Hip Hop Is Not Art

[jgx]

Ghideon- I would even suggest that when something becomes important to millions of people there must be depth going on.

I wouldn't.

I wrote "there must be depth going on" now that is a rather abstract statement, yes?

I did not mean to imply that Britney Spears music is deep or that the Super Bowl is deep.

What I did mean is that if I were to throw a party next Sunday I don't suspect too many people would show up.

But a few Sundays from now millions or even close to a billion human beings will sit in front of a tv and watch two teams play with a small leather football.

From my perspective it would be only be fundamentally disrespecting those human beings to think that they are all chosing to stop and watch something for superficial reason. Propoganda, imho, is effective because of very significant dynamics involving all sorts of factors. Sporting events rake in billions and billions of dollars for important reasons (having do with everything from our need to watch violence to pervasive male conditioning towards competition).

I would say the same thing about any aspect of pop culture from bubble gum to hip-hop.

Humans are obviously very often misled, confused, told that they need things that they actually do not and then believe that...but none of these are unimportant nor evidence of shallow or unimportant phenomena.

How would you suggest we improve the shallow face of pop culture if we do not take its power seriously? Or do you think it lacks power? If it does lack power then please explain its incredible appeal?

And lets return to hip hop actually. Just because something looks, sounds superficial does not mean that the dynamics involved are also supeficial. If only that were true things would be so much easier to resolve. No?

[Yelena]

I agree about the "depth" part.
I can also admit that there are some hip-hop songs that have at least some meaning, but as far as I'm concerned, most of them talk about women, money and sex. No offence, but to me hip-hop isn't art, its a way to earn money by those, who have no talent but have enough gall to go out there and show off.

[dramasnot6]

Perhaps we can all agree that hip hop is perhaps too much of an umbrella term then one could expect and has a diverse range of content, just some of it covering very offensive topics and therefore being debatable to whether it can go up there with Shakespeare and Brecht?
boy, i can just feel the dirty look of my teacher after a run-on sentence like that

[jon1jt]

To begin, my compliments to St.LukesGuild for his depth and range of thought and evaluation expressed on this topic. people ought not be dissuaded from reading his rather long posts --- they're packed with "ideas."

abdullah: i want to read your posts again before responding fully. i know you noted questions, i'm not avoiding them. for now, you mentioned some confusion about the term "exploitation" as i used it to highlight that words have meaning when we want them too. a debate rages over the exploitation of foreign workers by no-good "American" companies, which set up affiliates overseas - e.g. bangladesh; others in mexico and latin america. relativist liberals argue that these workers are not paid a "living wage" but also that it creates the conditions for entire families to perform "sweatshop" labor, native parents forcing their children to work as well rather than allow them to go to the local school to be educated. multi-national corps have taken the brunt of criticism because they've created and in the process, arguably, furthered the conditions for illiteracy, subsistence wages, and fractured family life. some neo-con journals, like Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, have run articles defending MNCs on the basis that such workers are not "exploited" in the strict sense of the word -- in fact, without the added trade and work opportunities MNC's provide to these regions, the logic goes, workers would be far worse off. relativist liberals contend that 'exploitation is exploitation' - in that 'I know it when i see it'-justice stewart sense. and so then accuse MNCS and think tanks that the realities on the ground don't comport with MNCs suggestion that they are a galvanizing, region-developing force. i hope this clears up my point. and strike the "false analogy" claim you didn't make it - i had wanted to say i wasn't making one. sorry.

as far as the claim that i contradicted myself regarding my perspective of history, i meant that to be human is to breath value into the very "reading" i.e. understanding, the process by which we take in and assemble - historical fact. i'm tempted to go further on this point but there's already a wonderful thread on historical interpretation.


ghideon: your note about my bringing up class next to my remark about music: i used that term as a contrast to hip hop, not in the elitist you make me out to be. we're all self-righteous in some way, remember that.

ghideon
You bet there is, actually tendency is not putting it strongly enough, to distrust government...

ghideon
The "cursing in class" bit is close to sci-fi. My God have you even been in a HS class these days? Cursing? Folks are worried about bullets.

abdullah
You "think" he had it right but do you "know"?

abdullah
Society becomes a stagnant morass until someone stands up and fights it, and that person is ultimately labeled an unconventional, seditious, dangerous traitor by his contemporaries and a noble, moral, just man by the people of the next generation who want to impose the same restricting standard that he fought against.

abdullah
What is the 'public'?


perhaps my thinking is to many here anachronistic - offensive to others, both to free wheeling relativist liberals, but history will absolve me when the whole s***house goes up in flames, the day it's recognized that rap/hip hop is (was) a contributing factor in this nation's slow and inevitable decline. you can see it in pockets all over. in education, at all levels. i have a friend who has been teaching at a major university, a renowned (white) scholar in her field, and even she admited to me that if she didn't dumb down her course lectures and requirements, she'd lose 70% of the class and the administration would go bonkers. she also told of students who "earned" C's who after filed petitions and screamed, one who even spit at her. she's had to reprimand students with ipods in class (listening to hiphop??!)- an apparently widespread problem - and students who play on the internet in class. she's showed me incoherently written "research papers" and essays from students with an eigth grade writing level. another person - an adult who decided to go back to school and finish up her college degree, was shocked that one of her teachers had to actually ask students repeatedly not to talk during class. colleges are set up as a business and accept just about anyone with a pulse.

hip hop contributes to the increasing lethargy, banality, sloth, and ambivalence in the United States.

waving the banner of unfettered first amendment speech and thereby turning a blind eye with your shoulder-shrug acknowledgments of its misogyny is sad.

the public IS democracy and the latter can't survive without a sense there's a common denominator. forms of totalitarianism already exist in America and yet you blow your trumpets of freedom, as if free press and free speech are real. i have not yet discussed that dimension of my argument. please do not in any way suppose that i suggest that censorship should be enforced under the present conditions---that is, this democracy. the public is too far gone for censorship to have any positive effect. America is slouching towards gomorrah. global warming, world hunger (yet US pays farmers NOT to produce), poverty, epidemics, terrorism, nuclear arms, weapons, guns, war, indiscriminate killing, etc. etc. are all sullen examples. i'll stop there.

I think it was William Penn who once said, "Let the people think they govern and they shall be governed."

and that's the illusion - the spell you relativist liberal-free speech folks are under. i will not be cajoled into your cave, nor you mine. twas always thus, and always thus will be.

[dramasnot6]

"perhaps my thinking is to many here anachronistic - offensive to others, both to free wheeling relativist liberals, but history will absolve me when the whole s***house goes up in flames, the day it's recognized that rap/hip hop is a contributing factor in this nations slow and inevitable decline. you can see it in pockets all over. in education, all levels. i have a friend who has been teaching at a major university, a renowned (white) scholar in her field, and even she admited to me that if she didn't dumb down her course lectures and requirements, she'd lose 70% of the class and the administration would go bonkers. she also told of students who "earned" C's who after filed petitions and screamed, one who even spit at her. she's had to reprimand students with ipods in class (listening to hiphop??!)- an apparently widespread problem - and students who play on the internet in class. she's showed me incoherently written "research papers" and essays from students with an eigth grade writing level. colleges are set up as a business and accept just about anyone with a pulse.

hip hop contributes to the increasing lethargy, banality, sloth, and ambivalence in the United States.

waving the banner of unfettered first amendment speech and thereby turning a blind eye with your shoulder-shrug acknowledgments of its misogyny is sad.

the public IS democracy and the latter can't survive without a sense there's a common denominator. forms of totalitarianism already exist in America and yet you blow your trumpets of freedom, as if free press and free speech are real. i have not yet discussed that dimension of my argument. please do not in any way suppose that i suggest that censorship should be enforced under the present conditions---that is, this democracy. the public is too far gone for it to have any positive effect --- America is slouching towards gomorrah and teetering on the horizon.

I think it was William Penn who once said, "Let the people think they govern and they shall be governed."

and that's the illusion - the spell you relativist liberal free speech folks are under. i will not be cajoled into your cave."

Ill have to agree with many of your points here Jon. As a highschool student i experience first hand the effects of popular culture on my peers, and it isnt pretty. Issues like rape, racism, and mysogany are taken lightly and are often brought up in a joke or insult in almost every class or personal discussion. Girls dress and throw themselves at guys jsut like the objectified women sung about and shown on music videos. Art is meant to inspire, to provide beauty and comfort in a world already filled with too much pain and hate, not exacerbate it. I for one think we should be progressing from such blunt crudity and sexism, but instead we seem to be regressing and were probably better off as Neanderthals.

[dramasnot6]

Also, some people seem to be defending hip hop in saying the artist cant help what they are expressing because it is just their context. But large scale musicians dont simply jot down what comes to mind and perform it for millions. Teams of editors, songwriters, and publicists review the song many times over before it is performed and sold. They are aware of and even try to appeal to young people as their target audeince. Tis a dangerous and boling solution created by the media made of both shockingly crude content AND a direct appeal to the most vulnerable and gullible audience, youth.That is marketing and corruption, not art.

[SheykAbdullah]

This is a response to Stlukeguild's post. I am not going to quote it except where required to save on length.

Pornography is something whose primary intention is to titilate and arouse feelings in a sexual manner. Most of the works of Roccoco were intended as decorative cycles in boudoirs in order to titilate the viewer in a sexual way. That makes it pornography. Does that make it not art? No. You claim to think I've said that, but I never did.

As far as Il Sodoma there is no sexual intent there, as far as St Teresa in Ecstasy, while there is an element of sexual gratification in the piece that is not the purpose for which it is sculpted. That is the difference between it and most Boucher's work.


1. Whether you believe me or not, titilation was the point of most of Boucher's Fragonard's styles, which is why they were hung in the rooms of the king's mistresses. 2. Well, I do view a work that is intended to titilate as pornography. Is that a negative thing? No. 3. The definition of pornography has not changed over time, but the threshold of what is pornography has changed and that is undoubtable. For example, Madam X by Sargent, the so oft mentioned by me Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Olympia, and many others were considered pronographic due to the direct representation of the female nude outside of the established Academic conventions, which Boucher and Fragonard also violated.

Call it crap art, call it whatever you want. I've said I accept all definitions of art whatever they may be. Art doesn't exist independantly of man so it can be whatever we want it to be.

[SheykAbdullah]

I will admit an absolute definition of art if you can show unequivicobly what qualifies you to have one and why. I fail to see how art is NOT a relativistic term. I would also remind you that my defintion of art is not '1990's' relativism, but is related directly the Warhol's idea of art and the idea of art that pushed forward the Pop movement.

Sure, the piblic gets what it wants just so long as no one gets hurt as a direct result of their entertainment. No one goes out and kills someone JUST BECAUSE they heard a rap song. There are other influences. Maybe the music plays a marginal role in the mentality, but there are other factors involved in the ultimate decision. Now, I would ask you since you have labelled a bunch of things you consider inferior in value, for whatever reason, would you outlaw them as well? If you redefine the things people want by education, etc, then there is no need for the less agreeable aspects of rap. That is what I have been saying all along. The music exists to fill a need people feel they have for whatever reason.

Well, in that case, since you are so comfortable with elitism, let's set up an academy to dictate artistic tastes. If you are an artist and you don't meet the criteria you'll starve, never gaining noteriety, until a group of angry artists set up across the street and destroy your institution. You can not legislate taste like you legislate law. The establishment will only hold back the artistic surge. Inevitably freedom will produce forgetable, immaterial pieces, sometimes it produces greatness. You'll never know, but what is wrong with people thinking Harry Potter was the best book ever written? Or the Lord of the Rings, which I consider a fine piece of literature. Do people HAVE to listen to a broad range of musical styles if they have no interest in it? I don't like eating and am fine eating the same thing for weeks at a time, am I ignorant because I don't explore the greatness of various cuisines through out the world? I don't like dancing, so am I ignorant for not having explored the nuances of the jeter? As for Joyce, I'm sure he's great, but I really wouldn't know. never read him, not interested in it either. Does that make me a philistine? What is the problem with someone who thinks Harry Potter is the best thing ever written?

[SheykAbdullah]

I am sorry, but I seem to get the feeling you seem to think that I have no experience with art or anything artistic, and I assure you that would be a faulty assumption on your part. I may not paint, but I know art, and I say there are no absolute standards, and that if standards are impossible to define that indicates a need for a relativistic perspective.

There were thousands of 'the people' that read the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo because when it was originally published it was NOT 1200 pages. It was serialized a chapter at a time, in popular magazines. In such a case we ARE talking about a mass public. It's not like the literacy rate in France a century ago was 12%. Art Nouveau was very popular, though more so in architecture than painting. The Pre-Raphaelites can be found in many museums and the movement is more popular than other ninteenth century movements such as Orientalism, which I think are superior. In any case I feel they aren't nearly as under-rated as they deserve, but I guess it's a good thing my opinions aren't absolute. Maybe they'll even be called uninformed.

And again, I would disagree with everyone you listed but Vermeer and Velazquez. I don't like Renaissance art and I don't like Rubenisme, so again, I guess it's good that art is relativistic. I have my reasons to like Hopper more than Michelangelo, you have yours for liking Michelangelo more than Hopper, just like some people like rap more than anything else.

[SheykAbdullah]

I suppose the reason we all study art is different. Some people see art as expressing individual, personal genius, others often see art as an expression of the society from which they came. Again, it's a good thing that no one view dominates. Otherwise there would be nothing to learn because everything would be the same, which is what has happened everytime art has been organized into cpncrete definitions.

[SheykAbdullah]

I don't want to respond to the political comments in your post because it can go no where but off course and result in nothing but mud-slinging. Suffice to say I disagree strongly. I think it is best left at that.

My point in citing those artists was that a dictatorship of taste does not promote change or improvement of an art form, and it is true. The fact that the impressionists were or were not elitists doesn't matter for the point I made, though I might point out that they accepted Henri Rousseau, le Douanier, or the tax-collector, who had no formal training and was an unabashed primitivist in his painting, and given their lives I find it hard to claim that they were elitists in refusing to accept the outside or the public. The important point I made was that the Academy tried to establish a standard for legislating taste, such as is being suggested, but it failed miserably and that for art to advance its restrictions had to be thrown aside.

As individuals we do not abdicate our right to freedom of speech, only our right to directly harmful forms of speech. I would direct you to my earlier comments that outlawing rap WILL NOT remove its audience. Rap is outlawed in Iran, but I personally have several songs that are rap produced in the country (I have them more as a novelty than anything else). Again, rap is a music form that wants to be viewed as illicit, if you actually make it illicit it will only grow in popularity.

[SheykAbdullah]

i want to read your posts again before responding fully. i know you noted questions, i'm not avoiding them. for now, you mentioned some confusion about the term "exploitation" as i used it to highlight that words have meaning when we want them too. a debate rages over the exploitation of foreign workers by no-good "American" companies, which set up affiliates overseas - e.g. bangladesh; others in mexico and latin america. relativist liberals argue that these workers are not paid a "living wage" but also that it creates the conditions for entire families to perform "sweatshop" labor, native parents forcing their children to work as well rather than allow them to go to the local school to be educated. multi-national corps have taken the brunt of criticism because they've created and in the process, arguably, furthered the conditions for illiteracy, subsistence wages, and fractured family life. some neo-con journals, like Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, have run articles defending MNCs on the basis that such workers are not "exploited" in the strict sense of the word -- in fact, without the added trade and work opportunities MNC's provide to these regions, the logic goes, workers would be far worse off. relativist liberals contend that 'exploitation is exploitation' - in that 'I know it when i see it'-justice stewart sense. and so then accuse MNCS and think tanks that the realities on the ground don't comport with MNCs suggestion that they are a galvanizing, region-developing force. i hope this clears up my point. and strike the "false analogy" claim you didn't make it - i had wanted to say i wasn't making one. sorry.

All right. I understand what you mean, and the point you raise is an interesting one now that I understand it better. I still disagree with the relationship being drawn. In one situation, art, there is almost nothing physical that defines it. Meaning, that unless you accept the primacy of convention adn tradition you do not have a measuring stick to use to ensure the rightness of a piece of art, but in exploitation there is a firm measure, there is a standard of living. You can compare the standard of living, the comparative wages and the conditions worked in with that of other countries and come up with nearly mathematical relationship and base your defintion of exploitation on those facts. Since I am unwilling to admit the primacy of any form of art over any other form there is no similiar measure for me to apply to art.

In any case, I don't see how that makes my definition of art defunct.

as far as the claim that i contradicted myself regarding my perspective of history, i meant that to be human is to breath value into the very "reading" i.e. understanding, the process by which we take in and assemble - historical fact. i'm tempted to go further on this point but there's already a wonderful thread on historical interpretation.

So you see history as having a 'value'? I assume that value in this sense means some kind of moral struggle, or maybe a struggle for justice? For you history is a dialectic of good vs evil or some such thing?

[SheykAbdullah]

perhaps my thinking is to many here anachronistic - offensive to others, both to free wheeling relativist liberals, but history will absolve me when the whole s***house goes up in flames, the day it's recognized that rap/hip hop is (was) a contributing factor in this nation's slow and inevitable decline. you can see it in pockets all over. in education, at all levels. i have a friend who has been teaching at a major university, a renowned (white) scholar in her field, and even she admited to me that if she didn't dumb down her course lectures and requirements, she'd lose 70% of the class and the administration would go bonkers. she also told of students who "earned" C's who after filed petitions and screamed, one who even spit at her. she's had to reprimand students with ipods in class (listening to hiphop??!)- an apparently widespread problem - and students who play on the internet in class. she's showed me incoherently written "research papers" and essays from students with an eigth grade writing level. another person - an adult who decided to go back to school and finish up her college degree, was shocked that one of her teachers had to actually ask students repeatedly not to talk during class. colleges are set up as a business and accept just about anyone with a pulse.

I will save the first part of the paragraph for the end of this response. I would prefer to address the college argument, because I agree with you. Education is terrible, and there are a number of reasons why.

The first is regarding college. It is inevitable, in my opinion, that a college education will begin to mean less as universities are democratized to accept nearly everyone, which is true. Anyone, regardless of how ill-prepared can go to college now somewhere if they can pay. I do not necesarily agree with this idea, and I think it is unfortunate.

The second thing is about lower levels of education, and much of the blame for ill-prepared college students rests here. Education in the US, and I would say the world in general, is terrible, not because of the quality of education but because of the skills emphasized. Students, on average, are not stressed to come up with their own answers to problems. Emphasis in the past twenty years in education has been placed on multiple-choice tests, which is mostly a test of data-retention and not critical analysis, which is the skill that needs to be stressed to create more intelligent individuals, and that critical thinking and analysis is engendered mostly by questioning the veracity of previously held assumptions, such as what is 'socially acceptable' and 'what is art' and 'what did Hitler REALLY think when he invaded Austria.' Those questions can only be answered in a free environment.

The knowledge base that evolved from a strategy of multiple choice testing and pre-formed essay response (many essays now a days in school are the bland five-paragraph approach which are nearly sppon-fed to students) is one where rhetorical skills are lost and one that tends to engender a natural respect for intellectual authority, which as I am sure you can gather, I disagree with.

Descartes never said anything better than 'question everything.' To me knowledge is a revolutionary prcoess and learning is a rebellion inside the individual against society and against what he used to be. In the end things may stand much like before, but stronger, with more integrity, or they may be toppled and changed, but it is almost always for the betterment of the person, provided the discovery is unguided and unhampered by outside requirements and demands. Guidance is not a problem, but rules are. Science, society and art never advanced because people followed 'the rules.' Advancement only comes when the conventional rules are either broken or bent.

A note here, I am not railing against teachers. They are as much victims of the system as the students themselves are.

hip hop contributes to the increasing lethargy, banality, sloth, and ambivalence in the United States.

waving the banner of unfettered first amendment speech and thereby turning a blind eye with your shoulder-shrug acknowledgments of its misogyny is sad.

I've said several times that I don't agree with the misogyny, that I think it should be fought. I have said several times that the way to fight it is NOT censoring it, but rather exploring the PHENOMENA that create the violence and then figuring out how to CHANGE that. Hip-hop is not our problem, it is a symptom.

the public IS democracy and the latter can't survive without a sense there's a common denominator. forms of totalitarianism already exist in America and yet you blow your trumpets of freedom, as if free press and free speech are real. i have not yet discussed that dimension of my argument. please do not in any way suppose that i suggest that censorship should be enforced under the present conditions---that is, this democracy. the public is too far gone for censorship to have any positive effect. America is slouching towards gomorrah. global warming, world hunger (yet US pays farmers NOT to produce), poverty, epidemics, terrorism, nuclear arms, weapons, guns, war, indiscriminate killing, etc. etc. are all sullen examples. i'll stop there.

I think it was William Penn who once said, "Let the people think they govern and they shall be governed."

and that's the illusion - the spell you relativist liberal-free speech folks are under. i will not be cajoled into your cave, nor you mine. twas always thus, and always thus will be.

Allright, to begin with you seem to think I don't believe that anything is wrong, and that is not true. As I have said before I am not completely a relativist, I know there are things that are right or wrong and I believe in a moral truth, but I do NOT believe that things such as art can be defined, because I do not believe that they can be VALUED (in a superior/inferior, important/unimportant, etc) sense. I believe in an absolute morality, namely that you must repsect the liberty of someone else so that they respect the liberty of you. People do not always live up to this standard and laws are required, but they must walk the thin line between enabling the individual and disabling him so that he is not restricted from too much. Banning hip-hop would be too much.

You believe you should ban hip-hop and certain undesirable aspects of history, just not in a democracy? It was ok under Socialism? I don't understand the logic of your argument.

The government is not some great caring parent that spreads its wings protectively over a civilization. You can't name a single government in the history of the world that operated that way without being a tyranny.

I normally hate this kind of thing but your argument just called for it. There was another country once, not too long ago, that was fighting rampant inflation, crushing social divisions and many feared that society had degenerated so badly that it could never recover, drastic measures would be required to purify the social hygenie, and, of course, ensure the future of business against the Communists. Because of the fear that the once glorious country would descend into the terrible reaches of leftist anarchy and the mass killing that would inevitably follow, along with the destruction of business, the gov't reached out to a person who promised to fix all the problems, clean out the scourge of political dissent that was affecting the youth, and ensure a great, glorious, continuous society. He would empower business, strike fear in the hearts of the evil-doers spreading propoganda in his society, and the people that appointed him thought he was a funny man they could countrol, whom they would ensure would only restrict things just enough, because, after all, he was better than a Communist. I will assume you know to what and whom I am referring. The man the government apointed to fix its social problems was the author of the book you want to ban. He saved not just Germany, but even Greater Germany from becoming a gemorrah. I should also add that if one reads his mannifesto he learns that one of the future-leader's biggest gripes was that a particular ethnic group controlled everything, including the art world, and was therefore stealing, by virtue of their aesthetic, the right of young German artists to create. Of course, the future leader also enforced his own standards for art just like Mao and Stalin.

You have ended this post with another quote, but why don't you explain yourself instead of only referencing great men. You say that the moral hygene of our country is bankrupt, but you do not say why YOU are qualified to judge it. you don't say what it's bankrupt against, Christianity, Islam, Capitalism?

Are you qualified to arbitrate because of what you've read? What is it that qualifies YOU as the person that has the asnwer to our society's ills? What makes YOU the man who can fix us, the one with the knife that can right the senate's wrong if you'll just be given a chance and a legion? You have said a lot of things, but you have not said, a single time, why you are right, how rap is destroying our country, and what makes me wrong. You have referenced a few SC cases, but for the rest you just respond that 'rap is full of misogyny,' 'your relativism is the end of our country,' and 'you need to read more before talking.' These are not arguments, they are declaritive statements from which arguments spring. The only one you've managed to prove is that rap is indeed full of misogyny, a point we all agree with.

[jgx]

To my community:

Does anybody have a problem with the statement: we are not moving forward here.

Arguments are made. Then the same arguments are made again and again. Examples are used to prove a point. Then other examples to negate them.

And this would be fine if there was some degree of evolution from one premise to another.

But I do not see that occuring.

I think it is time to end this hip-hop thread and, if folks desire, create some other thread that is broader, eg "Does art have a specific duty to society?" "Can art be judged as to its value/worth in absolute terms?" "Are there times when art should be censored?"

Those topics are acutally the ones being discussed now. Why not simply admit that and create a better context to discuss those specific questions?

ghideon
aka
jgx

[SheykAbdullah]

I think JGX has a point.