Hip-hop

Over the last week Ruthie has expressed her concerns at the effects of the hip-hop lifestyle. She fears for what it is doing to a young nephew of hers and huge numbers of other young black men and women. She then wrote a second piece highlighting music which she feels showcases the positive potential of hip hop.

For those who don't know Ruthie she is an American journalism student and single mother that James Higham introduced to the British blogosphere. She mixes in cultural and political observations with her thoughts on her own life. Both the outward and inward looking sides to her blog are well worth reading.

The two posts are interesting not just as a look at what is going on in parts of the States but as the problems she discusses filter into the most troubled areas of the UK and other European countries as well. Dalrymple's discussion of French rap is revealing in this regard (as always with Dalrymple the entire article is indispensable reading):

"But at the same time, official France also pays a cowering lip service to multiculturalism—for example, to the “culture” of the cités. Thus, French rap music is the subject of admiring articles in Libération and Le Monde, as well as of pusillanimous expressions of approval from the last two ministers of culture.

One rap group, the Ministère amer (Bitter Ministry), won special official praise. Its best-known lyric: “Another woman takes her beating./ This time she’s called Brigitte./ She’s the wife of a cop./ The novices of vice piss on the police./ It’s not just a firework, scratch the clitoris./ Brigitte the cop’s wife likes niggers./ She’s hot, hot in her pants.” This vile rubbish receives accolades for its supposed authenticity: for in the multiculturalist’s mental world, in which the savages are forever noble, there is no criterion by which to distinguish high art from low trash. And if intellectuals, highly trained in the Western tradition, are prepared to praise such degraded and brutal pornography, it is hardly surprising that those who are not so trained come to the conclusion that there cannot be anything of value in that tradition. Cowardly multiculturalism thus makes itself the handmaiden of anti-Western extremism."

To end on a positive note my favourite hip-hop track is this one: