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3/2/03:

An interesting NPR story unfortunately relegated to the thinner weekend audience -

Hip Hop: Today's Civil Rights Movement? wherein media studies professor Todd Boyd makes the likely discomforting assertion that the present state of the Hip Hop movement has more currency in addressing Civil Rights (through defiant positioning and ironic excesses) than retrospective views of Dr. King's peaceful dissent. He writes: "I would suggest that you might get a better read of what's going on the world of Black people today by listening to DMX on It's Dark as Hell is Hot than by listening to the repeated broadcasts of Martin Luther King speeches." The Real Audio Stream does well in sampling the aformentioned references to DMX, Jay-Z, and Tupac in presenting Boyd's argument that these rather excessively marketed rap products advance the causes of 60's freedom marches and 70's Black Power movements.

But allow me to bring in some other sharp words from Ursula Rucker's "What???" -

posted by jeremy @ 1:44 AM

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