Pain Hop

Just some thoughts…

Rock & Roll influenced Heavy Metal… Heavy Metal has its own sub-genres for its less than “positive” or “less sociable” expressions… known as Death/Hate Metal (none of which I listen to personally). 

Jazz/Soul/Funk/Reggae influenced Hip Hop (and Rock & Roll coincidentally) … Hip Hop has its own sub-genres, and they are categorized into broader musical sub-categories… “rap (conscious/ganger)/trap/ect.” 

I wonder if there is a lesson to be observed in comparing social reactions to these Genre Cousins, based on a socio-political context? What is in a name? What if Hip Hop/Rap that had messages that were “communally/socially counter-productive” were though of as “Death Hop” or “Hate Hop”.

A stereotypical Death Metal fan suffers from self-imposed social alienation to some extent… because the style and values of the music seem anti-social and is not “comfortable” when measured against conventional social standards….  The stereotypical “Death/Hate Hop” fan also occupies an alienated subculture as well, but it is merged and exploited in Popular Culture… Mainstream society is “comfortable” with the degradation of the Dehumanized population that is targeted/represented in this music. As long as it is Black bodies being threatened and insulted in this music… the musicians became mass icons who were given a seemingly large share of social/economic rewards…

The subgenera of Hip Hop (“Death Hop”) that propagates the persecution of a marginalized population (targeting racialized men and women in romanticized horizontal violence and masking the severity of systemic/state violence) is socially celebrated – makes sense… when we consider who this society is structured to benefit… politics.

So… what would/should (under “normal/normalized” conditions) merit social disenfranchisement…. has instead won the hearts and minds of manufactured pop. Youth Culture. 

Our communal body has been injected with a strange and deadly virus… it has been accepted by our body because it was cleverly disguised in the guise of “our own culture” and it presented itself as a vaccine. A vaccine that would sting a little bit (and maybe even make some of us nauseous), but it was suppose to make the pain and hurt in our innermost being at least heard, if not healed. 

Our community’s culture has been abducted, distorted and injected back into the cultural blood stream… but this vaccine is not intended to strengthen the body