Good hip hop is great but there is so much shit hip hop, but some of it is so wack its great just for its level of wackness standing out
A large part of the wackiness of easily visible or rather marketed brand of hip hop is because of record labels that formed in that period when NWA came out with a rebellious tone and those labels were Jewish owned. Def Jam one of the largest is owned by a Cohen. Those white guys who saw business opportunity out of a ghetto sound wanted to open shop and they saw drugs and apathy and violence as a way to trigger the raw youth and their dissatisfactions in that society. Jewish people don’t make hip hop or rap, not part of their culture in terms of origin, but they made it intertwined and they built the distribution system by pooling their own money and controlling all of it. They posted themselves as decision makers and started exploiting Black talent and sucking their money off of them using legal loopholes and well designed contracts. The best lawyers and law firms are Jewish for a reason. Guys like Shugg Knight made money rolling and back stabbing and coercion his work ethic and no doubt he got busted for it eventually. But the repurcusssions of people like these meant that everyone involved started to watch their backs eventually and trust dissolved into a peace treaty of legalities just like drug dealers who watch their own turf.
The major issue with the music industry is that the industry is not made, maintained and run by musicians. Rather it is run by money spinners and art mafias who are basically looking to make a major revenue shave off their ‘talent pool’ of artists. If a Black record label was run by a music producer himself it would be anti establishment to go against his brothers and short sell them of cheat them right and left. It will be an industry taboo. Rather such labels would foster healthy ‘artistic’ competition and in turn build culture while pitting sales as a motivator too. Can white business men make rap music? HELL NO.
Once the talent part is removed, what remains is control. The business men who run this industry and distribution platforms very well known that if the industry was full of artistic gems made day in day out and a superlative culture was being built side by side in parallel then eventually musicians will take over becos of the pride and accomplishments of free artistic reign. Business men will be mostly a sideshow, the errand boys for the real item and product creators, the ones ones without whom their leverage would not even exist. An artist can still sell his own music while making it too. A business man won’t be selling shit if his artist control breaks loose. So in order to leverage creative control and prevent culture from being too progressively expansive and ambrosiac, they made it stifle and ridicule itself to the point of making it look asinine. It’s a mockery of talent, like saying ’ we own you fellas, we can make you look like shit and still make you sell! We doing the talking now, not your talent and music, without us selling your stuff no one will get it and buy it…we tell you to become a monkey on a music video, you do it, we tell you to strip butt naked you do it, we tell you to curse your own mother, you do it…we own you fellas, we do…".
This kind of cultural control also helps other business models thrive. When rap music was about having hope in life and appreciating the beauty of what one had and was all positive, business men had no chance to thrive on drugs and violence and sex. In those decades, drug imports started becoming a booming trade, entertainment industry was becoming more technologically available with TVs selling everywhere and prostitution at an all time high. The gun business was another outlet for revenues. But the real business was the prison business. Some insiders now reflect on their time doing such contracts with some shady people (no doubt mafia) who decided to sponsor the record labels to bring in more inmates for their private prisons. The more inmates they have the more money they make and also translates to money for their stakeholders. They mutually agreed to help fill such corporate hostels and money making entities by fuelling the still vulnerable and impressionable youth with images of sex and violence. They did their execution with a high degree of professionalism (organised crime as usual, always with a suit) and the result is a cabal of White and Jewish businessmen and mfaia sponsors who are running the media outlets, money collection spots and the distribution system. No wonder they feel it’s their duty to make money off every single thing that goes through them. Artists who are on such labels are chosen for their level of charisma or influence on the mass audience or rather their target audience. The businessmen label owners also understand that they can sell to preteens, teens, adolescents, young adults and beyond and it’s best to stratify the music catalogue so they everyone comes shopping to them. Artists are just ice cream flavours in their ice cream shop and they want you to come to their shop only. The result is that it becomes a competition of business by selling what a businessman thinks versus a competitive existence of culture and a healthy symbiosis of merit money with a cultural trophy as a musician thinks. Now multiply this issue with every other businessman motherfucker who enters this line of investment portfolios and each one of them thinking how to maximise their profits outlets without giving two hoots to cultural development, cos obviously they don’t even play an instrument… now we have a major problem of what we call a commercial music industry, an industry designed and engineered to make money as its first priority, with the most cannibalizing dog running the show end of the day. It’s like trying to play piano in a mafia joint, each one will about shout what to play and if you don’t you just might be shot by anyone of them, they all want their piece of the pie, that is all, as long as you survive your stay in that joint, after you roll off to the side, they bring in the next one to man handle…
Hip hop music has lots of subgenres from instrumental beats which explore the composers skill and imagination, to rap lyrics backing music which have a steady beat to let the rapper shine to electronic downtempo stuff that makes songwriting a priority, to Neo Soul style beats and songs where heavy Jazz and Blues and Gospel influence enables creative freedom for its producers, and every other derivative genre that capitalises on a core rhythmic standard taking cues form the last 100 years of music and music technology and Hip Hop culture.
The wackness comes from the middlemen elements not the musicians. The musicians are the innovators and cultural progenitors at the very least folks who can do art. Never let a business man tell you what to play, ever. Unless you feel it’s good to give him an ego massage and he feels pampered enough to believe that he can control your outputs and he magically hands out a recording contract (ohhh boy oh boy)…no wonder they call it selling your soul to the devil.
I like Quincy Jones’s statement because on deeper analysis it seems he is making a positive statement on the exploitative nature of the music industry and the kind of output that is clearly discernable and what he is calling as shit. In that sense he means to urge musicians to learn their craft in a more deeper way and not get mentally stifled and swayed to more pedestrian standards or sellable standards and forego musical education in the process. Obviously it takes way more intellectual investment to do a degree in Jazz or classical than to make minimal techno mixtape, but art if done with sincerity transcends even this sort of intellectual benefit. More study obviously will help the musician without a doubt. That is what he was saying.
The other thing I like about Quincy is that he says very outspokenly about what he prefers end of the day. ’ The worst that can happen is that they(meaning the decision makers or the audience) don’t like what I made and even I don’t like what I made (referring to folks or the labels telling him what to make it sound like)…so I make music that I Love (meaning that the end result of both parties likeing it is a win win situation and that is a bold chance he will always take no matter what, short selling or stunting your goals to please someone never pans out in the end. You cannot make everyone happy, so most definitely make yourself happy FIRST without a sliver of doubt)'.
If that is the message from the man himself, I think it’s an excellent lesson on how to make your cake and eat it too. Learn for the masters as they say. Personally even if I do business every day my existence and experience as an artist takes first priority every single living minute I have. Self perfection and continuous improvement of inner skills and the use of one’s talent is what drives me, not the money (I already got enough…). But the society is heavily manipulated so it’s not too pleasing to realize that. Shit sells becos people buy it, and that is the unavoidable truth all of us have to deal with. To me, control or the drive behind it is the root of all social evils, not money, money is just an emblem of asset transmission, it ain’t got no brain of its own, unless we give it. Control however is a very ancient form of growth inhibiting force masquerading as progress and commercial competition (versus artistic competition). I would prefer to thrive and live in a world where artists rule the planet and businessmen clean the sewers.
Edit: On the cultural growth point, the businessmen who have no artistic say in how culture pans our in time nonetheless have made it a historical ‘work it in the books’ agenda as well by making culture coerce in a direction they collectively prefer just cos they can influence it via commerce. After some time has passed even the business men can say ‘look this is how we are the arbiters of social change and cultural development’. But in reality they are no the inventors or magazines or creators of art but the apt definition of a businessman is ‘manipulators of commerce’. Historically thougj when times well less contrived and more ezpansive, the Silk Road and the seas were trading routes. In that sense trade and commerce is as old as prostitution itself (the first blowjob over coins is a valid transaction). The influence of trade and commerce has no doubt been a force on social developments and has a huge stake in world history and cultural exchange too, but that was all in the past. Now when the stakes are far less in terms of loss of time, assets or life by long expeditions, the business folks have forgotten their ancestral legacy and when the band of robbers and bankers and petty thieves and plain and simple mafias and crime collectives approached them for a symbiotic relationship, they fell flat and went full frontal with their new established goals insulting even thier forefathers in the process. It’s a pity how the bad elements get the best of us so easily with disastrous consequences. The only thing the ones among us who realise all this is to fight with a dedicated drive and fight to kill and not fight to win. The other party ain’t fighting with honor, just so that you know. They think idealism is a weakness…good for them, they gonna get stymied with the right people. They don’t stand a chance.
The other irony is that the criminal s practice ‘united we stand divided we fall’ but they themselves are selling the idea of jealousy or material possessions and stupid and petty competition and violence and adultery on TV so that the masses remain disjunct and unity never happens. Without unity the masses don’t stand a chance. Its the secret reason why the baddest of their clan go to the gym and drink milk while the masses are sold Coke and sugary doughnuts. These guys are smart too and they have been arbiters of their game for a long time too. Their artistic skills are non existent but they understand people and they are risk takers too, and possibly that is the dystopia we have to fight against. A world run by businessmen and mafias.