CAT BEAR

Story By: Gail Nobles

First, let's talk about rap music and the music industry. Today rap music is a more complex thing to me than it was when it first started. Rap music became like a street thing with violence. It crushed my dreams from wanting to become a rapper. When rap first started, it was simply all about having fun and entertainment. It started in the early 70s. It was a good thing in the 80s. It kept some people off the street where I'm from. Some of us had dreams and wanted to become famous and make rap records. We would get together in school and have rap contest. Those were the good old days. Our parents told us we wouldn't make it that way. I believe we could have back then considering what's going on now.
It seemed like the music industry began to change and so did hip-hop in the 90s. I saw how hip-hop was affecting things.

I didn't know what was going on in 1989 when Whitney Houston got booed, and why I was hearing all the talk about her not being black enough at the Soul Train Music Awards. I believe something was happening then. Then everybody was talking about hip-hop singing Mary J. Blige in 1992. But by then, Whitney Houston went on to act in a romantic thriller film The Bodyguard in 1992.

But getting back to hip-hop, it seemed in the 90s rap music was popular because of the West Coast - East Coast thing. By then, I wasn't interested in rap that much. To me, some people started looking at black as hip-hop. I never consider the race thing in music as far as all of the violence. Music was becoming a violent thing to me because Tupac got shot and Biggie got shot. It made me think that music was not just music anymore and hip-hop wasn't hip-hop anymore.

Then all of a sudden I was hearing that Michael Jackson was facing allegations of child sexual abuse in 1993 and 2003 then in 2009 he dead in 2012 Whitney Houston died our biggest stars after that prince died in 2016 then R. Kelly went to jail in 2022 for sex trafficking now I'm seeing P. Diddy in the news. Things ain't right in the music world. That's what the headlines have been telling us. Not tabloids with the gossip, but headlines and television. So what's behind the music? Why are all these bad things happening to our favorite stars? Why are they being accused of sex crimes? Why are they going to jail? And these are very successful people. Think on these things.

Thank you for listening to CB news. I'm Gail Nobles.