MA: Nas, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z:
Side A (The performers themselves, predictably) claim Carnegie Hall means a supreme moment for Hip-Hop.
Side B (My brain) tells me this is a non-moment for Hip-Hop.
Irrelevant, not true, nutso.
What do you think?
Like a strange physics law, that as soon as you see something it changes, it is not the same as when you did not see it. As soon as hip-hop climbs a stage reserved for classical art, it stops being hip-hop. ? Or does it not?
ME : The thing about a music form that started roughly forty years ago is that its founders and fans grow up. Twenty years ago I would never choose to rock a collared shirt and khakis. Now I can. I’m still hip hop as ever. Growth is inevidable. Nas is now a multimillionaire. Should a multimillionaire perform at the Strand theatre or Carnegie Hall? Hip hop has grown up to be financially succesful. It is what it is.
MA: It is what it isn’t. Hiphop grew a coterie of millionaires who knew how to work the system while at the same time exercising their great talents.
Instead of keeping their backs turned to the system, they sold themselves to ads for Gucci, Versace, vodka, any sponsor who could buy their backs like athletes are worked, high-performing slaves. To me they look like aging fools with not a clue about how to keep the art form authentic to the people. You can’t serve two masters, Versace saying you have to word Versace and your other master, the people, at the same time, you sell people down the river because you inject wants for clothes and liquor when they should be thinking about self education and addressing the racism that remains.
It’s sad to me.
HipHop deserves to die quickly and I don’t even have to hope. It is Darwinian. A people’s art form to replace hiphop will come very soon.
ME: Did elvis not make a billion crappy movies? Did the Beatles not perform wherever the money was right? Did Sting not do car commercials? Why is hiphop the only genre held up to moral standards?
MA: Because Elvis never laid claim that he was the voice of white Appalachia and coal miners.
The Beatles never laid claim that they were the voice of the Liverpool unemployed.
Precisely your last point about Nas performing at the Strand.
Yes. Artists that stay true to the people stay away from big centers of the mainstream.
Hiphop made a claim that it was the voice of the people and these stars are pretenders.
Can’t you see the absurdity of JayZ talking to imaginary hallway people in a Brooklyn housing compound, but instead of the kids in the graffiti- scribbled elevator he is talking to blonde heiresses and hedge-fund investors?
Don’t you see the absurdity?????
Whatchoo think? She right?
