The battle lines have been drawn among African-Americans regarding language and content, and it’s quite clear that things aren’t going to be simple (if indeed they ever were). The latest target is comedian D. L. Hughley, whose comments on a recent Tonight Show regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team didn’t exactly go over well with many people. These included such insightful remarks as “these were some of the ugliest, nappy head women” he had ever seen. The furor over that hasn’t settled down yet, and on June 16 Hughley found himself the target of protesters during a concert at Bass Hall in Fort Worth. Pastor Kyev Tatus of Servant House Baptist Church said that “It’s not only that comment, he has a history of demeaning our community in such a way that it’s not funny anymore,:

Hughley responded by saying “I believe that freedom of speech is a zero-sum proposition. Too many times I have watched clowns like these pretend to speak for the masses. I can only speak for me. Isn’t there a child you can help teach to read, a war to help stop, an unjustly accused man you can help get out of jail? I will not apologize for telling a joke about the world as I see it.”

While much of this is overstated defensiveness, the most salient points Hughley made are the first and last statements. The contention that freedom of speech is a “zero-sum” proposition is one that many people simply don’t understand, including Hughley evidently. It means that everyone, be they racists, neo-Nazis, murderers, left-wingers or right-wingers are free to express their opinions. It doesn’t mean however that those opinions can or should be expressed without consequences. Those who utter hateful, vicious, ugly and racist statements deserve their fate and must take responsibility for what they say. I don’t think what Hughley said here is the worst thing in the world, but it was both unnecessary and humorless. I don’t think Hughley should be permanently banned from the airwaves or exiled to a foreign land, but anyone who’s upset with what he said has the right to express their displeasure in any and all legal means necessary.

But he was also accurate in asking whether there aren’t more important things in the world, both in Fort Worth and around the world, than some dumb statements he made on a late-night television show. In fact, right now he’s getting more publicity than he deserves, and the furor ensures that the comments keep being recycled in every town he appears.

Let’s be clear here. I’m not saying that reprehensible comments don’t merit some response. I am saying that too often our behavior is more reactionary than thoughtful, and overly focused on trying to silence things we don’t like rather than advance messages that are needed and could be inspirational. But right-wing talk radio is solidly entrenched in America, supported by corporations and hugely popular with the same people who blindly support Republican policies and actions irregardless of how much they cost them. Just because Imus was dumb enough to get caught in an untenable situation, no one should be silly enough to think that there’s no Madison Avenue support for the Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage types who are still on hundreds of radio stations nationwide and stay on the air despite daily doses of hate-filled bile.

What all of us need to do is decide for ourselves what we think is appropriate as adults. Parents of children can determine for them what they should hear and watch. Everyone else must make their own decisions, and here’s where things get sticky. I’m 100 percent in favor of artists presenting positive images, particularly of Black Americans who have long been the subject of hideous media representation. What I don’t favor is the imposition of someone else’s standards in a blanket, rigid manner. Protestors are well within their rights to make demands on the content of rappers, actors, comedians, radio hosts and anyone else. But when they start insisting that the government unilaterally impose their standards on everyone, we have a major problem.

There are coalitions out there now gathering to pressure major record labels not to release the music of particular individuals. It seems to me a better use of the time and energy would be to urge the signing of people making what you think is “conscious” or “positive” music. Not only does that establish a productive set of goals, it also prevents the likes of a Snoop Dogg or Young Jeezy being turned into a sympathetic figure and made the poster children of a censorship campaign.

Certainly the marketplace is currently flooded with questionable material, whether it’s rap or porno films or disposable books. But rather than waste time trying to block the publication of this stuff, how about getting more attention on what would be considered the alternatives. We’ve already seen how long it took for supposedly principled radio stations to end their R. Kelly boycott and start pumping his music 24/7 again. There’s a ton of worthy performers from Anthony Hamilton to Ornette Coleman who could benefit from more attention paid to them and less time spent agonizing over some dubious rap video or single that will be old news anyhow in six months.

At the near midpoint of Black Music month, rap bashing seems to be back in season. Certainly no one has to like everything, and there’s plenty of rap that doesn’t catch my ear, but then there’s also plenty of things in every other genre from jazz to reggae and gospel that also don’t do much for me. But so much ire directed at rap is coming from uninformed, misguided and in some cases elitist types like Washington Post columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams who weighed in with this nonsense. “African-Americans have seen intellectual cultivation, education and self-expression through the arts as the “key to equality.” Hip-hop culture is a denial of that history: it evolved in the streets, as a “cool pose” by young, uneducated black men filled with anger, violent impulses, and misogyny. Over the last two decades, that pose has come to define blackness: for middle-class black teens, “Keeping it real” means imitating thuggish hip-hop stars, while doing well in school and treating people respectfully are “acting white.” It’s crazy, really; of all of America’s ethnic and racial cultures, only Blacks have adopted the values of the lowest rung on their hierarchy.”

There’s so many historical falsehoods, dubious claims and outright lies in that screed we could spend a decade exposing them, but let’s just look at a few. Where does Williams think jazz and blues came from? They didn’t spring up out of the seminary or the academy, but in nightclubs, bars, on farms, in prisons, on people riding trains to Chicago, and in some cases houses of prostitution. Does that make them any less relevant or any less a part of African-American history? I also hate to inform him, but the anti-learning attitudes he decries (rightly) were around back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, long before anyone ever heard of hip-hop and rap. There’s a long and sad tradition of anti-intellectualism in America that you can see in everything from reruns of televised westerns to attempts at censorship in the schools. Blaming them solely on hip-hop is absurd. There’s no singular anything that defines “blackness” except how you feel about yourself, what you know about your heritage, how you interact with others and what you do with your life. The whole issue of authenticity is a dicey one, but in my view there are plenty of rappers who embody the best elements of blackness just like there are doctors, lawyers, athletes, classical musicians, scholars and many others across the board. Only those whose own self-esteem is shaky can be bullied by anyone spewing out blacker-than-thou rhetoric. Finally, I’d like him to tell people like Chuck D or KRS-One that they aren’t interested in helping uplift African-Americans through the arts. I’d love to see and hear their reaction to that type of drivel.

But disagreeing with those who’d dismiss all rap with a broad brush doesn’t mean that there aren’t some serious issues with what’s happened within the music. Here’s some justifiable and accurate criticism expressed by someone who’s been a lover of rap since the ‘80s. Brian Coleman’s new book Check The Technique – Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies (Villard) continues the tradition he established with Rakim Told Me in 2005, giving hip-hop fans the same type of insider interviews, session details, studio breakdowns and production tips and expertise that are regular staples of jazz, blues, R&B, rock, country, classical and world music journalism. Here are some criticisms he voiced of current rap as part of a wide-ranging interview, some of which was included in an article for the Nashville City Paper. Here’s material that wasn’t published there due to a lack of space.

StylesFree: Who would be your favorite rappers
Coleman: Public Enemy, De La Soul and Boogie Down Productions (KRS-One).

StylesFree: How do you respond to the array of criticism that rap currently gets about issues of content and language?
Coleman: That’s a tough question. I’ve never viewed myself as a cultural critic, but more as a fan of people who were making positive statements about their lives and their experiences. What I would say is that in the ‘80s, which is where a lot of the rap albums that are in the book were done, the sessions were really collaborations between the performers and the producers. A Tribe Called Quest talks about all-night sleepovers. Today there may be an album where you’ll have 14 or 15 different producers and I’ll bet you that most of them weren’t there in the studio with the rappers. You can really hear the difference there. There was a sense of camaraderie on these albums, whereas now everything seems more calculated.

But consumers need to demand more from the artists as well. These big labels are putting out these albums where there’s only maybe five good cuts out of 16-20 songs. I would urge people not to buy some of these records, but everyone has a right to listen to what they want to hear. For me, there’s far more interesting music being made on the indie rap scene than at the major labels. Just because you don’t see these people on MTV or on BET, that doesn’t mean they aren’t making great music.
Stylesfree: Still, the controversy is raging, and rap is regularly being denigrated, attacked and dismissed.
Coleman: On one side, I’m a staunch defender of rap. I love hip-hop so much that I’ll always stand up and defend it against attacks from people who don’t know anything about it, but feel empowered to attack it anyway.

But what I don’t stand up and support is music coming from people that I don’t think are making positive, constructive music. I won’t buy it. That doesn’t mean that I hate it, or that I think anyone who’s not doing what I think is positive music should be banned from recording. I admire Snoop Dogg greatly as a stylist. But I’m not running out to get the next Snoop Dogg record. I think that Byron’s documentary (Byron Hunt’s Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weights in on Manhood in Hip-Hop Culture that was shown at last year’s Nashville Film Festival and later on PBS) laid out a lot of the problems perfectly. It’s not a case that I’m necessarily right and someone else is wrong, it’s just the way that I see the issue.

I’ve never bought a Young Jeezy album, and probably never will. I think if you go back in this book and look at all the great albums from the ‘80s and play them, they still hold up very well today. I don’t think that will be the case with Young Jeezy, and that’s nothing against him.”
(Ron Wynn)

How rap is performed and recieved in other countries is one of my significant interests. I’m particularly interested in the scene in Japan. Though B-boys have been doing it big in Japan since the 80’s, many peeps are still a bit surprised that Japanese cats rap, let alone that the music is best selling and has influenced the pop music landscape there. For reasons I’ll get into in a follow up post, some people have an almost reflexive reaction to non-African Americans performing rap music — that those non-Black, non-poor people are “stealing” the music and culture, that they’re committing “cultural appropriation.”

I disagree. For now, I’ll hook y’all up with some youtube flicks of Japanese MCs and DJs doing their thing.

First up, Shing02, an indie rapper best known to the anime nerds for his contribution to soundtrack for the animated TV series “Samurai Champloo.” Here he is doing his Nujabes produced songs “Luv Sic and Luv Sic (pt.2)

Tha Blue Herb, a crew representing Hokkaido

Dabo, coming more from the pop side, collabin with a R&B singer Pinky

Skip the dorks from the TV show at the beginning and forward to the kids freestyling in the park

So, is this cultural appropriation? Why? Why not?