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I like some of the rap music and I dislike others. I feel that it says a lot about the black culture, but sometimes it says it in a negative way, and it could be more positive. What are some of the negative things that you've heard? Drugs,

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Prison, Uh, crime. And I don't think these are the things that should be reflected in any kind of music. I think make a music should always be a positive projection and vehicle to society. You know, when you say that, you go and look at the multimillion

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dollar film and all the violence in these movies on all the sex air in these movies and all of the just out in our disrespect of women raped so forth and so on, what's the difference? I mean, I feel that these kids see this every day,

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and all they're doing is expressing what they say. Rap music has been under attack recently by parents and critics for its explicit lyrics about violence, racism and sex. Last week, a Florida judge even banned the sale of the rap Group Two Live Crew's album after ruling

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it obscene. But for the performers and their audiences. Rap music is attractive because it is a mode of self expression and a two for raising cultural awareness. Right now, the trend is for a lot of people to embrace the concept of Afro Centric City, which means

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having a worldview that's based from an African perspective, as opposed to our Eurocentric perspective. So that means honoring, accepting and acknowledging our value system, uh, in lieu of other people's value systems and basically presenting things and saying things on our own terms. And that's the trend

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that's that's picked up by a lot of rappers now the original name of that. In ancient times, Egyptians develop all sciences of the mind with a planet. Greece and Persia wasn't having it, but it wasn't enough. Get, of course, because in that time it was keeping

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line that move religion, politics and man in order to destroy the Egyptian race they had with scientists from off the face of the planet. So they proceeded to ban it from replace it with sanity at It's Been That way. That clip is from the documentary Rap

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City Rap City, and Joining Me Now is the producer and director Achille Buchanan and Dave Davey D. Cook, K. L X radio personality and music critic Thanks so much for being with me this morning. Now yesterday's Chronicle A man selling two live crew's album Arrested, put

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into jail What is going on here? I mean, what are we What are we looking at here? You're looking at a censorship and you're looking at the the state Ah, judge a federal judge dictating to people their taste what they should here and what they shouldn't

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here. I think the market place should be the sensor. You know, if people don't wanna buy an album, they should be allowed not to buy it, but they shouldn't be told to either buy it or not. But is this any different than what was going on

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in the fifties when we got rock and row of starting out with, uh, Elvis calling it rock and roll? Although it's the same thing that that blacks have been doing for some time the kind of music and and all the parents getting up in arms about

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this and saying we don't want our Children listening to this music. Is this the same kind of thing we're talking about here? Well, It's hard to say I don't I wasn't around when Elvis situation was going on. What I see happening here is that this censorship

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that's going on in particular with the two live crew is a reaction. It's a backlash to, ah, black voice that's coming out. Um, not that the two live crew represents, ah, positive black voice. But I think it's the first step in trying to silence the amount

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of positive, uh, messages that are coming out in rap music. And most of the messages are positive. Isn't that correct? Most of them are positive and very, very political and political to the point that it inspires a lot of younger people to start questioning, questioning the

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values, the situation around them and hopefully moving on to another direction. And the fact is that rap has crossed over, so it's affecting middle mainstream America, and they're starting to question values like the piece that you showed where you must learn where care is. One depicts

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a black Moses now that gets shown on mainstream television. A lot of mainstream, you know, white kids in the suburbs are up on Kerry's. When they go to Mommy is Moses black is Jesus black Now all of a sudden. Now all of a sudden, people's, uh,

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sense of reality thrown out of it gets thrown out of whack. Why is it if most of the messages in rap music are positive? We are only hearing about the women hating and the violence and the racism it sells. It sells, and also you have to

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look at who's presenting it. Um, most of your radio programmers, people that are running these video shows their white. They take black music and presented. But they might say, that's a black radio station. This is black television but is white owned. And the main emphasis that

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they're looking for is to get ratings and toe, you know, secure advertising dollars or whatever. So Hansa two Live Crew, you know it's gonna where they show naked women or half naked women is gonna b'more titillating. Now let's get back to the origins. Where does rap

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come from? And what's the difference between rap and hip hop? We'll wrap as a music art form came out of Harlem and Bronx communities. Uh, DJs at house parties and block parties would, uh, would would play the records And then one thing led to another. Be

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a call response with the audience while they were changing records and the D J would be talking to the audience. Hey would start scratching. I mean, they're being creative. One thing would lead to another. And what's the difference between rapping hip hop, rap rapping? Hip hop?

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Hip hop is a subculture that incorporates four main elements in this Submerged in the Bronx in the mid seventies main culture main subcultures of context of hip hop was break dancing, uh, deejaying, uh, graffiti. And, of course, wrapping. It was called emceeing back then, and these

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were all means of self expression, because at this time there were very few avenues for brothers and sisters to really express themselves. So they found these four venues to do that. And, uh, would rap or M seeing there was a D. J. I think it was

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Hollywood or cocoa Iraq that usedto use the word hip hop, shoo, bop it up. He used to rap like that, and hence they took hip hop. They coined it hip hop. Now that break dancing and graffiti, a kind of passe wrapped in hip hop, have become

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synonymous, But you can have hip hop music but not wrap. You say that it's caught on so much you were saying to me earlier because it filled a void that wasn't being filled by black, essentially political leaders. Yes, well, the political edge to wrap came out

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out of the mouths and voices of these young rappers because, you know, you know, we're all human beings. We see what's going out here. There's one excerpt from Alan Blackwell from Metro Records who who owns a PG crew, who said, You know, we see the stuff

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that's out here with drugs and no values or whatever. You know, injustice, uh, political hypocrisy out of time here. But listen, we're gonna find out more about it from your documentary, which we didn't have time to talk about. We saw some of it, but I'm gonna

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tell people where they could watch it. Thanks so much for being with me today. Be sure to watch Rap City Rhapsody, which will be on June 14th at nine PM on KQED TV, Channel nine and don't go away When I come back. I look at the

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intricate art quilt making stay with us