Pause For The Cause

Thug Mentality: A Pandemic Of Thought

PART 1 OF 3



Since the first slave ships docked in the "New World" carrying their precious ebony cargo, Blacks in America have been under a constant attack. Each decade has brought us new challenges and each generation has stood to face them with a resiliency that has long since characterized us as a people. But we are no longer in an age where our enemy lacks pigmentation. No longer are we trapped in a battle between our government or a racist ideology. No, we are in the age of the iPod and just like the advances in technology, the enemy of Black America has upgraded to a nice 2.0. We no longer have to protection of the Black Panthers and no longer fear the brutality of the Blue and Whites. Our enemy does not don green fatigues and utter Nazi rhetoric. Our enemy can be seen in our reflection. It is wholly familiar. Distinctly brown.



As you may have noticed, this is a departure from the usual humor I administer in these columns, but watching the destruction of a people is never a humorous matter. We should not laugh off our own degeneration or ignore the issue that is at hand. Please do not confuse me with Tipper Gore and the mothers of the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center). As an artist I fully understand that artistic expression is just that and can not be policed. This entry is not an attack on Hip Hop. While it is true that America and its political structure did at one point fear Hip Hop music, the fervent cries of the right have subsided to a quiet lull as has "hip hop" and dare I put it in quotations...as has "music". What it has been replaced with is a perversion of a genre of hip hop that was at one time both novel and thought provoking. Gangsta rap, as it was dubbed, was every bit as poetic and biting as the stylings of Public Enemy and KRS-One. NWA were truly Niggas Wit Attitudes who had each grew up in the distress of the Cali hoods and had earned the right to say "Fuck Tha Police". When emcees like Ice T spoke they painted vivid pictures of the hardships of life in the inner city. Not to glorify a lifestyle, but to heighten awareness of its existence.

Somewhere along the lines we became aware...desensitived...and completely uninterested with the horrors of the "Thug Life". Although it had always played a part, somewhere along the lines we became fascinated with the ostentatious. We became a parody of ourselves and somewhere along the lines, the beast that once couldn't be tamed had become the teddy bear the American public eagerly went to bed with each night. But while rap was busy transforming itself into an unintellectual super power it was all the while growing like cancer in the psyche of the African American youth. It gained billions in the process, but who exactly were the casualities in this war or attrition?

Stay tuned for Part 2