I recently read an article called "The Secret Meeting that Changed Rap and Destroyed A Generation" (link:http://dontpaniconline.com/magazine/music/the-secret-meeting-that-changed-rap-music-and-destroyed-a-generation) that forced
My Inner Conspiracy Brother to rear his head after a bit of a hiatus. This was a meeting in 1991 in L.A. featuring all this time period's big music execs and conducted by mysterious but ridiculously powerful men. The music execs would find out that the small body of "decision makers" had recently invested in building privately owned prisons and needed "the help" of the music industry to ensure the prisons stayed full, maximizing profit. They'd identified rap as a genre which could market violence and crime in order to negatively influence the young, vulnerable generation, which would like produce more criminals. If the music execs participated effectively, they would be allowed to buy shares in this venture. It offended many of the music big wigs in the room, however the few who verbally objected were forcefully removed at gunpoint. The article's author chose to maintain anonymity even all these years later because the "decision makers" have the vast power to "touch" individuals and their families they perceive as a problem. Assuming this meeting happened, think about the tremendous effect it has had. Rap was born from the hood and there was always a gangsta faction, which was previously held underground and couldn't make the radio; groups like NWA had trouble getting airplay for their singles in the late 80's. When they broke through, these acts broke through in full force...as if the execs all of a sudden favored them to get more national attention than the previously favored acts. Nowadays, the radio - once the home of the most lyrical and groundbreaking music - is virtually unpalatable to me. Make no mistake, there are plenty of good artist out there, but the message-filled music of even the hottest young intelligent lyricists (Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Big KRIT, the controversial Macklemore, etc.) are woefully outnumbered by drug/violence laden trash like "Young Nigga Move that Dope", "All I Know is Yayo" and "My Nigga, My Nigga"; I don't even bother learning the names of these terrible mother fuckers anymore, they all sound the same. This is a trend that I noticed long ago that I blamed on the rise of gimmicky artists and focus on beats and party potential rather than message and lyrics. But reading about this meeting has added to my thought process. Even more than the business ethic "Provide what sells", there may have truly been more devious influence from label heads than I would have guessed. It would be very telling to find out how many people associated with the music industry ended up investing and making money off of shares of corporations building private prisons as well. Do I think this meeting alone could truly create that many more criminals? No. With groups of mysterious decision making bodies (i.e. Illuminati, etc if you believe in that), I believe there were probably similar meetings with the power structure of entertainment, sports, or whoever else as well; think about how wide-ranging such an influence could have possibly been responsible for. This contributes to my distrust of large corporations and anyone else who uses the "it's just good business" defense when putting a wide scale unethical practice in place. And even though it wasn't the cause, it damn sure didn't help. They didn't create bad artists, but they may be a big reason why they weren't laughed out of the industry upon arrival as they should've been. Am I reading too much into this? Maybe, but I'm not sorry, my
Inner Conspiracy Brother is on the loose...
