In his review of the John Waters look at 1950s culture, Cry-Baby, Roger Ebert wrote
If there is one constant in recent social history, it is that we feel nostalgia for yesterday's teenage badness even while we fear today's. As I was reading that ridiculous newsweekly cover story on rap music the other day, I found myself wishing that the hysterical old maids who wrote it could have been taken first to see "Cry-Baby," so that they could gain some insight into themselves.
In every generation, teenagers find a way to express themselves and annoy adults. And the adults find in this teenage behavior signs of the collapse of civilization as they know it. "Cry-Baby," which is a good many things (including a passable imitation of a 1950s teenage exploitation movie) is, above all, a reminder of that process. Today's teenagers will grow up to be tomorrow's adults, and yet in every generation teenagers and adults seem to have as little knowledge of that ancient fact as the caterpillar has of the butterfly.
It is an additional irony that humans have learned little from the insects, and the butterflies turn into the worms.
Ebert wrote this is 1990. He was referring to this TIME cover story…
…written by its film critic, Richard Corliss, who opines
There's an acrid tang in nearly every area of modern American pop culture. Heavy-metal masters Motley Crue invoke images of satanism and the Beastie Boys mime masturbation onstage. Rap poets like N.W.A. and the 2 Live Crew call for the fire of war against police or the brimstone of explicit, sulfurous sex…Whatever heavy metal can do to provoke censure, rap can outdo. Whereas metal is mostly suggestive, this urban-black music is often politically or sexually explicit. N.W.A. (Niggers With Attitude) won an admonishing letter from the FBI for their song FTha Police, in which the singer warns the ghetto's occupying force: "Ice Cube will swarm/ On any m f in a blue uniform . . ./ A young nigger on the warpath,/ And when I finish it's gonna be a bloodbath." Another group, Public Enemy, has been charged with anti-Semitism in their lyrics and statements to the press.
Corliss wasn't just speaking about music, but people like radio/ television personality Howard Stern and comedian Andrew Dice Clay, and something more than "casual" sexual references on sitcoms. But the world survived Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor and their four-letter stand-up routines, and it survived Stern and Clay; whether or not it "survives" rap and hip-hop is probably a moot point, since it's principle effect is on the community that spawned it, for good or bad. Despite Ebert's criticism of the piece, Corliss eventually came to essentially the same conclusion as he did:
X-rated pop deserves its First Amendment cloak. No one can predict whether, in a cool retrospective glance a decade or so from now, today's raunch will give evidence of artistic value. Odds are that, as in any group portrait, the members of the blue brigade will soon emerge as individuals, some gifted, some not. But because it speaks from the gut of disenfranchised America, and because it has raised the crucial issue of freedom of expression vs. public propriety, the form already has political value. And clearly, because of its popularity, it does not offend "contemporary community standards": a lot of the community is laughing and singing along.
He went on to say that people have “the right to offend” while others “have the right to be offended…Entertainers shouldn't have to act as baby-sitters or Sunday school teachers. And the government should quit playing hall monitor to blue comics, metal defectives, rap randies—and the real artists among them who, through subtlety or obscenity, will help us navigate our trip into the 21st century.”
Unfortunately, neither Ebert or Corliss, at that moment when rap was still only bubbling under the surface of mainstream consciousness, foresaw or could draw the connection between rap and violence, as shown in this graphic...
...or the rise of “wokeness” and “cancel culture.” Some have “defended” this by claiming that some form of “cancel culture” has always been a part of human history, but what is happening now is much different, because now anyone is allowed “credibility” in making accusations that take leave of the truth, or without evidence. Anyone with an ax to grind, or is offended by what someone says, can "cancel" someone.
Note that Corliss defended the right to "offend" and to be "offended." But that is only true now if the side doing the "offending" has the backing of a significant segment of the population, and usually of a political or "cultural" nature. More often is that people are willing to toss away the rights of the (often wrongly) accused because they fear being "cancelled" themselves (see all those celebrities "unliking" Johnny Depp in response to the mainstream media's cherry-picking of the unsealed court documents).
Personally, I don't regard rap or hip-hop as "music" as such, but just a variation on "performance art" in which the only real talent required is to have the right "attitude" to reinforce their "street cred"--which typically means being angry and vulgar. This isn't the way music used to be, even in the black community. Jazz, blues, soul--those genres for the most part revolved lyrically around relationships between intimate partners, and if it ventured outside of that sphere, it revolved around "solving" issues such as race relations and poverty. But you could write books about that; for the musician, the music is what drew the listener to the message; producers like Thom Bell strove to imitate classical composers of the past. Today, it is just image and attitude and the willingness to offend.
In the 1970s, it seemed like it was a generation that was tired of the chaos of the Sixties. Not that there wasn’t any social messaging; at least in the early years there were social statements about “love,” “peace,” “racial harmony” and the occasional reality checks, like Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” and “Living For the City”—although there was the odd song that criticized gangster culture, like William DeVaughn’s “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got.” Oh yeah, there was that celebration of feminist ideology, “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy—who followed that up with the woman-as-weak-victim mythos with songs like “Delta Dawn,” “Ruby Red Dress” and “Angie Baby.”
There was also still an audience for punk rockers who
railed against society, and head-banging noisemakers, and hardcore sexuality
like Fancy's cover of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” (sung—or rather
“breathed”—by former Penthouse Pet Helen Caunt), or Donna Summer’s “Love to
Love You Baby.” There was even the "suggestion" of, well, a "boy" being seduced by someone older and more experienced in Sylvia's "Pillow Talk"; of course I don't want to go where that Benny Mardones song "Into the Night" sounds like it's going. But in general the popular music of the time remained mostly in
the realm of “mainstream” cultural mores--you know, love, peace, etc.
It was mostly more of the same in the 1980s, except with the music being brought into the "future" with electronic sounds instead of lush string arrangements. If rap and hip hop were making an "impact" during the decade, it was strictly an "underground" movement that made little headway on the top-40 and "mainstream" pop charts.
It wasn't until, as I recall, around 1990 that rap groups like N.W.A. and Public Enemy was
gaining critical and media interest for its "real" street approach. Of course it wasn't just rap that was turning "music" into something other than a way to escape to something better than the shitty world we live in for three or four minutes; the likes of Alanis Morissette (her Grammy-winning Jagged Little Pill was referred to by one reviewer as a "juvenile revenge fantasy") and Fiona Apple began the trend toward the self-involved narcissism of gender politics in music and beyond, and Mariah Carey started that weird vocal gymnastics thing on "Vision of Love" that replaced true emotive singing. Oh, and Cher showed people that if you couldn't sing worth a shit anymore, just use that new "auto-tune" contraption.
Ebert wrote that the youthful "rebels" of yesterday grow up into today's adults, and implied that we will look back on this time as not as a time of the coming "collapse" of civilization, but as Corliss claimed, would provide "evidence" of "artistic value." Unfortunately, I do not see that, at least not the "value" part. Today's "pop stars"--i.e. Taylor Swift--provide society with nothing more than a red carpet appearance, the "music" merely a platform for a narcissistic personality (which Swift clearly is), while country music espouses far-right political views, and then there is racism in what passes for "heavy metal," and rap and hip hop "artists" only want to be offenders and to offend to no purpose, meaningless outside their own habitat.
On the other hand when we hear a "golden oldie" from the past, we may not remember the names of the musicians who recorded it, but it wouldn't matter to them as long as they knew their songs stood the test of time and provided a needed respite from the world of what Ebert called "worms." No, civilization won't collapse because of today's shitty "music"; it only makes the world a shittier place to live in.
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