Anyway, the issue I read contained a bunch of relatively short interviews with big name musicians/artists like Courtney Love, Tim Burton and Marilyn Manson. While most of these interviews were pretty vapid, there were two in particular that stood out to me as being reasonable when it came to the socio-political questions. I even found myself agreeing with them. The weird part is that the two I agreed with were: Chuck D, formerly of the rap group Public Enemy, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of Southpark (which I can't stand).
Here's what Chuck D said about rap and kids. I think it's applicable to most popular culture, not just rap.
Spin: You once talked about rappers filling the void for kids who didn't have fathers. How do you think that's evolved?
Chuck D: Are you asking has there been more damage than good? Of course there has been. In hip-hop we've got a couple of generations of fatherless kids who haven't veen given any direction, and there's a certain type of face that's put out there because of what sells, and that's gonna have an effect. A nine-year-old is gonna be influenced by what a 20-year-old says. And if the 20-year-old sees himself as having a child's mentality, then you're gonna end up with some side effects, and we're going through 10 or 15 years of living with those side effects.
S: How did you address that in Public Enemy?
CD: I chose not to share my adult life with kids. If I'm at a party, why the hell do I want a 12-year-old next to me at the party? By the same token, if I was gonna say something on a record, I had to be conscious of the fact that not only are the so-called streets watching, the kids are watching. And ultimately, the streets are less important than the kids. They always have been. You can't share these street things with kids unless it's something they're ready for and can use. I've always thought that way. I thought that way before I had kids all the up to now when I have teenagers. My attitude with my music and Public Enemy was always the same. If I'm gonna say something to kids, it's gonna be beneficial to them in some way in the long term.
S: But people in the music industry usually say they're just giving consumers what they want or they wouldn't be buying so much of it?
CD: Here's the double-talk: The record company says that they need to get their 12 to 17 demographics poppin'; the radio says they've got a youth audience, but at the same time, they're all promoting a song about a strip club. The videos are appropriate for, like, 30-year-olds, and the artists are between 25 and 35 years old, so I'm like, "Yo, how is this for kids?" But these companies can get [the kids'] money and their minds, and to me that's virtual pedophilia, exploiting young people and not giving them anything to help them grow up and fight off what the world's gonna throw at them. At two in the afternoon, you got records on the radio talking about "Face down, ass up." What the hell is that supposed to mean?
S: But what about the argument that these records are providing a cultural voice that needs to be heard?
CD:A voice that needs to be heard by who? There's always somebody saying that shit who lives somewhere else. I live in the black community; I have to seriously look at the cause and effect and say there's got to be a better way. That voice needs to be heard by people who can make some sort of social or structural change in the community. It doesn't need to be heard on a record. One think I just can't nod my head to is the fact that there's a lot of people who know better and are smart enough to defend against this, and they just don't. Maybe they don't wanna be called a nerd. Well, I don't care if you think I'm a fuckin' nerd; this is just what I am.
Now I've never listened to rap (save for a Christian group called JC Crew when I was in the sixth grade, but I don't think that counts) but if this is the philosophy behind old school west coast stuff, sign me up. I would welcome the rise of Black pride rap. Anything would be better than the mysoginistic, violence-laden imagery of current stuff. We need more guys like Chuck D; articulate, thoughtful, caring. We could use more people like that everywhere, not just in rap. And we need less thugs, less teenage harlots, less "virtual pedophilia." And less of me starting to sound like a crotchety old man, but hey, this is what I think. Especially since I have a child.
And here's what the Southpark dudes had to say. Warning, as you might expect, it is a little profanity-laden.
Spin: Did you guys vote in the 2004 election?
Parker: We did an episode of South Park right before the election and it will tell you exactly what we did. We didn't believe we had to choose between a turd sandwich and a giant douche. And we weren't going to waste one minute of one day. If it would have been between a giant douche, a turd sandwich, or an awesome guy who speaks really well and is really cool --- Stone: Or maybe just even a normal guy. Parker: ---we absolutely would have gone and voted.
Spin: DO you get the sense that the youth of America now are just totally fucked?
Stone: I don't. I think they're smarter than we ever were. Kids get so much schooling, even kids who don't go to private schools, and there's just so much more stimulation and sources of information. I spent the 1980's riding my BMX bike around town and having nothing to do. You could go to a movie, but there was no cable, no DVD, no internet, iPods, cell phones -- what the fuck did we do back then? We played around in the dirt. We were totally bored.
They also have a few comments about Michael Moore that I found funny, or sad. Apparently they turned him down when he asked them to do some animation for Bowling for Columbine so he just faked their animation and put it in the movie right after his interview with them. Of course, Mr. Moore is not exactly famous for playing slow and tight with the truth. Anyway, the point is, people always look at the past as some idyllic time when everything was better, and the kids weren't Godless heathens, but I don't think that's true. Pretty much, life has always sucked, you just don't remember it that way. Me? I look back at my childhood and it seems like a relatively wonderful time, but that is only because of my ignorance at the time. I mean, we were in the middle of the cold war for crying out loud. We were in the greed decade! The economy was in the toilet! So just because I remember certain times as being good doesn't mean they really were.
Also, do you know what you never see out the windows of a train? The nice part of town. Nope, it;s just slums and chemical plants as far as the eye can see.
Also, I think it's sad how easy it is to predict which people entering a subway station are going to get on which line. White people? Red Line to Shady Grove. Black people? Green line. Seriously, when I take the train home, it's almost always white people exclusively. Or other non-black people. So I can't let it go to my head that I live in such a diverse city. I don't. I live in a very segregated city. And another thing I hate about the subway is that it makes me see my own bigotry. Sometimes I feel like I have more in common with the black or hispanic blue collar construction guys in or near the stations than I do with the other besuited men with briefcases. But if that's true, why do I walk faster, look down and hold my briefcase tighter when I walk by the blue collar guys on the street? Damn me and my ingrained prejudices!
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