Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, a magical place called MTV played these things known as music videos, and the people were content.
Today, anyone unfortunate enough to stumble on ruins of the once mighty music video channel feels a sudden compulsion to projectile vomit on the cast of “The Hills” and slap the parents of the spoiled brats on “My Super Sweet Sixteen.”
Four years before I turned 16, I devoured MTV music videos. As an angsty youngster, I dedicated an untold number of hours watching the pioneers of grunge, punk rock, indie rock and hip-hop late into the night as my parents slept down the hall.
Countless weekends after basketball games, comic book shopping and trampoline jumping, I disappeared into my bedroom, listening to Tupac and Nirvana on my CD player while playing a muted Donkey Kong Country on my Super Nintendo.
Arguably, a half-black, half-Irish 12-year-old growing up in the suburbs of Choctaw has little in common with the tales of gang violence and communities devastated by crime and drugs.
Still, there was young me, immersed in the beats, the rhythms, the rhymes, the storytelling of gangsta rappers.
The 27-year-old me laments the sad place where MTV and the music industry finds itself at the end of the 21st century’s first decade.
Long ago, hip-hop abandoned its socio-political and cultural roots in favor of bling and video hoes. Where once groups like NWA and Public Enemy rapped about the crime and drugs crippling many black communities across the country, 50 Cent raps about giving “shorty” ecstasy “in da club.”
Where white, middle-class punk rockers raged against the machine — and disco, Reagan — in the late 70s and early 80s, what passes for punk rock on the radio today eschews all things political to sing about, well, really nothing at all.
In the first decade of the 21st century, Public Enemy’s Flava Flav stars as a parody of himself on VH1’s “Flavor of Love” where women compete for the opportunity to, I guess, sleep with Flav while he wears a giant clock around his neck and survive.
And, in the stead of the punk rocker exists the hipster, a soulless, vapid and completely apolitical 20-something who cares about nothing at all but carrying a Pabst Blue Ribbon, wearing skinny jeans, loitering at coffee shops — never Starbucks — listening to bands you’ve never heard of, and doing their darndest to look as they do not live off their parent’s bank account or trust fund.
“American Idol” insists it is looking for the next “rock legend” but what it really looks for is the safest, most marketable product to give folk an excuse to dispose of their disposable income.
Yet, where once existed disposable income now exists depleted bank accounts and 401(k)s and record unemployment.
The unemployment rate for blacks sits at 15.4 percent and the best T-Pain can come up with is a rap about a bartender and “some brand new 24’s on a brand new ride?”
In his recent “D.O.A (Death of Auto-tune),” Jay-Z raps, saxophones blaring behind him, “Get back to rap, you T-Pain-in too much.”
Earlier in the song, he warns, “I know we facing a recession but the music y’all making gonna make it the Great Depression.
National unemployment sits at nearly 10 percent, 25.9 percent for teenagers, and college graduates face the toughest job market in decades. The era of bling and silliness is over, gone with our bank accounts.
It is time for music to act like it.
James Cooper is a M.A. student in screen studies an English. He received his B.A. in film studies and political science from the University of Oklahoma.
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