Arrested Development’s Lead Singer Speech Thomas Shares Thoughts On “Straight Outta C

This pretty much surmises my feelings about, "Straight Outta Compton" and the barrage of blaxxpoitation films that are sure to follow after the film's success.

http://beansouptimes.com/arrested-developments-lead-singer-speech-thomas-shares-thoughts-on-straight-outta-compton/#sthash.bozT9UQJ.dOAy3FxJ.dpbs

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Part 2

Part 2:

 

Wow!

Good read, the quote below is an eye opener.

 

I know some won't agree with me, but the birth of gangsta rap and the glamorizing and celebrating of the criminal/gang lifestyle, and the subsequent generations of Black youth who listened to those albums as a BLUEPRINT on how to live their lives, has been as detrimental to the Black community as the introduction of heroin and cocaine in the 1970s.


Gangsta rap didn't invent crime or gang violence, but it did pour gasoline IMO on an already smoldering fire.

Gangsta rap became the soundtrack for living the thug life.

Thumbs down.

All this phoney artistic crap by MCs like Ice Cube claiming all they're doing is retelling life on the streets in their lyrics is bullshit.

You see how most of that Compton/Long Beach rap family kept their kids faaaaaaaar away from the lifestyle they rapped about.

 

What about movies and video games?

 

Kids can recite entire albums of their favorite rap artists. You don't see that level of saturation in a person's consciousness with movies or video games IMO.

There used to be artists who although popular in the Black community, were understood as not something you listen to in public or among 'decent' folk because of their content.

I remember as a kid listening to Richard Pryor albums in the basement of my uncle's house because of all the cursing and sex talk.

Gangsta rap is just such a bizarre phenomenon.

If NWA came out a decade earlier there would have been boycotts in many Black communities not to sell their music.

It's sad that the whole Black criminal subculture became mainstream through gangsta rap.

Compare the complex message in Curtis Mayfield's Pusherman to the generic Jay Z or Biggie track.

We're going in the wrong direction.

 

Gangster rap or crime rhyme, according to one sociologist, is action movies for the ears. Some of what is explored in the music either really happened or it was fictionalized for profits. The film Scarface directed by Brian De Palma, also influenced rap and hip-hop. Al Pacino and De Palma were surprised by the film's influence even though it was a cautionary tale. If you look at the first film with Paul Muni you get the idea. Anytime I hear or read about a rapper in jail or a in a conflict of some ki d with another rapper, I wonder what they are proving to their fans. Not much, really.

 

Without seeing reality of drug dealers prosper at an age too young to legally work a job; the things that young guys see in videos would simply be viewed as fiction or a life style that rich people have. I could use what I seen for an example. Guys in grade school with more money than teachers had in their pockets, who never seemed to wear the same shoe twice, always had the latest clothes from the most expensive store in the mall, all the while living in the projects.

Is learning calculus now in order to go to school 6 years for an MBA or STEM field more appealing to a teen than having more money than they ever seen in their life within a few weeks??

I knew a guy in the 9th grade that had a gold chain that looked exactly like the one big daddy kane was wearing in the picture below. Never worked a day in his life and if he did, Mc donalds wasn't ever going to pay like that. Think it was fake? How about that Benz he drove to school in the 11th grade? Was that fake?

The point I'm trying to make is the allure of the "streets" was a clear visible reality to anyone close enough to make the bad decision to pursue a life of crime, with or without rap. By itself rap could have been no more influential than the movie "goodfellas". Young black kids may have wanted to join some sort of mob after watching the movie but would have thought no more about it than their desire to become James Bond.

Saying that rap was as detrimental to the black community as the introduction of heroin and cocaine is a huge error. The addiction of the drug was the detriment and the money was the allure.

 

If anything rap music lead to the trend of flaunting prosperity from crime not the crime itself.

 

Very wise words :smt023

 

Just saying when you combine the reality of life on the streets with its own soundtrack, gangsta rap, it creates a combustible mixture worse than quicksand for many economically and socially deprived young Black men.

It's like, big time drug selling in the 'hood has been going on since the late 1950s. Rival crews have been staking out territory nearly as long.

But when crews started toting MAC 10s, TEC 9s, Uzis, etc., the death toll from drug game skyrocketed.

Semiautomatic weapons aren't the cause of drug murders or drug selling, but they made the situation 100x worse.

Like the introduction of the machine gun during Prohibition made bootlegging a mass murder operation.

Like Speech said, gangsta rap isn't some authentic artistic voice from young Black men at street level. This shit is being developed, produced, marketed and sold by multi-billion dollar media conglomerates.

Gangsta rap is, or was, the biggest selling genre in hiphop.

At one point it was so bad that many young people, Black and other, bought into the stereotype that to be a 'real' BM, you had to be on some level about that thug life.

That's insane.

People have a right to listen to whatever they want. I sure as hell do.

Biggie might be one of the greatest story tellers in music I've ever heard, besides being a gifted lyricist.
But I was listening to the Ten Crack Commandments at the gym a few days ago, and thought Biggie could have rapped about countless real stories from the 'hood and had his message still be potent.

Instead he wrote a track that literally told anyone how to get started dealing on the corner.

When I see how our community has way too many young BM in prison for non-violent drug offenses, whose lives are essentially over,(how many of you are really interested in hiring a 20-something BM ex-con who was in prison for 10+ years for cocaine distribution??), it's hard for me to have a warm and fuzzy feeling about gangsta rap.

Think how many young Black folk consider the murders of Tupac and Biggie political assassinations, instead of what they really were, personal beefs that went too far, and you know the influence of gangsta rap is deep in the psyche of the Black community.

I'm not going to look it up now, but I'd love to know how many BM were in prison in 1980 and how many are incarcerated circa 2014.

Also, how many BM were in prison for non-violent drugs offenses in 1980 and how many in 2014-15.

 

To be fair all "gangsta rap" didn't and doesn't glorify a life of crime. Here the once popular group mob deep speaks to a side of drug dealing that is rarely seen from the outside. They speak to how one crime can lead to another and have a tragic ending and how the "street life" can cause paranoia and keep you up all night worrying from the trouble it brings.

Same thing the ghetto boys did with "mind playing tricks on me"

Not too long ago Plies made a song about how he was driving his mother crazy when he was in the streets. A lot of people may not realize how their choices affect the people that love them and he did a pretty good job of touching up on the subject.


[YOUTUBE]KdF8wEfP6MQ[/YOUTUBE]

 

I agree. Simply talking about it doesn't mean you are glorifying it. Context is everything.

 

Niggas don't do "context" though

 

Too much nuance?

 

Put it like this, how much "nuance" do you hear in any black stand-up comic's routine who isn't Rock or Chappelle, and how do their black audiences respond?

 

And with that, RicardoCooper drops the mic and exits stage left. Lol

 

Hahahaha