Var að blaða í Undercover-blaðinu og rak þar augun í viðtal við rapparann Saigon og þótti þar seinasta klausan vera mjög markverð og nokkuð vera til í henni. Mér þykir þetta vera eitthvað sem er nánast nauðsynlegt að hugleiða og spurja sjálfan sig um sannleiksgildi orða hans.

"The future of hiphop is iffy right now. Right now we’ve fucked up as far as the messages that people are putting in hiphop and as far as what sells. It went from being righteous at one point to being gangsta. The black era was before the gangsta era and you went from gangsta era to the playa or pimp era that we are still in now, to the down south era and the shake ya ass booty music. If it don’t get better fast, it means it’s going to die. I’m not a racist or nothing, but it’s pretty bad that the white people took it from us. They took it just like they took rock n roll and every other music. Who’s the biggest rapper in the world ? Eminem. I mean he’s good, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not the greatest rapper that ever lived like they say, and he ain’t the best rapper alive right now. If you look at record sales, if you look at MTV availability, he’s able to say whatever he wants. He’s able to say ‘I’m going to kill my mother, I’m going to stab my daughter’. We say bitch and ho too much and we get C Delores Tucker (Chris Tucker) on our back for saying ho and bitch. The only people who rally against him are the fags, the gay people. They love him as well, they think he’s just rebellious white kid. It’s the same way they take everything from us: marketing. If you can market and promote something then you can sell it better, and he has the big machine behind him. He’s the reason 50 Cent is big, he’s the reason why D12 is big, and he’s the reason why the 8-mile soundtrack is at 5 million records. He’s like a human selling machine because he’s white. Bold prediction… 50 years down the line “Eminem started hiphop – Eminem is the King of hiphop” – guarenteed. Just like Elvis is king of rock n roll he stole that from Chuck Berry and Little Richard and all that. It’s going to be like “Eminem is the king of rap, he started rap, he made it what it is.” 50 years from now, mark my words.”

Stór orð. Engu að síður finn ég mikinn sannleik í þessu og hiphop er óneitanlega á hálli braut núna hvað varðar framtíðina. Og hver er valdur þess ? Við. Við gleypum við sell out commercial stuffi sem verður til þess að listamennirnir stefna á þá braut, þar sem peningur er. Er ekki kominn tími til að víkka sjóndeildarhringinn og kafa dýpra í menninguna, leita að þeim sem eru lítt þekktir en engu síðri en þeir stóru ?
Hvað finnst ykkur um þessa yfirlýsingu Saigon ?


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