I don’t know if I can believe this but apparently Alicia Keys told Blender magazine that she thinks gangsta rap “was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. ‘Gangsta rap’ didn’t exist.”
Now, the marketing of gangsta rap is certainly a topic for debate and the methods and messaging employed are ripe for a harsh look, but to suggest that some honky in Washington D.C. developed the genre that shook the 90s as an attempt to keep black folks in check is preposterous.
The lyrics from classic disses like “No Vaseline” (lyrics) that implied a controlling force over his actions aside, Eazy-E can probably lay claim to having the most influence over the genre that has enraged parents while entertaining teens for nearly 20 years. Jerry Heller may have rigged the pay structure but Eazy had the flow!
Keys is also said to wear a gold AK-47 pennant on a necklace “to symbolize strength, power and killing ’em dead,” which is oddly similar to the sentiments expressed in the gangsta rap that she reportedly said was concocted by others who mean to control the African American community.
There’s no mention of the quotes in this excerpt from Blender’s site and GLONO hasn’t read the entire article in print yet, so who knows if she’s actually quoted saying any of this.
So, what gives? Is this story bunk or is Alicia Keys about to go all Angela Davis on our asses?
On Woody Paige’s board this afternoon on Around The Horn..
“Rap is to music as etch-a-sketch is to art.”
Alicia is a talented artist but I think it’s pretty safe to say that she is an idiot.
I first read about her interview with Blender from my fellow blogger Juan Perez over on Highbrid Nation. I couldnt beleive it. I had always thought she was smart. Little did I know. In reality she is a cross between a Black Panther and a retard.
…she still looks good though ;).
kooky. to each their own. at best i will mark her statements up to the impetuousness of youth.
i give a lot of leeway to conspiracy theorists, but there’s a line where reality has to snap people back to sanity. ms. keys is soon approaching that line.
the insular lives of celebrities sure does lead to a lot of interesting bunk to read about these days.
listen, if the government had a lot more say into destroying culture, we would all still be bowing to the new kids on the block.
wait a minute, aren’t they reuniting?
i take it back… ms. keys is a genius!
viva revolution!
It’s preposterous to suggest that Whitey created gangsta rap, but the Man certainly doesn’t have any moral dilemma with raking in the money from it.
Chuck D said it best in a 2003 essay on the PE website: The 50 CENT PHENOMENON; RAPS CLIMATE OF ANIMOSITY and THE PIMPING OF BLACK DEATH IN AMERIKKKA
Read the whole thing. Chuck rules.
Wow. Well, the Keys is kooky, but I used to think Chuck D was smart. What a big baby.
[i]The case of the white exec hiring and doing business with the negro so he can create, recreate, cultivate, endorse then sell niggers doin ‘niggativity’ has never been more apparent. These execs would never do business with a ‘black man’, whereas a black man would draw a line on what would be said about his people. A man would tell another man that he couldn’t compromise a people for the sake of some false god named ‘profit’ and his son named ‘bottom line’.[/i]
So he (Chuck, the man who distinguishes between black man and “nigga”) is maybe bitter about his own records not selling, because maybe gangsta rap crowds his market? Okay, that’s legit, but say it outright.
Wait, wasn’t gangsta rap “street journalism” before, but now it’s “niggativity,” because (I guess) Evil Whitey Record Exec ™ forces these talented gentlemen (who would so much rather be uplifting people) to play up the violence so *gasp* their business can turn a profit instead of (I guess) provide some sort of a public service?
And these guys are killing each other (I guess) because whitey is laughing all the way to the bank instead of jumping in front of the bullets.
This shit is absolutely outrageous on almost every level, but because we’re nostalgic for what our image is of Chuck D, we just take it in stride?
Grow the fuck up, Chuck D.
You don’t see a difference between how N.W.A. was marketed and how 50 Cent is?
Alicia can lie in my bed and tell me her conspiracy stories anytime! I would just nod lovingly in her arms and say, “you are so cute when you spout out angry black panther rhetoric!”
OK, I’ll bite. What is the difference between how N.W.A and Fiddy is marketed, and why should we care?
NWA was a word-of-mouth thing from the ground up, originating with selling tapes out of the back of Eazy’s car at the Compton swap meet. (I realize there’s some mythologizing there, but still…)
50 is a brand that Interscope pours millions of dollars into promoting. It’s just like Gatorade, Nike, or Apple but instead of exploiting people’s desires to be athletic or hip or whatever, Interscope is exploiting people’s desire to be “gangster” or “street” and all that goes with it (bullet proof vests, surviving gunshots, prison, etc.). This is a major corporation engaging in lifestyle branding.
Yes, there is a market. People buy 50 Cent cds. However, advertising creates markets for shit people never even knew they wanted. That’s the whole point of advertising.
I mean, anybody who works in corporate America (especially in an ad industry hotspot like Chicago) knows a million people who spew this kind of malarkey for a living. But the advertising industry exists (and makes so much money) because it fucking works!
I realize this argument is not as cohesive as it could be, but I guess my main point is that I don’t think Chuck D is wrong (and definitely not stupid) when he suggests that Interscope is exploiting 50 and the black community in order to sell products (i.e., minstrelsy), and that the Interscope executives do not care either way if 50 gets rich or dies trying. A dead 50 is just as marketable as a living 50 (just ask Tupac’s estate).
I’m not quite prepared to go all Bill Cosby and suggest that hip-hop is destroying black America. But it’s hard to argue that the glamorization and glorification of “thug life” has done anybody any good…
And I don’t think NWA and the OGs (ha ha) glamorized it.
I don’t have the answers. But I don’t think Chuck is being crazy or particularly outrageous. Yes, his style is inflammatory and hyperbolic and sometimes preachy, but there’s a lot of truth, honesty, and experience in there, too. And I’m not just cutting him slack out of nostalgia. The shit he’s saying there is the same shit he was saying in PE (“Burn Hollywood Burn,” etc.), and I loved it then and I love it still.
I see what you’re saying, but that’s how business operates. A dead anybody can be extremely lucrative: Look at Elvis. Look at Nirvana.
See, Chuck knows talking about “sellout niggas” and “white execs” always gets the most vigorous ‘amen’s; he can’t help but throw them in. But in doing so, he becomes part of the problem. It’s his facile use of the race card and disingenuous victimology politics to which I object. People make choices. They are not helpless. Is Chuck unhappy with the content, or with the business, or with the audience? He is right that there’s a “problem,” but he is confused about the cause(s).
There’s plenty of movies I wish weren’t being made. Hell, I got rid of cable because I didn’t want my kids watching anything outside PBS. Let’s take this further: If you and I and Chuck were any kind of significant demographic, maybe there’d be a lot less shitty product coming out of Hollywood–because there’d be no demand for it.
I would happily join Chuck in calling for less garbage culture and more artistic integrity in entertainment. But you can only tell people “You shouldn’t do this” to an extent. Rather, you have to show them “Here’s why the alternative is better.” And the audience needs the tools and influences to discern that.
It is a problem of which the sellouts and Hellers are only symptoms.