I like what Danielle Charette has to say here… I also like her taste in music!

John, to speak of at least something I know, the thing about Public Enemy’s Fear of A Black Planet is that it was one of those albums everyone was salivating for, thus sold millions, but…admit it…it just wasn’t that good.

As for the idea that what explains gangsta rap is “Much money was to be made by selling white audiences a cartoon version of their own racism,” well, there’s a good deal of truth to that, but not enough to avoid the really sad truth that “Much money was to be made by selling black audiences a cartoon version of their own self-hatred.”

And some self-hatred is pre-emptive meeting of others’ lowest expectations. Or to get still more twisted and complex, as Shelby Steele’s theory of black identity might put it, such “self-hatred” might be the strategic adoption of a certain black identity mask, a criminal version of what he calls the “challenger” mask, in such a thorough way that the mask takes over–the gangsta image one wanted to manipulate others with winds up eating its way into the real you.

In any case, IMO the mainstreaming among blacks of N-word use for self-referential purposes is the spiritual key, the word of words, to the disaster that gangsta rap became for blacks. More on such theories in another post, when I get into Martha Bayles’ take, but gotta run…

Here is the prescient passage:

“Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress.”

Sounds like Rap to me …

My experience of B.I.G. is primarily though Top 40 hits like Hypnotize where he creates a loathsome power fantasy in which the character he plays lacks even the sympathetic qualities of anti-heroes like Tony Montana. My take on B.I.G. was pretty hostile.

But I don’t think my I was seeing what there was in B.I.G.’s work that has extended his influence years after his death. So I figure there is more to his rapping that didn’t get radio play on the pop music stations.