Getting the Real Scoop on Rap Music
by Robert "Scoop" JacksonRobert "Scoop" Jackson disdains the way hip-hop music is getting a bad rap from some circles. And being the pro-active kind of brother he is, he did something about it.
"The Last Black Mecca: Hip Hop" is Scoop's 99-page effort to show the positive effects rap music is having and can continue to have on Black culture. The book is the outgrowth of his thesis done at Howard University back in 1991.
"I did the book as a defense mechanism to the way rap was publicly being dismissed and portrayed as a vehicle for the mayhem and confusion in our community. At the same time they (whites) are making money off of it (rap)"
Scoop says those who criticize rap probably have not listened to it, but get their opinions of rap through the media. The media, he says, promote the rappers whose message is negative while record companies make money by rap maintaining a negative image. Controversy sells.
"For every Two Live Crew there's a Public Enemy, for every Dr. Dre there's a Heavy D," he says.
The real pain in Scoop's heart, however, is that Blacks who criticize rap are not trying to get control of rap by forming record companies and labels, video production companies, publications, and other business ventures now being capitalized on by whites. If they would do that, he says, rappers would have more access to getting record deals and can become more positive.
"All the people talking about how bad rap is aren't doing anything to hurt bad rap because they're not backing the positive rappers. That's how we lost control of jazz," he says.
Rap artists, on the other hand, are a potential clientele base for Blacks coming out of law school. The new Black artists go into show business for the 'show' and not for the 'business' and therefore get hoodwinked by record companies with a staff of lawyers, he says.
"Rap music is a Black youth phenomena that has reached all parts of the globe. For African Americans to criticize and not financially support a medium created by Black children is basically an upgraded form of suicide," says Scoop, who publishes a rap-oriented magazine called The Agenda.
About the social impact of rap. Scoop says: 'The socio-political movement of the '60s has 'bum-rushed' the '90s with a microphone and has taken center-stage to do the job politicians refuse to do. Yet the mindset of a large segment of African Americans refuses to believe this, and detaches itself from the responsibility of supporting the efforts made by rap artists to educate and establish a future for young Black Americans."
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