Sometimes I have really good exchanges in YouTube comments...and I won't lie, I feel they are worth putting on the blog, probably cause I write so much. Here is one random excerpt i just got done writing.. enjoy!!
Are you from California? The art scene in any field of art is , unfortunately, in a large way, very particular to certain cities. I've bounced around through a few art forms in my life now. Punk is fascinating to study because it was painted as an outsider movement, but the truth is that most of the bands came from what I woudl call "insider" cities. NYC in the case of , say, the Casualties, and San FRancisco in the case of DK's.
This is a bit peculiar because, being someone who also went on to study classic rock years after my obsession with punk, these were the same cities that were big in that movement, too. Yet classic rock is painted as being worlds away from punk. Also lets never forget, as i stress, the endless importance of London, a city most of us poor punks have never seen but have endlessly heard so much about. London , in the punk rock movement, almost seems to still have the same force it had, quite literally, even back in the old pirate days of the bloody 1500s!!!
Many People i talk to do not seem to realize how seriously vital Londons heartbeat was for rock/punk music of all types in the 60s and 70s. These days, sadly, I feel Londons influence on American culture has waned, or maybe even died completely. Hip hop is very responsible for taking our view ("finally", some might say) away from England, and to American cities. Like, the "real" heartland cities.. not just NYC, or SF. BUT the problem is, what we see of our cities through hip hop, is notrebellious, in my opinion, in the same way punk was.
have lived in a majority black city all my life as a white (im strictly democratic, lol); but... obviously rap music isn't really, like, ushering in any real sense of rebellion, cus its a genre that is amost entirely of the lower/criminal class. Punk, classic rock, both had middle class and lower class and criminal class mixing. Jello Biafra is the perfect example of this; in fact, DK's even had a black dude in the band. But ti was the middle class education, in my opinion, of the punk movement ,that helped it grow political fangs.
these are just an old punk heads opinions. I play intsruments myself, guitar and pianos. Though for the past few years i have moved away from this, to "study" things.
My opinion on what needs to happen is that hip hop needs to finally integrate more punk and HXC and rock overtones into its music. They are shy to do this but they are starting bit by bit. Punk and "white kid" music needs to merge with the black city stuff; then we will maybe have hope of a real American "exploited" band IMHO. I know I said i was annoyed by hip hop and I am, but you'd be surprised how this is sometimes happening in certain areas of that genre, wich is one i tend to study most now, to listen to the "heartbeat of the people". I grew up with 90s rap and early 00s rap..it was very ghetto then and radically unaware of any other music genres and i despised it. These days it has changed dramatically with the new rappers. Some are becoming "slightly" politicized. Also the female rappers are becoming VERY supportive of LGBT movements. This was unheard of in the 90s and 00s, which was a major reason I gravitated, as a child then, to punk rock instead, even though it was 20 years old by that point....
To show you how HXC/punk is sorta starting to mix with rap, i recommend this fantastic video from this band with Ice T... "Body Count -- No Lives Matter".
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