Week 7: Politics, The Media, and Money.

     This week we read about three different works, but the one I want to focus on in particular is Imani Perry's Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop. Most prevalent to our current discussion in politics is in chapter one of Perry's book titled "Political Location." This is where Perry explains how rap and a politically charged social identity are perceived together and the effect that each have upon one another. The complex relationship between the two have been debated since the birth of rap culture. I agree with Perry when he states that rap music has been (associated as) "a scapegoat for social ills and reviled for it's negativity in many social structures" (Perry, 27). Politically, rap music, to me, is the focus of negative attention due to the ignorance (not stupidity) of those who fail to understand the importance of a globalized world and the U.S. melting pot. Perhaps we should not be focused so much on the music as the focus of negative attention but that color of the skin of those who perform it. Indeed as a society we seem to relate prison, drug trafficking, and symbols of sexual aggression to African Americans and other minorities over Caucasians.

     Hopefully I am not diverging from the path of rap and politics too much, it is just that this chapter has spurred my curiosity on why African Americans seem to be criticized harsher than other races. How many of people ar emore familiar with investor Bernie Madoff, operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history or O.J Simpson for his sentence of "not guilty" that is still disputed to this day? Would be have believed it had O.J. been white or hispanic? Will we remember that Tiger cheated on his wife? Or the Brad Pitt did? 


      This brings me to my thought on the media and the importance it plays in creating an "image" for those in the music industry. Before the inventions of MTV and BET, hip hop seemed much more politically conscious than music now. Perhaps it is the point we stressed in class that the rap music of today lacks the importance social movements that were once popular among civil rights activists or during the era of Reagan. However, the media has and will always continue to choose sides of who is deemed 'good' and who is deemed 'bad' in conformity to social norms, so what happens to the message rappers? They chose the good, but not to the tastes of the music industry. It is sad to me that the inner culture of hip hop seems lost to us compared to what makes the most money.