spirit that I give it, out of love for you and honor for your greatness and honor for the love and beauty and greatness of your wife. I would love to see our women clothed, demonstrating the gift of their talent. The gift of their form should be seen by those who are worthy. You got an unworthy dog looking at something beautiful that he wants to paw at but can never have. Do you know what that does to a man, when he can see you and can’t have you? Then he wants to go home and attack a child.
I think Minister Farakhan made some good points, but I also think that the issue is not necessarily about the singers/rappers who wear very little clothing when performing, but more about the fact that those are the only types of images our children are seeing in mainstream media. I’m all about freedom of expression and freedom of choice – our generation expressed that very well as a matter of fact- but we also had a variety of images and role models to look at through mainstream media. We had George Clinton and P-Funkadelic on stage wearing diapers while smoking a joint, but we also had Curtis Mayfield trying to get us to see the ills in our society. Salt N’ Pepa were telling fellas to “Push it real good,” while Queen Latifah and Monie Love were saying “Oooooh ladies first, ladies first.”
I don’t think this is a ‘Beyonce’ problem,’ this is a ‘corporate major record label/music executives problem,’ because they’re the ones who are zoning in on just one type of artist and narrowing the creative vision that so many other artists out there can bring to the table. It was all about balance and variety in music back in the day, but today it seems to only be about sex (well, not just sex…many of today’s mainstream artists talk about money and cars too) because that’s what these label executives are choosing to put out there.
If there were more than just roughly 8 mainstream singers and rappers played all day, everyday on the radio, then there would be room for other types of artists to shine and give the younger generations more options, but of course the major music labels aren’t gonna let that happen- at least not for the R&B and hip hop genres.
Minister Farakhan is speaking with an Old School undertone, so I don’t think that his words will effectively land firmly on the right ears- the young ladies (and men) who need to hear his message. In addition to that, it’s a new day, and women are much more independent and don’t necessarily need a husband or boyfriend telling them how to dress, they can get the message on their own, but the underlying message Farakhan is giving is still one that needs to be heard, in my humble opinion.
