Hip-hop sales drop as many tire of images of sex, crime
BY NEKESA MUMBI MOODY

NEW YORK - Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit.

The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture's negative effect on society.

Rap insider Chuck Creekmur, who runs the leading Web site Allhiphop.com, says he got a message from a friend recently "asking me to hook her up with some Red Hot Chili Peppers because she said she's through with rap. A lot of people are sick of rap ... the negativity is just over the top now."

Though music sales are down overall, rap sales slid a whopping 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year.

A recent study by the Black Youth Project showed a majority of youth think rap has too many violent images. In a poll of black Americans by The Associated Press and AOL-Black Voices last year, 50 percent of respondents said hip-hop was a negative force in American society.

Nicole Duncan-Smith grew up on rap. She still listens to it, but says it no longer speaks to or for her.

She wrote the children's book "I Am Hip-Hop" partly to create something positive about rap for young children, including her 4-year-old daughter.
"I'm not removed from it, but I can't really tell the difference between Young Jeezy and Yung Joc. It's the same dumb stuff to me," says Duncan-Smith, 33.

Hip-hop also seems to be increasingly blamed for a variety of social ills. Studies have attempted to link it to everything from teen drug use to sexual activity among young girls.

While rap has been in essence pop music for years, and most rap consumers are white, some worry that the black community is suffering from hip-hop - from the way America perceives blacks to the attitudes being adopted by black youths.

But the rapper David Banner derides the growing criticism as blacks joining America's attack on young black men who are only reflecting the crushing problems within their communities. Besides, he says, that's the kind of music America wants to hear.

"Look at the music that gets us popular -- 'Like a Pimp,'," says Banner, naming his hit.

"What makes it so difficult is to know that we need to be doing other things. But the truth is at least us talking about what we're talking about, we can bring certain things to the light," he says. "They want (black artists) to shuck and jive, but they don't want us to tell the real story because they're connected to it."

Criticism of hip-hop is certainly nothing new -- it's as much a part of the culture as the beats and rhymes. Among the early accusations were that rap wasn't true music, its lyrics were too raw, its street message too polarizing. But they rarely came from the youthful audience itself, which was enraptured with genre that defined them as none other could.

"As people within the hip-hop generation get older, I think the criticism is increasing," says author Bakari Kitwana, who is currently part of a lecture tour titled "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?"
"There was a more of a tendency when we were younger to be more defensive of it," he adds.

During her '90s crusade against rap's habit of degrading women, the late black activist C. Dolores Tucker certainly had few allies within the hip-hop community, or even among young black women. Backed by folks like conservative Republican William Bennett, Tucker was vilified within rap circles.

In retrospect, "many of us weren't listening," says Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, a professor at Vanderbilt University and author of the new book "Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip-Hop's Hold On Young Black Women."

"She was onto something, but most of us said, 'They're not calling me a bitch, they're not talking about me, they're talking about THOSE women.' But then it became clear that, you know what? Those women can be any women."

One rap fan, Bryan Hunt, made the searing documentary "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes," which debuted on PBS this month. Hunt addresses the biggest criticisms of rap, from its treatment of women to the glorification of the gangsta lifestyle that has become the default posture for many of today's most popular rappers.

"I love hip-hop," Hunt, 36, says in the documentary. "I sometimes feel bad for criticizing hip-hop, but I want to get us men to take a look at ourselves."

Even dances that may seem innocuous are not above the fray. Last summer, as the "Chicken Noodle Soup" song and accompanying dance became a sensation, Baltimore Sun pop critic Rashod D. Ollison mused that the dance -- demonstrated in the video by young people stomping wildly from side to side -- was part of the growing minstrelization of rap music.

"The music, dances and images in the video are clearly reminiscent of the era when pop culture reduced blacks to caricatures: lazy 'coons,' grinning 'pickaninnies,' sexually super-charged 'bucks,'" he wrote.

And then there's the criminal aspect that has long been a part of rap. In the '70s, groups may have rapped about drug dealing and street violence, but rap stars weren't the embodiment of criminals themselves. Today, the most popular and successful rappers boast about who has murdered more foes and rhyme about dealing drugs as breezily as other artists sing about love.

Creekmur says music labels have overfed the public on gangsta rap, obscuring artists who represent more positive and varied aspects of black life, like Talib Kweli, Common and Lupe Fiasco.

"It boils down to a complete lack of balance, and whenever there's a complete lack of balance people are going to reject it, whether it's positive or negative," Creekmur says.

Yet Banner says there's a reason why acts like KRS-One and Public Enemy don't sell anymore. He recalled that even his own fans rebuffed positive songs he made -- like "Cadillac on 22s," about staying away from street life -- in favor of songs like "Like a Pimp."

"The American public had an opportunity to pick what they wanted from David Banner," he says. "I wish America would just be honest. America is sick. ... America loves violence and sex."

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The Article is completley ludacris. Hiphop is not dead at all, infact hiphop is hotter than ever. Some of the anit-hiphopists written about in the article are women who see nothing but the woman degrading videos on MTV. They probably haven't ever listened to an entire album from Nas, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lupe Fiasco and Lil'wayne who raps the good stuff. IMO you see what you want to see, if the guns and women are what you focus your eyes on in the videos than you have really missed the whole point.
As for the sales the music industry as a whole has suffered a great deal the latest years but that's not becasue people are tired of music, right? The answer is piracy and a great number of hiphop lovers I know are too cheap to buy the records, and heck I'm guilty. i should be buying records to show my appretiation for what talented people have created for my ears, and further more I love the cristal clear sound from a proper dics. Unfortunately I'm too cheap to buy CDs, I'm a bootlegger and so is a large majority of the hiphop fans out there.
With that being said the drop in sales has nothing to do with people not appretiating hiphop any longer. Hiphop will never die, the creative use of words and rhymes is nothing that any other genre offers.

^gr8 post. couldnt agree more

Meh...Rap & Hip Hop has been dead for me for about the last 15 years. I used to listen to it in the 80's & early 90's, but, after that, not much of it appeals to me.

Yeah Hip Hop is dead, but at the same time, the entire music industry is dead.

Right now, if you turn on your radio, its all about junk-food crunk and hyphie stuff - which is fine by me. I get a kick outta the stuff. It's funny - as a more diverse palette of entertainment is offered to us via the internet, mainstream radio continues to consolidate and offers less and less programming choice.

Yeah, there's good hip-hip poppin', just like there's good indie bands doing their thing and good DJs working a new sound - it's just that nobody outside their respective scenes are paying much attention, and record sales are doomed to be forever slow thanks to our proclivity to download free music.

Ye, the whole music industry is dead to me too. I prefer to listen to music that isn't industrialised.

I love hip hip and always have, and no, hip hop isn't dead. Luwalira explained it very well in his post. Although, there has been a lack of good albums this year I think.

I'm not sure I agree with your last statement.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know amongst my pals, we've purchased more music as a direct result of the internet than we did before having the ability to download music (& we purchased a lot of music before the internet helped out). There are a lot of bands we now know about that we would've had no clue about before.

It's normal to see a decline of hip hop eventually. It's not just a question of music being downloaded.

You can only hold the mass' attention for so long.

Every type of music becomes extremely popular for a given period and then fades out to its normal fanbase. 80s saw metal rise... 90s saw pop punk/grunge be hits...

But to say that it's dead is stupid. Just like metal and grunge, the really good artists are still arounds, while the shite died out. Same will happen with hip hop, the good stuff will remain, the crap will die.

Seems like Indie and House is taking over a bit. Indie is everywhere now and alot of people listen to it, and today's pop has house written all over it.

To me...yes, hip-hop is pretty much dead. I haven't heard a good record in a long time for me to justify buying the whole F_king album. Hell, I don't even bother pirating songs...they suck anyways. As much as you're right Luwalira, you're wrong at the same time. You've been to cali...tell me how much of the Real-Life songs do you hear on the radio over the Gats-Bitches-Money crap? Tell me what all the kids talk about at school? Is it how Jay-Z is right about Afro-American issues or the Yin-Yang Twins + Bubba Sparx "Miss new booty"? Yes almost all the rappers out there have at least one song on their album that deals with some real, everyday issues...but most of the crap on the album is mone-bitches-gats crap. Why? Because that's what sells the albums.

Don't even talk about Kanye...he is a self-absorbed retard. He talks about the ghetto yet the boy grew up rich..Why should I even listen to him? I grew up in the ghetto...not the projects but still it was ghetto. Shit...I have more street cred than Kanye.

The one thing I hate is that people blame sh!t on piracy...here is my response: Make a better F_cking album...simple. I haven't pirated music in years and I mean many years...right now the only thing I listen to is Punjabi music and internet radio (DI fm). thats it...I haven't heard my local radio in may be 2 years...seriously. The last few good (by good I mean good beats..thats it) rap songs I heard were Loco and Candy by Snoop Dog and "Show me what you got" the new Jay-Z song...thats it.