Shoot the messenger

We got this email from Aaron, who makes some points about Gangsta rap:

"..blaiming gangsta rap for The Gun Culture(TM) is on a par with blaming EastEnders for skinhead violence because it's got a bald bloke who punches people in it."

I'm a fully paid up-sandal wearing guardian reading leftie, but I really think you (and everyone else saying it) are wrong about this.

The way I see it, the major labels feed on the paranoid and poverty of certain black communities (which obviously is the fault of the state, not the music industry) by producing hip-hop/garage/gangsta rap that promises a glamorous escape from 'the ghetto' through violence, in the knowledge, that it will seem aspirational to inner-city black youths, while providing vicarious thrills to comfortable white youths. For them, it's a win-win situation, until, of course, they have to deal with the moral consequences of their greed.

I'm not saying the music industry caused the situation, but it does nothing to help, and even exacerbates things. And in Britain, we make exactly the same mistakes the Americans do, just a little later. Why are the only successful British hip-hop acts those that have an undercurrent of violence?

And, for all of his pomposity, the guy who wrote to the Telegraph is right. Westwood is as guilty as other R1 DJ's of using his privileged position to promote acts that will line his pocket, without a thought for the moral consequences or the public-service remit of the BBC.
Which is not to say the BBC isn't doing some good work. The news bulletins of 1xtra are fantastic, as is Deviation (an underground hip-hop show on Thursday nights, which you should check out, if you haven't already), amongst other things I probably don't know about.

You might also take a look at talking point [BBC News Online] and read what anti-gun campaigner and record producer Charles Bailey had to say yesterday.

and, for what it's worth, I do think Aaron has a sort of point - as indeed did Fraser - the labels and the whole stance of the So Solid Crew are making hard cash from selling back the myth of just how cool violence is through a lot of music. But while that's true, I'm a bit unsettled that Gangsta Rap (and associated music) is being made to carry the can for the increase in gun crime on the streets, and was just a bit surprised that anyone could be so cynical as to use the shooting of two teenaged women as a platform to complain, basically, that the music his company puts out isn't being played on Radio One.

Sadly, it seems to me that the music itself is reflecting a more violent society at its sharpest point, rather than shaping it; and I fear all the press coverage will do is attract more nutters with guns to rap gigs (the 'give a dog a bad name' effect was seen with the So Solid gigs last year.)

Personally, I'd rather listen to songs about flowers and girls and boys and kissing, but that's not what young city-dwelling Britons seem to want to either make or consume. Seemingly. And if there were other sorts of music available in the Capital, I don't know if it would make much difference to the general gun-crazed mayhem on the streets - Liverpool is awash with mini-Oasises and, to an increasing extent, acts who feel themselves to be psychedelic but actually are more like the Inspiral Carpets. And Merseyside is kneecap-deep in gun crime. It is shocking that the only artist who's managed to work up a statement attacking the dicks with guns is Ms Dynamite - it'd be nice to see something along the lines of the Stop The Violence Movement's Self Destruction project taking root in the UK - although the fifteen years since that happened in the States kind of proves that there's only so much musical pleas for ceasefire can achieve.

On your point about Westwood, though: He's had a reputation in the past for putting his pocketbook before the public service remit of the BBC, hasn't he?