I have never been a huge fan of Chicago emcee Common, but I have always given him his props for growing up in hip hop. Starting out as a pretty typical rap dude rapping about typical rap things,
Common evolved right before our eyes into a conscious musician with an ear for spiritual, lyrical and musical experimentation. So much so, that he became almost synonymous with conscious rap, and the hinge between the serious lyricists in hip hop and the newly resurgent spoken word poetry movement. I mean, the President actually invited him to perform at a poetry jam at the White House. That is my mental context for listening to
Ghetto Dreams, the collabo song Common dropped with Nas last week. As my longtime readers know, I love it when Nas gets into his deep pro-black, celebratory/revolutionary vibe (as he did on say,
One Mic or
Black Republican), and that's what I would expect him to do beside Common over a track by No ID. Well, that's not exactly what happened...
Common's verse starts (in what strikes me as very un-Commonly):
"I want a bitch that look good and cook good/Cinderella fancy, but she still look hood..." Sigh... This was not starting off well for me. I decided to listen to the whole thing, though. Maybe Common was going to rap in the place of different characters or something, showing that different people in the hood had different dreams and aspirations, including this character? Nope. He goes on in the second verse about this great woman whose "ass is like a weapon and it's hard to conceal it" with "a baby in one arm, in the other is a skillet"... "my ghetto housewife watch reality shows"..?
Okay. So much for Common... maybe Nas is gonna pick it up for me? Not really. He goes on to brag about how he got "powerful women playing the roles of submission/ lawyers on leashes, congresswomen inflicting pain on 'em..."
For some reason, Nas and Common took this opportunity of having two heavyweight emcees on a nice track and used it to endorse the tired and cliched connection between hip hop and a misogynistic, male chauvinist worldview. So disappointing. If you been reading this blog for very long, you may have noticed that I rarely take the time to mention anything I don't like, much less spend time writing a whole post about it. And I'm not the type of dude who hates on thug rappers and pimp types. I've seen it all in my time and as long as there is balance and sincerity, I don't hate the player nor the game. To paraphrase Special Ed. I never lose cause I never play.
What bothers me is the degree to which conscious dudes who definitely know better give in to supposed pressure and start making bullshit in some half-hearted attempt to get paper. I don't blame Nas for this record. He does this kinda shit all the time, and the song titles let you know that if you don't wanna hear that shit, you should skip it. I'm insulted by a song called Ghetto Dreams that essentially says dudes in the hood are looking for a "bad bitch" to cook, clean, raise babies and that's it? Come on, guys... way to dumb it down...
Maybe some of my readers will want
Ghetto Dreams on their hard drive. As for me, I will definitely pass. If you want it,
click here to cop it free, but keep that to yourself. I listened to it several times trying to see if there was some depth to the record that I was missing (there wasn't), and that was more than enough to last a lifetime. I don't want the backwards thinking contained therein growing on me... let alone my wife or daughter.
Or (for that matter) yours.
-samax.
