Spoken Word Blog

I just found out about a cool hip-hop website. Rapartists.com contains lots of information, news and media related to rap music and hip-hop. You can talk about hip-hop on their forum, look up information about your favorite rap artist, and more.

They have some nice top 10 lists for songs, artists and albums. They also list new releases. You can register on the website for free.

As a website, rapartists.com is well-designed and easy to navigate.

Overall, it is really a great website for anyone interested in rap.

Here is something I wrote today about judging hip-hop music based on the mainstream rappers who go on about sex, violence, and money:

Commercialism and art never mix well, in my opinion. That’s why the type of music, be it hip-hop or not, on the radio, on MTV’s TRL or on BET’s Rap City is not generally considered high quality. It is to music what McDonald’s is to food. It’s meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I do not mean to insult mainstream art or those who produce it, but I just mean to point out that it is meant to appeal just enough to large groups, but not to be artistically deep or beautiful. From a commercial standpoint, it is preferred to have a whole lot of people like your work a little bit than to have a few people love it a lot. What sells is sex, violence, money-talking, and light-hearted fun; and that’s true not only for music, but for movies, books, TV shows and so forth. And that’s fine because every so often we all like to sit down and watch a relatively superficial but fun movie or go to the club and dance to some silly new song.

From an artistic view, the greatest art is generally not the most popular, mainstream or commercially successful.

What do you think?

Big Lou told me about two YouTube videos each with one of his songs. They are more hip-hop music than spoken word, but they are deep and poetic. I love both songs, and I highly recommend you watch the videos.

The first one, entitled Stop Hittin Me, deals with domestic abuse:

The second video, entitled Crack Head, deals similarly with serious real life issues in a powerful way:

Like I said, I love both the songs. They are catchy and cool like the type songs you would hear on the radio, but these Big Lou songs are so much more real. This is what hip-hop is really about, in my opinion. What do you think?

Today I am happy to tell you about Beats45.com, which provides royalty free hip hop and R&B beats and sample CDs.

They use a decade of professional experience to build quality beats for others in the audio industry. Since the beats are royalty free, that means you can use them in your performances and products without having to keep paying money over and over. This is important for an artist or producer trying to come up with the next big hit.

In addition to the $5 beats, Beats45.com also offers free downloads, a MySpace page, and an up-coming eBay store.

If you are working on songs or interested in it, go check out Beats45.com to get quality beats for your songs and other audio-work.

Today I have something different for you than a spoken word poem. BET aired the following animated music video that satirically mocks the current state of mainstream hip-hop. D’Mite wrote and performs the song, entitled Read A Book:

I like the video and song, which literally made me laugh out loud. I like how it uses humor to not only mock mainstream hip-hop, but also to actually deliver some positive advice, such as reading, hygiene, and investing (in land). Of course, the positive advice contrasts to mainstream rap which now mostly promotes self-destructive behavior and stereotypes.

Unfortunately, commercialism controls mainstream hip-hop and rap, and all mainstream music for that matter. Record companies make money by getting young “artists” to act like nasty idiots. Sex, violence, and name-calling sells. Stupid sells. This results in bad role models and the furtherance of negative stereotypes.

Luckily, spoken word has mostly escaped commercialism in comparison to rap and pop music. You can find talented artists all over the spoken word scene, rather than a bunch of people who sell out to make a few bucks from crooked record companies.

What do you think?

Carter Media Enterprises reports the following press release:

With the success of HoodGrown Records debut release, Cartel - Prepare For Glory, hip-hop’s first and only digital label wants to give thanks to its supporting fans with it’s “Brix: Real Talk Remix” contest.

Up-and-coming hip hop artists and rappers can download the FREE album, Cartel - Prepare For Glory, which features rapper Brix’s original version of the song “Real Talk” and an accompanying instrumental, write their rhymes and submit an a cappella version to HoodGrown Records. The winner will be featured on the hip hop remix to ‘Real Talk’ and listed on the album artwork.

“This was one of the most popular tracks on the album. People haven’t heard a female with such intense lyrics in quite some time,” says HoodGrown Records CEO Chris English. “With so many people supporting this project, we thought it would only be right to give someone the chance to feature their talent on the song with her.”

The contest will run from August 13th - September 10th 2007, and the winner will be announced on September 24th, 2007. Contest details are available at:

http://www.hoodgrownrecords.com/brix-contest

HoodGrown Records is a new type of record label founded by the creators of HoodGrown Magazine and your browser may not support display of this image.Musica360.com. Digital music is the future, and with more people discovering new music by utilizing the Internet, HoodGrown Records is poised to take advantage of the latest online and mobile communications technologies and leverage the power of the Internet to market and promote quality music all consumers.

Based in Baltimore, MD, Carter Media Enterprises is a full-service communications firm, providing hands-on programming and marketing consultation for companies, institutions, organizations and individuals. From creative and conceptual development to final production, we deliver a holistic and creative communications plan that gets your business or service the results it deserves. For more information, visit www.cartermediaenterprises.com.

What do you think?

Ashley L. Battle recently wrote an article about the introduction of hip-hop studies into the University of California:

Michael Barnes, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at University of California at Berkeley, founded a hip-hop studies working group on campus as a place for students who are studying hip-hop in other departments to discuss their projects and share information. He is writing his dissertation about authenticity in hip-hop culture, mainly through the lens of DJing.

But as a new and often misunderstood topic, what obstacles will hip-hop face as it is analyzed in the classroom?

One obstacle, said Aya de Leon, who teaches poetry and “spoken word” at University of California at Berkeley, will come “from people who have a more traditional perspective–anything newer or popular or working class or developed by people of color is unworthy of study. Another is that the transitions that it will make into the academy will have a very fragmented relationship with the community it comes from.”

Read entire article by Ashley L. Battle.

I think it helps to have classes available about any topic. Students perform better if they can choose to study subjects that interest them. Additionally, as a major part of modern culture and society, it seems a truly complete education needs to contain some understanding of hip hop.

Chris Jordan recently wrote an article about a hip hop event supporting the acceptance homosexuality:

[Hip Hop is] an ultra masculine, rough-and-tough world, where even the slightest suggestion of an acceptance of an alternative lifestyle is pounced upon as not being street.

Street equals sales.

“Hip-hop is a kind of art form that’s always had a lot of male bravado,” said Scotch Plains spoken-word artist ShadoKat. “It was born in the streets and it’s always been a faux pas to allow that kind of diversity into the music.”

The Hip Hop: Out, Loud & Proud program, which takes place Saturday at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, seeks to open up the corridors of hip-hop culture to the voices of all sexual persuasions.

“Basically the point of the night is to raise awareness that hip-hop is an art form that’s had a variety of diversity of people who have been part of it and will continue to do so,” ShadoKat said.

Read entire article by Chris Jordan.

I don’t have any problem with homosexuals. I see someone’s sexuality as merely another personal trait, like hair-color or favorite-food.

Nonetheless, I do find the idea of a gay rapper odd - not necessarily in a bad way, though.

I would like to see more acceptability of homosexuality in the rap/hip-hop community. Since rap artists tend to also come from underprivileged backgrounds which often included facing discrimination, I think they can work together with homosexuals to address their mutual problems.

Luckily, I think the spoken word movement has relatively much more acceptability of homosexuality than most movements and places.

What do you think?

Bakari Kitwana recently wrote an article that conected commen misconcpetions surrounding hip-hop with the Imus incident:

When Don Imus put his foot in his mouth on the air last week with a dirty and derogatory reference to young black women, he was articulating a message that had been clearly voiced by Michael Richards, Rush Limbaugh and countless others long before him. Ditto the white law students at the University of Connecticut who donned big booties and blackface this year on Martin Luther King Day, as well as the rash of undergraduates across the country, from Michigan to South Carolina, who somehow imagine that hosting “pimp and ho parties”is a good idea.

That message is this: The aesthetics of hip-hop culture - from the language and clothing to the style and sensibility - can be absorbed into American popular culture like any other disposable product without any effort or responsibility on the part of the consumer.

It is an idea in part ushered in by the marginal voices of black youth themselves, youth so eager to be visible that they gave up far too much of their identity in the interest of partnering with the corporate music industry. Together, and all the while green-lighted by the Federal Communications Commission, a handful of rap artists packaged and commodified rap music (not to be confused with hip-hop culture lived daily by countless youth around the globe at a local level, from graffiti and break dancing to deejaying, spoken word poetry and political activism.).

Encouraged by the quick bucks, this partnership was quickly reinforced by additional peddlers of one-dimensional images of young black men as violent, and women as oversexed bitches and hos - from filmmakers and television producers to music video directors, comedians and beyond.

Read entire article by Bakari Kitwana.

The overly sexy and violent nature of mainstream rap and “hip-hop” comes from mainstream American culture, not hip-hop culture. Hollywood, record producers and TV conglomerates peddle sex and violence, because it sells. They took only parts of hip-hop that they can package and sell. That’s why rapping became the most prominent part of hip-hop in the mainstream: because CDs sell much easier than break dancers and graffiti artists.

Blaming hip-hop for mainstream hip-hop artists is as silly as blaming singing for Brittany Spears. If you turn on the TV, you’re more likely to see Brittany Spears than Andrea Bocelli. You’re more likely to see overly violent, overly sexy and overly vulgar rap than cultured hip-hop.

Like all pop music, mainstream rap is the manifestation of mainstream American capitalism and commercialism directed towards an oversexed and violence-obsessed consumer-base.

What do you think?