Headline News

This caught me totally off guard. As I was waiting for the latest news on Hurricane Mitch and Newt's waning Speakership, I heard this blurb: "Hip-Hop is no fad, in fact it's going twenty years strong. Coming up after the break, learn why." They were playing clips of Lauryn Hill and OutKast.

I guess I should be happy they recognized hip-hop at all, but as is typical of media coverage, the report was a bit shallow and one-sided. Their basic focus was that hip-hop is youth music, and they added insult to injury by saying it's popular with young people because it has hooks and singers now. As if to make the point, they had the video for Pras "Blue Angels" playing in the background. They had a lot of respected industry figures like Russell Simmons and Nelson George who I'm sure expounded at length on the power of hip-hop and it's evolution over the years, BUT when cut down to easy to digest soundbites we were left with statements like "It's about a bunch of old people speaking to young people and telling them it's all about them." It got reduced to fluff.

It's hard to be insulted when the often ignorant media gives any coverage to hip-hop at all, but nevertheless I'll be insulted. Even in the infintessimally short amount of time that is a minute, they could do better justice to hip-hop. In a minute's time I could take you from Kool Herc to Jay-Z and do so fluidly. What CNN or should I say Headline News did was offer us a placebo pill instead of the medicine for what ails us by way of their scant coverage; the majority of which is usually negative and deprecating. It does little to set right all they have done wrong all this time.

Peace, Flash

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