“This Philly cat back it…” ~ Beanie Sigel, “Guess Who’s Bizzack” from Scarface’s album, The Fix
Bill Cosby is back at it again.
Actually, I assume he never stopped and has been travelling the country pissing off black people left and right with his chastising of those in the Black community that he feels simply aren’t doing their part.
Well, he’s gone to taking shots at the hip-hop community…finally.
I say finally because it seems slightly perplexing to me that after all of his thousands of rants and raves (and illegitimate children) across the nation, he seems to have left hip-hop alone. There has been little mention of how horrible rap music is or how denigrating it is to Black women or how violent it is.
I mean, c’mon Bill, even white people know that rap music is to blame for all the country’s ills. Which makes me wonder how out of touch he really is.
I know I’m making a leap here, but seriously, when discussing how fucked up the inner city is, EVERYBODY takes shots at rap. Rappers take shots at hip-hop. White people, Jewish people, Dominicans, aliens…
…pastors, bakers, candlestick makers, cobblers, wobblers, librarians…
…Presidents, Vice Presidents, Mexicans…
…well you get the point.
They all take shots at hip-hop.
For fuck’s sake, Bill…how is it possible that you completely missed out on assigning blame for the ills of Black people to the culprit that causes the Black community to devolve into the guntoting, pound-cake stealing, non-reading bastards that we are? Especially when so many of your contemporaries never miss an opportunity to do so.
Which leads me to two possible conclusions: 1) he actually doesn’t think hip-hop is that much of a problem and is more concerned about the root cause of the issue; or…
STOP!
This just in: Bill Cosby Addresses Absentee Fathers and Criticizes Hip-Hop (click on link to go to Allhiphop.com article)
Oh well.
So the only other conclusion I have is this, 2) Bill Cosby hasn’t been paying attention and finally turned on either BET or MTV or the radio or just so happened to be listening to some shit a grandchild or somebody played and was offended and decided to attack hip-hop now as well.
There is no way in 7th Hell that you can go years chastising the “lower dredges” of Black society without criticizing rap unless you just aren’t paying attention…
…which is what I tend to do with Bill Cosby now. It’s hard to pay attention to him when everything he says seems so doggone persnickety. And I’m not even saying he doesn’t make any legit points, but its all in the delivery Bill. You should learn from Rakim or Kane or AZ. Delivery Bill, delivery.
Every good rapper has a good delivery. It’s why we listen to dumb shit all the time…that and it usually sounds good.
Oh, and he’s wrong on this point:
“They put the word ‘nigga’ in a song, and we get up and dance to it,” Cosby said.
Not true, Bill. We get up and dance to it because it’s on.
Unless of course it’s Yung Joc’s song “It’s Going Down” which, I mean, just totally rocks, in which case we get up and dance to it because we all want to do the dance that goes with it.
Oh yes, and do the “have you ever seen a Chevy with the butterfly doors” part. That part is fly.
I’m just wondering when all of these critics of the lower class, especially the Black ones, are going to decide to attack the circumstances that led to this shit. All of the problems we have now aren’t new. In fact, none of them are new. The same problems that were present in the 50s and 60s are present today.
The difference now is that white America is fascinated by this culture and puts it all over television. And since they’re fascinated, they find us ninja’s to keep it up…it’s a vicious cycle really.
People are well within their rights to get upset at the state of Black America, and hell, hip-hop. But rarely is anybody doing shit to combat the very problems that we so often rail against.
Fuckin’ armchair activists, that’s what it seems like most of us are. Granted, I wouldn’t put Bill Cosby in that boat, and in some ways I suppose he’s earned the right to be a crochety old fuck. I think I’d just appreciate it more if I felt like he wasn’t so out of touch on some of these things.
Because now he just seems like he’s whining. And messages get lost in the whining.
When was the last time you wanted to do anything for somebody who was whining to you about something? It was like 10 minutes before never for me.
“This is a great evening because we’re calling on men to come claim their children,” said Cosby, who spoke for 20 minutes before joining a panel to field questions. “And that’s part of being a man. You cannot be a man at all if you haven’t claimed your child. Some of you have three, four, five of them. You have more children than you have jobs.”
This is kind of tangential, but I always have a problem with these speeches. Namely, it seems like he’s preaching to the choir. The very fathers he’s talking about probably aren’t there listening to him nor would they care.
And that crosses all color lines.
Many people posit that the family structure is what has the Black community mired in stagnation.
I agree with that too, and I wonder how you make that point to the fathers who aren’t there because those are the ones that need to hear it most.
More questions, fewer answers.
It’s not easy being Black.
Or hip-hop for that matter.
Bill has just turned into that crotchety old man waving his cane and saying, “You kids stay out of my yard. Come here again, and that ball is mine, dagnabbit.
When you say he’s out of toouch, does he have to live in it to know it isn’t right?? And I used to think his audience would be a choir too and not need preaching to. But I’m finding a lot of ‘up-standing’ Black men who have random kids they made and didn’t claim, with the check-out girl at Giant their freshman year of college. I once worked in a payroll office and I was surprised at how many upstanding BLACK men were having their wages garnished for child support. Mind you, these cats were walking aorund telling any slice that would listen that they didn’ have any kids and no criminal record.
@Cube: I agree.
@The Hostess: Does he have to live in it to know it isn’t right? Maybe not, but if you have a very limited vantage point in the first place, then you’re right for the wrong reasons and to me that’s just as bad. A broke clock is right twice a day, doesn’t mean we use it to tell time.
As far as preaching to the choir, maybe some of the men in there (and women in there too) need to hear some of that stuff, but the difference is at least they are there to hear it, which is a step in the right direction. Of course, folks have a lot of dirty laundry so they could be there just for show, but on a larger scale, he isn’t talking to the folks in his audience when he says we need to claim our kids.
He’s wanting the folks in the audience to go out and tell the ninja’s on the corner to claim their kids. And I’ll bet more than half of the folks are just there to hear Heathcliff Huxtable speak.
And not to get all technical or anything, but how many men as a percentage of the whole are you talking about? And further, are you saying that those numbers would more than likely hold up against all the so called “upstanding Black men?” Basically, ninjas ain’t shit?
Umm, Bill needs to rap what he is saying over that Nitty beat and the message will get out to the people (not the choir) who do not attend such functions. I always wonder if the functions where he speaks are free. You know he gets a pretty penny to come speak somewhere. My alma mater wants us to pay $250 for a benefit where Oprah is going to be. (I don’t even know if she will utter a word to the crowd.) All that being said, his message will continue being preached to the choir until he figures out how to reach the ones that need to hear it. Maybe he can work w/ Diddy and get some subliminal messages in the Young JOC song? Like, “use a condom, take care of your kids, be respectful to women, and stop saying n*gga, etc…” As much as that song plays, I think people would start to change. Lol!
I couldn’t read the article (dang firewalls!) but I’ll just take your word on what he said.
Honestly, I’m ambivalent on Mr. Cosby. I believe anyone can deliver a good message; the messenger should be secondary. But that said, is he not the one who was being extorted by a love child? Hmm… I wonder if he’s managed to add “men, stay faithful to your wives” to his commentary yet. lol
At any rate, I don’t consider myself an “armchair activist” and many people I know who critcize rap aren’t either. And that doesn’t mean we have more of a right to criticize than those who really are of the “armchair” variety. I say, anyone who appreciates decency has a right to criticize. Cuz at the end of the day, we don’t “hate” rap…we just give a damn about our folks…excuse us for caring I guess. *Shrug*
Oh well…