I was chatting with a friend recently about the current state of R&B music, lamenting what it has become. When I was growing up during the late 60s and 70s, what was the pride of the black community, and one of the few opportunities for material success, became increasingly tilted towards sexual promiscuity and irresponsible behavior. Then came rap in the 80s which further added gratuitous violence and misogynistic messages into the stew. Music is and has always been a powerful force in the black community, which, during the days of slavery, forged communal bonds and told stories of struggle. Yet over the past 30-40 years, R&B music has done the black community a great disservice. Many incredibly talented people have been getting wealthy peddling destructive messages by getting into the consciousness of our people through the power of music, and yet we remain mostly silent. In case you haven’t yet, consider the message of the song Shame by Evelyn “Champagne” King. Here is an excerpt of the lyrics:
Shame. My mother says you’re playing a game. And what you do to me is a shame. Gonna love you just the same. Mama just don’t understand.
And here is an excerpt from her song I Don’t Know If It’s Right:
I don’t know if it’s right, to let you make love to me tonight. I don’t know if I should, give my love to you, when I know you’re no good.
The shift in the 70s towards negative, counterproductive music was concomitant with increasing attitudes of sexual promiscuity and a marked increase in out-of-wedlock births. Now the reason I use these two songs as examples is because I love Evelyn King’s music. While some would beg to differ, I think Shame is one of the most brilliant, innovative dance songs I have heard. The intro is incredibly fluid, and throughout the song, the musicians blend texture and nuance to produce a memorable performance that sounds fresh even today. So my problem is not with the music itself, but the content of the words in the music. Indeed, we had the same phenomenon in rock ‘n roll music (notable examples are What Was Your Name? by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and almost any song by Boston), but the difference is that whites were not coming out of almost 400 years of slavery and institutionalized discrimination. What blacks needed was uplifting music that celebrated the ideals of an aspiring class of oppressed people, not music that encouraged behavior which would effectively provide as deleterious an affect as past oppression. It is one thing for some other group of people to hold you down, but it is entirely another thing to allow your own people to hold you down who would influence you to act against your own best interests.
Over the past two decades, whites have become more involved in rap music, whether behind the scenes through production or as artists themselves, taking it to even greater heights of commercial success. These are the ones who send their kids to private schools, and don’t allow their own kids to consume the content they produce or use the same language they do in their albums (as Eminem admits), yet they know well enough that unsupervised children in many single-parent homes are buying and listening to such destructive music. Doesn’t seem to bother these artists no matter the color. As long as they’re making money, the situation or the age of the person consuming such poison is none of their concern. They’re really no different from the Hollywood “limousine liberals” that preach to everyone else about global warming, yet take stretch limos to red carpet events, and fly around the world in private jets. Anyway, I’m getting off topic, but I think you know what I mean. Sheer hypocrisy, and only because we enable such behavior.
The operative question, in my view, is why would greater freedom bring about a decrease in morality within the black population, instead of causing blacks to use that freedom to take advantage of newly available opportunities to succeed? Why did we not set in our hearts to become the best educated workforce that sought the best jobs in engineering, medicine, and law? Other persecuted groups and immigrant groups are doing just that, particularly here in Southern California. What we need is an awakening within the black consciousness that will take our focus away from entertainment (and sports, our other Achilles heal), and towards a focus on education and professional excellence. Not that we should exclude entertainment and sports in the process, but not allow them to drive so much of our thought and action.
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