Great responses to this topic!!!
As long as the white teen male is the target audience of record companies, artists like Mos Def, Common, and Talib Kweli better find other ways to express themselves and make a living, because their consciousness will not sell to white teens who fantasize fetishistically about the "ghetto youth hunting each other down and searching for sexual conquests"
On VH-1 about a week ago, they ran a show about the making of the "Raising Hell" album by Run-DMC. One of the producers was a Jew named Rick Rubin. He purposely placed heavy metal guitar rifs in Run-DMC's songs (King of Rock, Rockbox, etc.) so as to appeal to white teens, because he knew, even back in the early stages of hip-hop, that if whites didn't like it, then there would never be any "real money" in hip-hop. Raising Hell was the first hip-hop album to go platinum, not because of the songs like "MY Adidas" and "Peter-Piper" which many black folks liked, but because of "Walk this Way" a song that most black folks fast forwarded through (we only had tapes) and even the group itself didn't want to do, but was persuaded by Rubin to do. White folks ate it up, and now this album is a classic? I do not think so.
Even on the west coast, White Jew Jerry Heller convinced a young DJ named Andre' Young and an ex-drug dealer Eric Wright to express the west coast ghetto lifestyle on wax to appeal to white suburban male fantasies about a lifestyle too dangerous for them to actually experience, but too "intriguing" for them not to be fascinated by. What Young and Wright (BKA Dr. Dre and Easy E respectively) came up with was NWA. Every since then, authenticity in hip-hop has been about "ghetto passes" and sexual prowess.
Now the future of rap is being described in increasing circles as limp bizkit, Eminem, Kid Rock, amd Korn. While the black hip-hop-ers are being relegated to side shows and minstrels still trying to cash in on an image that is fetishized by whites, rather than create new and innovative hip-hop art. Years ago, when I heard people say that rap was a fad, I laughed. And now when I hear people say that rap will go the ways of Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll, I believe it. In 5 years, we will not be able to recognize hip-hop anymore, it's sound, content, and image will only appeal to whites, and people will be saying that it is hard to believe that black folks came up with this, just like our generation looks at rock and roll.
Blackwatch!!!!