C'mon Russell...

So last night as I was headed home I heard Russell Simmons being interviewed on NPR. He was being asked if he felt his record label has participated in the glorification of the gangster lifestyle and violence in general. He defended by saying that people in Compton have the right to talk about their surroundings and their experiences.

Essentially, I agree because that’s all country music is. People don’t have a problem with it because it is glorifying the cowboy lifestyle and the truck driver lifestyle.

That said, hip hop and rap obviously glorify the gangster lifestyle.

While it’s true that living in the inner city seems pretty shitty (Miami barely has an inner city, I lived in da ‘hood – I’d thank you to note the distinction), and the situations these artists sing about are surreal, they are also INCREDIBLE! These events are so distinct and special that 99.99% of Americans will never experience anything remotely like them in their whole lives let alone live in a place where they would have these experiences again and again.

That was a great thing about moving to Delaware. For example, I have only ever been shot once and to be honest it was in the knee and I was grazed really. Also it happened on the playground when I was 5 so I wasn’t doing anything cool. Plus, by high school, it was a just a faint mark. I had friends who had been shot up – 5, 6 real wounds all over. In Miami, I never brought up my “GSW” because it would just be embarrassing. In Delaware, where I have yet to meet anyone who has ever been shot – or even grazed, I am a giant among midgets. (Thanks to “W”, I bet I’m gonna end up not being too special any more. Plenty of people my age are getting shot up pretty good right now.)

…and I have to admit too that I don’t know many people in Delaware that have a past like mine. In Miami, because I never stripped professionally and never was “managed”, my friends (who had) said that me and “my kind” were just “users” – now, thanks to the spread of hip hop culture, we are not “users” – negative connotation, but “players” – damn, that sounds better.

…and when I talk to the uninitiated, I can’t help but talk about the incredible things that happened. I am “glorifying” that lifestyle. In a lot of ways, now that it is the past, I have forgotten much of what sucked about it and I don’t focus on ways in which living like that at such an impressionable age has made it difficult to blend into suburbia. Obviously, I am totally nostalgic about it too.

No, I am not a rap/hip hop follower, but these people who argue that it should be banned because it encourages young whites to feel disappointed that they didn’t grow up in the projects are missing the point. I would argue that Russell Simmons knows that what he said on NPR isn’t true. He knows the majority of these artists are not singing about their own real experiences. They are talking about these incredible stories. It’s about story telling, not reality. It’s about young people, rich, poor, black, white, in the US or the Ukraine feeling powerful, larger than life, bigger than their surroundings.

…and for those of us who have lived some approximation of these stories, know how far they are from the truth.

…and know that the only way into this world legitimately is to be born poor in a city, grow up with next to nothing, raised by family members who were just trying to survive themselves – and be surrounded by fear and violence at home, at school, every where.

…and it sucks

…but there is some poetic justice served every time a group of upper middle class white kids drives by me with their dark tinted windows and bass blasting. I spent my youth feeling jealous of them and it turns out, they think they would have wanted to live like me (Bill Maher: “little Ashley trading her kootchie for Gucci”).