The Weinstein of Rap, the Epstein of Music-just how many such cases have to emerge before we look at these things without being afraid of the label 'conspiracy theorist'?
'Gangsta Rap' and its lapping up by white college kids (and bien pensant liberals more generally) is perhaps the single most grotesque bit of doublethink in our grotesque Age of Woke. And it is also a tragedy because up until its advent black music used to be great. Blues soul, Tamla, disco.....'rap' what a falling off was there! https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/imagine-theres-no-muzak
Isn't it what happens when there is a God-shaped hole in the world?
I'm not religious but I can see how this hole in the world is causing so much grief. People clearly need strong moral guidance (which I had assumed was something that was just innate or part of the human condition but what do I know!). Take away the moral and ethical guidance and some people just revert to being uncouth wicked savages.
The depressing part is that, as the top part of society continues to rule us all, we are gradually being acclimatised to paedophilia being "normal". Just like pornography and graphic sex scenes in movies is now "normal". Just like drug-taking is normal" in movies. Just like transgenderism is being normalised. Just like mass immigration of people-not-like-us has to be accepted as "normal". Just like schools and restaurant chains serving halal meat is now "normal". All the wrong things are "normal" and there are names for people like us who think none of this is "normal".
Very true. I’m in the same position. I’m constitutionally unable to genuinely believe in a deity, but I feel the absence and consider the rejection of our Christian heritage as the beginning of our descent into barbarism.
I think Christianity provided a moral framework which might have been unnecessary for many, but definitely set standards of what was acceptable and what was unacceptable behaviour for those with a weak or absent moral compass. It's a cultural code and I don't think you have to believe in God to accept it because it feels natural and right hence the way it underpins many of our laws and sense of justice. In the western world our foundations are Christian and we have removed that foundation. Not surprising that the civilisation which rested on it is cracking and crumbling.
It feels like we are reverting to barbarism. How long can those of us in the middle normal withstand the assaults on decency from all sides. Makes you want to move to Salt Lake City or an Amish community or something!
Salt Lake City is going the way of so many other Dem-controlled big cities. We escaped from downtown SLC to the suburbs 9 years ago and couldn’t be happier.
Sorry to be pedantic...but can you please put a space either side of a hyphen....your thoughts will read better!! Thanks....and by the way I love your writing .....
Thanks for the advice and the kind words. I’ll try to comply. Sadly some errors creep in as I write at a fast pace and do minimal editing afterwards. Generally the overall effect is a positive one. 😀
Many thanks for your thoughts, Daniel. It has come late to me that only deviants will be allowed to be persons of consequence. Still processing it. I'm curious who set Sean Combs to his career. Perhaps someone will come forth with investigation results about who set him in motion and who controlled him.
I suspect there are some genuinely innocent success stories, but a lot more of them are selected and managed and involved in a morally loathsome network of one kind or another. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that everyone who comes from nothing to massive prominence is an instinctually brilliant business person.
For once, l must take issue with something you have written. While I agree with your general negative characterization of "rap culture", I strongly oppose and even resent any suggestion that this disgusting cultural manifestation is somehow equal to "US black culture" as a whole. That brush paints with far too broad a brushstroke!
As I see it, gangsta-rap "culture" is the relatively recent expression of one particular subset of the American black experience -- namely, the great diaspora of largely southern blacks to the crumbling inner-city ghettos of the North during the late 1960s and 1970s. That subset culture was elevated to artificial predominence by unscrupulous and patronizing actors in those northern power centers, both political and cultural, who had a vested interest in sustaining the newly expanded "Great Society" welfare state and what would grow to become the almost total dependency of inner-city blacks upon it and upon them. Ultimately, "rap culture" is a celebration of dependency and dysfunction.
Seen in this light, "rap culture" was and is almost wholly alien to the world and culture in which I and most American blacks were raised prior to 1970. We "normies", raised in two-parent households, may not have been fabulously rich entertainment moguls like P. Diddy and his ilk (that wasn't open to us then, although there definitely were Jack-and-Jillers amongst us) but placed premium value upon being well-spoken, well-groomed, polite and respectful in our dealings with others ; maintaining our homes and properties to the highest standards we could afford; studying and working diligently to improve our lot; going to church regularly and practicing the God-fearing and civic virtues in our daily activities; and and conducting ourselves with rock-solid personal dignity at all times.
Whatever the difficulties we faced from society at large, we were first and foremost Americans who learned our lessons well and understood the immeasurable value of that designation.
Our cultural icons ran the gamut from Roland Hayes and Marian Anderson; to Jesse Owens and Willie Mays; to Lena Horne and Billy Eckstein; to Sidney Poitier, Leontyne Price, William Warfield and Diahann Carroll; to Dorothy West and Lorraine Hansbury; to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and The Supremes; to Mahalia Jackson and the Rev. Martin Luther King; to Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams; and on and on.
This was and is also "US Black culture", lest we forget.
Certainly there are cultural figures today who have been and remain closely associated with Rap (Queen Latifah and LL Cool J come to mind), but who have aspired to the world and culture we "old folks" grew up with. But that requires of them a recognition that these are quite different worlds built upon quite different cultural realities. These figures, if not P Diddy, deserve praise for recognizing the crucial distinction and acting to make the better virtues of times past a demonstrable reality in the present.
The female rappers are just as disgusting. What about Cardi B and her WAP? NPR cooed over this disgusting “song” speaking of how it empowers women.
True, that too is barbarism as ‘music’.
'Gangsta Rap' and its lapping up by white college kids (and bien pensant liberals more generally) is perhaps the single most grotesque bit of doublethink in our grotesque Age of Woke. And it is also a tragedy because up until its advent black music used to be great. Blues soul, Tamla, disco.....'rap' what a falling off was there! https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/imagine-theres-no-muzak
I agree. I have never understood people who saw merit in the genre. Earlier US black music is far superior.
Isn't it what happens when there is a God-shaped hole in the world?
I'm not religious but I can see how this hole in the world is causing so much grief. People clearly need strong moral guidance (which I had assumed was something that was just innate or part of the human condition but what do I know!). Take away the moral and ethical guidance and some people just revert to being uncouth wicked savages.
The depressing part is that, as the top part of society continues to rule us all, we are gradually being acclimatised to paedophilia being "normal". Just like pornography and graphic sex scenes in movies is now "normal". Just like drug-taking is normal" in movies. Just like transgenderism is being normalised. Just like mass immigration of people-not-like-us has to be accepted as "normal". Just like schools and restaurant chains serving halal meat is now "normal". All the wrong things are "normal" and there are names for people like us who think none of this is "normal".
Very true. I’m in the same position. I’m constitutionally unable to genuinely believe in a deity, but I feel the absence and consider the rejection of our Christian heritage as the beginning of our descent into barbarism.
I think Christianity provided a moral framework which might have been unnecessary for many, but definitely set standards of what was acceptable and what was unacceptable behaviour for those with a weak or absent moral compass. It's a cultural code and I don't think you have to believe in God to accept it because it feels natural and right hence the way it underpins many of our laws and sense of justice. In the western world our foundations are Christian and we have removed that foundation. Not surprising that the civilisation which rested on it is cracking and crumbling.
Every single day, I wake up again to the terrible reality of how life on Earth is warped and managed by pure evil.
There is still a huge swathe of decency and normalcy in the middle, but the terrible controls the social heights and the social depths.
It is so depressing 😞
It feels like we are reverting to barbarism. How long can those of us in the middle normal withstand the assaults on decency from all sides. Makes you want to move to Salt Lake City or an Amish community or something!
It does-the Amish look more and more sensible to me.
Salt Lake City is going the way of so many other Dem-controlled big cities. We escaped from downtown SLC to the suburbs 9 years ago and couldn’t be happier.
People with compatible pathologies are attracted to each other like “gay dar” it’s how people always seem to be attracted to the same wrong person
Sorry to be pedantic...but can you please put a space either side of a hyphen....your thoughts will read better!! Thanks....and by the way I love your writing .....
Thanks for the advice and the kind words. I’ll try to comply. Sadly some errors creep in as I write at a fast pace and do minimal editing afterwards. Generally the overall effect is a positive one. 😀
Thanks for the response!! Just keep doing what you're doing...your work is amazing!! 🥰
Many thanks for your thoughts, Daniel. It has come late to me that only deviants will be allowed to be persons of consequence. Still processing it. I'm curious who set Sean Combs to his career. Perhaps someone will come forth with investigation results about who set him in motion and who controlled him.
I suspect there are some genuinely innocent success stories, but a lot more of them are selected and managed and involved in a morally loathsome network of one kind or another. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that everyone who comes from nothing to massive prominence is an instinctually brilliant business person.
Name & shame !
Someone published the following list of the monster's "friends"...
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e112db7-3682-48da-90ae-9123f16008a3_1615x1765.jpeg?
For once, l must take issue with something you have written. While I agree with your general negative characterization of "rap culture", I strongly oppose and even resent any suggestion that this disgusting cultural manifestation is somehow equal to "US black culture" as a whole. That brush paints with far too broad a brushstroke!
As I see it, gangsta-rap "culture" is the relatively recent expression of one particular subset of the American black experience -- namely, the great diaspora of largely southern blacks to the crumbling inner-city ghettos of the North during the late 1960s and 1970s. That subset culture was elevated to artificial predominence by unscrupulous and patronizing actors in those northern power centers, both political and cultural, who had a vested interest in sustaining the newly expanded "Great Society" welfare state and what would grow to become the almost total dependency of inner-city blacks upon it and upon them. Ultimately, "rap culture" is a celebration of dependency and dysfunction.
Seen in this light, "rap culture" was and is almost wholly alien to the world and culture in which I and most American blacks were raised prior to 1970. We "normies", raised in two-parent households, may not have been fabulously rich entertainment moguls like P. Diddy and his ilk (that wasn't open to us then, although there definitely were Jack-and-Jillers amongst us) but placed premium value upon being well-spoken, well-groomed, polite and respectful in our dealings with others ; maintaining our homes and properties to the highest standards we could afford; studying and working diligently to improve our lot; going to church regularly and practicing the God-fearing and civic virtues in our daily activities; and and conducting ourselves with rock-solid personal dignity at all times.
Whatever the difficulties we faced from society at large, we were first and foremost Americans who learned our lessons well and understood the immeasurable value of that designation.
Our cultural icons ran the gamut from Roland Hayes and Marian Anderson; to Jesse Owens and Willie Mays; to Lena Horne and Billy Eckstein; to Sidney Poitier, Leontyne Price, William Warfield and Diahann Carroll; to Dorothy West and Lorraine Hansbury; to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and The Supremes; to Mahalia Jackson and the Rev. Martin Luther King; to Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams; and on and on.
This was and is also "US Black culture", lest we forget.
Certainly there are cultural figures today who have been and remain closely associated with Rap (Queen Latifah and LL Cool J come to mind), but who have aspired to the world and culture we "old folks" grew up with. But that requires of them a recognition that these are quite different worlds built upon quite different cultural realities. These figures, if not P Diddy, deserve praise for recognizing the crucial distinction and acting to make the better virtues of times past a demonstrable reality in the present.