save hip hop

Hip Hop has lost its once necessary lyricism. The days when people would rush to the store to buy the new Tupac or Biggie Smalls is over. There is no longer the desire to hear intellectual hip hop. This is not because there is a lack of talented artists; its the lack of exposure that they receive through the media (Television and radio). BET and MTV are partially responsible for many reasons. Take the incident in 2005, when BET refused to play the video Lovin it, by Little Brother. BET was quoted as saying that the video was too intelligent for the network to play for their audience. This is not the first time BET stopped airing a video deeming it to intelligent. In fact legendary group De La Souls video Shopping Bags was also not allowed to play, but for a different reason. BET stated that they refused the video because they said De La Soul was irrelevant to their audience. BET does nothing but play the same 5 or 6 songs a hundred times over every day. It also seems they focus on stereotypes of African-Americans when they decide to pick their music videos, reality television shows, and movies. I believe that hip hop artists have a right to make their videos in whatever way they feel, but it is the responsibility of music distributors, such as BET, Hot 97, and MTV, to put all types of music out there; intellectual or not. It is my current belief that much of the industry is currently trying to dumb down Americans with repetitive music that does not use real words.. Many hip hop artists also agree. Lupe Fiasco recently released a song called Dumb it Down. (To listen to this song visit www.youtube.com and look it up) The song states that all types of people are turning down real hip hop artists and trying to get rappers to focus on cars, jewelry, money, and women; to which Fiasco replies Bishop G, they told me I should come down cousin, but I flatly refused I aint dumb down nothing. If you truly want to hear genuine and original music, I urge you to sign this petition and show all music distributors to stop with the dumbing down of hip hop and music in general.b