On June 24th the BET Awards were held in Los Angeles, CA. Standard procedure was followed for the ethnic award show, several musical performances with a few awards sprinkled in between. Among all the gripes i could make about the show i will save the remaining 34 and just vocalize the one which i feel is one of the most indicative of suppressed issues.
For the male hip hop award, my man Lupe Fiasco was not nominated. For a gentlemen who has contributed some incredible, innovative, and prolific pieces to a musical genre that is devoid of such attributes it excavates my heart to see him overlooked. For as much concept and musical structure as he puts into his music it is funny (or not) how he can win a grammy but he cant get a BET Award! Not as if he needs a BET statue would validate him, although i feel it would dignify their awards, it just shows our lack of direction. As a side note i should mention that the audience wasn't really clapping when they were listing the nominees and they said Missy Elliot but the people went crazy when they mentioned Trina. Missy puts exponentially more work into her music than Trina and it shows, however i digress.
People have the liberty to create whatever they would like, and that is fine by me. The more appalling fact is what the people support. When you have a song and you can say "that song is just like song x" then it really isn't that creative. Take the hip hop condition at the moment for example, one person makes something that's hot and then you have 10 replicas behind it, yeah the songs may sound catchy at the time because that's just like the other song that was hot. But are you really that talented if your song is just like many others on the radio. At that point you haven't created anything, you have just issued your version of it. On the contrary when you have something innovative and pioneering that's put together then thats what should be rewarded. That is pushing the envelope and showing true musical talent. So back to my man Lupe, his music is novel, articulate, and musically authentic as a song and not just a track. If you haven't noticed it really isn't about Lupe exclusively, the roots to this soliloquy run deeper than that.
Music is meant to do a lot of things such as evoke fun, tears, reflections, and many other feelings. Most of us like to have a good time and i am no different, but my deepest rift lies in the fact that we consistently like our music dumbed down. It doesn't appear that as a culture we enjoy our simple, fun, and exuberant tracks as well as the tracks that supply the content, we are always stuck on the same gear. As I state all the time, when people feel connected to the music thats when its potency is highest, and as fictitious as some of these tracks are it amazes me that people are able to label them as "real talk" and people don't realize how uncool and serious some of that talk is until it jumps off the paper into real life.
I will slow it down and finish with these few paragraphs. We are stuck in a bad gear and driving nowhere fast, at some point you have to take the hip hop car out of park and drive around the block and see whats really happening. Oh, and reward the people who are really putting their creativity and concept into their music, that's probably why Kanye was always so upset about awards, i would be too if people were winning awards for music i could put out in my sleep and i put intricate amount of details into my pieces and the awards are being handed to the other guys. It just highlights the idea that you can't give a kid filet mignon and a burger and expect him to pick the filet, he just doesn't know any better. Im gone!
Just had to get that off my chest...
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4 comments:
I agree, the dumbed down music is killing us. It is fun to party to, but it doesn't resonate with the other aspects of our community culturally. The substantive portion of us is too often overlooked.
Mister Mills
I also have to agree, there's a quote that says, "There are more letters in Business, than there is in Music". That to me says so much simply because no one is stepping out the box because they are afraid of the chances of not being success, not through their eyes but through everyone elses eyes. I love Lupe,Kanye, T-pain people are creative and are willing to show our people thats its ok to think out the box insead of following the crowd.Hip Hop supposed to be our voice to help each other and pull together, but every since snap music came into play Hip Hop has been about just getting that next hit. Its very sad the affects we are not realizing that the music is having on our culture
"Bishop G, they told me I should come down cousin. I flatly refuse, I AINT DUMB DOWN NOTHIN."
-Lupe Fiasco
I concur ( ; ) )with ur posting Mr. Wallington. Music just isnt music anymore. I love when artists creates a picture or tells a story that you can relate too or something that u have or havent thought about. Nowadays, it's just a beat with some wack lyrics that my 9 year old sister could have can up with. This is so depressing because "music is suppose to inspire" (L. Hill)....not give me a headache!
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