• LOGIN
• SIGN UP NOW!
• My Account

AllUrbanGossip.com – All the latest black gossip!/

Funny how money change a situation…

I’m deeply disturbed by how any criticism of a celebrity is so quickly labeled “hating”. I WOULD quote Common’s much-repeated line about hating, but I don’t mess with him no more and I will ONLY refer to him as “That Nigga From Chicago I Used To Like” until he actually apologizes for his “Bitch, come get this conscious dick” line on the Kid Cudi “Poker Face” remix. I can’t even get in to that today, ugh.

Anyway, things move in cycles and circles. The more we have accepted the group-think mentality about art, the worse art gets. If she's on the cover of every magazine, then you'll buy her record. If you all buy the record, she's on the cover of every magazine again, and so on and so on. Pop music is a reflection of the people who purchase it and sometimes it says more about what they won’t say than it does about who they are. Confused? Me too. You see, because we don’t want to be called “haters”, we are often loath to diss things that are diss-worthy. And because there is a large segment of the population that will support pretty much whichever artist is on the radio at the moment, there is no reason for artists or labels to concern themselves with trivial things such as the lack of talent on their roster. People are on auto-pilot, listening to auto-tune. Whomever has the biggest label budget, the most promo and placement and the most paid for spins will be the biggest star of the moment.

You know what I hear all the time? "I didn't like that new (Rihanna/Jay-Z/Beyonce/whomever else can afford to get on the air) song, but I heard it so much, it grew on me". It's one thing to take some time to get to appreciate a song and another to just get comfortable with it, used to it. And if someone dare say "You know what? Rihanna really can't sing", then here comes the screams and cries of "HATER! She can sing and she went multi-platinum, so that's how you know she can!" If you venture mention how dreadful Beyonce is as an actor, someone inexplicably has the data on how many dollars her last film brought in.

I expect the labels to care about money. They've been greedy since forever and at the end of the day, they are businesses which by design are created to make money. However, why in the world are fans concerned or impressed by the amount of money an artist has or grosses? Why is it a part of the equation when it comes to making an assessment of how good an artist is or how much you respect them? Why is money a common song theme in not only rap BUT also what passes for R&B? What the hell is wrong with the modern music listener? How can we even criticize the industry when we (not me, but some of y'all) are out there buying what ever bullshit they put in front of you?

I don't care about any one's money but my own and I'm not really impressed or concerned with someone else's ability to stack chips unless they are going to help me get my own cash flow up. So who can explain to me how our friends and countrymen have become mindless peons who will gladly spend their hard earned money listening to someone talk about all the foolish things they are gonna do with their own cash?