I Give Hip-Hop an Earful (Part I)

It's not that I mad at hip-hop, I am just disappointed.

I read these books and listen to this music and I recognize the potential of this burgeoning musical forum...but that's where it ends. Granted I am trying to stir the polemical pot here, but I must invoke a debate that I have had with more than a few music fans: What does it mean when artists sell out?

I used to think that hip-hop was conscious and soulful. Back in the day Common rapped about hip-hop in "I Used to Love H.E.R":

Told her [hip-hop] if she got an energetic gimmick
That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy
Now I see her in commercials she's universal
She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle

Point in case. Common rapping about how commodification of hip-hop in turn waters down hip-hop's credibility. Fast foward five years and peep Common and Mya on your screen rapping and dancing about how 'real' Coca-Cola is and how Pepsi is more fugazi than Kenyon Martin. Is this OK with you, hip-hop fan? Did Common deserve to get booed at a show in Albuquerque a few days after the ad aired for projecting a Coca-Cola ad against the backdrop of his stage?

There's a history here and it begins with Russel Simmons. History suggests that black culture = white consumers. The Cotton Club, Rock and Roll and now Hip-Hop. So when fashion start-up Adidas wanted proof of hip-hop's ability to catalyze consumption, Simmons dragged two German execs to a Run DMC show. Half-way through "My Adidas," Rev. Run asked the crowd to put their Adidas in the air - about 3 million stripes lit up the room and a German shit his pants. But this was revolutionary. Black faces could now be used to sell sneakers on a inter/national ad plane. The counter-culture to this young black spokesman peddling shitty product were a group of hip-hoppers who stood against commercialization and stood for 'knowledge of self,' 5%er culture, and not selling out. So what happens when marketers use the counter-culture to counter the counter-consumers into going to a counter and buying counterfiet Nikes? The rant continues...