On March 26, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed Dennis Diderot, the Father of the Encyclopedia, who wished to make books of all of the useful knowledge of the world.  In the end, while Dennis Diderot and his friends’ contribution to the recording of knowledge is much appreciated, one could argue that there would be better results and information if the encyclopedias were written by (at least) a crowd of people instead of one man and his most likely like-minded friends.  Indeed, the question of how much bias was present within these texts, intentional or unintentional as it might have been, is a definite concern, especially for those who wish to look at information and history not from judgmental, revisionist, and biased eyes.  Our professor then sent us out on an online research assignment which he termed a, “Digital Scavenger Hunt”.  The assignment was to look into as distant of the past as we could possibly go and essentially figure out how terms such as “hip hop music”, “salsa”, “jazz”, etc. were looked upon at the time.  The main purpose of the assignment was to look at and possibly discover the radically different viewpoints people of the past had with such terms and to come to our own conclusions about them.

It was here where I chose the term, “hip-hop music” to focus my research and study on.  Using Google Ngram Viewer, I was able to find that the earliest record of the term “hip-hop music” within the 1960s (more specifically, 1962 – 1969), but unfortunately, I was not able to find any documents or papers from that particular time frame.  I was, however, able to find excerpts of a book entitled, “Philological Papers: Volume 50” hailing from 1947 from Google Books.  This ended up being the oldest document I could find on the term, as ProQuest seemed to only have articles from 1990 onwards and other articles older than 1947 seemed to be referring to hip and hop as onomatopoeias and sounds rather than the actual genre of music.  Within the pages of “Philological Papers: Volume 50”, three pages are ultimately given focus by Google Books: pages 76, 77, and 78.  On page 76, the book seems to be discussing the controversial relationship hip-hop music and the subject of violence seem to have.  It refers to a paper titled, Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism, by Russell A. Potter, and says that, “Taking the violence out of context and moralizing it creates what Potter calls a ‘moral panic’ that erases what he sees as crucial to understanding the political import of violence in postmodern African American art, such as rap” (76).  Page 77 is then given a title of, “When the Oppressed Becomes the Oppressor: Willie Lynch and the Politics of Race and Racism in Hip-Hop Music” and on page 78, there is a section entitled, “History and Its Connection to Hip-Hop Music”.

It seems to be that hip-hop is as controversial and as adept at raising concern back then as it is today.  Racism, oppression, and counter-culture, even back in the 1940s, seems to be the biggest themes of hip-hop music.  Even back then, hip-hop music seems to be a way for black people to “stick it to the man”, point out and inform others of the poor, sad shape of poor, black communities, and even back then, when questioned about whether it was appropriate to sell to listeners, hip-hop artists and the people who see all of the potential good hip-hop music can do to raise awareness and move their hopes for a better life for the minority communities forward passionately defend it, with both sides shaking their heads and wondering why it is that they can’t see the other side’s point in all of this.  It seems that compared to other styles of music, hip-hop is a relatively new genre of music, and it shows no signs of slowing down and changing anytime soon.

On March 19, 2018, our HIST 390 discussed the questions that surround history as a whole.  When one really thinks about it, many people get their general knowledge of history through museums and history books, and while that is all fine and good, what happened if we were to find out that museums and the authors of those said books were purposefully tampering, making up, or withholding information?  While most probably won’t mind too much (and maybe get a little bit irritated for being lied to all of this time), true history fanatics would probably be outraged!  So much time spent committing a couple of historical facts to memory and spending time and energy studying a history based on the belief of these facts being real, only to find out that it had all been a lie or hadn’t been as accurate as you thought it was!  While there is probably never going to be enough proof or enough of a conspiracy to force trustworthy investigators to find out the level of accuracy the information books and museums present as true (and in all honesty, what if those investigators were in on the lie too), the thought is indeed scary.  After all, we have no reason to accept the history museums and books want you to accept (at least, at face value).  The purpose of the brain is to think critically about what we take in and decide for ourselves whether we believe it or not.  If we do not believe it, then that then leads to whether you are passionate enough to undergo an investigation of your own or if you are simply content of staying ignorant to what the real truth is and going on with your life.  After all, no one person truly has the right to force you into thinking what they want you to think.  Then again, maybe the less than preferable practices of history books and museums aren’t coming completely from a place of malice and desire of manipulation.  There have certainly been times when museums have considered changing a display simply because sometimes they feel that if they allowed people to see the actual artifact or display in the way that it was supposed to see, then people wouldn’t believe it and would accuse the museum of promoting propaganda anyway.  It truly is a complicated issue when one takes into account the suspension of disbelief the public may have.  After all, what’s the point of being completely honest if no one is willing to believe you?

A prominent example of all of this is the fact that there were black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy back in the Civil War.  It seems contradictory, doesn’t it?  Why would black people fight for a system that was actively enslaving and mistreating them?  There are multiple accounts of Union soldiers witnessing the black and white soldiers of the Confederacy fighting alongside one another seemingly with little to no issue, but at the same time there were accounts where, yes, while they were actually fighting together, it was probably because they were forced to due to a loss of too many soldiers on the Confederacy side.  Which accounts do we believe?  On one hand, forcing black slaves and citizens to fight for them supports the belief and narrative that the Confederacy was the side of immoral racism; but on the other hand, the accounts that vouch that they were fighting as one pokes a pretty disastrous hole into all of that.  Perhaps slavery in the U.S. was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be?  Perhaps we are simply taking these documents out of context?  Perhaps these were all fabricated for a sinister purpose?  We really have no way of knowing for sure, as there is actual credibility to all of these theories!

This truly is a predicament that I feel is of the utmost importance.  So many people draw from the past to make decisions in the present and future!  There are entire groups of people who use their ancestors’ pasts to define who they are!  Policies and philosophies are created due to people looking to the past and determining which patterns and similarities would consistently come up and determining whether the country or humans as a whole should emulate and follow such examples or not!  While the past surely should not define anyone or any place’s present or the future, many aspects of society draw from the past for guidance.  If the past is indeed being mistranslated, misinterpreted, or manipulated, then wouldn’t everything in our society based on it then be a society based on lies?  What a dilemma this presents to us!

On March 7, 2018, our HIST 390 class continued to discuss the unique history of music within the U.S.  Back in the day, the segregation between blacks and whites socially was noticeable.  American music executive of King Records, Sydney “Syd” Nathan, was able to make a noticeable amount of profit by selling songs twice to the public with one song being sung and performed by white artists and musicians and another version of it being sung by black artists and musicians.  Twice the songs, twice the profit.  With music being this segregated and this calculated, it makes one wonder what songs were real and which were simply subtle and calculated political and social moves.  What was the true soul of music if behind the scenes, music was always so meticulously and carefully thought out and made?  One of the biggest examples that give credence to these seemingly pessimistic fears was the concept of racial nationalism.  Racial nationalism is a belief system that advocates and tries to preserve racial definition of national identity.  The problem with the U.S., however, is that with both whites and blacks living within the country, it wasn’t as easy to define who U.S. citizens were as compared to, say, the almost completely white Ireland.  It then simply became a matter of defining what each race was.  When it came to the music industry, music executives and producers went out of their way to look for their idea of “authentic” black and white folks to sing the songs designed for black and white folks respectively.  In the end, both races ended up being romanticized to look better or worse, but always inaccurately, to the general public.  The music industry sought out singers, artists, and musicians who, in their minds, looked like customary and traditional examples of what their races were.  A clear example of this was the signing of Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who was signed by John Lomax all the way from his prison cell and was forced to maintain the image of a poor, black farmer or peasant that he definitely wasn’t throughout a good chunk of his career.  As much as he wanted to sing his own songs and show people the real him, his old image and what he used to be never truly left him.

What no doubt encouraged this thought process and behavior was the strange and unique relationship black musicians had with their white audiences.  As Karl Hagstrom Miller noted in his book, “Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pp Music in the Age of Jim Crow, “Some black musicians found that they could make more money playing for white audiences than they could for black patrons” (65).  When comparing the amount of pay and tips a black musician would receive when performing in front of a black audience to performing in front of a white audience, the difference was as clear as night and day.  With black audiences, there wouldn’t even be enough for the musicians to buy themselves food and drink, but with white audiences, they would continue to pay and tip them for playing recommendations, serenading, and dances and bring plates of food along with them. It also helped that shows with white audiences always seemed to end around midnight while shows with black audiences seemed to continue on to the early morning, something that black musicians took notice of and appreciated, as they could get some much needed sleep for the day ahead.  What certainly didn’t help black audiences  was how much more rougher and less safe they seemed to be when compared to white audiences and how racial attitudes towards black musicians, when compared to blacks in general by both average white citizens and law enforcement, was very noticeably nicer.  With all of the perks that came with playing the music white people and the music industry expected from them, black musicians and artists were probably less inclined to step out of line and stand up for themselves creatively.

In the end, it is truly frightening how easy it potentially is to make people believe in something that is simply not true.  To be fed what were essentially beautiful lies about one another while also probably noticing the truth about each other that came with living with one another probably did not do the two racial sides any favors or relieved any actual tension.  After all, if you knew that what was being portrayed in the media about you was a lie and people constantly made assumptions about you because of it, it would probably get under your skin pretty quickly.  Likewise, if you saw how the opposite side was being portrayed in the media and knew first-hand how that wasn’t how they presented themselves of acted, you might grow bitter to how much the truth was being manipulated and resent the other side even more.  Sure, there was probably some good that came out of this, and perhaps there were some racial tensions that were relieved due to these practices, but in the long term, I just can’t see how this would all work out in the end.  If all we tell is lies, those who demand the truth will simply assume that everything else is also a lie and will try to fight against it, and more fighting is the last thing two sides would want if both sides desire peace and understanding.

On March 5, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the strangeness surrounding the musical genre known as country music.  Relating back to the previous discussion that we had, due to the constant dangers and lack of work due to the Great Depression, a large influx of both white and black U.S. citizens made the trip from the rural South to the cities of the North, but not without eventually realizing that they, in fact, missed the lives that they had left behind and ultimately felt homesick.  This was where another case of musical displacement reared its strange and perplexing head.  After all, if record labels could sell what they marketed as black, authentic music to the British, who would then in turn take inspiration from it and sell their own music based on that back to white people in America, then why couldn’t record labels be able to find a way to take advantage and profit off of the sudden longing felt by both whites and blacks to return to the good old country life?  And that is exactly what they did.  This was the birth of country music, a genre of music that record labels used to get rich quick off of selling an idealized, romanticized, and stereotypical version of southern life to people who had just recently left it, and for southerners now working in military industrial complexes and most likely working various factory jobs, this was welcomed with open arms.  Jimmie Rodgers was the first of many “country music stars” to rise from this particular period, and he wouldn’t be the last, nor would the practices done during this era be thrown away and forgotten so easily.  For example, at this point in time, Hawaiian steal guitars had slowly become commonplace within country music, alongside fiddles and violins as it was believed that these were considered the ultimate symbols of United States wholesomeness that country music couldn’t be without.  And to a certain extent, that was true.  With all of these factors and elements to fall back on, acts such as Buck Owens and the Buckaroos would become the first and only country act to book a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1963.  Later on, Syd Nathan, a Jewish immigrant in Cincinnati, a major industrial city with black and white migrants, opened Key Records, which gave rise to Cowboy Copas, who sang his first hit record, “Filipino Baby” in 1946.  This would later pave way for acts such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, one of the first rock and roll acts of the 1950s, bluegrass music, and many other musical contributions to the world of music in general.  It seemed like no matter how segregated politics was for the United States in the end, there always seems to be holes in the wall where other peoples’ cultures would seep through and integrate into.

While discussing the strange history and impact country music had on society and the music industry as a whole, a topic that was brought up was what exactly did country music stand for?  It was a daunting question to say the least.  For starters, country music’s political stance seemed to be complicated, and it just seems to get messier and messier from there.  Cowboy Copas’ song, “Filipino Baby”, when listened to, can seem downright sexist, as Copas describes the girl in the song in great physical detail, arguably reducing her to nothing but body parts and fetishizing women of color in a way that, back in the day, a black person couldn’t possibly sing about a white, blond girl.  Was this what country music was?  Sexism, machoism, the stereotypical male and American way?  Perhaps, but here was the counter argument: the song had a verse that informed the listener that the singer married this “Filipino baby” and loved her and was happy with her.  That alone actually sounds innocent enough.  So which was it?  Was country music degrading or was it simply simple and pure emotions that could unfortunately be misinterpreted in the wrong way?  To offset this, another country artist, Merle Haggard, had a song titled, “Irma Jackson” which basically had the same exact message “Filipino Baby” had but avoided all of the negative trappings and actually added a little bit of social commentary on the side.  In the end, the class agreed to agree to disagree about country music’s true meaning, as there was ample evidence for both sides.  For me personally, I’d like to think that country music is innocent enough.  As I have said before in previous writings, I doubt anyone cares enough to go out of their way to hate on somebody or degrade someone else’s people, so chances are that these country songs are simply pure and simple thoughts, emotions, and ideas that were stretched to fit a whole song and simply can be interpreted the wrong way because of it.  While I can certainly believe that music labels were attempting to cash in on vulnerable feelings, I doubt people actually wrote country songs in an attempt to send subliminal hateful and detrimental messages to the populace (and if that’s what ended up happening, I am more than willing to believe that it was just due to a crazy coincidence and an irresponsible populace).

On February 28, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the strange sense of segregation and racism within American history and how it affected the music industry.  At this point in the class, we talked about the strange and sudden appearance of lynching and the just as strange, if not stranger, ideas of discrimination and racism throughout the music industry that coincided with them.  The act of lynching was particularly strange in the sense that, objectively, they were horrible events, and yet, for some reason or another, no one who attended said lynching seemed to fit the expected mold one would expect of those who would attend such events.  And yes, these were events.  They were advertised, they were planned beforehand, and they often drew a large audience of well-dressed and respectable people every time.  A lynching could even be turned into a postcard back then!  It’s actually somewhat disturbing how casually everyone who would spectate such an event could react to it.  What makes this behavior even stranger was that minstrel shows were happening at around the same time, so the people who were attending the lynching, which the victims of were mostly black (though white people could get lynched too), could also be fans of minstrel shows!  How strange that they can go from enjoying a show that could very easily have black people in black face in it to watching intently a (most likely) black person being executed publicly.  It is because of this strange and dangerous behavior that many blacks fled to the north, but then immediately faced a strange new problem that they never thought that they would ever be faced with.  They were homesick.  They had fled the south to survive and to have a better life, but considering the fact that they had, for better or for worse, grown up in the south and were more used to the south’s countryside than the north’s bustling city life, it created an unexpected feeling of homesickness and inner conflict within them.  They missed the country fields, country foods, and the country atmosphere, and as safe as they were in the north, they couldn’t help but not feel at home there.  In order to cash in on this feeling, record labels solely meant to cash in on this feeling were made, producing a fair amount of new, black musicians and performers, but who were sadly forced and marketed into stereotypical images or caricatures of what white people thought black people were back then or were forced to simply take advantage of the feelings of black homesickness and simply recorded music that would make blacks feel like they were back at home.  An example of this was Muddy Waters, who was simply asked for his music to be recorded by Alan Lomax in an attempt to preserve a little bit of black culture and was forced to sit on a rocking chair with a guitar in hand on his front porch as if he were a low and humble country man, even if he really wasn’t.  His later career as a musician eventually forced him to just go with and find success with that image.

History has various instances where one looks back at it and simply can’t believe what they are reading or hearing.  In a similar vein with how apparent Christian slave owners could beat and abuse their slaves like the Egyptians did to the Israelites and still firmly believe that they were in the right, the fact that minstrel shows, the act of lynching, and pandering to black music listeners were all happening at the same time just screams, “What could these people possibly be thinking?!”  It’s not even the fact that these events are so evil, horrible, and monstrous that you wonder how compliance over such actions were even allowed.  No, the biggest and most objective question mark about all of this is how people could enjoy minstrel shows while still being relatively nonchalant about the lynching of black people and while still trying to pander to black people through music all at the same time.  They were okay and relatively peaceful with one, but were perfectly willing to sit back and let someone die in another?  And despite their animosity, they still also tried to pander to them as well?  What sense does this make?  Say what you will about different times, but you would at least expect a little bit more consistency in their actions.  Then again, humans are often inconsistent and hypocritical, so I guess this is just par for the course.  That being said, I had seriously given humanity a little bit more credit than this.  Sure, liking minstrel shows and then beginning to lynch black people would still be horrible and dumbfounding, but at least it would still be one event preceding that of the other.  But no, it was minstrel shows, lynchings, and musical pandering all happening at the same time!  In the end, this information can only leave me more baffled than angry.

On February 26, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed one of the biggest contributions the United States introduced to the musical world: the concept of a displaced beat.  Basically, in a basic 1, 2, 3, and 4 beat, the only ones that would have music over them would be 1, 3, and 4 (this could easily be any other combination as well).  It was a hit, and by the 20^th century, most of the music industry and independent performers were taking advantage of this idea, Louis Armstrong being one of many examples.  It became so big that the concept of displaced beats integrated itself into many genres of music, some less obvious than others, including hip hop and jazz.  Think about that.  Two seemingly different genres of music are actually connected by a single concept and idea.  And that’s not all.  Swing, go-go, and rock music are also connected to the idea of displaced beats.  And the connections between different types of music don’t stop there.  Because so many types of music take from the same idea, they can actually go even further and draw even more inspiration from each other as a result, and because they are already connected, the transition is actually more seamless than one might expect.  Pop songs nowadays can have a reggaeton beat to them!  It seems that as long as you can displace one of the beats, you can make a song unique and marketable, which is probably why so many genres of music base their songs on this concept.

It doesn’t surprise me that one concept amidst the music world has been able to influence music as much as displacing beats has.  When you look throughout history, you find that many things are based on previous ideas and are either taken in a different direction, followed faithfully, or improved upon so that the apparent flaws are no longer a problem for it.  Everything is connected to something else, whether the person creating the new thing realizes it or not.  There really are no truly “new” ideas anymore, just slight changes and tweaks on old ones.  That doesn’t mean that new creations can’t be good, it’s just that they need to realize that they are already a small part of something much bigger and out of their control and that they have to work both harder and smarter to step out of that particular shadow.  Every decision matters, even the type of genre, despite all genres already sort of being connected anyway.  We live in a world where skinny, sloppily dressed white guys can sing the exact same song a big, black, elegantly dressed woman can sing despite changing the music up just a bit to fit a different genre, so the least a music creator can do is make their first song (before all of the covers come in) as distinct and definitive sounding as possible.  Otherwise, a cover could possibly replace their spot in the hearts of the listeners.

On February 21, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the strange phenomenon of cultural and racial segregation that plagued the United States.  At the same time minstrel shows became popular (and even possibly before that), American politics and attitudes had become viciously segregated while American music had been hybridized.  It had been so easy for music of different cultures and different types of races to band together and integrate with one another, so why couldn’t American politics do it?  Was it possible that political and legal culture were actively trying to keep away from mixing or integrating?  A little bit of yes and a little bit of no.  The fact of the matter was that race and culture made people different from one another, and people, via basic human nature, simply like to categorize everything in their lives.  And why wouldn’t anyone?  It’s certainly easier than thinking and keeping track of everything individually.  The boundaries of these categories are arbitrary, making things even more complicated and divisive.  Everyone wants equality, they just can’t agree on what equality is or what the steps are necessary for said equality are, and in a time like this, feeling of segregation had become almost natural and accepted.  People back then had to consciously think in order to go against segregation, it wasn’t a natural or impulsive thought.  It was so bad that it makes one wonder if people truly were against racism or not.  After all, if people were honestly against it, then there wouldn’t be calls to action to combat it, right?  If anything, people sort of rely on it.  After all, there are very few real performers who don’t use politics or important social issues to express their own thoughts and opinions on the subject and gain an audience based on those opinions, the same can be said for politicians and social activists.  These people would lose a significant amount of their jobs if all of the political and racial divides just happened to disappear one day.  While steps towards fighting such racial and political differences have been made throughout the history of the United States (one such example being the case of Loving v. Virginia), the sad fact is that mental segregation is a part of our lives, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not.

For me personally, I’d say that segregation has always been a part of human history, not just in that of the United States.  We used to have tribes and tribes would simply fight one another, whether it be a moral argument, conquering the other one, or fighting over resources, there has always been an “us vs. them” mentality.  I’d actually even go as far as to say that racism doesn’t even really exist, or, at the very least, it’s just simply a small part of tribalism.  I’ve always found the idea of racism to be too simple, silly, and petty for it to truly be a thing, with the whole, “My race is better than your race” and all that.  I’ve never looked at another person of another race and think, “Man, I am so much better than that guy,” and if I were to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, I would have to assume that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, that everyone else thinks more or less the same way.  Usually when people hate or treat someone else differently, it’s due to personal problems or reasons or it’s based on what they or people just like them have done.  No one thinks, “I hate black people for the sole purpose of them being black” or, “I hate black people because they haven’t done as much as my race.”  Heck, I doubt anyone cares enough about that to really keep score.  And even with the latter of the two, no one is going to make accomplishments up.  They’re going to list actual accomplishments.  That’s pride.  That’s being proud of being part of a group.  Being proud of your “tribe”.  The U.S. being comprised of multiple “tribes” whether it be liberals, democrats, conservatives, republicans, white, black, Asian, Christian, Muslim, pro-life, pro-choice, sports teams, musical preference etc. is, what I think, the true reason for why the U.S. population can be so segregated all the time.  Everyone’s a part of thousands upon thousands of tribes and that constantly makes everyone opinionated and divisive about everything.  In order for feelings of segregation to disappear, or at least go down, we all have to agree to be part of one “tribe”.  We all have to agree on one end goal or else we’re all just going to argue about everything for the sake of arguing about everything to bring honor to our own “tribes”.  In order for us to be united, both politically and personally, we all have to agree on at least one goal, or else we’re never going to get anywhere.

On February 20, 2018, our HIST 390 continued to talk about the various influences that African culture had on Western music, more specifically this time, minstrel shows and how they may affect the world (or, at the very least, the world of music) today.  To put it simply, minstrel shows were America’s contribution to music as a whole.  Minstrel shows were basically an American form of entertainment in which the infamous concept of black face had its start.  They were shows in which white people would dress up in the attempt to imitate black people, performing skits, playing characters, playing music, dance, etc.  Many songs back in this time were specifically made for minstrel shows, some of them even being popular enough to last throughout the ages (thought admittedly had to be changed to match the sensibilities and tastes of the time), and, for better or for worse, greatly influenced the entertainment industry and were quite common.  To provide a more specific example, the state song of Texas used to be a song sung by white people in black face about leaving mixed colored women behind.  Jim Crow was even originally a character within a minstrel show (his name would later be used for naming the Jim Crow Laws).  That being said, African Americans were eventually able to turn it all around by having lots of actual African Americans perform at minstrel shows themselves.  In a way, they were living out their own degradation, owning it in a way that made it no longer as offensive as minstrel shows originally had made them before.  Eventually, a play called, “Darktown is Out Tonight” was written with every role to be played by black people by Paul Laurence Dunbar, who himself was a black writer.  What made this turnaround even more surreal was that these black performers were still making use of black face, putting on makeup that would darken their skin even more and emphasize their lips, just like how white performers had previous done before.  One could argue that this adds to the humor of the shows, as the uncomfortable feeling that comes with the practice helped to define the minstrel show’s own comedy (as all good comedy is usually somewhat queasy and controversial to begin with) while others could argue that since they were already black people under all of that makeup, it couldn’t possibly still be considered black face anymore.

One of the bigger topics brought up within the class was whether minstrel shows were still technically a component of the entertainment industry today.  As black face has obviously become taboo in today’s day and age, as the professor pointed out, black performers and artists seem to sell and advertise themselves around their “blackness” quite a bit.  Consider many black rappers today.  Many rappers seem to fit to a T or play or dress up as the black stereotypical rapper, which brings up the question of whether they really are who they portray themselves to be or if their bosses force them to or if they choose to take up the personas in an attempt to get an audience.  Is it racism on society’s part?  Did society force these black rappers to take up the persona or else face the less guaranteed uphill climb of trying to be a rapper who wasn’t the usual black rapper stereotype?  Was this the fault of the rappers themselves for agreeing to take up the role in the first place?  After all, the stereotype would not be so prevalent if black performers and rappers would just put their foot down and refuse to perpetuate the stereotype in the first place.  Is this even a bad thing to begin with?  With so many musical performers nowadays (some of them not even needing to sign with major record labels and could easily make a decent living being independent or building their career slowly on the internet), would using your “blackness” to your advantage to help distinguish yourself from the rest really be so bad?  Nowadays, with many singers and rappers simply being hired for their singing and rapping talents and looks without too much consideration for their personalities (if they have an interesting one in the first place), would playing up who you are, whether it be a stereotype created by society or not, or a possibly offensive character really be detrimental in the long run?  There really does seem to be an argument between morals and practicality here.  Personally, I’m more for the practicality side than the moral side.  While the music industry is no doubt rife with controversy and what the media expose as “terrible” people, I’d rather have that over bland singers singing bland and similar sounding songs, with nothing really distinguishing one artist from the other.  Back in the day, even without the controversies surrounding them, Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, and Prince had so much more charisma and personality than performers like Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, and Drake.  I’ll even give credit where credit is due: whether you like their music or not, at least Katy Perry, Beyonce, Adele, and Psy have definable personalities (being that they are the shallow, cutesy party girl, confidence personified, classy lady, and goofy guy).  If the singers or record labels were creative with the music they were producing and writing, then perhaps I would be less inclined to choose this particular side, but with a majority of songs being thoughtless dribble and the voices behind them (while admittedly talented, God-given gifts) not being distinct enough or charismatic enough to really latch onto the artist that way, I say bring on the terrible stereotypes and terrible people!  At least we’ll have something to talk about then.