Posted on 06/23/2008 12:17:39 PM PDT by EveningStar
BUMP!
“You are really naive!
...I venture to say he knew 80% of the men in the area, and most of their families.”
Cedar Rapids population density is 1,912.6/sq mi. Naivete comes at about 1,600 friends and acquaintances per sq mile...
I'd mention Robert Randolph, a Christian rocker who also happens to be one of the best living guitarists.
My example praises the black influence in music, as I had to go as far as Barbershop Music to reach a type of popular music that didn't have substantial black roots in one form or another.
Incidentally, just under 30,000 men of all ages are members of the Barbershop Harmony Society in the United States, and those are only the performing members; it stands to reason there are more coming to listen to public concerts. And I am still more impressed by tight, close-knit harmony than I am in spoken rhyming words...about drugs, guns, and prostitution. Still waiting for the argument about why self-destructive rap music is more valuable than the other impressive musical styles contributed by black culture, which was my secondary point in all this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbershop_Harmony_Society
Why do rappers, engaged in such a clean and fun profession as glorifying gang violence and drug culture have such a high mortality rate? Is it that they, in that tiny market segment, were raised to believe that the way to settle an argument is down the barrel of a gun? Is there from any perspective that you can honestly say that this is not an example of broken culture?
By the classical way of American thinking, these guys have tons of money...they should be happy. Or at least wise enough to take their money and move the heck away from other gun-laden rappers who, statistics prove, are likely to kill them.
Bill Cosby, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and other upstanding black celebrities rise above their initial poverty through hard work and talent, achieve great things, love their families, and become famous...and I hear them being slammed as not "keeping it real", whatever the heck that means. Who wants the "reality" presented in rap music? How can it be defended as art when the images it spreads are of death and disrespecting women?
Of course, I in no way want to slight other black musicians who, even today, make valuable contributions. It's just sad that the ones who generally make the most money and see the most notoriety with the mass population are rappers.
And, for my part, let me apologise to everyone for my people, the White Guys, who are idiots enough to sit at the stoplights with rap music blaring out of their cars so loud it vibrates you three cars away. Really sorry about that.
Exactamundo.
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