Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkies up
Russell Simmons needs to sit down somewhere.
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I was watching Oprah yesterday and he kept insisting on calling these rappers artists and poets, and I am sorry but not all of them are. And the ubiquity of this derogatory language in a rap song is not explained away by the fact that they are poets holding up a mirror that reflects their experience. If they are poets 1) they should have a greater command of language so that they do not use the same language over and over again; 2)they should be conscious of the way that they are using language (and I just don't see that kind of consciousness reflected in much of this music); 3) there should be more depth to the experience that they mirror; Our communities are not one-dimensional filled with loose moraled women and men, drugs, and bling. There is much more going on there, and a poet should be able to capture these things.
I agree that we need to address the conditions that some of these artists rap about, but at the same time there are a lot of other artists that don't use that kind of language and still manage to communicate a message and a truth about their experience.