Grandmaster, grandaddy of hip-hop
By Dave
June 11th, 2008 | Leave a comment
Talk about a Flashback. Grandmaster Flash is a published author! He goes back to the day when MTV was new, exciting and actually played videos. This thing called rap was new, too, and lots of pundits called it a passing fad. Well, that passing fad is 30 years old, give or take a year, and is deeply ingrained in the world’s pop culture. It’s made millionaires out of many performers. It’s gotten a couple of people dead, too, thanks to the gang mentality sometimes affiliated with some elements of hip-hop.
But it also opened doors for rap stars to other venues. What are the chances we’d have Will Smith starring in TV shows and movies without first getting a name in rap? Or Ice-T? Ice Cube (he’s great in the Barber Shop movies)? L.L. Cool J is another crossover star. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone. The point is, (white) people have become comfortable having these guys in their living rooms, figuratively speaking.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was a pioneer among pioneers. “The Message” talked about ghetto life, but it didn’t glorify gang-banging, bling and all the rest of that stuff. He was old school. Growing up in the ghetto sucked, that was his message. Broken glass everywhere.
I wasn’t really into hip-hop that much, but I heard enough of it at clubs and parties and so forth. Not that I disliked it, but I was more into rock, mainstream and alternative — you know, the MTV stuff, when MTV still played videos. I tuned out when MTV started airing those awful navel-gazing shows like Real World, the phoniest crap I ever saw — until this latest round of reality TV came along at the turn of the century. It’s all contrived crap, IMHO.
Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes.
There are certain tunes, such as Rapper’s Delight (Sugarhill Gang?) and Blondie’s Rapture, that stand out in my memory. The dude with the glowing red eyes had a little creep factor going for him in the Blondie video. And how about Run-DMC’s riff with Aerosmith in Walk This Way? Or, God help us, Vanilla Ice. At least Eminem had talent.
We’ve seen three examples of white culture usurping black culture in the past century or so: Jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and to some degree hip-hop. The only current well-known black jazz artists I can think of are named Marsalis. Rock is dominated by white performers. Biggest black band in recent years is Living Colour, and it’s been 20 years since they were big! I really liked that band — daring to confront racial issues directly is still pretty dicey stuff, and they did it. Funny Vibe did it. Black stars dominate hip-hop again, now that Marshall Mathers has retired his microphone. But a lot of pundits say the genre has become stale. Stay tuned.
I believe it was Charles Barkley who said, “What kind of a world do we live in where the best rapper is white (Eminem) and the best golfer is black (Tiger Woods)?” Never one to shy away from controversy, that Sir Charles.
