Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes provides a riveting examination of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a "loving critique" of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music.

By Richie

While this video is by any stretch of the imagination a breath of fresh air it misses the major point. The problem with this type of documentary and others is instead of looking at the "root causes" of violence, sexism, homophobia and hyper masculinity the video ends up blaming America and corporations (the lefts two boogeymen).

This video excuses the behavior and turns the artist into a victim while trying to come off

as an expose while the documetory does make some good point's the video does a better job in exposing the depth of victimolgy within black culture.

One interesting point that was driven in the film was its constant suttle mentions of the words "Industry" ,"Bush" ,"America" and other terms to create in the observer an acute awareness of the real scape goat which would be white old men in business suits.

The problem with the "industry made me do it" argument is that it neglects to mention that when hip hop was up an coming to the scene and being sold out of car trunks it was still at it's core brutal, raw, homophobic and sexist. In the 80's corporate America were being slammed as racist for not supporting the new industry.In fact BET was a direct creation of this anxiety. And today coprporate America is again being slammed this time for supporting

the music.

Another myth that should be debunked is that its moslty white CEO's who are pushing behind the scences for more violent lyric's. It is "the man" who is pushing innocent, shy artist to use the "N" word or they will get canned.The truth is not all of the hits are produced by white people and in many cases are put out, produced and recorded by black recording studios.

A perfect example of this is Death Row Records which was was founded in 1991 by Suge Knight and Dr. Dre.It was not Columbia Records but artists like Grandmaster Flash and N.W.A. that brought Hip Hop to the forefront.In fact N.W.A. was name was "Niggaz With Attitude" which went on to achieve widespread commercial success without radio airplay or mainstream promotions. In fact, they were banned from most radio stations.

This documentary like so many on the left(Spike Lee's) fail to articulate where the real anger, violence and sexism behind Hip Hop is coming from. Hip Hop's real issues have to do with the destruction of our black families.Tupac ironically admirably articulated this for the world in his "You are appriceated" a grammy-nominated song.


Listen to a clip of his lyrics as he explains what the problem
is.

No love from my daddy cause the coward wasn't there

He passed away and I didn't cry, cause my anger wouldn't

let me feel for a stranger

They say I'm wrong and I'm heartless, but all along

I was lookin for a father he was gone

I hung around with the Thugs, and even though they sold drugs

And this is not from a right wing website the anger and rage within Hip hop music starts very early. It is the absent Father that is the basis of the failers in the black community.The sexism and hypermascualinty in Hip Hop in many are symptoms of pain and neglect not white men in suits.

-Richie

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