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

Political Rap and Boogie Down Productions In the fall of 1987, Scott la Rock, the DJ of the rap group Boogie Down Productions (B-D-P) was shot in a car after trying to break up a fight (Small 77). In light of B-D-Ps role in reforming rap in the deliver the goods years, his biography is significant he was college educated and was employed--in addition to his musical activity--as a social worker. He had released a groundbreaking record that year, and had already worked on a follow-up, which would defy older categories of rap music. His violent death seemed a cause for pause to reflect on rap musics new direction. The effect on the otherwise member of B-D-P, the rapper K-R-S One (Chris Parker), was devastating but quickened his mission. Nearly two years after the murder, he preached against black-on-black crime, promoting education, spirituality and vegetarianism. Rap had to be political and it ask self-denial, even asceticism he had do rap music an extremely serious ende avor. Enlightened rap seemed poised to enjoy mainstream popularity. But something ab bulge out its center 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 view 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 New 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 sanctify D of Public Enemy, politicized rap in the middle eighties. It is well known that popular rap was capable o f political content from its earliest beginnings. Grandmaster Flash and the fierce 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 indictment of cocain (then called freebase), well before crack became a mainstream epidemic. Run-DMC rapped in Hard Times about the early eighties inflation economy. Of course, the political discourse of rap music has been pointed out before, but almost always in exalted form.