Critic’s Notebook: Lil Wayne and Other Rappers Run Afoul of Propriety

Three times in recent weeks large companies have learned this the hard way, severing ties with rappers they had previously happily paid to endorse their products: Reebok dropped Rick Ross over objectionable lyrics, and PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew did the same to Lil Wayne, just days after it had cut short an ad campaign it had worked on with Tyler, the Creator.

This is a neon-bright sign of corporate retrenchment in the face of protest, bad press and flashes of moral rectitude. Mr. Ross’s casual lyrics about rape incited a petition and a protest outside a New York Reebok store. Lil Wayne’s lyrics spurred an outcry from relatives of Emmett Till, the black teenager murdered during the civil rights era whom the rapper had mentioned in a vulgar context. Tyler, the Creator was jettisoned after a black scholar called his soda commercials racist.

But these reactions are also a signal of how expendable hip-hop culture — and, by extension, black culture and youth culture — is to mainstream, predominantly white-owned corporations. These companies have been happy to associate with hip-hop while turning a blind eye to some of the genre’s rougher edges, but at the same time they have remained at arm’s length, all the better to dispose of hip-hop artists once their liabilities outweighed their assets.

This is a familiar story with roots way back in the culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s, during the days of 2 Live Crew’s obscenity trial and Tipper Gore’s Parents’ Music Resource Center, which coincided with hip-hop’s rise as a cultural force, one both alluring and a potential scourge.

Hip-hop’s commercial power and success, penetrating even the least forgiving corners of the mainstream, seemed to ensure that the old stigma and disapproval had all but vanished. (The same goes for the old accusation that hip-hop artists sold out by partnering with big corporations that held purportedly opposing values — hip-hop took those contradictions and made them into art.) In this environment rappers looked like safer bets than ever for corporate endorsements: widely known and admired, with a frisson of counterculture still stuck to them. They are outsiders recognizable to insiders, and far better celebrities than the generally faceless titans of dance music or the declining stars of rock.

And yet those old debates have returned with a vengeance in recent weeks, re-energized by the frictionless way social media can speed up conversations. In each instance it was only days between the identification of the offense and the end of the business relationship. In the case of Mr. Ross and Lil Wayne the intense criticism was justified. Mr. Ross alluded to nonconsensual sex with a woman, using slang for Ecstasy, in his verse on Rocko’s “U.O.E.N.O.”: “Put molly all in her Champagne, she ain’t even know it/I took her home and I enjoyed that/she ain’t even know it.” Lil Wayne, on his verse in the remix of Future’s “Karate Chop,” invoked Till as part of an explicit sexual simile. (In each situation the offending verse was part of another artist’s song and therefore might have been policed less vigilantly than if it had been on Mr. Ross’s or Lil Wayne’s own album.)

Mr. Ross’s lyric is reprehensible; Lil Wayne’s is regrettable and tacky. (Lil Wayne is by no means the only rapper to mention Emmett Till in song, but his use is easily the messiest.) Both men issued tepid nonapologies. Mr. Ross eventually progressed to a full apology, but only after prodding.

In each case justice was swift, as companies said, rightly, that their values didn’t jibe with the sentiments of those lyrics — and, by extension, those artists.

Except when they do, that is. A cursory glance at any rapper’s catalog, from Jay-Z on down, will be likely to turn up a lyric that’s offensive, in poor taste or eyebrow-raising. By that metric, almost every rapper of note would be ineligible for corporate partnerships.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/arts/music/lil-wayne-and-other-rappers-run-afoul-of-propriety.html?partner=rss&emc=rss