Will Hip Hop be banned?

Seems that I am sensing a strong backlash against hip hop culture, or what is negative hip hop culture, epitomized by 50 Cent and Nelly. Their whole value system is based on just money, hos, and dollars, and I know that all in all it's wrong for hip hop to go that route, but I don't want to see it banned.

I like Essence Magazine's Take Back the Music series, which is mostly a woman's magazine attacking a sexist culture. Hip hop has always had a sexist vibe to it, especially when it has in the past been connected to the Pimp Game which it has nothing to do with, even though Too Short is one of the first to blow up the Bay Area out West. Personally, I feel that if women want to gyrate and model in videos there is nothing wrong with that; it's an image and I don't feel that this content has to be banned from videos, like the ever popular "Tip Drill".

I've seen the Tip Drill video on a bootlegged copy of one of Buckwild's X-rated shows, and you know what? That is where it belongs. This is young adult entertainment for those over the age of 18 or 21, whatever you feel the legal age is. Just like Richard Pryor's and Redd Foxx's nasty records were kept away from kids generations ago, this to me is the same thing. However, I don't understand the demands of the people who don't like Nelly. Do they want the music to never be made? Do they want Nelly to disappear? Should he scale back on his artistic expression? How would the world be a better place if a video such as Tip Drill was never made?

I just feel it should be kept out of young kid's hands, but I'm concerned about other people's agenda of wanting to ban this stuff.

I guess the argument is very complex now, and the factors are so overwhelming. There is the breakdown of the family in all of society's sectors, there is the corporatization of rap where all these big entertainment and media companies promote hop hop that makes the most money to a younger audience with no sense of accountability or responsibility. Also, a more whiter audience has emerged in the last ten years, and they are eating up Eminem, 50 Cent and G Unit, and Nelly, and that is causing concern that probably would never have emerged if the audience was only black, ethnic, inner city kids as imagined.

However, the conflict between the 2 camps: preachers, concerned parents, politicians, and activist college students on one hand and hip hop artists on the other will continue as it always has. In the middle are the hip hop purists, who took a stand against the Hot 97 machine of rumors, lies and BS music.

In the end, I feel that hip hop purists should take a stand and determine what will go down in hip hop because what they say matters more than what woman's magazines, campus busybody's, entertainment and media conglomerates, no-talent opportunists and their crews, right wingers and other such characters think. If hip hoppers themselves don't try to correct the situation or come up with what should be done, then this right wing oligarchy we call a democracy will step in and ban it in the name of "protecting the children", whatever that means.