SAD RAP... By Nat Irvin

Sunday, March 13, 2005
Sad Rap: Trash music still pollutes the airwaves
By Nat Irvin
JOURNAL COLUMNIST

Nat Irvin
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I could not have been more wrong when, in a column in 1994, I wrote with conviction and confidence that "rap was running out."
A major radio station in Los Angeles had banned all songs that "promote drugs, degrade women, or promote violence" - the "gangsta rap."
Not only was the urban music industry trying to clean up its act, I thought, but also the mostly socially conservative black community would follow such people as the Rev. Calvin Butts, the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York and C. Dolores Tucker, a civil-rights leader. They had begun to speak out about rap/hip hop, which pretended to be entertainment and political discourse.
In truth, it was trash being peddled into the hearts and minds of urban youth by the music industry - at the expense of the image of black children not yet born.
I predicted that the idea of a boycott of rap/hip hop trash would spread "faster than the Santa Ana winds blowing across the hot California landscape."
Seen and heard worldwide
Just a little more than 10 years after, the video images of black women gyrating like oversexed rabbits to the delight of black men who are jumping up and down like chimpanzees, shouting some version of Ebonics, calling their sisters, aunts, mothers and grandmothers "bitches" and "ho's," has become a global phenomenon. This image is now seen in every corner of the world - wherever there is a television.
It's difficult to calculate the damage that has been done by the urban music-video industry to the image and psyche of young black people in America - particularly that of young black women. What black folks seem not to have realized is that a lot of this stuff is as radioactive, as poisonous, as crack cocaine was in 1980s.
Studies are beginning to show a direct correlation between the rise in STDs, unwanted pregnancies, increase in HIV-AIDS, drug use and the number of hours spent watching rap-music videos. What may be more damaging and harder to measure is the impact the rap videos are having on the self-respect of young women in urban communities.
Slap in the face
Nothing illustrates this point better than a video clip a friend sent to me. It's "Smack Fest 97," a contest staged by a radio station in New York. It features "Kemeisha from Queens vs. Ray Ray from Brooklyn." Two young black women take turns "bitch-slapping" each other in the face for three rounds until one of them gives up.
I watched in amazement as they slapped each other until their faces were swollen. Apparently the whole sequence was broadcast live with people in the crowd oohing and aahing as each girl's hand slapped the face of the other.
How had we come to this? I believe that it's happened because too many people who ought to have known better let it happen. Instead of condemning the use of pimp and pimpology, we've elevated it as if it were a badge of honor.
Last week the Rev. Al Sharpton called for a 90-day ban on radio and TV airplay for any performer who engages in violence - this after a fight broke out between two prominent hipsters who Sharpton feels are using the airwaves to romanticize their exploits. Essence magazine, teaming with Spelman College in a campaign against the misogyny and sexism in rap music, is calling for a major focus on the global impact the rap videos are having on the images of black women everywhere.
In a time when image and ideas are the most precious global commodity, the price we are all paying for the downside of hip hop and rap is enormous. Maybe we are finally waking up.
• Irvin is the president of Future Focus 2020. He can be reached at nat.irvin@mba.wfu.edu