Dr. Boyce Watkins is a professor at Syracuse University that is a contributing writer for Newsone. Last week, he deliveredan interesting perspective on a segment of the Hip Hop world that he contends is destroying the black community…one life at a time. While a lot of us believe that there are a lot of great artists to be found under the guise of Hip-Hop, there are some poison berries in the group choking the life of the genre and our children.
The piece he wrote entitled, “BET Has Become The New KKK” is definitely worth reading. He makes an eloquent argument against listening to artists like Lil’ Wayne because the lyrics he uses reflect a dangerous resemblance of life imitating art. But, surely Wayne would argue that the landscape he raps about was already there when he got to Hip-Hop. He isn’t saying anything that he hasn’t seen for himself. A lot of the more negative rappers use old school mama’s logic, ”Don’t repeat everything you hear!” They figure they can say whatever they want because they’re rappers not role models.
Watkins makes a compelling argument for us to stop bobbing our head to the beat and listen to the lyrics that our children are using as their soundtrack to violence. The senseless murders we continue to write about as well as experience can be found on the latest platinum Lil’ Wayne cd and other discs like it. But the ironic thing is that Watkins brings BET into the picture as our pusher. The now white owned Viacom company that owns BET makes certain that we are immersed in nominations for the rappers that would do us harm. BET, in Watkins opinion, has taken over the plan for the black community from the KKK and is making us slaves to the rhythm.
