Blame the manufacturer

In Glen Ford's article in the Black Agenda Report, he disagrees with the common claim that the artist should be blamed for the content of the lyrics. He uses the image of a McDonalds where the workers conduct is unacceptable for a service type market. In this case people would maybe blame the employees, but most likely they would blame the McDonalds corporation instead. He compares this with rap music, and shows that "The artist, the song, the presentation -- all of it is a corporate product." There is no room for rap music to flourish unless it is backed by the major label companies, and the major label companies only back a certain kind of rap music. A type where "the thug-and-ho-ification of the genre is now all but complete. The point that Ford makes is true. There is no room for individual rap to flourish. The large corporations, and media control what is seen by the public, and the only image they want to present is a thugged out slutted out version of hip-hop. A type of hip hop that promotes a lifestyle that is often times true, but often times over exaggerated as well. The violence found in hip-hop is eternalized by people of that culture and creates a cycle where their ideas of what they should grow up to be have been fostered by an oppressing force. Also how is new genres of rap supposed to emerge if record companies are only permitting the gangster genre to make it to the big screen. I think that the more that violence is promoted and shown, the more it is going to become the norm, and then there will be a real problem.

Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
Hip Hop Profanity, Misogyny and Violence: Blame the Manufacturer
http://www.alternet.org/story/51543
Posted May 7, 2007