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Hip-hop claims another body
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Like many of you, I read about the young man who was shot close to St. James Cathedral, his name was Max Gasoi and he was 21. According to a story penned by Mike Carter in the Seattle Times
The man shot to death near St. James Cathedral Friday night was identified Saturday by his family as Max Gasoi, a local rap performer and promoter.
Miko Braxton, 21, the mother of Gasoi's infant daughter, said police told her that Gasoi died after being shot in the chest by an assailant. He was found lying next to a car in the street just around the corner from the church on Ninth Avenue shortly after 9 p.m.
Braxton said Gasoi had an appointment, but didn't know the details.
She believes that the 22-year-old Gasoi — who Braxton acknowledged "lived the gangster lifestyle" — likely shot back at the gunman who shot him.
Witnesses described a trio of shots that sounded like different caliber guns being fired.
Braxton said Gasoi had recently incorporated a record label — So Hood Records — and had been having success promoting material he performed under the name, "AKshun Tha Don."
On the So Hood MySpace page, Gasoi wrote that he was born in New York City, but moved to Seattle "in hopes of a better life."
He wrote that he moved to the Central District, where he made his living rapping and on the streets.
"They call me AKshun 'cause my life is like a action movie," he wrote. "My music is like a action packed movie."
His mother, Jody Meyers, gave an interview to KING television. This is not to diminish this woman’s obvious grief, but the interview left me wondering what was this man’s real story? Did he have a father who was more than a sperm donor? Were there any positive male role models in his life? One comment by Ms. Meyers that her son was her teacher, made me wonder who was the parent in this relationship? I note that one part of his story is he left behind is a baby mama and a young daughter. So, the cycle is probably repeating.
Too often, the definition of manhood in some communities has more to do with the caliber of the weapon young men often treat as a close friend. This distorted view of manhood has more to do with the number of women impregnated with your progeny rather than the quality of the parenting which helps children to achieve their highest life chances. This is the hip-hop culture which permeates many communities. President Obama has spoken eloquently about the absence of his father and the fact that he never wanted to be MIA in the lives of his children. See, It's the Culture and the Values, Stupid , Relationship Meltdown and the Effect on Children , Children, Especially Boys Need Positive Role Models , and Gang Bangers
The death cult of hip-hop has been on a lot of people’s radar for the past few years. Because of artistic freedom and the romanticizing of some hip-hop and rap stars, those sounding the alarm about this death cult have been labeled as prudes, nervous ninnies, and anti-free speech. A 2005 Nightline story by Jake Tapper and Marie Nelson looked at the links between corporate America and hip-hop
"The blueprint now is an image that promotes all of the worst aspects of violent and anti-social behavior," said Source editor Mays. "It takes those real issues of violent life that occur in our inner cities, it takes them out of context."
Attorney Londell McMillan, who represents Lil' Kim and many other hip-hop performers, says the record labels and radio stations push the artists toward a more violent image. "They all seek to do things that are extraordinary," he said, "unfortunately it's been extraordinarily in the pain of a people. They are often encouraged to take a certain kind of approach to the art form."
Added NYPD Commissioner Kelly, "Whereas some of the other violence was sort of attendant to the business itself, now I think they're trying to exploit it and make money off of it."
But C-Murder says if he projected a more benign image his career would be over. "I wouldn't sell a record because my fans would know that's not me," he said. "They don't expect me to just sit in that booth and write about stuff that the news or the media want to hear about."
Record executive Dash adds there is a double standard between predominantly black and predominantly white music. "I remember Woodstock Part II was a mess," Dash said, referring to the 1999 rock 'n' roll concert festival that exploded in a mass of riots and rapes. But, Dash said, "nothing more about it than that" transpired. "There wasn't any new laws, there wasn't any investigations. It just was."
Lest you think I am anti-capitalism, the real kind, not the corporate welfare of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, you are wrong. Most inner city neighborhoods and poor regions like Appalachia and Mississippi desperately need investment and capital to encourage entrepreneurs. As the motto of Homeboy Industries states, the best defense against violence is a job.
John Mc Whorter wrote a prescient 2003 article in City Journal entitled, How Hip-hop Holds Blacks Back
But rap took a dark turn in the early 1980s, as this “bubble gum” music gave way to a “gangsta” style that picked up where blaxploitation left off. Now top rappers began to write edgy lyrics celebrating street warfare or drugs and promiscuity. Grandmaster Flash’s ominous 1982 hit, “The Message,” with its chorus, “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under,” marked the change in sensibility. It depicted ghetto life as profoundly desolate:
You grow in the ghetto, living second rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate.
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alley way.
You’ll admire all the numberbook takers,
Thugs, pimps and pushers, and the big money makers.
Music critics fell over themselves to praise “The Message,” treating it as the poetry of the streets—as the elite media has characterized hip-hop ever since. The song’s grim fatalism struck a chord; twice, I’ve heard blacks in audiences for talks on race cite the chorus to underscore a point about black victimhood. So did the warning it carried: “Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge,” menacingly raps Melle Mel. The ultimate message of “The Message”—that ghetto life is so hopeless that an explosion of violence is both justified and imminent—would become a hip-hop mantra in the years ahead.
The angry, oppositional stance that “The Message” reintroduced into black popular culture transformed rap from a fad into a multi-billion-dollar industry that sold more than 80 million records in the U.S. in 2002—nearly 13 percent of all recordings sold. To rap producers like Russell Simmons, earlier black pop was just sissy music. He despised the “soft, unaggressive music (and non-threatening images)” of artists like Michael Jackson or Luther Vandross. “So the first chance I got,” he says, “I did exactly the opposite.”
Now, for many children of color, the worry of being held back has been overtaken by dying young. Mc Whorter and C. Delores Tucker, among others, were warning about the dangers of hip-hop back in the day. Their predictions have come true.
Hip-hop music and hip-hop culture is just as virulent a disease as AIDS or cancer. The lifestyle is claiming bodies all over the country. There is money to be made in this culture of death and “presentable” purveyors like Sean Combs, Jay Z, and Russell Simmons funnel resources to public relations bonanzas like encouraging teen voting to burnish their image. I’m not sure if any of the trio has been appointed an UN ambassador yet. They, like the family portrayed in the God Father want to move into the mainstream and hide the source of their wealth. The mainstream corporations who profit from hip-hop and are all too happy to let Combs, Jay Z, and Simmons front the money making machine as they are smiling all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, the body count continues.
Dr. Wilda says this about that ©
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