I won’t waste time reviewing Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s most powerful celebrities, or noting that Beyonce was ranked number one for earning $115 million between June 2013 and June 2014, or applauding her husband Jay Z, Dr. Dre and Rihanna for also being ranked in the top ten. Yet, each one of them, either in general or specifically, have been so condemned by conservative racists for being influential in the worldwide hip hop scene that even a casual observer would wonder whether they are truly rich.
Chris McDaniel, the Tea Party crybaby and sore loser in the Republican primary Senate race in Mississippi, who complained about Senator Thad Cochran’s appeal to Blacks to win the primary, ranted on his former radio program, The Right Side, that hip hop was dangerous to Canadian and American culture. Bill O’Reilly, the racist host of the O’Reilly Factor on FOX News, dissed hip hop and rap during his interview with Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari. So, instead of focusing on the Forbes’ list, let’s consider why those bigots criticize hip hop in the first place. And what grabs our attention almost immediately, what yanks us by our coat tails and turns us around, is the white conservative’s fear of hip hop.
The fear of hip hop bubbles from his astonished imagination like an erupting volcano’s hot lava. He just can’t understand her appeal. What he does know, however, is this: Hip hop has successfully repulsed the right-wing way of life. She has so eroded the white right-wing’s influence that it now resembles a mountain after a mudslide. She has blocked the advance of the right-wing’s march. And she has shamed the immoral morals that underlie right-wing judgments. But what fascinates us even more is the psychological harm hip hop has wrung from white conservatism’s anguish. Just as figs fallen from a tree are useless until picked up, put in a basket, washed, cleaned, then sold at a farmer’s market, so conservatives must sell hatred of hip hop to their customers. That’s really easy for them, because hate is the timber from which racism is made. And racism runs through the right-wing’s veins as if it were turpentine. But hatred also terrorizes them to the fact that hip hop seems to be unstoppable. And so though in one sense the white conservative hates hip hop, in another sense he resents her. Why? Because like the regular return of the flu in winter, hip hop success has engendered right-wing envy.
The white conservative looks at all these hip hop artists who were poor a few years ago and now sees them driving BMWs, wearing $25,000 Rolex watches and owning seven and eight bed-room mansions with swimming pools, four-car garages and tennis courts. He sees them and wonders “What went wrong? White people, not Black people, are supposed to possess all this wealth!” He realizes he can never come close to amassing their wealth. And so as hatred turned to envy, envy skidded into frustration. Hip hop reached the outskirts of Black appeal, sailed across the seas of unknown adventures, and invaded and conquered other cultures and countries.
Even whites in America, as well as Europe and South America, have surrendered to hip hop’s charm. Her freedom of expression they adore, her liberation from white conservative hypocrisy they prize. White hip hop artists like Eminem and Justin Bieber have become millionaires by bowing their heads and worshiping at the feet that sensuous goddess. And white conservatives have been unable to sell country music to the world as an alternative. As we can see, the white conservative’s fear of hip hop is not coincidental. Most of them hate hip hop, some envy hip hop and others are frustrated they cannot run her down or wound her in a drive-by shooting. They cannot control her, so they dread her; they cannot contain her, so they loathe her. But to the Black masses hip hop’s influence is fair compensation for white producers and music artists, such as the Chess brothers, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, taking the rhythms of blues and jazz musicians, or even covering them, and making millions when the original Black artists made virtually nothing. Moreover, Blacks and whites see another principle waving her hands as a result of the white conservative racist’s frustration with hip hop: We condemn that which threatens our way of life and fear that on which we cannot put a bridle over its mouth and throw a saddle on its back.
By: James Strong
