My upscale suburban cousin was always on the cutting edge. If I wanted to know what was “in,” I knew who to ask. Once when I visited his family for Thanksgiving, he took one look at my unruly afro and whisked me to the bathroom to give my head a workout with the clippers. Seeing his blood relative so out of touch with what was “hot” at that moment was a call to action.
It was only fitting that as soon as he set out on his own, he dove into the recording industry, the media field that, true to its cutting-edge nature, was the first to be affected by the “file-sharing” firestorm.
Last year, when the music business launched its nationwide dragnet to round up the most notorious freeloaders, some saw justice being served. Others, however, saw nothing but a lot of crocodile tears.
I could understand the industry’s outrage: People were partaking of goods without paying. But like many, I wondered if the music industry was such an innocent victim. Just spend two minutes watching MTV or flipping through Rolling Stone magazine. Year after year, the behavior of music’s biggest icons becomes more intoxicating – nothing moves records off the shelf faster than sex and scandal.
The music industry’s most recognizable contribution to society in the last few decades has not, in fact, been music. Rather, it’s been a relentless promotion of a culture of pornography and thuggery.
So when I saw pop-star-turned- pitch-person Britney Spears telling file-sharing kids to do the right thing and stop stealing from artists, I almost fell off the couch.
In reality, insiders will tell you recording artists almost always wind up on the short end of the stick. Aspiring hopefuls are used by producers merely to create an image, and then chucked by the wayside the second their record sales flop. All the while, many of the throwaways-to-be indeed become the images they were dressed-down to portray – druggies, thieves, thugs. A waterfall effect follows, passing this all on to fans.
My cousin hopped on to the rap bandwagon almost 20 years ago. When he sent me his first hit CD, I looked for his photograph somewhere on the album jacket. Unable to find him and embarrassed to ask, I instead called my brother in California.
“That’s him on the front cover,” he said.
I looked again. “Which one?” There were only two people in the photo.
“What do you mean ‘which one’? The black guy in the bandana and Compton shades!”
My cousin got caught in the vortex, just like everyone else trying to win 15 minutes of Grammy fame. But for every Britney, there are a thousand would-have-beens who don’t fit the bill of image-makers. Where to from there? A rehab clinic? A seedy photographer? Both? The fact that Britney ended up in a recording studio rather than the Valley is a testament to good luck more than anything else.
Several notable figures spoke out against rap in the beginning, among them Spike Lee and Jesse Jackson. However, even they soon realized the futility of trying to block the runaway train. Nowadays, when someone like Bill Cosby rants about what has become of Generation Next, he risks public-relations annihilation for criticizing youth about what they themselves now see as an inextricable part of their own identities.
There are real-life consequences in all this. America today has a higher percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world. And the adult entertainment business routinely brings in more annual revenue that the mainstream film industry.
I don’t mean to belittle the artistic mission that is at least part of music’s trend. All art, modern music included, has a transcendent duty to render social commentary in the public space. But what is happening anymore is simply an unforgiving campaign to ride a money train as far as it will go, even if it means running over those who provide the financial fuel along the way.
Meanwhile, as controls are being put in place to prevent the proliferation of file-sharing, history will remember that the music industry bore the financial brunt of the unregulated years. Some will always say that it’s just another example of what goes around, comes around. The generation that had been cannon fodder to an endless barrage of rubbish dug from the bottom of society’s barrel decided to start “sharing” the love back with the music industry.
It’s still difficult to hold back the tears at the sight.
Joel Hughes is a financial analyst in Littleton.
