I Playa Hate, Therefore I Am

I should be writing about a more serious matter.

It should have taken something like the election of our first African-American president to motivate me to post my first real blog since July. It should have taken a personal victory - as of today I have been sober for eight months and three weeks - to give me the inspiration I needed to finally sit down and speak to my faithful readers (both of you). But no, it isn't that serious - at least not to me. I wish everyone felt that way.

It all started on Twitter, a micro-blogging site where users post short messages ("tweets") for all of their friends ("followers") to see. (I shouldn't even have to explain this. Even if you don't have a Twitter profile, you've undoubtedly heard of it.) I signed up on Thanksgiving 2008; I've been hopelessly addicted ever since. Anyway, one of my good online friends, someone I "met" in 2006 by way of a Boondocks fan forum, also has a Twitter profile. (She also has profiles on other social networking sites, including MySpace.) Since we have always been able to build on a number of topics - music and politics in particular - following her tweets was a no-brainer. The favor was returned almost immediately.

Sometime last week, I "re-tweeted" a post by another user concerning what is now known as the "Un-follow Diddy" movement. I never even followed him, but when someone decides to diss the man I once called "the Agent Smith of Hip-Hop" so publicly, they'll get props from me in the form of a re-tweet. Well, my friend, who knows how fearless I am when it comes to criticizing those artists who I believe are hurting Hip-Hop (more on that later), didn't take kindly to the re-tweet. Not only did she tweet her dismay to the movement (both publicly and to me directly), not only did she start following Diddy "in spite of" the movement, she also stopped following me on Twitter and deleted herself from my MySpace friends list.

Really?

I've posted way more controversial tweets, but she decided to end a friendship over this?

SERIOUSLY?!

But you know what, I'm not going to resort to name-calling like I would if I was still a hopelessly loud drunkard. However, I would like to address one of the names I was called in her most recent MySpace blog - "Playa Hata" - and why I actually consider it a compliment.

I've been listening to Hip-Hop ever since I was eight years old. Throughout those 29 years of my life I've come to care for the art form as if it was a dear friend. And whenever I thought it was headed in the wrong direction, I said so fearlessly: When Vanilla Ice released "Ice Ice Baby", a lot of Hip-Hop fans (and artists) thought it was whack, and we said so publicly and fearlessly.

But sometime in the late 90s, whackness figured out a way to better market and promote itself, earning it more airplay and acceptance than ever before. It was also around that time that whackness coined a new phrase in an attempt to combat any criticism it encountered - player hater.

To most, a player hater is someone who doesn't have the success or possessions someone else has, and instead of trying to get it for himself, he jealously criticizes the other person for having it. (I actually agree with that definition.) But most whack rappers use the phrase toward any fan/artist who dared to criticize them for, well, being whack. And out of fear of being called a hater (as Black Star stated on "Hater Players", posted above), some fans and artists kept criticism of whackness to themselves.

I, however, never bit my tongue. And I never will. There are a whole bunch of rappers nowadays - Plies, Rick Ross, and 50 Cent, just to name a few - who I believe are criminally over-rated. There are trends - AutoTune, for example - that I think have long out-lived its usefulness (if it ever had any). The current lack of lyrical creativity is, in my opinion, destroying Hip-Hop. And I care too much about the music and culture to just sit back and say nothing. If that makes me a player hater, then so be it.

One final note: The sad irony is that the friend I lost always said I should blog more often.

Maybe I should thank her.