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by special guest columnist Jamarhl Crawford aka Uno the Prophet
In reality, to commercialize something only means to prepare it for mass consumption in a public or "commercial" market. The problem then, is not the commercialization of an artist or their music, the problem is the artists who are chosen to be commercialized and the music they produce. Once again, these same powers that be have successfully popularized simple minded foolishness with the slick packaging and promotion of their sister Tobacco corporations who peddle sweet death to innocent children. Breathe Deeply. We all know that the business side of the industry is full of pencil-pushing artistic cowards who are scared to death of new ideas and experimentation. The popular thinking seems to be that if one DMX is good, 10 DMX's are better, so we get caught up in a clone syndrome as theorized by the Roots. The tragedy of it all is there is no historic precedent for blocking new music on the basis it won't sell. On the contrary, the newest and freshest ideas brought forth by artistic visionaries & musical geniuses have enjoyed unparelleled successes when they were allowed to come full bloom. Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Marley, Jimmi Hendrix, James Brown, Public Enemy, Erykah Badu, and Lauryn Hill, have all come forth with what we can imagine may have easily been seen as "too risky" to be put out and most likely would've gotten turned down by an A& R who couldn't see an audience for the views expressed. Give Thanks that it did come out, and when it did it went platinum and travelled the world and some of it even 20-30 years later remains as popular, if not more so, than it ever was. When artists are allowed to explore and express themselves without restraint, the people are blessed with some of the best music ever heard. It is incumbent on us as the consumers of music to ensure that the true voices of our culture are valued to a deeper degree than the musical puppets who are made to dance on strings in front of us for the pleasure of the Baylonian incarnation of Japetto. We must support the underground, flip the paradigm and popularize cultural integrity. Let us commercialize consciousness by only supporting that which supports us. Make the underground the above ground and let us chase the interlopers and cultural infidels into the subterranean environment of obscurity. If the music buying public stepped forth as an organized consumer base we could demand in a unified voice to hear only things which edify our soul instead of whore it.
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The copyright of the article Commercial Consciousness in Hip-Hop Music is owned by . Permission to republish Commercial Consciousness in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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