Rappers telling kids to stay in school, hypocritical?
October 2, 2007
If you're new here, make sure you subscribe to the Nubian Waves RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I ask this question because I am always reading press releases or stories about a rapper or rappers performing in support of education. The latest one is the “Stay In School” concert taking place this month in New York City.
From the release:
“Our 2nd Annual Entertainers 4 Education Stay In School concert/rally is gearing up to be a huge event as you can see from the line-up and we’re expecting to announce many more mega-stars who are putting their voices behind education,” explains ENTERTAINERS 4 EDUCATION ALLIANCE Executive Director, TONYA LEWIS. “Our goal with this event is to show our children through entertainment that education is important. We’ve brought together some of the coolest music, sports, hip-hop and R&B artists who support education and we’re especially excited that HOT 97 and Catapult Online have chosen to partner with us along with our many sponsors including fashion company, Lot 29, who are all encouraging our children to stay in school.”
Some of the people performing:
- Lil Mama
- Juelz Santana
- Cassidy
- Jim Jones
Now the thing I find that is a trip, is that these personas rappers take on as a performer (in many cases, it is really them) counter a lot of these positive causes they participate in. So what do you think? Is a rapper whose music relies on the negative but then he or she turns around and performs at a function like this, being hypocritical? Does this confuse our youth? Will a little boy watching a rapper who may talk about dealing drugs and having a “magic stick” take this from the situation:
Oh I can go and sell drugs, drop out of highschool, rob people, and glorify it but then turn around and say ‘don’t do what I did even though I made millions from it’.
Things that make you go ‘hmm’…
What next? Subscribe to Nubian Waves
let’s not act like today’s youth are simple minded. they already know to stay in school.
is a drop out parent telling their own children to stay in school, hypocritical?
does it even matter who tells a child to stay in school as long as somebody is telling them to do it?
bill gates dropped out of college - should he not tell young adults to stay in college? would it be hypocritical for him to encourage it?
every artist in the industry has said at one point or another that you have to learn the business of the industry you interested in. you can’t do that without the basic skills of reading and writing.
you can’t even be a profit making artists recouping all your expenses for the label fronting you if you can’t read.
to suggest our youth are simple-minded and without the common sense to know they need an education in order to make any money doing anything is ridiculous - it doesn’t matter what the person’s profession is encouraging them to stay in school.
you have to know basic math - fractions/measurements along with multiplication/division in particular to be a successful drug dealer.
so what if Jim Jones is encouraging our youth to stay in school. our youth may listen to him before they listen to their own parents.
using the word “hypocritical” just doesn’t seem very unifying to something so needed within the “nubian” community nation-wide.
@legacy
1. I asked a question and did not specifically call it hypocritical. I actually don’t feel it is hypocritical.
2. I asked the question for the following reasons:
- to get feedback from Nubian Waves readers
- to examine the quagmire of the situation which is rappers who shove the negative part down kids throats all year round, but then 1 day they choose to take a positive role aimed at a few students in an auditorium. I would prefer that this be flipped and more positivity be spread.
My stance is not that they should not speak to kids or do other good things, however, it is that their positivity should out weigh their negativity.
Think about it in regards to math -100 + 2 = -98 (the mo%#&@$!a is still negative lol)
I am all for rappers giving back to the community, but how much good are they doing when their negativity outweighs the positive?
Interesting.
As a “youth”, I’m so tired of people telling me to stay in school. I know I need to stay in school!
I can enjoy the music of the people performing, but i don’t know them personally, so why would I take important life advice from them? Its just not ‘Lil Mama’s’ job to tell me to stay in school. (Mayb SHE should have stayed in school so she can come up with something better than Lip Gloss.)
I believe it is a mixed message to send to us. I ‘think’ i see Bow Wow up on the poster, and he’s been rapping since he was 12. Now he’s maybe 20 years old and has probably never seen the inside of a highschool. What does HE know about staying in school?
I believe that if more black kids had momma AND daddy at home being PARENTS and making their kids go to school, we wouldn’t need events like this. It could just be a concert where we simply enjoy the music.
Once again, like Nas said “Intellectuals will only half listen”. Rappers who actually have something to say other than what you hear on the radio have been saying this for years. Just because they were sucessful and made a bad situation into a good one, they keep in mind the hundreds of others that didn’t get that break for various reasons. They know whatever they did in the past wasn’t the best way, but when you’re young and you don’t really have anybody teaching you the right way, they only ppl that are active in your life are the pushers, pimps etc., then what do you expect a child to do, and that’s what they did. You always have ppl telling you you should do the right thing but the problem with the previous generation is they dropped they ball they didn’t show us much, they got theirs and kept it moving but now have a problem when we have a significant portion of the younger generation making mistakes. That’s retarded. But like I was saying just because they went through doesn’t mean they youth should and that’s the message they are trying to send. They are saying if you’re going to make it big, don’t get to it THE WAY I did. Make a better way for yourself. And if you actualy listen to what’s being said instead of keying in on specific words, most people would know what the message of any song is. You can’t judge what rap is and has become by what’s on the radio, listen to the albums and go from there, that’s where you find the real music assuming you know how to separate good artists from the bullshit artists. T.I. is a prime example of this, he sends a message like this on every album. basically telling those aren’t from the hood or even if you are but you not a street dude, don’t fake it, be who you are and make a better way for yourself cuz a lot of the rappers that’s getting fame ain’t the ppl everybody thinks they are. One song is on his new album T.I. vs T.I.P. #16 and I think the last song on his Trap Muzik album. He is just one example of this. It isn’t all about negativity.
[…] this is what I am talking about. Rappers outweighing the negativity with positivity. Good for him. Like this article? Make sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed WidgetBucks - Trend […]