The No. 1 selling genre of music in the world is pop music, largely in part to the No. 2 genre of music in the world, hip-hop. In 2006, media giants like Viacom and Clear Channel started believing in the earning potential of hip-hop. Viacom staked their claim by green-lighting shows like Flavor of Love on their previously all-pop network. Clear Channel did the same by allowing artists like Kanye West to grace their airwaves for the first time in 10-plus years.
The adoption of the sub-culture by mainstream broadcasting giants led to exponential growth that opened the doors for top-selling artists like Drake, Post Malone, and Kendrick Lamar, yet small towns like SLO refuse to accept hip-hop as an institutional art form. They fail to realize that they’re signaling to two generations of constituents that they don’t care about a culture that raised us.
When local restaurants and business make it a point to exclude our music from their playlists, they may not realize that it signals to us that our patronage is less valuable than others. When parents and grandparents go out of their way to express their disdain for the way the young express themselves, children and grandchildren translate that as a sign their interests are of no interest to the ones they love, and that has lasting effects. Community is built on inclusion, and it should go beyond people from cultures you’re most comfortable with.
Lorde Sanctus
Connect the Coast
SLO
This article appears in Summer Guide 2021.
So what is said about the restaurants and businesses that play only pop/hiphop, are they excluding an older generation? Is it really logical to walk into Apropos and hear Post Malone playing? That would be like walking into a Mothers Tavern and hearing Mozart. I’m sorry but when I am eating dinner at Flour I don’t care to listen to Drake. I don’t understand how this can be an issue. It’s ok to for social media platforms to control what people post but not ok for a business/restaurant to choose what music they care to play? My daughter wears the clothes of today and I am more than happy to share my disdain about her choices. She thinks none the less of me and knows I love her no less. There is no wreckage created by people’s personal choices and opinions in this area that you are writing about. It is only a self-centered view from ego that is being affected.
Work harder than your “Hip Hop” peers. Save money. Open a restaurant. Serve whatever food and play/promote whatever music you desire. Invite everyone. A third-world solution to resolve a first-world Millennial tantrum.
R = Reducing
A = American
P = Pride
Get it? Rap is gutter music, and it’s no wonder businesses don’t want to give it an audience. Decent people do not see our mom’s, sister’s and daughter’s as whores and bitches, but rap music does.
Perhaps most of the customers don’t want to be forced to listen to the stuff, and will just go elsewhere. Would this writer and his pals appreciate being forced to listen to, say, highly amplified bagpipe music played by a spastic piper, while trying to recover from a severe hangover at a coffeehouse, just to be “inclusive”? Perhaps the customers should determine the playlist.
Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slipknot, Limp Biscuit, GWAR!!!!!! All should be played loudly in vegan restaurants to drown out the sorry-ass whiny clientele’s whimpers. Yes, let’s increase the noise.
Investigate so-called Steve Edwards, please. It will make for a good story. White supremacist propaganda delivered in that snarky manner is a national problem, tolerated and/or propagated via many local forms of media.
The individuals or group behind the so-called Steve Edwards fraud epitomize this insidious cancer eating away at free speech, democracy and nationwide harmony and unity of purpose.
Let’s call it what it really is: hate speech.
Let’s ramp up the love in our community and maybe so called Steve Edwards will feel it And learn that love always feels better than hate in the long run.
Investigate so-called Rightword, an obvious front for a secret cabal of virulently left wing teenagers who have been genetically modified to receive instructions from George Soros and Hillary Clinton by radio receivers implanted in their cerebral cortext, and use them to subvert our democracy and cover up Bill Clinton’s and Joe Biden’s depraved sexual adventures with enslaved girl scouts.