RE: FW: RUN-DMC?

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Roni,

I agree with just about all you have written here, but I don't know 
anything about this new PE song or what is going on now with Def 
Jam/Cohen/Public Enemy.

Let me share a trick with you and everyone else.  If you can't find 
anything with the top search engines such as Alta Vista or Yahoo, go to 
multi-engine search tool Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/).  With exception 
of one or two with a unfocused engines, it searches at least 10 of the best 
search engines all at once.   Definitely worth bookmarking. I just put in 
"Swindler's Lust" and found a large collection of sites with info.  Tons of 
stuff for everyone to read about this song, Public Enemy, MP3, MP4, etc., 
but I don't have any more time for this now.

Gotta go.

Enough for today.

But I do have one question:   You have heard thousands of rap songs?   Why 
did you want/have to do that?   Is there a rap music station that you were 
always tuned into?


Reyzl



----------
From:  Rmsarig (at) aol(dot)com[SMTP:Rmsarig (at) aol(dot)com]
Sent:  Monday, July 12, 1999 9:44 PM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Re: FW: RUN-DMC?


>  >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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