Since the Imus dust up, there's been building pressure on the Hip-Hop community to likewise clean up their acts with respect to the N-word, the B-word, the H-word, the MF-word, blah, blah, blah. It's not the first time such pressure has been exerted by member of the southside community, but now that Russell Simmons has weighed in on the side of buffin' hip-hop's image with a brillo pad and some Mister Clean, strangely there FINALLY seems to be some movement to where I've been tryin' to get that crew to move for the longest...
Recently there have been a couple positive developments on this front. The first came from rapper Chamillionaire whose summer album, Ultimate Victory, has been announced to be curse, n-word and misogyny free.Following closely on the heels of this announcement as a similar but larger reaching one by rap impresario Master P, who announced that he's creating a new rap record label that will focus on '100% clean lyrics'. I'm liking the sound of that and it's been long in comin'. It would be nice to think that this ephinany came from a desire to do the right thing but I'm more so thinking this shift as has more to do with green than common good. Sales for rap music have been on the decline - down 21% from 2005 to 2006 and no rap/hip-hop albums graced the Top 10 last year - and with Jesse and Al doin' all that yappin' about Imus, there's no way they can get away with not putting the focus on rap lyrics as well.
So given that, a brother would think that most rappers would consider gettin' on the bandwagon. Most rappers...then there's our boy Curtis Jackson. When asked by EURweb.com's Lee Bailey about his thoughts on the Imus backlash, Fiddy was quoted as saying, 'Man, fu#k that bull$hit, if I want to call a bit$h a ho, I'll tell her straight up and her bit$h ass ni%%er too! Or something like that. *Sigh*... well, nobody said that Rome was built in a day, but ol Ty is likin' the direction things are headin'.Peace@Least,
Tyrone
