If I shout:
Ideal, Ideal, Ideal
Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge,
Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom
I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books.
~Tristan Tzara
During the recent controversy surrounding the remarks by Don Imus about the Rutgers Women’s basketball team, Michele Malkin and many others have attempted to conflate the issue of Imus’ remarks with the issues of rap lyrics and other forms of artistic expression which are, on the surface, similarly contemptible. While it seems obvious on its face that such comparisons are not genuine, but rather pallid attempts to reduce the culpability of Imus for his words by comparing them with those of others, the complaints about rap lyrics are hardly new, and have brought back complaints as old as the medium itself (and for that matter, complaints that have dogged all forms of popular music since at the least Mozart) which tend to have much resonance with many people. Which leads me to think that this is as good a time as any to bring up an issue dear to my heart, which is the virtues of art utterly freed from the notion of "responsibility".
Sympathy? I feel none
When you hear that humming, common sense to take a duck and get the fuck outta harms’ way
Your dying would absolutely make my day
Why he had to go look who, but he wasn't so he got betrayed
This is what I did to him, shoved a grenade in his mouth
Hurried out his crib, before that
My niggaz raped his bitch, molested his kids
Filled it wit gas, lit a match, and blew up the shit
While on this earth, if I didn't get you right, you better hold your pistol tight
When we meet in the afterlife, Coldchain I'm the black one that bleed
Rosco P, young G, I don't speak I just squeeze
97 P will make you drop to your knees
Before you know it, you'll be floating to a better place, your soul feeling free
I'm young, black and I just don't give a fuck
Big gun on my waist, drugs in the trunk
Sitting high in a truck, call me luck, come press me
~Clipse, Chinese New Year, from the 2006 album Hell Hath No Fury
This is pretty much the standard fare for Clipse, who happen to be among the most lauded acts in hip-hop today, praised by among others the New York Times. Musically stunning and lyrically, well, pretty much exactly like the above verse, Hell Hath No Fury made a bevy of music reviewers’ top ten lists for last year (and if I was a reviewer, it would have made mine). Yet it is easily the definition of what people from Malkin to Rev. Al Sharpton have spoken out against since the most recent example of the rephrehensible speech of Don Imus.
If the long and proud history of socially irresponsible art did not already make this case eloquently, this recent quote from Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam, (from Time Out New York) does so superbly:
Russell Simmons: The poets are an example of our negative reality sometimes; they remind you how sexist we are, how racist, how homophobic, how violent. But do you think gangster rappers are nearly as gangster as George Bush? That their expression of sexism is more sexist than the clerics or the Christian preachers?
Kate Lowenstein: So they’re holding a mirror to society?
Russell Simmons: Yes, and we can’t stand it. So we blame the rappers instead of ourselves.
Beyond recognizing the fantastic contributions of socially irresponsible artists in the past, we owe it to ourself to remember that we are in the midst of a fantastic era for these forms of art. The last year has not only seen the long-awaited release of the Clipse album, but the far-more long-delayed release of Alan Moore’s controversial Lost Girls, the release of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s paean to pulp sex and violence in Grindhouse (following up on a similar tribute in Sin City), and the release in the last week of a documentary tribute to the anti-Warhol, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, along with a touring exhibition dedicated to the DaDa movement at the National Gallery of Art and MoMa.
We owe it to ourselves and to our world to not allow the demagogues who would profit from our disgust with the words of Don Imus to imperil our tolerance and support of such art and artists.