Just an interesting article I thought I should share after our discussion last week. We discussed copyright laws of books, but apparently a lot of music artists would like to extend the time frame on music copyrights. Since there is such a large industry in re-releasing old hits or remaking old hits, copyright laws are clearly important for the music industry. The article connects the recent use of downloading as a source of consumption of music to copyright laws, somewhat unclearly. Anyway, it's interesting and you should all check it out.

I found this quote most interesting and relevant:

While I am here on campus working on my thesis, I read an interesting article that relates to this course. My thesis is on hip-hop music and I recently read the article "Who(se) Am I? The Identity and Image of Women in Hip Hop" by Imani Perry. While the majority of the article is about feminist lyrics, the objectification of women in Hip Hop, and female stars that are the exception to the objectification, there was an interesting section about the music industry and the authorship of the music.

I wanted to write about the corporate creations of music artists. Especially with Hip Hop music there is a standard image that sells well and that the corporations want their artists to be in order to sell records. In the beginning, Hip Hop was a form of honest self-expression. Before it became an extreme commodity, it was a way for a group of marginalized people to speak out against their oppression. Perry's article describes how the 'realness' of contemporary Hip Hop artists is completely created by the corporation. Teams of people go into creating the image of an artist.

I found another interesting news story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6160414.stm

It's about Universal Music Group suing MySpace for encouraging copyright infringement. Wtf? Why would they waste their time with this? It seems to me like MySpace's case is pretty airtight, as they've done less to encourage law-breaking than almost any musically-oriented site since prior to Napster's inception. In fact, MySpace is nothing but good for music - the industry, the musicians, the art form. This is a terrible PR move and an unwinnable case. Seriously, if anyone can see why a record company would continue the litigation against this particular site, let me know.

I just thought that I had to share this all with you. I got one of my "CNN Breaking News" emails today, expecting to see something about the outcome of elections, how election day was going, or something like that. No, what CNN feels is most important to tell me today, Election Day, is that Britney Spears filed for divorce from Kevin Federline. And CNN is supposed to be one of the serious news sources that will tell me important information about the world. While I see that some citizens view things such as Britney's love life as something more important that voting (maybe that's why we have such low voter turnouts), I would think that the CNN Breaking News Bulletins would be saved for something a little more academic or political and that people could find out stuff about Britney's divorce procedures on people.com ??

So... as we all begin to turmoil over the horrible 't' word, I just thought I'd lay out my general idea and see if anyone had feedback/ideas/criticisms, etc.

Basically, I took this Hip Hop Culture class while I was abroad in New Zealand. Seeing as hip hop culture has its roots in the United States, it was interesting to study it outside of the US (although my prof was American) and the class actually focused on tying in the abundant use of rap music in the Maori community in New Zealand and other marginalized groups across the globe. This inspired me. So I want to write about international hip hop on the small scale, i.e. how individuals outside the US use hip hop as a form of voice to speak out against oppression in their individual communities. I'm debating whether I tie this in with the early stages of US hip hop, before it was a mainstream commodity and most rappers used hip hop to communicate within their communities and speak out about their daily experiences and oppressions.

bell hooks' writing about rap & Leesoid's blog have me wanting to say a million things, but since I'm presenting tonight & i'll probably talk more than enough then, I'll try to just mark a few main points:

-hooks writes that "much postmodernist critical inquiry has centered precisely on the issues of 'difference' and 'otherness'...in the absence of any sustained research into what artists of color and others outside the mainstream might be up to..."

First of all, where is all the research? Does it even exist? I've spent the past hour looking for some supporting evidence of a statistic that I've cited and heard many times in my life, but never gotten around to actually looking up: 80% of rap, r&b, and jazz production companies are owned by whites. Has anyone else heard this, and can anyone find any solid source?