Re: FW: RUN-DMC?

[Rmsarig <Rmsarig...>]

>  >Anti-Semitism in commercially released rap is virtually non-existent.
>  
>  I don't know how you can end your post with this concluding remark, after 
>  all that preceded it.

It exists, I know, in the two songs I mentioned. And it doesn't exist in the 
thousands of other rap songs I've heard over the past fifteen years. That's 
why I say it's virtually non-existent. Not trying to minimize the cases where 
it exists, just stating facts. 
  
>  
>  Composing a song in 1999 called "Swindler's Lust"?!?!?!?!?
>  "Oblique....references"?!?!?!

Yes, if you saw the lyrics, you'd see that on the most literal level the song 
is a condemnation of the exploitative practices of the music industry. 
However, it is anti-Semitic by inference (music industry = Jews = Shindler's 
List). I think most intelligent people would understand the writer's intent 
and rightfully find it offensive on close inspection, but yes, I would call 
it oblique.
In fact, it surprised me to find that on an Internet search, the only 
references to "Swindler's Lust" I came across made no mention of 
anti-Semitism. For example, this article from Billboard (music industry trade 
publication):

[P.E.'s Back With Scathing MP4 Track 
Public Enemy has unleashed a vitriolic attack on the music industry in the 
form of "Swindler's Lust," a new song available for free download on the 
hip-hop group's Web site. The track, one of the first to be encoded in MP4, 
the successor to the controversial digital delivery format MP3, responds to 
labels' attempts to control MP3 and, as Public Enemy leader Chuck D sees it, 
deny artists of profits that are rightfully theirs.
On the track, Chuck D likens artists' plights to that of slavery, tracing a 
path of the industry's financial exploitation of black musicians. Citing the 
blues players in the Delta, Little Richard, soul singers, session players, 
and rappers in the '80s and '90s "who are still trying to get paid," he sings 
in the chorus:
"If you don't own the master
The master owns you
Who you trust
>From Swindler's Lust
>From the back of the bus
Neither one of us
Control the fate of our soul
It's Swindler's Lust."
In a statement on the site, Chuck D comments on the music industry's Secure 
Digital Music Initiative, which aims to bring technology and consumer 
electronics companies together to develop a security standard for digital 
music delivery. "It's a last-ditch effort for the power players to keep 
control," the rapper writes. "Skeptics say that artists will be undercut. 
Wrong, what will happen is that there will be more artists in the marketplace 
... It's back to Pre-K, big boys will have to learn how to share."
Undoubtedly, another impetus for "Swindler's Lust" was the decision of Public 
Enemy's label, Def Jam, and parent company, PolyGram (now Universal), to 
remove the band's unreleased remix album, "Bring The Noise 2000," from the 
group's site in early December. Four of the set's 27 songs were posted in MP3 
in an act of defiance by P.E.; the tracks were taken off the site shortly 
after news broke of their availability.]
  
>  They may be desperate for attention these days, but where are the moral 
and 
>  social boundaries here?

I wonder the same thing.
  
>  People who reach a certain level of success don't risk crossing such 
>  controversial boundaries unless they know that there is an audience who 
>  will concur with the content and buy it.  They are not trying to get 
>  attention from a small, esoteric audience.

With the media being as controversy-driven as it is, I wouldn't put it past 
the group one bit to go to such lengths. And to whatever extent it would 
reach a sympathetic audience (in the black community or otherwise) has 
everything to do with race relations in the country, and not much to do with 
rap music as a form.
-Roni 

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