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I was content with leaving it at that and not doing anything on it in my blog. But the morning after the Academy Awards, within hours of the news brief running, I received a gang of phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages asking my opinion on what transpired the night before. What Do You Think? How Do You Feel? I know you have an opinion, etc etc etc
I eventually just told everyone they would have to wait til I wrote my next rant on my blog. Even then I still hadn't intended on really doin anything but again the phone calls and emails kept coming in. Then I started reading other peoples perspectives on The Industry Co-Sign and Davey D.com just to name a few,
First let me say Im torn, In a perfect world would I want a record called Its Hard Out There On A Pimp to down in the history books as the first rap performance of the Oscars, hell to the nah! But with that said would I want Denzel to win an oscar in what was a great performance but his most ignorant role or would I want Halle to be the first female to win in years for her role, well what can I say about monster Ball
help me out Jada,
Why Halle have to let a white man pop her to get an Oscar
Why Denzel have to be crooked before he took it
So am I surprise that The Academy Awards picked Three Six Mafia to be the first rap performers, when they could have gotten Will Smith to perform Men In Black, which was the biggest thing in the box office that year and would have shown hip-hop in a much more positive light. The bigger picture with the Three Six Mafia, Denzel and Halle oscars is the message it sends to aspiring actors and recording artists. Why do good roles like Malcolm X when you can get an Oscar for a Training Day. So in that respect we are continuing to get pimped and pushed to put out material and leave behind images that alone don't represent us in the highest light at all. Is Hollywood pimping us? Yes just as much as the major corporations that own all the big record companies. Hold up, my bad arent they some of the same
But to be mad at Three Six Mafia or a song called Its Hard Out There For A Pimp that was in a movie about a pimp with asperiations to make it big in Hip-Hop, is pointless. Triple 6 wrote a original score for a movie and they capture the essence of the movie with that track and thats all we can expect from a recording artists. I read somewhere that we should be happy they didnt select Whoop That Trick as the song to be performed. I personally think Hustle & Flow was a good movie and we don't benefit from just having a feel good, positive sanitized black flicks, but I do feel there should be a balance.
In hop-hip everyone wants to talk about how it was back in the days. Yes we got knowledge from PE but we were pumping F*#K Tha Police by NWA as much as we were Fight The Power, and Boys In The Hood and Menace To Society were relevant flicks of the time as Beat Street and Wild Style. The problem as in today's music is when there is no balance. Combine that with a lack of leadership and positive role models to show boys how to become men, and girls how to become women, the miseducation of the black youth and the continuous programming of negative lyrics and images on the television and radio every 22 minutes and we have today's youth.
So do I think Hollywood is Pimping us? Yes I do, but I believe there is a much bigger picture we should be looking at. The same corporations responsible for some are images Hollywood produces are responsible for the images seen on music television (videos) and the records we hear. What can u expect from Paramount Pictures Corporation (the company that put out Hustle and Flow), a subsidiary of media firm Viacom (who aquired Paramount in 1994), who owns MTV and BET, that brainwash our youth with the images they play everyday all day. The Sony Corporation who owns Sony Electronics Inc., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., (PlayStation) and a 50% interest in SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, one of the largest recorded music companies in the world. (Arista, Jive Records, J Records, RCA Records, Sony, Sony Urban, So So Def, etc). And lets not forget about Warner Brothers multimedia company that includes books, magazines, records labels, movies studios and televison stations.
When you look at it in that light, we are expecting too much that these companies that make all this money off of us to care about the end result of their products as long as it keeps selling, especially since we support everything they give us. Why worry about the effects of images our people digest willingly, when we support some of the most degrading images they can produce. My point is to get mad at Three Six Mafia for making that song for the movie or Terrance Howard for acting his ass off in the movie or John Singleton for making it a relevant look on what's goin on in that region and not just another negative sterotype serves what purpose. Stop supporting what they are giving us, Stop buying the music, watching the movies and television shows. Call BET, MTV, Ya local radio station where hip-hop lives and demand more of a balance or refuse to support them and organize a boycott or better yet and Ive said this before threaten their sponsors. When their advertizers complain, these corporations listen.
On Moment Of Clarity, Jay Z spit:
I dumb down for my audience
And double my dollars
They criticize me for it Yet they all yell "Holla"
If skills sold Truth be told
I'd probably be Lyricly Talib Kweli
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
(But i did five Mil) I ain't been rhymin like Common since
When your sense got that much in common And you been hustlin since
Your inception F*#k perception Go with what makes sense
Basically to sum it up when that attitude, while totally understandable is what's wrong with Three Six Mafia being the first rap group to perform at the Oscars and being forever documented in the history books. And when songs like Its Hard Out There For A Pimp wins an Oscar, when Denzel wins for Training Day and when Halle wins for Monster's Ball, this is the attitude our youth adapt. Its like why go to college when you can get a 100 million dollars endorsement deal before your graduate high school and haven't played one day in the NBA yet.
So instead of getting mad and complaining at the pawns what are you goin to do to send these big corporation a message, that we aint excepting what they are force feeding us or our children anymore.
AND THATS MY TAKE ON THE SUBJECT,
HOLLA BACK AND LET ME HEAR YOURS!!!
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