Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Hard Questions About Hip Hop
From The New York Times on Christmas Eve:
"A new documentary by 36-year-old filmmaker Byron Hurt, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” questions the violence, degradation of women and homophobia in much of rap music.
Scheduled to go on the air in February as part of the PBS series Independent Lens, the documentary is being shown now at high schools, colleges and Boy’s Clubs, and in other forums, as part of an unusual public campaign sponsored by the Independent Television Service, which is based in San Francisco and helped finance the film.
The intended audiences include young fans, hip-hop artists and music industry executives — black and white — who profit from music and videos that glorify swagger and luxury, portray women as sex objects, and imply, critics say, that education and hard work are for suckers and sissies.
What concerns Mr. Hurt and many black scholars is the domination of the hip-hop market by more violent and sexually demeaning songs and videos — an ascendancy, the critics say, that has coincided with the growth of the white audience for rap and the growing role of large corporations in marketing the music." (click here for more)
Related: Ice-T's wife Coco on the cover of this month's Smooth magazine (!).
Bonus audio: James Brown "Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine (Part 1)" [MP3: YSI | zshare stream/download]
On the web:
James Brown - MySpace Pages | website | Buy the Sex Machine album
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes - website
