W. David Marx is the author of the new book: “Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change.” He posits the dearth of quality new music comes down to status. We discuss this and other implications of status in society. Put your thinking cap on!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w-david-marx/id1316200737?i=1000584913290

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/9f7fbc0a-109e-4461-a803-eba0541c874b/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-w-david-marx

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/w-david-marx-208197447

The casual listener is dead.

The best analogy is television. Boomers will remember when you watched what was on, even changing channels was a big deal, you had to get up off the couch before the remote.

And then came the remote and ultimately cable TV, with its plethora of channels. But recording was still done by VCR, which most people could never figure out, the VCR was mainly a playback device. So people would sit down at night to watch television, and click through the available channels, unless they rented a movie.

Then came the DVR. And the internet. And the ability to pick and choose your content and watch it at a later time. “TiVo” became a verb, remember those days? Ask a member of Gen-Z what a TiVo is and they’ll have no idea. They came of age in the on demand era. What you wanted to consume was at your fingertips, you only had to make a choice.

And then there’s today, we live in the on demand culture and there’s a plethora of choices! In TV, in music… And then there’s the internet, with its endless diversions, never mind TikTok, which is the Netflix of the young.

But the point here is there’s no more drive-by listening, never mind viewing. You choose what to consume, and if you don’t choose it, you never hear it.

No one wants to admit this. Because this means they’ve lost control, that the lunatics have taken over the asylum, that they no longer control the market.

The record companies had it good. They controlled radio and physical distribution. Most people didn’t know about it unless they heard it on the radio. Sure, there were active fans who consumed print publications, but ironically they were the most dedicated radio listeners! And sure, you could learn about an act via an opening slot at a gig, but all the money was in the recordings, the live gig was an advertisement for the record.

Today, terrestrial music radio means little. Because who wants to listen to the same damn station ad infinitum, never mind consuming twenty minutes of commercials per hour. I mean how many music-oriented stations are there even in your market? And they all don’t play the genre of music you like. And your car comes with Bluetooth and you can stream from your smartphone. The only people passively listening to music are the same boomers flipping the channels on their TV sets every night. Meanwhile, subscriptions to cable TV keep going down, people have cut the cord, and some never ever were connected, they’ve picked and chosen their entire lives. You go to college with a laptop, you employ your parents’ Netflix account. You borrow passwords for other streaming giants. Other than that, it’s the internet.

So how are you going to expose people to new music? YOU CAN’T!

Oh, you can strong-arm the media the same way you used to strong-arm, and probably still strong-arm, terrestrial radio. But the target audience doesn’t see it. They get the headlines on social media, they never drill down to your story. They evade it completely. If people can evade hard news, politics, what are the odds they’re going to see your promotional campaign, the reviews of records? NEARLY ZILCH!

Then there’s the playlist… Never has there been that much concern about something with so little impact. Talk to Spotify, read their screeds, most people pick and choose their music, they don’t want to listen to endless playlists with so many tune-outs. Come on, ever try? If you’re a music fan it’s excruciating! So people make their own playlists. And as far as being turned on to something new, they depend on their friends, they constantly have their ear to the ground taking the temperature of the buzz.

But buzz mostly works for the unknown. People’s time is so limited that if they’ve already sampled and didn’t like it, they don’t go back. Yes, there’s that first impression, and after that good luck!

Having said that, there are rabid cults. But they don’t cross over to the general public. I’d say much of the population is aware of K-Pop at this point, they’ve heard of BTS, but they’ve got no desire to listen to the act’s music. That’s for a hard core who live and die, who are invested in BTS. And they punch above their weight. They’re so busy talking about BTS, and going to the shows that media and insiders believe it’s a widespread phenomenon, but it’s not! It’s just a very large cult.

The vaunted acts of the past fifteen years, they’re all like this. They don’t appeal to everybody. They’ve got a hard core, and that’s it. No one’s even a casual fan, why bother, why spend the time?

As for those who do listen to playlists, they are the least active consumers, the last one to stream one track ad infinitum and pay for a ticket to the show. These are the people who employ playlists as background music, at home or at work, they may not even be able to recall ever hearing the track, never mind that it played.

There are other cults. Public radio. Rabid fans who follow deejays and then stream what is featured. Like WFMU or KCRW. Listeners know it, but no one else does. So, when the hipster band comes to town an elder audience will show up, but the act will never play arenas on the first tour, the cult is just not that big.

As for all these sellouts…

Let’s say you play fifteen stadiums. Let’s say you sold out at each, 50,000 seats, never mind many stadiums today hold fewer than that. Sounds impressive, but…

That’s 750,000 people in a country of 330 million. It’s a drop in the bucket. Apple doesn’t even wake up for that number. It’s bupkes.

I’m not saying it’s not good business, there’s a lot of money there, but if you think there’s endless demand to see that act, you’re wrong. Never mind there being additional acts on the bill to turn it into an event so people show up to begin with.

Festivals? 100,000 a day? Good money, not much impact.

This is very different from being on “Hee-Haw” back in the day. Or even MTV. TRL was a club that moved the needle, there has been no replacement, there can’t be, because everybody is no longer on the same page.

And then you’ve got the history of music competing with the new. And a lot of those acts are still on the road, albeit not that much longer.

Once again, there’s plenty of money to be made, but don’t confuse this with IMPACT!

So you have a #1 record. Big deal. Most people have never heard it. Morgan Wallen’s album “Dangerous” has been in the Top Ten for over a year and I bet most people reading this have never ever heard a single track and couldn’t pick Morgan out of a lineup. Sure, they might know about the n-word controversy, but that’s part of the cancel culture, gotcha, political sphere…that’s the entertainment now, much more interesting than anything anybody is putting down on wax. And don’t get me started on the touting of vinyl records. A tempest in a teapot. Many people are never even listening to them, they’re a souvenir. And the numbers proffered are not reflective of reality. It’s all calculated on suggested retail. And retail for a vinyl record these days can be $40. How much comes back to the record company? Maybe $20, assuming there are no discounts and people actually pay the suggested retail price. And then there are all the costs involved, manufacturing and shipping…the only good thing is vinyl is sold one way, and if you don’t know what that means that means you’re not burdened by the record company economics of yore, which no longer apply today. When the label gets paid by a streaming company that’s NET! And other than the usually de minimis royalties paid to the act, if they’re even in the black, it’s all profit. As in there are no costs. No manufacturing, no shipping, no returns. So to compare vinyl to streaming is like yes, comparing apples to oranges. I’m not saying there’s not money in vinyl, there’s a good amount. But it’s not as high as they say it is, cut the number in half right away, that cash is going to the retailer, and it’s still a fraction of what is made on streaming. People LIKE vinyl. They want to FEEL it’s successful. But vinyl itself is just a cult. How many people own record players these days? And many own them as fashion, and you know fashion is evanescent.

But the vinyl story is paraded everywhere. You’d think Tower Records is still open on Sunset and there’s a line to get in, but there’s not. In many cases, vinyl is positively cottage industry. Small acts sourcing a few records to sell at gigs. Good for them, just don’t tell me it’s a big deal. Never mind that getting your albums pressed is so difficult because of the lack of capacity. There’s almost no capacity because people stopped buying records!

The truly universal acts of yore… They don’t exist. Whether they be from the British Invasion or the MTV era. Come on, every boomer and Gen-X’er knows Men Without Hats, AND THEY ONLY HAD ONE HIT. But it was on MTV.

I’m not saying the music business at large is suffering, that’s not my point at all. It’s just that the music business is built on hype, about saying so and so is the biggest and brightest. NO ONE IS THE BIGGEST AND BRIGHTEST ANYMORE, NO ONE!

So I don’t want to hear about your chart numbers, bumped by selling souvenirs. And I’m supposed to applaud you for selling multiple albums to the same customer? That’s a grift, that’s consumer abuse, it’s only youngsters are so immature and myopic that they spend their allowance this way, or get their parents to lay down the cash so they can stop hearing about it. I mean do GM or Ford or Tesla or Toyota try and sell four cars to a single person? No, that’s not a perfect analogy. Do these same companies try to sell a car to someone who lives in MANHATTAN? Where there’s no parking and in truth you don’t even need a car. Yes, people are buying physical product that they can’t even play. Quick, look around your house, do you have a CD player? I bet most of you don’t. They’re no longer in cars… Hell, most people no longer even have a DVD player, WHY?

So the music industry and media keep telling us that there are these monolithic stars, that rule, that everybody knows and pays attention to. WRONG! There are some big cults, that’s it. And even worse, if people even know about the act, they often HATE IT! Just because a cult is enamored that does not make it good, never mind not having broad acceptance.

And speaking of acceptance, this is something the aged boomer and Gen-X acts can’t get over. Well, I used to make so much money, but Spotify has killed my income stream. No, that’s not it whatsoever, Spotify is just a reflection of reality, and in this case a scapegoat, you’re competing against everybody who recorded music in history and not that many people want to listen to you. Sorry. Sure, you might have a million streams, but there are acts that have a billion, that are still cults. Come on, sing an Ed Sheeran song, I doubt you can do it. Oh, there are millions who can, but there are many more people who can’t! Yet the guy sets all these streaming records…

I won’t even judge the quality of the music. Even if you’re talented and great at most you will be a cult, if you’re as successful as you can be.

It’s time to reset our barometers. But no, the music business wasn’t built on truth, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The industry wants you to believe there are these huge stars that dominate the culture, are bigger than “Stranger Things”… But “Stranger Things” is much bigger and broader, and most people haven’t even watched THAT!

So take everything you see and hear with a giant grain of salt. When they start touting numbers, put them in perspective. The devil is in the details, never mind outright lying.

But no one wants their balloon punctured. No one wants the truth. Because then, concomitantly, how powerful are the major labels themselves, never mind the people who run them. The average American has no idea who runs the major labels, and now there are only three! Same deal with the movie studios. Many more people have heard of Ted Sarandos, never mind Reed Hastings, than anybody working in music. The heads of labels were titans! Remember in the “Sopranos” when Christopher called out to Tommy Mottola outside the club? Do you think today’s Christophers are going to be calling out to Rob Stringer, head of Sony today, never mind Lucian Grainge?

This is where we are. Acknowledge it. Because it’s hard to march forward without knowing and accepting the truth. And once again, everything is a cult today, EVERYTHING!

Case closed.

It’s a blip on the ass of social media. For a self-selecting group who need to keep up on the news, evidence their opinions, and haters who want to undercut anybody who participates.

In other words, the story of Elon Musk BUYING Twitter is more important than the platform itself, because almost no one uses it.

Really, it’s all about TikTok. We were told the internet would surface untold number of overlooked musical acts. The concept was right, the genre was wrong. In other words, creativity is on a rampage. And it’s coming from the grass roots. But it’s not about music.

You see TikTok has unleashed the creativity of America. 

This is not Instagram, where you post polished pics to demonstrate how groovy and privileged you are. Nor is it YouTube, with influencers hawking their brand ad infinitum, sans soul.

First and foremost, TikTok is different because you don’t have to be a winner to play. You can be no one and your post can be boosted to everyone. I’d say it’s like a lottery, but it is not. Because it all comes down to your creativity. And you can’t buy it, not like beats online. And you can’t fake it. It’s all you, from inside your brain, and the less polished it is, the more authentic it is, and authenticity is everything. This boost in the creative side of the brain, in these millions of short clip endeavors, has been overlooked by the mainstream for two reasons… One, they do not fit in a traditional, established, anointed vertical and two, the mainstream decries TikTok, they don’t even investigate it, they just pooh-pooh it as a backwater of young amateurs that deserves no attention, like toddlers playing in a sandbox. But that’s not what it is.

So the story of Trump on Twitter is purely access. To a large group. Trump played when the staid establishment did not. In an era where all news junkies, most importantly the reporters and commentators, were addicted to Twitter, so that his impact on the short message service was overblown. Believe me, if Trump comes back to Twitter the impact will be minimal, although never underestimate the media’s ability to make a small story big, by amplifying it. The media was complicit in the election of Trump in 2016, by giving him all that oxygen. A similar thing is happening with the midterm reporting. The establishment media has decided Republicans are going to win and that’s the story, even though the underpinnings of that opinion are slim, just some polls that have been notoriously inaccurate since Trump’s election. The media is so fearful of missing a big story outside the liberal domain of its members, that it is overemphasizing stories about the unknown on the right.

So, for the past few months the story hasn’t been about Twitter, but Musk. Musk was feeling his oats on Twitter, with his follower count of bros, so he decided to buy it. It’d be like you going to a carnival, riding the Ferris wheel and raving about it and all your friends being enthralled with your experience. MOST PEOPLE DIDN’T EVEN GO TO THE CARNIVAL! MOST PEOPLE WERE NEVER EXPOSED TO IT!

This is the dirty little secret of Twitter, most people never see your tweet. Follower counts are nearly irrelevant. Someone has to either be on Twitter when you tweet, or be so interested in what you say as to go back in time on your feed. Furthermore, most Twitter addicts follow so many people most of the posts are lost in the shuffle.

Which is why I rarely tweet. Let’s see, right now I have 66.3k followers on Twitter. Sounds like a lot. But if I tweet it’s like pissing in the wind. I can say the same thing to my mailing list and my inbox can go wild. Because it’s a direct connection. Twitter is not a direct connection, it’s not used that way by most people.

As for the number counts… It was a fad. People signed up and signed off. This is a bigger issue than the bots. The bots are a sideshow for most of the people on the platform, and in truth most people are not on the platform!

And, even if you are using Twitter on a regular basis, it’s confusing.

Twitter tried to make it easier by employing an algorithm, like Facebook, which selected posts that most appealed to you. In theory. In practice, the algorithm is so poor, it overemphasizes some people and de-emphasizes others, who you are interested in. And if you miss a post on Facebook about someone’s afternoon activity, who cares. But if you’re on Twitter for news and you miss a big story, that’s a huge loss.

You see people on Twitter base their lives on being informed. And since Twitter is instant, that’s where stories break. And, all other reporters are on the service. How many people in America are reporters, or comprehensive news junkies? VERY FEW! If Twitter was a sport it would be Monster trucks. No, that can get TV exposure… Well, Twitter is bigger than backcountry skiing, but it generates less enthusiasm than Pickleball, which is on the way up, whereas Twitter is on the way down. You only get a chance to be brand new once. And the hardest thing is to bring someone back who gave you up, it’s nearly impossible, if for no other reason than there are so many other entertainment/information options.

So, what you’ve got on Twitter is writers with no direct connection with their audience. They’ve got no mailing list, they don’t know who their readers are, so they post to make themselves feel good, by gaining followers and getting a reaction. And then they’re stunned when there is evil blowback. Hello, this has been an issue online FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS! It’s just a matter of whether you have direct connection with your audience. To complain about this hate today is laughable. You’re a muckety-muck, people don’t like your status, they don’t like your attitude, and they want to bring you down. Period.

The funny thing is these establishment wankers are too stupid to look at the follower count of most of these haters. It’s anemic, they reach almost no one. And anybody with any experience knows you never respond, that’s exactly what the haters want. And they never back down, if you think you can set them straight you’re wrong.

So, what you’ve got on Twitter is not the hoi polloi, but an elite group, which cries that they’re now subjected to all the vagaries of the internet. And the haters keep piling on, because they can reach these people.

And it’s a tempest in a teapot, most people don’t see it and don’t care.

So Musk is forced to buy Twitter. To honor his deal.

He’s lost all credibility in the process. He made a deal with no strings attached and then wanted to add strings after the fact, and this don’t play when you’ve got a legal contract, homey won’t allow that.

And now Tesla is in trouble in China and everybody knows the automobiles are poorly built and…

In one fell swoop not only has Elon messed with his image, but with Tesla’s too. As for rehabilitation… I expect a mea culpa when Kanye gives one, which is NEVER!

Elon thinks he’s untouchable, that the rules don’t apply to him. And since this story was all over the news for months, the public is aware of it. They’re not ON Twitter, but they know the business story. It’s better than almost all TV and definitely better than all records. Only streaming television can compete.

So, because he’s not on Twitter 24/7, because he has other obligations, Musk doesn’t really have a feel for the service. And his lack of knowledge means he’s living in a vacuum and is unaware of the issues. You can’t let everybody say whatever they want whenever they want, BECAUSE OF THE ADVERTISERS! Advertisers are conservative. They don’t want to be where one single customer can be pissed off. And believe me, these companies often make decisions based on very little feedback, it’s not like they get a million e-mails, maybe ten or fifteen. But they’re scared.

So, Elon has to make money, he’s going to charge for verification. WHO CARES! Who is that dedicated to Twitter that they need their identity authenticated? Almost no one. And no one is stealing the identities of the big players anyway, BECAUSE THEY PLAY SO MUCH! And the supposed advantages of a blue check mark are de minimis.

And then there’s the right, the Trumpers. They started supporting Musk under the rubric of “free speech,” but once Musk gained control of the company he found out there had to be content moderation. So now those free-speechers on the right are mad at him. Musk has succeeded in pissing EVERYBODY off!

And then there are the wankers who talk about competition, a new Twitter. Give me a break, take a look at Truth Social lately?

First and foremost, Twitter is not good business. But the history of the internet tells us new platforms are based on new ideas! I.e. TikTok vs. Instagram. And the thing that is most interesting is Instagram has tried to imitate TikTok, with the same features, AND IT’S NOT WORKING! People have TikTok, why do they need to post videos on Instagram? What is the problem, other than Instagram’s waning business, which users couldn’t care less about.

And building an audience is almost impossible these days. Everything scales much more slowly, because there’s so much in the channel. So you’re going to start a new business from scratch when we’ve already got Twitter?

As for people leaving… Didn’t take down Amazon. It never works. There are just not enough people who care enough to go without.

Do you know how many people would have to leave Twitter before it impacted my usage of it? I can’t imagine it ever happening.

And then there are those who use the service as a personal megaphone. I don’t want your damn opinion, give me INFORMATION! That’s what the complaining posters don’t realize, we don’t want to hear what you have to say, just give us the news, right away. So the service is inundated with endless detritus. My feed has too much b.s. in it. And the more b.s., the less I look at it.

And Lists are just for pros, which is almost nobody.

And as far as what is trending and general news and entertainment…the stuff you click on that is not based on following anybody specific? Idiots create these trends, no one with a brain cares. And there are much better places to get news and entertainment that is not of the moment.

So what happens now?

WHO KNOWS?

Can Musk make the trains run on time, make Twitter a burgeoning business?

Possibly. BUT THAT’S NOT GOING TO AFFECT THE SERVICE!

Once again, users don’t care about the profitability of your business. They just want to know about the utility to them. And nothing Elon has said or done in the past year has directly affected the utility of the service, the business story is separate from the utilization of the service!

So no, there won’t be a Twitter competitor, not one with any traction.

And no, most people tweeting will not sign off, or if they do, they’ll come back on.

And nothing Musk can do with Twitter will turn it into a powerhouse, attracting new users. Sure, he could turn the app into something else, like WeChat… But in truth, that’s about building a whole new service, there’s not that much there at Twitter to base a new effort upon.

So, Elon tries to clean up the business, bloviates how great it is, then takes the company public once again and GETS OUT!

So far, Musk has not done anything to improve Twitter, not a single thing. So one guy owns a social media outlet that most people never think about? He bought it on impulse, he didn’t think it through, which is why he wanted to get out of the deal. This is who Elon is. He demonstrates this over and over again, he shoots from the hip and ignores the law and social mores. It’s just that this time there was tens of billions of dollars involved.

Let him pay the price. Not only the cash spent in the acquisition, but the burden of owning this moribund social media service which stumbles along but no one has been able to blow up into boffo business. It’s his problem. GOOD LUCK!

If this guy was white…

Most people have no idea what goes on behind the records. Despite the braggadocio, the flash of cash, the actual lives of these rappers are not depicted.

They’re in danger.

In an underground economy.

This is rock and roll in the old days. A cash business, but much more dangerous.

Not that I knew that much until I read Joe Coscarelli’s book, “Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story”: https://amzn.to/3Ns7PMl and talked to him for the podcast: https://bit.ly/3haAadK

First, we’ve got a huge incarceration problem in America, which targets Black men disproportionately. It’s stunning how so many of these ultimately famous rappers go in and out of jail. And if you think racism is passé, you must be on the Supreme Court. There are places in Georgia where the rappers are on guard because of noted white police crackdowns for minor offenses.

As for pay…

Everything seems simple from the outside. There’s record company royalties and concerts. But it’s much more complicated than that. There are tons of cash gigs, the IRS is not only missing the rich CEOs, but the rappers too, who are sometimes incredibly wealthy themselves as a result of this economy, where you show up at a club to rap to track and…you can do multiple gigs a night. That’s another stunning thing in Coscarelli’s book, how rich some of these rappers are.

Not that a career is guaranteed. It’s one thing to have a hit, quite another to sustain.

And it’s not only the underground economy that’s involved, but the Fortune 500 too. They know that rappers have the most cred, never mind popularity, with the target audience, so they go into business with them. Used to be you had to have a number of hits before the corporations came calling, but now they’re involved from the get-go.

And so many of the acts are disposable. And end up back where they came from. Never mind the fact that many don’t make it.

And while rockers and old blowhards are still trying to figure out the internet, it was embraced by the hip-hop community from the advent. The rappers knew you had to give to get, like a dope dealer. They knew it was about going for the big money, not the small. Ergo mixtapes. These recordings endeared them to an audience that became bonded to them. There was plenty of money down the road, if you had fans.

And culture.

And, the culture involves a lot posturing and violence.

And the whites and the mainstream media might report it, but they do not decry it.

It’s taken as a given, that rappers get shot. Why?

Well, we could go to the source, and ask why Black people don’t have more opportunity. Coscarelli writes about college graduates who end up doing manual labor. But affirmative action is taboo, because someone might gain an advantage that’s been baked into a majority group. I mean you have to attack the problem at some point.

And let’s be clear, it’s not what you learn at Harvard or Yale, it’s the people you encounter, who become part of your network. J.D. Vance was a hillbilly until he went to Yale Law School, made connections, went to work with Peter Thiel and ended up writing a distorted book that he used as a platform to run for the Senate in Ohio. Where is the concomitant advantage for Black people?

Believe me, the upper middle class knows all the tricks. But even the middle class is clueless, that the top educational institutions are need blind, and if you can get in and you’re broke you don’t have to pay a dime.

The American information gap, right there.

So think about all the people profiting off of rap. The labels run by white people, the TV and streaming companies, the aforementioned Fortune 500, but none of them lift a finger to counter the violence in the culture, they don’t even bother to decry it.

It’s racism incarnate.

As for George Floyd… All the companies who came out in support of Black people…that was then and this is now, the end result is far from major, it’s the same as it ever was.

So, if a white rapper had gotten shot, there’d be front page stories on his family, their devastation. And there would be investigative articles in the media asking how this could happen. How this upright citizen from a good family got snuffed out. Yes, they’d candy-coat the deceased’s background, ever read an obit where they say the person was an arrogant punk?

And all the governmental leaders would convene and talk about taking action.

Meanwhile, where are the stories about Takeoff’s family? Where’s the deep dive into his past live?

AND WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE!

We can start with gun control… But that seems to be going in the other direction. I’d think twice about moving to Texas, where everybody can carry a gun without a permit. Rave to me about the supposed economic advantages all day long, they don’t mean much when you’re dead.

The truth is whites and the mainstream community don’t care if another Black person dies. Just one less mouth to feed. Yup, that’s the way they see it, that Black people are takers, always wanting more, the government must stop supporting them.

While they’re at it, why don’t they pull all that money the government disproportionately gives to red states, huh?

And an advanced society looks out for those at the low end of the economic spectrum. In most western countries. But welfare was hobbled during the Clinton administration and the idea that Black women are just having babies and being supported by the government is untrue. You figure someone must be taking your money, that you should pay fewer taxes, but when there’s a natural disaster you immediately want federal relief.

Yes, there must be a scapegoat. And the Black people are number one.

Even though their schools are substandard. The right says there should be school choice, to close bad schools, only there’s not enough room in good schools for all the disadvantaged to go to! And in truth, this is just a ruse to advance the cause of religious schools, which are not free, and if you’re not a believer…

And let’s not equate every rapper with Kanye. They’re not that rich, and they’re not that crazy. They’re just trying to survive.

So, we’ve got to get the guns off the street. Enough of throwing our hands in the air. When your kid gets shot you’re going to go bonkers, how about someone else’s kid?

And how about a denigration of violence. Why are gangs and violence portrayed as cool? Many kids go into gangs not because they’re cool, but just to survive. And since the police are ineffective, the gangs and others take the law into their own hands. And since opportunities are low, kids deal drugs, for that fast cash, I mean how long are they going to live anyway?

This is what stunned me in “Hoop Dreams.” They had a big birthday party for the player because living to eighteen is such an achievement. Do we feel the same thing as whites? That just staying alive is something to be celebrated?

And often, they find the perpetrators of this violence and lock them up, but it’s not much of a deterrent, because they don’t feel they have much of a future to begin with. And honor and image is everything, like we’re living in the feudal past.

All these talent agencies and clothing manufacturers can drop Kanye like he’s hot, but how about dropping those involved in violence. Believe me, if you take away the few avenues of opportunity it will change the culture.

As for the clubs and the strippers and making it rain…

Everybody gets to choose how they want to live their lives, but we shower these big time athletes with cash they’ve got no education on how to spend, and then they blow it and end up broke and ultimately dead with CTE. But the players are disposable, just like the rappers. Hell, most of the players in the NFL don’t even have guaranteed contracts! Get hurt and you’re out. We don’t care about you. Life is tough. Meanwhile, the bad actor billionaire owner continues to rape and pillage not only in business, but their personal life.

This is a way you can demonstrate your status, by making money and spending it.

Now in truth, on TikTok, there are all these videos talking about money, about the economics of buying a new car, investing. Maybe up and comers will see them, but we don’t even teach economic skills in school, because if we did the sellers wouldn’t be able to pull the wool over the eyes of these customers. Dollar stores, payday loans… They’re heinous, but if you’re broke sometimes you have no choice.

Somehow America has flipped, and it’s the whites who are disadvantaged. What’s a poor boy to do? Not play in a rock and roll band, BUT BECOME A RAPPER! It’s one of the few potentially high paying jobs for a disadvantaged youth, other than dope-dealing.

But we demonize these people, as we profit off their backs.

Come on, Blacks punch way above their weight when it comes to culture. And, unfortunately, this culture of gun violence impacts not only them, but white people too, BECAUSE IT’S SEEN AS COOL!

Let me tell you, when you’re dead nothing is cool. Finito. It’s over. The challenge is staying alive. Hell, the government should give a million dollars to every rapper that makes it to forty. Even better, a guaranteed income to everybody, including Black people.

But no one wants to PAY FOR IT! I don’t get it, do you want to live in Venezuela? I’ve been there, the wealthy people live in the hills in houses surrounded by concrete walls topped with concertina wire.

You think you’re immune, but you’re not. We live in one big society. And you’re part of it, and you’re vulnerable. If you don’t take care of your brothers and sisters, lift them up, it’s going to negatively impact you.

But then you’ve got all these execs saying they earned their billions who don’t acknowledge that without customers they’d have NOTHING!

Consumers are king. But that’s not the way our society sees it. We venerate the rich and criticize the poor, ignoring what is going on in their brains.

And when it comes to hip-hop, it’s all about creativity. You don’t make it to the top by accident. So why can’t we acknowledge this, other than on awards shows that no one watches anyway?

Granted, everything fades almost instantly these days. But in the wake of Takeoff’s death, I haven’t seen one elected official comment about it. I haven’t seen any outcry. At best, there’s been a shrug of the shoulders.

And that’s not okay.

Something’s gotta give. And if you don’t address the underlying problem, it’s going to affect you.

Come on, isn’t anybody outraged that this guy was shot?

I guess not.