WOO CHI-LAY...OOPS I MEAN CHILE

 

Well, here it comes

Black culture is being gentrified every day, and it's honestly disgusting and annoying.  Now let's divulge a little bit past slavery because that is a bigger can of worms in itself. Let's take it back to the last century...

Let's imagine this is the 1920s, you're at a family party and your family is playing the radio and you decide to change it, ending up on a black station. The band starts playing an array of instruments but nothing like you've ever heard. The sound is an organized mess and the music makes you want to move freely and unchoreographed, unlike the music you're accustomed to. Your family looks at you in disgust and switches it off immediately. 

That music was Jazz. When you think about the roaring '20s, you think of prohibition, the depression, speakeasy, and Jazz, correct? Now, what if I told you that originally known as jungle music, and if you can't read between the lines...it's an insult toward black people. When Jazz first hit the scene, it was not a party favorite to the masses (the masses mainly being white people). It was predominantly at that time a black thing and was a really underground thing but with the rising of the speakeasy, it started to gain popularity amongst the party crowd and eventually the youth. Which was a BIG problem, well during that time black people were seen as grotesque, vulgar, dumb, hyper-masculine/feminine beings that had to be restrained. Jazz pretty much embodied that ideology to the hegemonic system. People were moving their bodies freely and was usually played in those ILLEGAL bars (speakeasy) and the face of jazz was black people, so of course, it had no choice but to be associated with something negative. So your probably wondering how Jazz is known today and didn't "fade" out in the '20s. In short, it was gentrified...Hollywood actors started to listen to it, magazines wrote about it..etc..They saw how marketable it was for white youths and saw nothing but dollar bills..so the media ran with it. 

Fast Forward to the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of the genre is still taking the world by storm every day...It's Rap music or could be known as Thug music coined by probably one of your local/national politicians.. referencing that rap had created these raging super-predators in the 1990s that were always wildin'. Let's see if you notice a pattern. Rap music started in the 1980s originally being played at block/house parties in the 'urban neighborhoods in New York. Dj's would spin records and Mc's would talk over the beat, initially trying to hype up the crowd, it soon transferred into "rhyming" over it. This was underground for a while. Rap would soon catch popularity outside these urban neighborhoods in a series of events. It started out as Dj's selling tapes outside the cars to have a side hustle, which would lead to the black youth buying and sharing with friends, then "urban stations" who were hesitant to even play the genre, as most of the elder black generation were against Rap because it was waste of good records and songs...

The stations had to give in eventually to their audience cause the youth definitely was a major part of their audience, soon many black youths had the rap bug and many crews started to form wanting a piece of the popularity that rapping brought in the neighborhood. Now how it really popped off, do you recall a diddy going " I said a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock". Well, that song is what made Rap take off, but not too much...I'd say it set a huge presence in the black community and was just dipping its too into crossing over. By the late 1980s-90s, is when Rap started to really became something to deal with...

Now you may be saying, "I haven't heard anything negative yet"..well, Rap was still predominantly a black thing...Rap didn't start to truly become a problem til' I said groups like 2LIVECREW, NWA, PARIS came out...Now, 2LIVECREW was vulgar but it's based in Florida, and if you don't know much about Florida..it's party-state, in the urban neighborhoods; music like 2LIVECREW was played and accepted because it was part of their culture. Much like every other artist, their records were being in Record stores which is accessible to everybody, soon not only was it urban youth who were listening to them, it was white youth and it was unlike anything they'd ever heard BUT when their WASP parents heard what their children were listening to. It was nothing but massive hysteria because of the vulgarity, hypersexual lyrics. Although, they had a right to be concerned; let's also remember this is a culture shock from what they are accustomed to, unlike the urban neighborhoods. It got so bad to the point where 2LIVECREW had to go to court to fight for their freedom of speech. 

 Now NWA, which is probably the first thing you think of when you think of "Gangsta rap", is based in Los Angeles where the crime was rampant but also crooked police resided in black neighborhoods. It can create someone with a hard exterior. NWA rapped what was reality for many black men in LA but everywhere in America. They talked about drugs, women, guns, violence, the police..Well, you guessed it the cycle repeats. It was deemed vulgar, inciting violent behavior, etc..and then it became marketable.