Ever since Imus laid down the Hip-Hop Card as a defense for his silly-ass statements about the Rutger's Basketball team - I've been hoping that people would know better than to pick it up.
Unfortunately I hoped in vain.
Michelle Malkin on O'Reilly April 12th:
"Whose mouths are the words coming out of? So, Snoop Dogg doesn't bear any responsibility for spreading this filth? And Young Jeezy, and Crime Mob and all these people, they don't bear responsibility? It's all whitey's fault?"
Color me surprised and skeptical that Malkin even knows who Young Jeezy is. I'm even more skeptical that she could acually name specifric song or lyric by these artists that matches the comments made by Imus.
But here's the thing: We've already been down this road before and the artists always win.
Malkin was essentially using this arguement to bash Al Sharpton of course...
"When was the last time Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson looked at the top of the Billboard hot rap tracks charts? Just look at it this week. Every single one of the top six songs has the N-word, the H-word, the B-word. When was the last time that Al Sharpton said anything about it? Was it two or three or four years ago?"
And here I thought conservatives just got all weak in the knees over the magic of the marketplace - but as it turns out both Sharpton and Jackson have been arguing against vulgarity in popular music, particularly black music, quite recently. Sharpton brought it up as he eulogized James Brown and recounted their final conversation.
SHARPTON: It was the last conversation we had. He said to me, "Reverend," he said, "I've been watching you on the news. I want you to keep fighting for justice. But I want you to tell people to love one another. I want you to fight to lift the standards back." He said, "What happened to us that we are now celebrating from being down? What happened we went from saying I'm black and I'm proud to calling each other niggers and hos and bitches?" He said, "I sung people up and now they're singing people down, and we need to change the music."
So much for those "Why doesn't Sharpton try to clean up his own house" claims.
Oh and as a matter of fact, Billboard doesn't have a "Hot Rap Tracks" chart, it's actually called "Hot R&B/Hip-Hip" and the top six songs are as follows (link goes to lyrics):
- Robin Thick - Lost Without You
- Musiq Soulchild - Buddy
- R. Kelly or Bow Wow Featuring T.I. and T. Pain - I'm a Flirt
- T. Pain Featuring Yung Joc - Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')
- Akon - Don't Matter
- Mims - This is Why I'm Hot
Contrary to Malkin's claim none of these songs say anything about "Bytches" or "Ho's" - although besides being fairly trite and vapid most of them are sexual. Only two songs - "I'm a flirt" and "This is why I'm hot" - actually do say "Nigga" several times, but it's not used in a negative or derogatory context.
I'm not surprised that the actual filth content is so low, we all know that if it were the FCC would have put most Hip-Hop radio stations in the "Po House" or else their broadcasts would be one long Beeep!
Snoop Dogg and Young Jeezy aren't even in the top ten right now - but Crime Mob (featuring Lil Scrappy) with "Rock Your Hips" is at number 8 and in the interest of being "fair and balanced" here's a lyrical sample:
Lil' Jay, on the track,nigga, aye & you already know, its ya boi lil scrappy
we finna have the whole M-F world, rockin'in dis b*tch,
look at shawty check her out. southern smokin
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