• » Name: Meka Soul
• » Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Slap-Boxing With Jesus

It’s Not My Fault You Ain’t Selling

One of the many problems within hip-hop is that everyone wants to point fingers at someone else’s mistakes. Many critics attack the South for supposedly injecting a minstrel-flavored taste into today’s current musical melting pot, abandoning the lyrically driven concepts of the past for goose-stepping and hand waving, while one hump yesterday had the gall to call me out for preaching blasphemy and ignorance. The way that person threw such a bitch fit (I’ve never seen so many big words in my life!), you’d think I was the one who green-lighted “Lean Like A Cholo” or something.

If only I had that much clout.

In any case, throwing the blame on someone and hoping it sticks is a relatively weak reasoning for anything. For the most part, the music business (and pretty much all businesses that try to sell you something) try to convince its target demographic into buying whatever bullshit they put out, under the guise that it’s the “next big thing.” While I’m somewhat elated to have met people who have an IQ that’s higher than a turnip and are able to sift through the bullshit, there are still those that call a shitty album a classic since it can make you bust out the Robocop dance in the middle of a club, which is just silly.

A while back I mentioned how women are having the toughest time out of everyone in hip-hop. While I still allude to the fact that the chances of a woman being taken seriously were nigh impossible unless they either were the color of a yellow highlighter or were shaped like an hourglass, the basis of that observation comes from the decidedly male-run corporations that subliminally tell women the exact same thing. Let’s face it: in a climate loaded with machismo, nobody wants to have an image of thugged-out broad thrown in his or her face. I for one use music as a temporary escape from the bullshit issues I face on the daily. Call me a chauvinist, but the last thing image need when I watch television or listen to music are a bunch of chicks that remind me of Snoop from The Wire splayed all over the place.

Once women decided to drop the baggy clothes for some booty shorts, they actually started selling records. In an ironic twist however, that shit’s now passed off as nothing more than a sexist representation of the female population, and rightfully so. I probably would have never stolen all those copies of Hard Core if I hadn’t seen that promo poster of Lil’ Kim squatting with her monkey damn near falling out of that leopard bikini. And while many people are yearning for that “average Josephine” rapper to hit the big time, the reality is that the majority of hip-hop buyers prefer gun talk, crack sales, dance moves and other delusions of grandeur over “reality rap” [1].

A few days ago some hump was on this site proclaiming that females are fucking up hip-hop. I don’t really believe that when they’re only doing what their TIs are telling them what to do. And contrary to popular belief, there are some women in the industry that hold a lot of weight behind the scenes.  But it’s kind of sad if you think about it: genuinely talented (and jaundice-toned) rappers like Jean Grae and Rah Digga will always be passed over for some random-ass skeezer who won’t sell shit, all because they don’t have a closet full of assless chaps. And if that isn’t ignorant, I don’t know what is.

[1] And don’t give me any bullshit on Kanye West. Running around like a fake-ass “Evel” Knievel ain’t real.

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