Fuck Hip Hop

Hip-hip (or this kind of hip-hop) has officially been officially co-opted by capitalism. No, no, no many of you may argue that hip hop in the last ten years or more, has been nothing but ideology to oppress black folks, but now that imaginary threshold has been crossed. Yes, i am reifying it, but this latest fiasco really represents a process or transformation that hip hop has fully gone through. You may tell me that Eric B and Rakim had song back in the 'golden era' called paid in full, and isn't that Milk on the hook of the 50 cent track saying 'I get money, money I got'. Making dough and getting paid out the asshole has always been part of hip hop. No one here is against African Americans accumulating use values. I can even deal with this fetishization of money, as long its not the focus of an image or a persona.

Fucking Forbes dude. Forbes, the publication that comes out with its top 400 wealthiest person every year. Now you have to have over 3 billion dollars to make into this club, (Now if this isn't proof that the gap between rich and poor is widening in this country I don't know what is) Are we supposed to feel bad for those who didn't make it this year, who dropped out. These billionaires are portrayed as guys, and by guys I mean white males, who are just like us, but used some kind of hard work or savy to get where they are. Only if these million dollar men would act like the million dollar man and be dicks. Everyone would hate em. I heard ted debiase is coming back, but now as the billion dollar man. God, even virgil has millions now a days.

Anyway class is erased, and if its maintained, its celebrated as an achievement of a quantitatively roll for broke system. While Emelda Marcos could only collect a couple of thousand pairs of shoes, the universal equivalent can be accumulated forever.

Anyway, fuckn 50 cent. In a lot of ways a guy who is on the vanguard of a new breed of rappers. Hell it was only 2003 since he broke into main stream radio. His newest incarnation of capitalist ideology the 'I get money remix' is featured on the Forbes website. Doesn't anyone else see the fucking hypocrisy in this move. Someone who in many cases, not all of course, represents the streets, or what I would gingerly called economically oppressed black people is side by side with the people who have made their empire off the surplus labor/sweat off the people represents (or people like them). Of course fifty didn't ask for this, but he did give a free shout out to Forbes in the title of his song.

I am apprehensive to group 50 or actually say his identity. I won't take that away from Curtis. Who knows he might have the identity of a white man. He does live in a fortress out in Connecticut somewhere, he is paranoid about traveling in the streets (yeah he did get shot, but stop being such a god damn pussy), he has fetishized money to the point where it makes me want to throw up, and he really cares about record sales. Sounds like pathologically white behavior to me.

I would have more respect for 50 if he advertised for whitening cream, god damn it. At least we would know where he stands, that he was transmitting ideology that was in someway racist and harmful, but this mother fucker comes out with a song glorifying Forbes. I don't think I've ever seen capitalist idea logy work so well. What an inner contradiction, so fuckn juicy. How will it resolve itself? On one hand capitalist enslavement, and an urban reserve army which is maintained largely by the state, and on the other a culture of alienated value (i.e. fetishization of money) (See the prison diaries of Antonio Gramsci for further reading on the formation of common sense in capitalist society and the interplay between culture and bourgeoisie ideals). We don't know where this value or money comes from. Record sales, way to abstract. How does value get generated in this process. Who knows? Where is the cash in these videos coming from? Whose labor made it? And now white critics can unite against hip hop culture telling us that it has no values, and how it keeps black people poor, while they are most likely oppressed in a similar way on a more basic level.

I'm stopping here
'I like being around money' THANK YOU P DIDDY. ALSO, jay z is in this song, go figure going back to his volume 2 days.... sigh!