To the editor,
Bill Wyman ignores the economic issues and problems that give rise to many of Ice Cube’s and Chuck D’s lyrics [Hitsville, February 11]. At the HotHouse panel discussion on gangsta rap, he held up Cube’s lyric “You let a Jew / Break up my crew” without mentioning the inequity in the way goods and services in America are produced and distributed. For example, although two-thirds of poor Americans are white, the average white in this country has 12 times the financial assets of the average black.
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I guess there’s no reason to expect Wyman to understand gangsta rap. On the other hand, a middle-class background doesn’t prevent the many whites who do love and understand the music, because they have (or soon will have) the same problems as the rappers, due to changes in the economy. Cube and Chuck speak for everyone, regardless of race or sex, who’s concerned with homelessness, education, health care, police brutality, and with changing America. Nor does supporting them make one an anti-Semite. For example, Ice-T is a vocal opponent of anti-Semitism, and yet he’s always had Cube and Chuck’s back.
It’s no trick to go through our music and find disgusting shit. The better endeavor is to listen for and promote the good aspects of it, to emphasize the positive. We do need an atmosphere of critical discussion and dialogue around our music, but Bill Wyman, whose performance at the HotHouse served only to distract attention from the important and pertinent issues that gangsta rap raises, shouldn’t be allowed to set the agenda.
