Irony

While flipping through channels I've come upon vh1 a.k.a. MTVLite. I'm watching what appears to be a show about hip hop. It is...sort of.

It's the 40 Least Hip Hop Moments.

You know what the irony of the situation is?

The show in itself is probably one of the "least hip hop moments."

When did vh1 become an authority on hip hop?

The first hip hop video I ever saw on vh1 was Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," which is actually more like hip pop (no offense Mr. Smith).

Aw man, now they're clownin' "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It." Et tu, Brute?

vh1 used to be like MTV in it's early days- as white as the driven snow. But since cash rules everything around me, once White suburban kids started buying hip hop everything changed. 75% of the purchasers of rap music are non-Black.

Of course on the flip side, one could argue that what we have is an example of the economic opportunity that comes along with living in the United States. True dat, true dat.

But my beef is that Black people don't have ownership of hip hop culture- it's becoming recognized as everybody's culture now. To be clear, I'm not talking about culture sharing. I'm all about culture sharing. However in order to share on an equal plane there must be equal recognition of who is contributing what.

For example, just because you can buy a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli off the shelf at CVS, doesn't mean that ravioli isn't a distinctly Italian dish.

Rap music and hip hop culture as a whole is not only a distinctly African American- and to an extent Latino American- form of expression; it's roots lie in the struggles and turbulations of African descendants in North America for the past 400 years or so.