November 2nd, 2008
Last week Marcus Johnson, a hip hop musician here in Madison left a comment at an old post of mine, “Hip Hop and Madison Racism”, that I think is worth repeating:
“well I’m a 24 year old CEO of TR Records in Madison and i have no problem with getting shows and radio play any ware but my own city. This is all because Madison don’t want hip hop. But they can let a strings concert on the square and charge 30 dollars and get it. But i cant perform my music no ware. I got a large fan base in Madison, if people don’t like what I’m saying then don’t pay to come see me,don’t shut down all the clubs so i can make a living. You cant force me to work for somebody and make them money and not make my own money. It’s not hard to make it it’s just Madison don’t want to selling out clubs and driving around in new cars off my music, they hate it..they hate us (black people) (Emphasis mine)
The next day I read that 93.1 The Lake switched formats, going from classic rock to hip hop. What was ostensibly a business decision prompted some heated comments at 77 Square:
It’s bad enough that crime is rising in Madison, now we have more music to fuel it.
We don’t need a hip-hop station with a stronger signal; the only people that are going to listen to it are in the city, where they could already hear it.
Hip-Hop blows!!! As if I don’t hear that “gang-banging crap just driving down the street.
It is a shame to replace original classic rock music with unoriginal hip hop. Hip hop just steals someone elses original beats, riffs, chorus whatever and then they try and ryme over it….real original. It is more about the image rather than the music! 93.1 also had a good morning show. Not something annoying like Bob & Tom crap. Madison doesn’t have many hip hop concerts because of all the issues that the riff raff bring. That is one reason why not to replace classic rock with hip hop. The listeners don’t have any appreciation for the music.
The first three comments sound racist but I cannot know if the commenters are, in fact, racist. They certainly traffic in stereotypes, however, which stand in contrast to one hip hop fan which I interviewed at my blog, Martinez White.
With regards to music, the last comment is born of ignorance and, I would guess, of stupidity. Classic rock is not some bastion of originality. Classic rock bands recorded innumerable covers, for one thing; to say that bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream were liberal with their appropriation of blues songs is putting it charitably; John Lennon was sued for stealing from Chuck Berry and George Harrison from The Chiffons; the Bo Diddley beat is everywhere in rock; “A Whiter Shade of Pale” owes more than a small debt to Bach; the list goes on. Music doesn’t arise in a vacuum. Indeed, I would argue that music works by taking that which came before and tinkering with it, whether you be a hip hop musician, in a rock band, or work in any other genre. Even in Western art music. Bartók lifted Hungarian folk melodies while Copeland did the same with American folk. When you see that commercial urging you to eat beef for dinner, you’re essentially hearing a symphony orchestra cover the old folk song “Bonaparte’s Retreat”.
If you want to argue that there’s something inherently better about playing someone else’s riff or beat yourself vs. just sampling it, then go ahead. But I think you’re going to have a hard time showing that it’s not a distinction without a difference with regards to the concept of “originality”.
Related posts:
lowsesI agree that the first three comments sounded racist, but frankly, it’s hard not to get the same racist attitude that hip hop music seems to thrive on. Musically, it has no redeeming artistic value; culturally, it corrupts rather than grows.
Obviously, the format switch is done strictly for the money. I’d be damned good and pissed, too, if it happened around here. In fact, it did, and I was – but not as much as I would have been if it was a station I listened to frequently.