Jesus Fucking Christ, Rolling Stone. No, Bob Dylan is NOT the Godfather of Hip-Hop, You Fucking Morons.

By
Manny Faces
-
Bob Dylan hip-hop godfather

Sorry not sorry for the curse-riddled headline, but what the entire fuck Rolling Stone?

Apparently, Rolling Stone decided that an asinine clickbait article from 2010 didn’t generate enough backlash-slash-clicks-and-social-media-frenzy when it was first published, and decided to re-unleash this moronic concept back onto the masses in a June 19 tweet.

The answer, of course, is “No, you culturally insensitive and frankly, racist idiots.”

I literally could cut and paste my 2015 piece for The Center for Hip-Hop Advocacy, where I lambasted NPR for pulling the same cultural mockery and disingenuous bullshit with Frank Sinatra — using the same term no less! 

Granted, Rolling Stone’s imbecilic article came first — perhaps it is the Godfather of dumb theories about hip-hop’s foundation — but to now, years later, continue to think that such a premise is something worthy of spreading to the masses, is the pinnacle of shitty music journalism.

Dumbasses.

(Over on The Center’s website, I have to be more diplomatic in my critique. Here, I get to say things like “dumbasses.”) 

In case one thinks that being “gestated in New York,” having “distrust” for the government, adopting a psuedonym, and being an (arguably) crafty wordsmith are all it takes to claim birthing an entire fucking subculture, let me recap some of my 2015 piece for those who don’t feel like clicking (kindly replace references to Ol’ Blue Eyes with that of Bob Dylan and any of NPR to stupid Rolling Stone):

Absurd and, frankly, insulting.

Ignoring the fact that there is a man who has been collectively granted the actual title of Godfather of Hip-Hop, as well as overlooking many others who are much more worthy of such recognition, was a hurtful use of your station’s great reach and influence.

Afrika Bambaataa is largely considered the Godfather of Hip-Hop.

DJ Kool Herc is a forefather of hip-hop. Gil-Scott Heron as well. The Last Poets. James Brown. Cab Calloway. Blues artists. Gospel singers. Africans.

Any discussion of who should be granted the title of “Godfather” of the great musical and cultural phenomenon known as hip-hop, must include these figures.

This meager attempt to find an unexpected angle to celebrate Mr. Sinatra’s achievements — which stand on their own merit quite nicely — ended up being another example of how media often distorts and downplays hip-hop’s significant musical and cultural contributions and full history.

Hip-hop, which we believe already receives a great deal of corporate and media-backed distortion, deserves better.

Once again, we see a large voice in the media landscape, make zero mention of those who would and actually should be considered as godparents of hip-hop music and culture, and instead, distribute a lazy, intern-worthy shitpost that has no merit, and slaps the face of an entire genre’s foundation.

Instead of retweeting this inept breakdown of why someone completely removed from hip-hop should be heralded as a distant relative of any kind, Rolling Stone should be immediately amending its original 2010 article with an acknowledgment and apology.

Something along the lines of:

“Dear readers. Back in 2010, we decided it would be cute and haha to link Bob Dylan to the creation of hip-hop music. In doing so, we willfully decided to ignore any human beings who actually are worthy of such a distinction. We probably didn’t think about it much, because we — as with most mainstream media — have no genuine comprehension or respect for hip-hop music and culture (and are basically kinda lowkey racist, as demonstrated by this ‘article,’ which shows we are perfectly happy to perpetuate whitewashing of African-American contributions to music and culture, keeping in step with America’s historic traditions.)

Since no one seemed to care when we did this the first time — mostly because African-Americans don’t really pay much attention to us since we basically shun them anyway — unless it helps sell magazines, shouts to Outkast and Barack O! Oh, and that time we called the Fugees the future of Rock ‘n Roll, as if hip-hop didn’t matter, lolz — and since we toy with their genre’s history with things like our stupid “Top 100 rap songs of all time” lists anyway, we said hellyea let’s re-tweet this idiocy (even though NPR did the same stupid shit in 2015 about Frank Sinatra, and were ridiculed for it by some dude and his little non-profit. <giggles>)

So, like, yeah. We’re sorry and stuff.”

Or don’t. Whatever. But tweet that shit again, and next time, we’ll go to your advertisers and see how they feel about your culturally and racially insensitive musings and we’ll see if Rolling Stone becomes the godfather of legacy magazines that finally bit the dust after being dumbasses.