arts school to be named after thug - Page 2

You don't need to "suggest improvements" for socially conscious lyrics to have value.

Rappers aren't policy makers!

No, you don't have to. But you'd make yourself far more valuable if you did.

That's absurd.

What art can you think of that's instructive on policy solutions?

EDIT: WHOOPS. DIDN'T MEAN "INSTRUCTIVE" SINCE ALL SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS ART IS INSTRUCTIVE FOR POLICY SOLUTIONS. READ MY FOLLOW UP POST FOR CLARIFICATION.

Sorry, couldn't resist

Novels?

I love how this is always about me.

Doesn't perceived infallibility and wordsmithing versus actual discussion points get tiring?

I guess not for you. You'd rather have a two page discussion about a subtopic and how I was right or wrong on some piece of giant selected minutia as means of discrediting the arguer instead of an argument.

Honestly grow up and get a new lame tactic at least. If you can't then screw off because I'm not going to deal with your craptacular reasoning that since I can't remember whether Mos Def was 98 versus 94 that Tupac wasn't advocating a thug lifestyle and all it represents.


It's clear that you continue to believe that disproving point A validates point B. Sorry but that isn't true. Especially when your point A is "In my estimation trumptman isn't a hardcore enough fan to render an opinion"

I really don't care if you think my rap credentials west coast dominated or not. I don't really care if you want to crap all over where I live or any of the other lame personal attacks that pass for reasoning in your posts.

Got that yet? I guess not because you keep going back to that same tired routine. Perhaps it is why you cannot realize it is a tired one whether it is dirty south or west coast as well within a genre.

As for the actual Tupac discussion, well I guess you don't have to even address that now that you got your ranting ad-homs out of the way.

Let's make sure we all understand giant's reasoning. Trumptman spends 2006 coaching kid's soccer instead of going to underground clubs in "cultural centers" so he can't really have known if Tupac was a thug in 1996 when he died. (Especially since he lived in Long Beach from 88-98 and god knows nothing regarding rap ever came out of Compton, or Long Beach.)

Lame... lame... lame....

You know what giant, when someone let's you teach in a school, leaves you responsible for their children, and then hands you a million bucks, you can name your school after Tupac.

I stated that the school I would be running wouldn't accept the money. I'd rather be broke because there are considerations other than money in my decision-making regarding children.

I've got a long list of credentials, award nominations, serving on school and community boards, etc. to show why people would trust my decision making ability with their children. None of them ever revolved around what underground club I spend time in last weekend.

Nick

No, he the one who used the family credentials to peddle a self-indulgent thug lifestyle. For folks like yourself that deal more with intent than outcomes, this is the perfect shield.

"Dude, he's talking about killing others, pursuing only money and women as pure prostitutes."

"Yeah, but his Daddy is Black Panther so that isn't advocating, it is consciousness raising..."

Sorry, that reasoning doesn't fly. Labeling the "intent" of those who refuse to let that fly as racist is just pure intellectual laziness.

Refusing to take song called "Bury Me a G" on an album called "Thug Life" and see it "social commentary" instead of straight up advocation of the lifestyle doesn't make one a racist.

Now taking that straight up advocation and giving it a pass because Daddy and Mommy were this. That is straight up racism.

Nick

I don't know what genre that is.

Looks like literary non-fiction-- which is a good rebuttal point.

But the vast majority of fiction, music, visual art-- you just can't hold them to the standard that the highest example of social consciousness there is some advocacy for policy solutions. There's so much more to it than that-- like things that are actually instructive for policy solutions. That's just as good.

Because "having value" is enough for a kid like you desperately looking to give his "white guilt" an out. It doesn't have to have positive value, just value.

Advocating black on black crime might have "value" but that "value" isn't acceptable to name a school after. That "value" isn't automatically positive just because mommy and daddy were activists. That "value" isn't equal to a song attempting to stop black on black crime.

Nick

Leave the armchair psychology out please, kiddo.

You're simply ignoring the body of Shakur's work-- something you're admittedly and unconcernedly unfamiliar with. Something's not right if you think you can make arguments about the cultural relevancy of a rapper without knowing anything about his work. And it's a little more than wearisome to discuss "Bury Me a G" with someone who sees it as "straight up advocation of a criminal lifestyle." It's not quite black and white like that dearie. That one's about his youth-- or a common youth among troubled black teens. The ending laments his days as a "heartless hustler" and the "game" he has to play as a "motherfucka." What a ringing endorsement! Still-- that's one of his "harder" songs. He has much more explicitly socially conscious tracks like "The Streetz R Deathrow." You should check it out.

Let's address this straight up Shawn. Shakur's body of work as a whole got less socially conscious and more materialist, misogynistic, nihilistic and violent as he went along. It would actually be much easier to understand the reverse, It would be very easy to forgive a young Tupac rapping and reflecting his limited life experience for being less than enlightened. We have seen this pattern often with artists. One can indeed act a fool when one is still foolish.

But you get that success, you get those dollars, you see the world, get involved in the media, have your own businesses etc... you are no longer a fool at that stage. This is instead when he choose to go to the opposite direction. Instead of leaving say a Death Row records to do something socially conscious. (We see so many do this conveniently after they are already rich) He did the opposite. He left the socially conscious to go to Death Row, to add more violence, more nihilistic and misogynistic themes to his music.

He didn't wise up and so we can excuse his youthful indiscretions. He wised down and people want his adult indiscretions excused by his youthful idealism. That doesn't fly for me.

So now the BODY of work has been addressed as a whole. Stop imploring me to "go listen" assuming I haven't. Your assumptions are insulting. I'm not using an exception to prove the rule. There are plenty of examples similar to what I cited to be found in Shakur's music. If anything it is the occasional early socially conscious song of his that people use to ignore all his other work.

Speaking of familiarity.... how many ghetto's have you lived in and for how long Shawn? You want to know what is wearisome, talking to a kid who claims to listening to a song gives more credence about the subject matter than those who lived in the neighborhood that is the subject matter. Want to interpret what the art is properly reflecting and to what degree then it isn't quantity that is necessary. Then you need to experience the reality of the art.

Nick

That's a response to *your* comment about *yourself.* If you don't want to talk about yourself, then stick to a discussion of the facts, arguments and views at hand and *don't talk about yourself.*

Two pages? I have only 2 *posts* (now 3) in this 50 post thread. Hyperbole much?

You, grove, shawn and others spent most of the 1st page discussing the state of hip hop. Don't try to pull this "but what about the tupac issue?!" misdirection as soon as your "state of hip hop" argument is shown to be completely baseless.

And why should I opine on tupac directly? I don't form opinions in the absence of sufficient information, and I don't know enough about tupac's lyrics to know whether he's advocating a criminal lifestyle or talking about it as something as a painful fact of life and something rise up out of. My understanding is that it's the latter. From what I understand, within the hip hop community he's pretty universally considered a "socially conscious" artist, and widely revered, and virtually all of the criticism of his work seems to come from people who are utterly disconnected from it, the hip hop community and the world that many black americans live in.

Clearly many people across all walks of life have felt a strong connection to his work, and it has had a major impact on contemporary american culture. Even just hitting up wikipedia we can see that his work is far more culturally significant and diverse than how it's characterized by culturally ignorant outsiders.

In my experience, many people who listen to his music without having knee-jerk "he's a thug!" reaction come to the same kinds of conclusions summed up the quote above, so it would be a mistake to ignore that in deference to the knee-jerkers, particularly the knee-jerkers who clearly know close to nothing about hip hop, those who make it or those who listen and relate to it.

Really, we are talking about some high school accepting a huge donation dedicating a theater to a major american cultural figure. This is really such a small, routine deal it's amazing that there are people on an apple rumor forum who are up in arms about it.

Perhaps when the default position of parties such as yourself isn't disagreement = ignorance of subject matter then I don't have to talk about what I have done to not be ignorant of the subject matter.

Answer me this. Could a person have listened to every single Tupac song and have a position in disagreement with your own? Could a person have listened to as much rap, perhaps even more rap, or rap of different geographical areas and come up with a different view than your own?

Because based of the contentions of yourself and others, the answers to those question could only be no. Since that is obviously not true, you should stop attempting to use those contentions as some sort of means of discrediting the person and thus ignoring their valid arguments.

In other words, stop attacking the person and the person will not have to respond personally.


I've heard many Tupac songs and multiple albums. I basically have heard everything released while he was alive. As I addressed with Shawn, I can understand the viewpoint where people try to chain a party to their past.

If someone said nothing good ever came out of the life of Malcolm X for example because part of his self-enlightenment involved learning to overcome the hatred that was directed at him (instead of merely reflecting it back) and that his writings and public statements reflected this evolution, you'd be right to call them full of shit.

However if again, Malcolm X started from the enlightened state and devolved into a violent state, you would not be able to justify the violence as not really being violence since the party held a previously enlightened position. You couldn't say "it isn't really violence but consciousness raising."

Now back to Tupac... Tupac is Black Elvis. There's really nothing more to it than that. There are plenty of people who want to assign some sort of higher ideals to Elvis Presley. They literally deify him. I don't consider him god, godly, or even "socially conscious." When then do the same to Tupac, I call it what it is there as well. Your citation of Wikipedia and the quotes it features make reference to people deifying Tupac.


Who's up in arms? Saying one wouldn't take the donation is within one's right. Saying I wouldn't doesn't mean I would prevent you. The only thing to be up in arms about is how little dissent is tolerated by the likes of you.

Nick

What do you mean by distention, trumpt?

You clearly can't have a conversation with that Nick kid.

It's called a warp speed typo.

Nick