Saturday, February 13, 2010

We Are The World (Who Murdered Hip Hop)

Boy, where do I even begin.

Let me first say, I'm utterly shocked that Bono wasn't involved. This just REEKS of Bono.

Next, the majority of the new 'We Are the World' SOUNDED alright. They didn't mess with it and for the most part stayed true to the original. That being said, the inclusion of some people had me a little baffled. Like that dopey lookin' mother fucker in the beginning. I've been told that he's Justin Bieber? Who the fuck is he?

Look back at the roster of the original version in '85. It's full of legends. Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Dianna Ross, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, Steve Perry (!), Huey Lewis (!).

Now, redone 25 years later, the only people who could be called 'Legend' or even 'Potential Legend' are Mary J, Janet, Wyclef, Snoop, LL (15 years ago LL would have been a legend, now, not so much), I'll even give Usher some love on this. Tony Bennett is, but fucking T-Pain got about 324,098x more airtime than he did. I suppose people would say Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand are legends, but those people are dumb.

But onto my real point. The hip hop portion of the song. I've had some time to cool down from my initial viewing of it, and I'm still ready to declare it the worst, most shocking thing I've ever seen. There's no coming back from this. It was shameful. For all the world to see, we put out hip hop's biggest names and stars, to completely ruin the song. There was just no room in this song for hip hop. They just tried too damn hard. Not to mention their selection of hip hop artists to put on the track. I'm assuming the 2 biggest (and arguably best) rappers on the planet (Eminem and Jay-Z) were busy that day. Where was Common, Mos Def, Black Thought or Kweli? They couldn't even get Dr. Dre (C'mon, we know you're not working on Detox). Instead we get T-Pain, Akon and Lil' Wayne trying to out auto-tune each other, and LL, Will.i.am, and Kanye trying to spit these sentimental rhymes that make almost no sense. Kanye didn't have the best year, Lil' Wayne is on the verge of prison, LL hasn't been a relevant rapper in over 10 years, and Will.i.am has slowly been killing hip hop ever since he let Fergie into Black Eyed Peas. And these are the people we put out there to spread the message?


From Jay Smooth over at illdoctrine.com
"It is with a heavy heart I must report that on the evening of February 12th, 2010, Rap Music died once and for all. After battling a long illness, our beloved Rap was too weak to withstand the overpowering shame of that We Are The World remake.

And so, out of respect for this tragic passing, I am joining rappersiknow.com in shutting down my website forever. I simply cannot go on in a world where that rapping choir happened.

Please consider giving to the people of Haiti in memory of Rap Music, 1974-2010"