Class acts & sleazy listening. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gente de Zona, Maluma. Part 2.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• Advertising creatives resort to puppies and babies when inspiration is elusive and they badly need a sure hit.
• Urban music composers resort to thuggery and misogyny.
• As I pointed out last week, I strongly believe urban music (meaning hip hop, reggaetón and its offshoots) is successful DESPITE its lyrics.
• From a strictly musical POV, I find these genres irresistible.
• The rhythm, the beats, the hooks.
• Urban music can make a corpse tap its feet.
• Sooner rather than later it will take over the mainstream music biz.
• Particularly when composed and performed by real, accomplished musicians.
• Such as virtuoso hitmakers Descemer Bueno or “cubatón” juggernaut Gente de Zona.
• The latter’s La gozadera is truly a masterful party anthem, a total earworm with a great message of Hispanic hope and harmony.
• Problem with the lyrics is, where’s the line separating free speech & self-expression from outright filth, cheap shots and pandering?
• I know, I know, these thorny racial topics are kryptonite for the mainstream media.
• It is extremely slippery ground.
• The establishment needs to overact its faux inclusivity.
• No white Anglo Saxon protestant pundit or politician wants to go there, lest he or she is accused of bigotry.*
• Good thing I am Latino and dark (and handsome).
• Not unlike many a potty mouth rapper or reggaetonero out there my heavy pigmentation gives me carte blanche to say whatever I want.
• So here’s a little questionnaire that might ruffle some feathers:
• Why is urban music so rife with thuggery, misogyny and materialism?
• And why do fans respond to this garbage?
• Is it a problem of misplaced male self-esteem?
• Is it anger, misguided rebellion, the frustration of the oppressed?
• Or is it just the cartoonish masculinity of adult men perennially stuck in puberty, regardless of their ethnicity or background?
• Methinks these guys just desperately seeking approval, a pat in the back, a little love.
• An awful lot of these guys come from broken, single-parent homes without a clear male role model (whatever that entails, don’t ask me, I am not a developmental psychologist).
• They grow up too fast and too lonely.
• They have too much to prove too soon.
• Granted, rap, reggaetón et al reflect the reality and the hardship of the inner city.
• In the ghetto, machismo and crime are survival strategies.
• Misguided, tru dat, but strategies nevertheless.
• There was a time not too long ago when urban music had acts such as Calle 13 or Orishas with solid street cred yet sans the thuggery, misogyny, bling and vulgarity.
• Maybe the problem is that “protest songs” are regarded as tedious turnoffs and commercially unviable buzzkills, pushing producers and artists towards the garbage that gets attention and airplay.
• Oddly enough, an awful lot of consumers of urban music do not live in the inner city.
• Quite the contrary, the kids who buy the music, the concert tickets, the t-shirts and the overpriced kicks are suburban dwellers with little or no first-hand knowledge of the hardships of el barrio.
• Is life in the suburbs so boring that the only escapism is to live vicariously through the suffering of the displaced?
• Conveniently packaged, marketed and distributed by multinational record labels, of course.
• I have a son and two daughters.
• How can I give them a good example of integrity and decency when all they get from mass media is Maluma, Kanye, Kim Kardashian, el Chema, el Capo, el señor de los cielos and Kate del Castillo allegedly having an affair with a drug lord to forward her acting career?
• Thank God for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Descemer Bueno, Gente de Zona and John Legend.

*Well, this reality seems to have changed dramatically as of late. Welcome to the era in which bigotry and nativism pay off handsomely at the polls.