Angry Old Man: Why Can't We Be Friends?

Hip hop has been more like PRO wrestling for a minute now: all the fanfare and trash talk; the golden belts and the blown-up titles (like “King of New York”); the complex moves springing from the top rope; the ringside commentators giving you the blow by blow. Blood-spattered faces—it’s the look in hip hop media. And our favorite rappers are like ’hood-rich Hulk Hogans. Conflict is what makes the rap world go round.//Cam’Ron, a Diplomat, for example, called out Jay-Z for wearing flip-flops. Big no-no in hip hop. Then in Cam’s video “Wet Wipes,” Damon Dash (Carter’s business partner–no más) nods in agreement as Jimmie Walker struts his stuff as Mr. Carter’s double for the clip. Hahahahahaha! Cam’s tryna say that Jigga looks like J.J. from Good Times! Ya think Jiggaman’s gonna be able to come back from that one? I don’t know, son. I mean, Jay owns a piece of the New Jersey Nets and dates Beyoncé—Cam’s words must really sting. Excellent drama. Better than Dynasty ever was! Will Jigga fire back? We wait. We hope.

And then there’s Busta Rhymes. From his flamboyant dress to the way his verbs clobber the mic to the psychedelic colors in his videos—B.R. is a superhero entertainer who takes mortals up, up, and away from that day-to-day grind. Now he has to think about his bodyguard who was killed while doing his job. A family man—a father, a husband, somebody’s son—shot to death on a video set! A lot of people were there, but don’t nobody know nothin’! Now Busta’s in a tight situation. He has to decide whether he will talk about who might have killed his friend.

You know, there’s an NYPD hip hop task force that’s supposed to figure out crimes like this; the theory is that rappers and their crews are the new mobs and bosses. I recently bumped into the guy who started the unit, Derrick Parker, coauthor of the newly published Notorious C.O.P., at a Manhattan diner. I asked him whether he thought some of the stupid stuff that goes down in the rap world was embarrassing to black people.... I won't tell you what he said.

I will say this: Think about Quincy Jones - cultural icon, prodigious musician, and one of the founding fathers of this very magazine - you think Quincy wasn't gangsta back in the day? You're talking about a man who came up in the seedy world of entertainment: nightclubs, fast women, and dealers of H. You're talking about a man who made it through situations we PBS-watching by-products of the Civil Rights Movement could never understand - black people hosed down in the streets by rednecks with nothing better to do. Nowadays, rappers hose down silicone breats with water pistols in music videos.

Like Quincy, our forebears had class. Dignity. They aspired to be more than gangsta, to rise above the suffering. These individuals were four-star generals: in contrast, our hip hop celebritites are privates led by their privates. In other words, a bunch of dicks.

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