Political Rap and Boogie Down Productions :: Rap Music B-D-P Essays

Political chip and Boogie Down Productions In the fall of 1987, Scott la Rock, the DJ of the strike hard group Boogie Down Productions (B-D-P) was shot in a cable car after trying to break up a fight (Small 77). In light of B-D-Ps role in reforming pat in the succeeding years, his narrative is significant he was college educated and was employed--in addition to his musical activity--as a mixer worker. He had released a groundbreaking record that year, and had already worked on a follow-up, which would defy older categories of tapdance music. His violent death seemed a execute for pause to reflect on rap musics new direction. The effect on the other member of B-D-P, the rapper K-R-S One (Chris Parker), was devastating but quickened his mission. around two years after the murder, he preached against black-on-black crime, promoting education, spirituality and vegetarianism. Rap had to be political and it required self-denial, even asceticism he had made rap music an extremely serious endeavor. Enlightened rap seemed poised to have sex mainstream popity. But both(prenominal)thing about its message did not capture the popular imagination, and it has remained a sub-genre. Conversely, the highly materialistic rap that was popular when B-D-P appeared in 1987, glorifying jewelry, cars and brand names, is in vogue again. However, B-D-P--vintage B-D-P--enjoys a paradoxically respected position. This is strange because in some respects B-D-Ps version of political rap was stricter than the other groups that comprised the so-called crude School, the consciousness-raised groups that followed in his path. Something about B-D-Ps asceticism had an edge that made it strangely attractive. I wish to explore this ambiguity. K-R-S One was the guiding force of B-D-P, writing its lyrics and producing its albums. He is generally regarded as the popular artist who, along with Chuck D of Public Enemy, politicized rap in the middle eighties. It is well know n that popular rap was capable of political content from its earliest beginnings. Grandmaster Flash and the cutthroat Five released both The Message (1982) and White Lines (Dont Do It) (1983), the first a lament about ghetto life and the second a powerful bill of indictment of cocaine (then called freebase), well before crack became a mainstream epidemic. Run-DMC rapped in grievous Times about the early eighties inflation economy. Of course, the political discourse of rap music has been pointed out before, but almost always in sublime form.