Record Execs Taking Rap From Critics Charging Racism

Record executives who didn’t take last month’s congressional gangsta rap hearings seriously may be having second thoughts now.

Against the backdrop of violence that’s marred the music’s image, record companies are scrambling to cope with fallout from the latest accusation against rap: racism.

A growing number of black feminists, church leaders and politicians have charged that white-owned record labels are profiting from disseminating negative images of African Americans in the music of Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ice Cube and other rappers.

In the past, record companies involved in rap were accused of racism when they succumbed to pressure from white critics and censored or banned potentially offensive songs by African American rap artists.

This time around, those applying pressure to the industry include singer Dionne Warwick, “Soul Train” founder Don Cornelius and Rev. Calvin Butts, pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church.

“The proliferation of violence and unacceptable sexual messages in our youth’s music is due in large part to the avarice of the record industry,” said C. DeLores Tucker, head of the Washington-based National Political Congress of Black Women. The organization, which includes such high-profile figures as former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, was instrumental in encouraging Rep. Cardiss Collins and Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, both of Illinois, to convene the recent rap hearings. A second round of Capitol Hill hearings is planned.

“For 400 years, profit has come before principle as African Americans bore the brunt of slave masters’ degradation,” Tucker told Pop Eye. “Who owns the companies that put out all this garbage? From what I hear, the record industry is demanding in their contracts that these messages of degradation be in the music of the artists.”

Record company executives deny that such contracts exist and also call the charges of racism absurd. Privately, however, they express concern over the groundswell of support that the new wave of gangsta rap critics is gaining in the African American community.

“It seems like the industry just can’t win when it comes to putting out controversial rap,” said one white executive. “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”