-word and the n-word) from all so-called clean versions of rap songs on CD and on the airwaves.

The mainstream Hip-Hop industry is currently in a self-inflicted nosedive. The beats have gotten flat and repetitive; the accompanying videos are cookie-cutter crap straight off the T & A assembly line, and the whole industry is perilously close to collapsing in a cloud of irony-free self-parody. In the midst of all this, it appears that folks are preparing to turn the stinkeye on the genre's sometimes overtly crude, misogynistic, and homophobic lyrics. Hip-Hop's crudeness factor has always been acknowledged, and even sought after in some form, as Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube among others can attest. Commercials, movies, and all sorts of pop-culture ephemera have fraternized at one time or another with Hip-Hop, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its lyrical frontage:

Mr. Imus has one thing in common with rappers, after all. Like him, many rappers have negotiated an uneasy relationship with the mainstream: they are corporate entertainers who portray themselves as outspoken mavericks; they are paid to say private things (sometimes offensive things) in public. It's an inherently volatile arrangement, bound to create blow-ups small and big. Mr. Simmons's proposal could buy some rappers a few years' reprieve.

With Hip-Hop album sales down 33% so far this year and down 27% between '04 and '06, will the industry, spurred on by the current attention, take a fresh look at the content that it's been producing?

"Hip-hop is a dog at this point. It's not a terrible dog, but records aren't selling," said Felicia Palmer, editor of SOHH.com, a leading hip-hop site. "If I were a record label person, I'd use this as an opportunity to turn things around by taking the proactive approach and putting out a different type of product. If hip-hop is declining, it behooves us to bring it back to where it should be. . . . I'm glad this is happening and that the finger is being pointed back at us. Don Imus has taken a major fall, and he's not going down by himself."