Ive always thought there is a separation between the art & the artist. This goes for just about any medium — music, movies, television, etc. That is, you can hate the artist & still appreciate the art. They are not role models. Not in the positive sense — as people who have a responsibility to raise awareness — nor in the negative sense — as people who are responsible when children take guns to school & kill their classmates.
However, it becomes a little more complicated when the message is the art. Not much, at least to me, and I would imagine most of the country. There are few folks of Gen X, who haven’t heard and don’t like, Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name of”, yet clearly not all of us are against the system, as most of us are now deep in the process of embedding ourselves in it.
This is lucky for me, for as a conservative who voted for Bush, and will most likely vote for him again, my favorite musical genre is Rap/Hip-Hop. And there just aren’t any rappers who have a conservative slant. Well, good ones anyway. Hell, I love KRS-One, but I don’t think Collin Powell is a devil.
But amongst my favorite rappers, without question, is Paris. (If you just went “Hilton?”, slap yourself.) Paris is a master of hip-hop. Smooth vocals, extremely well-composed lyrics, and top-notch tracks. If you don’t listen to rap that much, the title track from his debut album “The Devil Made Me Do It” received some attention, and his sophomore album received some attention (notably MTV News) in ‘92, as it was slated for release around the time of election and included a track called “Bush Killa”, a fantasy about killing the former President Bush. He was kicked off his label, Tommy Boy, delaying the release until after the election, by which time Clinton was elected… and what good is Bush Killa if Bush isn’t president anymore?
From that alone, you probably could get a good sense of what most current release would contain. He’s militant. A member of the Black Panthers & the Nation of Islaam. Not shy about his views, on “The Devil Made Me Do It”, more than once, declares his belief that AIDS and crack cocaine are government plans to affect genocide on black Americans. I have to give him credit, however — the only reason I know my heart all 10 points of the Black Panther’s 10 point program, who Huey P. Lewis was, as well Elizah Muhammad (prior to seeing/reading Malcom X) primarily is because of him. Not that I believed any of these conspiracies, but still, you have to admire the man’s passion.
So with that in mind, I shouldn’t be too surprised to find he’s pretty pissed off with Dubya in his newest release, Sonic Jihad. It also takes quite a bit of gumption to release an album with a cover a plan flying into the white house. And this isn’t a pre-9/11 oops! gotta-change-the-cover-now thing. This is post-9/11. And he does mean the white house, in particular as long as it contains this George Bush. The album is laden with tracks containing mixed sound clips of Bush resulting in him declaring war on the American people, civil liberties, and the rest. Paris meanwhile goes into the Patriot act, how Bush helped arrange the 9/11 attacks, and so on. (He also discusses it online.)
Again, not one really for conspiracies, I can’t say I agree with much of it. I still admire his passion, his willing to express his opinions regardless of consequences, and of course, his musical talent. And it’s not like I would believe that government would do something, like use credit card receipts to track and monitor who purchased this album, but, yeah, I paid cash for this one.
