Niggas and Japs by Dex Digital
Keeping with my Golden Week theme of bringing you a myriad of stories on blackness in Japan, Dex Digital [@dexdigi on Twitter] brings us "Niggas and Japs - Race, Identity, and the Right Wing in Japanese Hip-Hop" which was presented at UCLA on December 5, 2010. 日本語版もやろうかなぁと思ってるけど、果たして需要があるのかな…The presentation may be old but the message is still current. Be sure to leave a comment to let us know what you think!BTW, to learn more about Dex Digital, here is a blurb from a previous interview by The Aesthetic Poetic:
Do you see Hip-Hop maintaining in today’s world of mainstream media where every video and track seems to be about the same bitches, ho’s and bling?I mean, this isn’t necessarily all artists’ fault. I think a lot of society’s ills get blamed on hip-hop, and while yes some of us could be doing better, you have to realize whom you’re pointing the finger at. Hip-Hop at this point is largely cooned out. If you want to make money, you absolutely have to dumb down. And unlike, say, alternative rockers or whatever, who all they have to worry about is their own artistic integrity, when we do it-it comes at the expense of the Black community at large.But don’t get it twisted. This is how the corporations like it. Mainstream hip-hop controlled by a small group of people whose best interests are served by making sure that hip-hop is apolitical, self-degrading, and non-dangerous. So people who are trying to make music that is counter to that paradigm simply aren’t signed, because they are a threat to the system.So do I see the current system “maintaining”? Yeah, for a while. Modern mainstream rap is just a projection of mainstream American culture’s sexist, paranoid insecurities onto us. But people will eventually get tired of that – and for me, that’s where alternative mediums like podcasting come in. Once people on the whole realize that they don’t have to put up with other people telling them what they are supposed to like, it’s over, whether Clear Channel have prepared for that or not.Click here to read more.
