Hip-Hop

Black Plastic Bag … We Care

Posted by Joe Warminsky on Aug. 10, 2007, at 1:21 pm

I want to end Get Money Week on a positive note, so I’m offering a suggestion to the hip-hop world: The market is somewhat saturated with songs about getting money, so I challenge every rapper to write a song about giving money.

I’m not talking about some sort of uber-charitable “We Are The World”/“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”/“Stars” kind of project, where the song’s lyrics aren’t pointedly about giving money, and the people involved aren’t necessarily giving a lot of money out of their own pockets.

I’m also not talking about a conscious-rap/positive-tip call to arms–y’know, where the MC tells people that they should give money.

Nor do I want to hear about a rapper’s financial obligations. We all have bills.

And I know all about Heal the Hood, but it’s not really what I’m aiming for.

Here’s what I want: a song about a rapper who has so much money, he has to start giving it away, just to prove that he has as much as he says he does. That is, the philanthropy has to be a purely tactical gesture, an irrefutable offering of proof. Y’know, something about fully funding the fiscal-year needs of a Third World vaccine program. Or maybe a theme as simple as, “I bought your mom a house because I know you couldn’t do it.” You get the picture. And it can’t be sarcastic. That’s not my style.

Comments

Mark Athitakis August 10th, 2007
1:31 pm

#1

Makes me wonder why more MCs don’t rap about their nonprofits/tax shelters.What’s stopping Banner from mentioning Heal the Hood, or Ludacris mentioning the Ludacris Foundation? IRS rules? Nothing rhymes with “501(c)3″?
DJ Eurok August 10th, 2007
2:33 pm

#2

And then what – you’ll spend some journalistic energy writing about – gasp – good hip hop from DC?!
Joe Warminsky August 10th, 2007
4:42 pm

#3

If the only good thing to come out of this post is that you get some attention, Eurok, then I did my job. Blogs are messy like that. So why isn’t it easy to find an e-mail address on your site? (Believe it or not, I don’t have a Myspace account, so I can’t use that page to get in touch with you. I’m lame like that.)
Joe Warminsky August 10th, 2007
4:48 pm

#4

And for the record, I did do this:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/otm/2006/otm0818.html

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