Emmett Till

People are really upset about a line that YMCMB’s front man Lil Wayne said on Future’s song “Karate Chop (Remix).”  On the song Lil Wayne says “Beat that pu**y up like Emmett Till.” For those of you who don’t know, Emmett Till was a young African American male who was brutally beaten and was shot by white males. He supposedly was flirting with a white woman. I’m pretty sure that what happened to Emmett Till was not the first occurrence of something like this happening, and not the last(especially back then in the segregated south). But Emmett Till was the face of these type of events and made people realize (black and white) that this needs to stop.

Lil Wayne always has some shocking lyrics in his song and I would not expect anyone to be surprised by anything that he says. I personally feel that there is a line that should not be crossed when creating music(especially lyrically), but on the other hand I feel that I see people crossing that line every day. If we go after Lil Wayne for this lyric, we would have to go after other artist as well. And this creates other problems such as censorship hindering the creative process.

The problem with this line is that someone from the family did not like the reference that Lil Wayne made about their loved one. That makes this a personal problem. And I honestly don’t understand what they would want other than a apology, which is well deserved.

In conclusion, I feel that the lyric was crossing the line, but I feel that there is nothing we can do about it but make it be known that it was a little too much.  Everybody is not going to like every line a rapper writes, so for people who feel disrespected this should be treated as one that they didn’t like and we should all be able to move on.

Brown Sugar

“When did you first fall in love with hip-hop.” That’s a famous quote from the movie Brown Sugar. The movie Brown Sugar is interesting because it shows the life of two individuals who fell with Hip-Hop, but it uses parallelism, because they fell in love with each other. The two people who fell in love with Hip-Hop, were not even artist, they took a different route in making a career while showing their love for Hip-Hop music. So the line “when did you first fall in love with hip-hop,” is a loaded statement. It could mean the actual music, it could mean the lifestyle, it could mean a person (that you associate with hip-hop), etc.. The concept is relative. But, the main point in the movie is that lots of people are not in love with hip-hop, they lack the passion that is so greatly needed.

Every new artist should be asked the question when did they fall in love with Hip-Hop. There answer will tell us a lot about their passion for the concept of Hip-Hop. When I hear answers to this question, I want to hear heart-felt stories. Feelings being conveyed. If an artist gives a general answer it takes away from there credibility and it takes away from their music.

In the music industry today there are to many watered down artist who lack passion, and they use gimmicks to become famous. To me, that is not Hip-Hip. What big business fail to realize is that the reason Hip-Hop is dead is because of the way it is marketed. There is a lot of quality, passionate music that is not being marketed because companies don’t see the gimmick, or the catchiness in a song so they are afraid that it wont sell. But, quality will sell, it sells now without the proper marketing so, with the proper backing it will sell even more.

Even in life the hip hop community is water down, we need to find our “perfect verse over a tight beat.”