Allow me to give you a brief history lesson. In 1955 a young
boy by the name of Emmett Till (originally from the north) visited some of his family
in the south and while he was there, was dared by some friends to flirt with a
white woman, which he did. After finding out, the woman’s family kidnapped him.
After beating him, shooting him, tying him to a cotton gin and throwing him
into a river, the family felt as if justice was served. Till was just 14 years
old. The men responsible for killing him were acquitted of charges, and the
case received national attention, bringing into question civil rights for
African Americans in the US, and is said to have played a large role in sparking
the civil rights movement.
So I’m
sure at this point you might be wondering what this has to do with hip-hop.
Well today while I was browsing through some current events a particular story
struck me. Lil Wayne is receiving heavy criticism for a line in a verse he
recently dropped which disrespects Emmett Till. The line stated, "I beat
that pussy up like Emmett Till." (The song, in case you were wondering,
was Karate Chop (remix) where Wayne was featured by Future.) This is very
disheartening for multiple reasons. The first is that this is showing major
disrespect to the African American community and spits on those who have worked
so hard and sacrificed themselves so that African Americans today can enjoy the
rights that they did not have back in Till’s
day. The amount of disrespect that this one line has is unbelievable and
I absolutely cannot believe that nobody saw this offensive line in the song
before it was released to the public. Furthermore, this has been the second case in
which a rapper has come under major criticism for their lyrics as Rick Ross was
recently dropped as the spokesman for Reebok following controversial lyrics
that seemed to advocate rape. Wayne, wanting to avoid being dropped by his big
sponsor Mountain Dew, issued an “apology” to the Till family (aka a bullshit
statement that eloquently dances around a real apology) and the Till family
actually did not accept the apology, as it did not actually apologize for any
wrongdoing!
I have
been a huge fan of hip-hop for a long time and to see the kind of lyrics that
have been coming is starting to really disturb me. I mean I know the lyrics of many rap songs
have been under scrutiny ever since N.W.A. in the early 90s, but even I think rap has been taking it too far
lately. Many songs that I have seen in the past that had controversial lyrics
were still part of a bigger picture (for the most part). Whether it had
political motivation or was just part of an artist’s struggle to stardom, many
rappers have used graphic or obscene lyrics in order to paint the ugly picture
of living a tough urban life to their audience. But things such as rape (or
even hinting at it) or disrespecting the people who have helped the progression
of civil rights are not only unnecessary, but give the genre of hip-hop a bad
name. I think these recent controversies have forced us to ask the question:
What can be done to resolve this problem? I ask this because I feel that more
than the artists are to blame for these issues. Managers, producers, record
companies, all of these people could have stopped these songs from being
released before any sort of conflict could have come about. Should there be
fines, suspensions from recording, or some other punishment that these artists
and/or their labels should face for these? Saying you’re sorry (not even that
in the case of Lil Wayne) is only a bandage to a bigger problem that has been
coming up too much lately and there need to be more proactive solutions to stop
this from happening again.
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