MC Garage/'Rap Cultue' blamed for rising gun violence in UK

It must be possible for someone to say "gun culture in rap music is bad" without people assuming it's an attack on ALL rap-culture.
What the hell is the academic at the end of the first piece doing trying to say ... "well, there are rap bands who speak out against gun culture therefore all rap is innocent"? Huh?

Nor do I see why criticising garage music for promoting guns is racist. Garage is far less uniformly "black" than hip-hop was back in the days of NWW)

Having said that, I don't remember any particularly gun oriented lyrics on the So Solid album. What about their videos (Which I haven't seen)? Mind you, the idea of So Solid claiming to reflect the "poverty" they see around them, when the whole album is focused on boasting about their success and wealth, is pretty disingenuous.

For once I think industry seem to be the ones overreacting here.

he said that rap is a wide church. he didn't say whether it was 'innocent' or 'guilty'.

But saying that a poor kid on a gun-ridden estate should listen to uplifting conscious lyrics not violent ones is like saying that 16-year-old Tom should have been listening to happy love songs not songs about how miserable people were and how they couldn't get laid: they were exactly the songs I was rejecting for not being credible.

Guns work in music as a metaphor for power and respect - the reason they work is that they have become a route to those things in real life. How do you tackle *that*? I have no concrete idea. I think that musicians not bigging up guns would help a bit, I think trying to enforce that, or letting it seem as if it's authority getting the musicians to do it, doesn't help at all.

The point is that we're beyond treating "rap" as a single monolithic thing. We should be beyond treating all criticisms of rap as "generalized attacks on black culture"

This kind of overgeneralization could be made by either side ... politicians or the musicians. In *this* particular case, reading the quotes, sounds to me like the over-generalizing is being done by the music people rather than Howells.

..they talk about the frustration of how they are often perceived, denying that they promote the gun culture associated with them.

"When they listen to our music, they're just hearing gun, kill, you get me? Drugs, weed, listen to what we're talking about," explains Megaman.

"I'm just ringing alarms, I'm ringing alarms for all the people that can help these people.

"I don't see no wrong in doing that. If I'm talking about a gun or I'm talking about weed, this is my experience, this is my lifestyle.

"You put me in this system, you put me down here, you put my parents down here to live, so I have no choice but to grow up round these things. If you want me to talk about Bentleys and nice cars you gotta put me in that environment, you get me?"

"Directly, we say that we speak about our lives, our experiences - that's what we've experienced so that's what we have to speak about."

Lisa Mafia adds: "I think that's where our downfall come - because we are street guys. We used to be street guys, we're coming out of it now.

"People are reflecting off the yardie killings and stuff like that and putting it with us because we came from there. They're just guessing that we're the same kind of people but we're not."

Fine.

But where did the hataz come from? How come all rap stars have mobs of hataz when 70s rock giants had the odd lone nutter? Who made hataz into a lifestyle choice equivalent to fans or groupies?

Or maybe hataz don't really exist, part of the rap fantasy lifestyle. But rappers believe their own hype and get paranoid anyway?

None of the quotes attributed to Kim Howells mention black people or black music.

So Solid Crew have different colored members (either oxide or neutrino is white for a start). Eminem (though not British he is the worlds most famous rapper) is white.

But where did the hataz come from?

Perhaps because the people come from such poor, tightly packed communities there are people left behind who don't 'make it' and who get jealous. Perhaps the musicians just aren't nice people? Perhaps the displays of conspicuous wealth stick in some people's maws?
This kind of music does benefit from an enemy.

These are all questions by the wat, not my answers. I Don't know.

Imagine if Nurse With Wound had released _Straight Outta Compton_!

Imagine if Nurse With Wound had released _Straight Outta Compton_!

Oh God! Freudian slip ... but my, what a concept!

Last year I commented that "Robbie Williams takes elements of daytime Radio 1 and Test Match Special but fatally removes the meaning from both" and that I liked and trusted "Jay-Z and Fairport Convention, and nothing in between". That's my aesthetic, right there.

Ah well Carmody, stop the waffling. I agree with everything Tom said and also with Matthew's and Phil's comments. I think the reason for the "white liberal media outrage" is that the complete independence of the music industry from any sort of government intervention has been so well-established in Britain for so long, and has been part of so many of our national moral positions (ie our staunch opposition to Communism and status as America's strongest European ally in the Cold War, etc etc) that any hints otherwise are viewed with suspicion.

"Government sources last night indicated that a massive anti-rap campaign will be launched to nail the lie that guns are cool."

You've made killing cool

And Conor Mcwhatshisface is a tosser. The fact that he's editing NME shows what a travesty the music press is in this country.

I'm tired of this government making up policies on the spot to appease the media.

(sad to say, even those former team-mates who have been hung out to dry for tony's skweekykleen sake tend to take "the tsar is badly advised" line...)

http://www.base58.com/misc/sun030107.jpg

(sigh....too much time on my hands again...)

I feel alienated by Blunkett's views on this matter, but his cultural attitude is merely the sort of puritan socialism which dominated the Labour Party until 1963 and was still widespread in the 1980s. He makes me realise why I consider myself to be a liberal social democrat, not a socialist.

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/mirror/jan2003/2/4/0006AA9F-83A8-1E1A-838580BFB6FA0000.jpg

btw top Photoshopping blueski - did you actually rewrite the whole article too? I can't tell...

(and no, it wasn't me who asked the question)