[dfwgator]

Go to any rap concert and the audience will be predominantly white.

[ken5050]

Then of course, there was the great joke from the 1980 presidential campaign:

Q: What's Reagan's program to cure poverty?

A: 100,000 new teams in the NBA

[Alberta's Child]

If a white supremacist from the Ku Klux Klan was asked to come up with the most insulting, degrading caricature of a black man that he could think of, he'd probably describe something remarkably similar to what is accepted these days as a "rap artist."

[Mr. Jeeves]

At 2 AM on the New York subway not long ago, I saw another scene—more dispiriting than my KFC encounter with the rowdy rapping teens—that captures the essence of rap’s destructiveness. A young black man entered the car and began to rap loudly—profanely, arrogantly—with the usual wild gestures. This went on for five irritating minutes. When no one paid attention, he moved on to another car, all the while spouting his doggerel. This was what this young black man presented as his message to the world—his oratory, if you will.

There was a time, not long ago, where NO ONE would have dared do something like this without fear of reprisal from five or ten large gentlemen in the train car, who would have not so politely surrounded the miscreant and advised him that if he didn't shut up he would be leaving the train at the next stop - face first. The biggest cause of decline in civility in America has been because the average man is now afraid to do his part to enforce "the code".

[HairOfTheDog]

Old Fogie alert! Fearing what is foreign to him.

What he saw was a group of teenagers who don't look like him behaving badly. He thinks it is that foreign music he hears that causes it.

I am no longer a fan of teenage rebellion music..... but I dug it when I was in high school..... Our rebellion music was sung by grungy lookin' white guys with long hair.... My parents and the other old folks found that threatening too.... when they could understand the words.

[r9etb]

Lest we get too far thinking that Mr. McWhorter is merely another complaining white guy:

[moodyskeptic]

It's a thoughtful examination of hip hop by, I believe, a black man. He laments the passing of the smooth Motown-style music of old, and I agree. In the sixties and seventies, black music was the best in America.

Now?

[gdani]

Is there anything more boring than an old(er) fart trying to dissect why kids listen to certain music?

I wonder how this author feels about Johnny Cash who has sung songs about:

* Shooting a man "just to watch him die" (Folsom Prison Blues)
* Doing drugs & killing his wife/lover (Cocaine Blues)
* Killing his wife/lover (Delia's Gone)
* Trying to kill his father (A Boy Named Sue)
* Breaking the law & fleeing from the authorities (Wanted Man)
* Getting ready to inflict violence on his boss (Oney)
* Dissrespect for the law (Starkville County Jail & San Quentin)

And so on.........

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[smith288]

Too much money to be made to have a conscience about making gangsta rap.

[rockfish59]

The latest idiot!

[Clemenza]

So completely was rap ingrained in their consciousness that every so often, one or another of them would break into cocky, expletive-laden rap lyrics, accompanied by the angular, bellicose gestures typical of rap performance. A couple of his buddies would then join him. Rap was a running decoration in their conversation.

Yeah, Rap "retards" alright. I see these morons on the subways and in the streets all the time. Even many of the Arab kids in my nabe walk around "rhymin' and stealin'" (I'm OLD SCHOOL here), which in my circles, would be evidence of severe retardation.

[A_perfect_lady]

Ah, McWhorter. He's my favorite! I just love this man....

[King Prout]

I believe the author misses one of the more pernicious effects/characteristics of rap: non-stop self aggrandizement. Listen to rap - all of the lyrics scream of "I did this, I did that, I banged dat ho, I capped his ass, I got this, I got that, I'm da bomb, damn yeah I'm PHAT"
Me, me, me... blah blah blah.
Self aggrandizement, nothing else.
Self aggrandizement, built on nothing but ritualized accounts of gluttony, vice, and violence. Defining as the quintessence of the admirable that which should more properly condemned as the most vile of the sins of man.
And people wonder about youth crime.