What in the Hell

Dr. Dre got suckered punched at the Vibe Awards Monday. What does it say about the music I love when one of it's greatest producers is getting honored and someone sneaks a jab to his face. Would this happen in any other music genre at all? No it wouldn't. All of the awards Outkast has won this year and all of the achievements of Jay Z have been washed away with this stupidity. I am 30 years old now and I have been listening to hip hop since I was 10. I don't know if it's the age or not, but I am not sure about the direction of hip hop anymore. There are some great hip hop artist out there. De La Soul, Roots, Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, even Jay Z are examples of artist who take the music seriously. The problem is besides Jay Z and Outkast, most of the artist that get major media publicity are ignorant, talentless and not creative. Guys like Suge Knight got into the game to make money and brought the same hustle mentality from the corners into the board rooms and made hip hop a symbol of thuggery. How is this guy still able to sign artist and put out records? How is he even invited to award shows anyway? The answer is simple, ignorance sells records and makes money for the powers that be in the music industry. They don't care if Suge causes chaos or not. The only thing that matters is that the uneducated, ignorant black kids and the "wanna be black" white kids in America, think that this kind of thing is cool and go out and spend their money to support that bullshit. This is how a artist like Nelly, who shows not lyrical or musical talent can make a song like Pimp Juice and make millions while people like De La Soul barely break even. Nobody may want to admit this but guys like Nelly, and Cash Money, or Snoop Dogg hanging out with pimps is the image that people have of our community because of the music. I never thought it was necessary to be negative to sell records. The kids in the ghetto will follow their heroes no matter what they say. If Nelly and Snoop Dogg wanted to rap about stopping black on black violence they could and would still sell the same amount. They are not going to do it because they are really just whores to the system of corporate pimps that control this so called rebel music.