Last week, people around the world took the streets in order to protest a Ferguson, MO grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson on criminal charges in relation to the shooting of Mike Brown. You know all about this, unless you've been living under a rock—or only paying attention to music sites. They’ve all but ignored the events, opting instead for releasing a steady stream of "content" masquerading as news, such as "Wiz Khalifa Gobbles Up W/ Reality TV Star, Not Amber Rose, For Thanksgiving." If you went solely by what entertainment sites—particularly the hip-hop sites—posted, you may not have even known that varied parts of the country and world were on foot and afire in solidarity with a town almost no one had heard of before August 9th of this year.
This is not to say that hip-hop websites have an obligation to cover what should be considered news proper. Nor is it an argument for rappers to rise to leadership roles within the black community at times of crises. These sites have no duty to cover anything outside of their beat; rappers owe us nothing but music. That's the agreement—except it's not. Because, when things that are at best tangentially related to hip-hop happen—say an NBA Final win, an ice bucket challenge—blogs are only too quick to compile the Vine, Instagram and Twitter posts that these rappers are only too happy to provide. It's all presented as necessary information with a gravitas that begs to say it's bigger than hip-hop.
But, last week, what we saw was largely the same pre-approved promotional/publicity drivel that makes the music 'net go 'round—album streams, album cover artwork, album track listings, disposable mixtapes, grainy and shaky cell phone footage of an artist being joined on stage by another artist, songs by someone you've never heard of featuring someone whose name you sort of know. And it's not exclusively the relatively smaller blogs; one prominent hip-hop site posted more items about the Kardashians last week than anything to do with the Mike Brown verdict, at a rate of 8 to 5. If the argument is that what's happening with regards to Ferguson, to America, isn't a hip-hop matter, then whomever members of the Kardashian Jenner clan are letting into their bedrooms certainly isn't. It's perverse to think that a random week of keeping up with the offscreen happenings of a reality TV family is on par with a worldwide justice movement.
This function of the Media Distraction Complex is aided with great verve by the rappers themselves—mainly because the overwhelming majority of rappers are presenting themselves as self-focused, apolitical capitalists who are unwilling to say things about the real world. Back in August—as the first rounds of civic unrest took place in Ferguson— J. Cole, Talib Kweli, and Jeezy were just about the only ones to step into the arena with their art, bodies and/or music. It took two weeks for the Game to assemble a DJ Khaled-like motley crew of figures (which, ironically, included DJ Khaled) for a perfunctory song in which Diddy plugged Ciroc and Rick Ross made a "boss" reference. The proceeds from the effort were to go to Mike Brown's family, but the song itself was barely promoted.
If you juxtapose that with 362 days prior, when Kendrick released his verse on Big Sean's "Control", you can see hip-hop's priorities. Within 24 hours of "Control", there was a slew of responses—and no one felt the need to go 1/12th on a rebuttal. Heck, if Drake releases a song today, there'd be more "remixes" of it in two weeks than there have been total Mike Brown tribute songs to date. You can count on one finger the Ferguson song to come out in the week since the verdict, and it's courtesy of Tink, who's still barely a bloghold name.
Outside of music, there's been more of a presence— Killer Mike's impassioned speech in St. Louis the night of the verdict; Q-Tip and Macklemore taking to the streets; Jeezy's statement; Solange postsponing the release of her Puma collaboration. It's much more a response than what we saw three and a half months ago but when the Brits are shutting down Piccadilly Circus, we're going to need more tweets, more changed avatars, more symbolic gestures that prove that there isn't such a gaping disconnect between the music we're listening to and what's going on in the world. While Rick Ross talked that good hood talk on TMZ, his latest album Hood Billionaire is more rooted in aspirational one-percenter wet dreams than anything else. It doesn't have to be What's Going On?, but so little of the contemporary music being made reflects the times—which, if nothing else, lessens its potency as an escapist release. The right drugs are needed for right pains but denial of pain is extremely unhealthy and ultimately self-defeating.
Still, there's some good reasons for rapper so stay silent, as some of the more prominent persons who have been speaking out against the verdict are being made targets of the State in no small fashion. Mike Brown's stepdad is reportedly being investigated for inciting to riot due to his cries to "burn this bitch down" immediately after the verdict; the St. Louis Rams have been targeted by the multiple St. Louis police associations for five players who came onto the field with the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture for this past Sunday's game. The conflict between the police supporters and the football team have dissolved into a social media embarrassment, but you can be sure that those five guys aren't going to be let off with a warning for any moving violations any time soon. In some cases, we are seeing that keeping quiet may be in your best interest.
It's tempting to look at these issues based upon race, but the travesties of justice in Ferguson (and beyond) need to mean something to everyone who is interested in fairness. This should be important to all of us. If there's to be a call to hold rappers and hip-hop blogs accountable, that same call has to extend to Pitchfork and sites like it, as well. The world around us is not disconnected from the art the we make and ingest and entities that pretend otherwise don't deserve your time—whether that entity is your favorite rapper, the website that serves as your homepage or the site that you're reading right now.