shrink rap
"Hip-hop started off in a block I've never been to
To counteract a struggle that I've never even been through
If I think I understand just because I flow, too
That means I'm not keepin' it true, I'm not keepin' it true
Now I don't rap about guns so they label me conscious
But I don't rap about guns because I wasn't forced into the projects"--Macklemore, "White Privilege," The Language of My World (2005)
"But blaming rap [for the stereotypes whites have about black people] is not only conveniently opportunistic and intellectually dishonest....It also ignores the reasons why rap music sometimes (though not as uniformly as some seem to believe) peddles images of violence, or lyrics that are sexist. After all, if whites make 80 percent of all rap music purchases (and that is the conventional wisdom), then white consumers must be responding via their purchases to an already held impression of black people. Without such a preexisting mental schema firmly in place, the images of blacks as gangstas, pimps, dealers and "hos" wouldn't resonate nearly so much as to make possible billions of dollars of sales annually. In other words, perhaps whites need to consider the possibility that the thug image has been marketable, and thus created a financial incentive for black artists to play to that trope because these images comport with the negative things that much of white America believes about blacks in the first place."--tim_wise, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male
To counteract a struggle that I've never even been through
If I think I understand just because I flow, too
That means I'm not keepin' it true, I'm not keepin' it true
Now I don't rap about guns so they label me conscious
But I don't rap about guns because I wasn't forced into the projects"--Macklemore, "White Privilege," The Language of My World (2005)
"But blaming rap [for the stereotypes whites have about black people] is not only conveniently opportunistic and intellectually dishonest....It also ignores the reasons why rap music sometimes (though not as uniformly as some seem to believe) peddles images of violence, or lyrics that are sexist. After all, if whites make 80 percent of all rap music purchases (and that is the conventional wisdom), then white consumers must be responding via their purchases to an already held impression of black people. Without such a preexisting mental schema firmly in place, the images of blacks as gangstas, pimps, dealers and "hos" wouldn't resonate nearly so much as to make possible billions of dollars of sales annually. In other words, perhaps whites need to consider the possibility that the thug image has been marketable, and thus created a financial incentive for black artists to play to that trope because these images comport with the negative things that much of white America believes about blacks in the first place."--tim_wise, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male