The problem with hip-hop in '16

Amanda Hudgins wrote an article over at Unwinnable about rap artists for people who don't like rap.

It was in reference to an article she had come across that was almost all white rappers. I posted a little rant in the comments, which I'm posting below. As you can see, I caught some feelings.

This is a sore subject to me, because I find rap music on the whole to be problematic, and acting like it is racist to think it is problematic is bullshit. Anyways, my rant is below:

I’m white and I listen to a lot of rap music. While rap music isn’t all about bitches and the grind, a lot of it is, and most mainstream rap is. Mainstream rap has become what hair metal was in the 80s-cookie-cutter songs about sex, drugs, and partying, a lifestyle that none of its listeners enjoy but all would like to have. Even if it isn’t about sex, money and drugs, it’s full of profanity in a way that no other music is. Every fourth word out of Kendrick’s mouth is either the N word or the B word, and he is one of the best rappers around today. I love vince staples, but I can’t listen to that around my wife or kid because it is all curse words.

I have a friend who was trying to listen to more hip-hop, so she checked out kendrick’s good kid album. She said she wanted to like it, but it was like getting hit in the face over and over again with how much he said bitch. And she doesn’t want to hear racial slurs. She stopped trying after that.

I listen to the local hip-hop station, and every song is about sex, cars, and drugs. Every fucking one, only with the swears blocked out so that it is like watching a porn movie with a black bar over the genitals.

The alt-rappers everyone got excited about four years ago were odd future, who rapped about raping women and called everyone a faggot.

Even Anderson Paak, the fucking Bruno Mars of hip-hop, has lyrics full of bitches and n-bombs. I was rocking Malibu with my kid the other day and alla sudden some lady is saying she wants him to fuck the shit out of her. There’s another one off rotation.

I struggle to find rap albums I can listen to with my kid that are not rife with profanity or sexism. Even the Native Tongue’s stuff isn’t safe. I can get away with Blackalicious, early Tribe, early De La (but not “De La Orgy!), Digible Planets. That’s about it, I mean that I wanna listen to. I’ve been going with jazz or R&B. Yes, there are rappers who don’t swear, but there aren’t many rappers with more than 1,000 plays on Spotify who don’t swear.

Rap has chosen to embrace raw language as some sort of brand of realness. Twenty-five years ago it was shocking to hear the n-word in a rap song and you had to seek out those records. Nowadays they get played on mainstream radio, with the swears blurred out. If hammer was starting out today his song would be “Can’t Touch This, Bitch.”

I know I sound like a pearl clutching old white lady, but it’s something that bums me out.