Time to fight gangsta' rap, fo' shizzle

Editor's note: The following column contains language that will be offensive to some readers.

Well, fo' shizzle ma nizzle. It seems that the greatest artist of my generation, the venerable rapper Snoop Dogg, has crossed the law once again. An Emmy Award-winning makeup artist has sued Mr. Dogg, alleging that after an appearance on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Mr. Dogg and his posse raped her. She named parent companies ABC and the Walt Disney Co. as defendants as well, claiming that during the days leading up to the rape, the Kimmel show stocked the Dogg House with lots of champagne and pot.

In the last few years, D.O. double G has appeared in the hit film "Starsky & Hutch" as Huggy Bear and in "Soul Plane" as Captain Mack. He also did the voice of Lightning in the kids' film "Racing Stripes" and has starred in a T-Mobile commercial and in a Burger King commercial urging youngsters to get out and vote.

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But how Snoop became mainstream is beyond me, fo' shizzle. This is a gangsta' rapper, a man who made his name by degrading women and promoting violence – and by allegedly acting as an accessory to the first-degree murder of 20-year-old Phillip Woldemariam. He recorded his first songs with fellow rapper Dr. Dre for the Death Row Records label (the logo for that label depicted a black man strapped to an electric chair). One of his early hits, "Gin & Juice," rapped:

I'm serious nigga one of y'all niggaz got this a-- motherf---in' up ... I got b----es in the living room gettin' it on / and, they ain't leavin' til six in the mornin' (six in the mornin') / So what you wanna do, sheeeit / I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too / So turn off the lights and close the doors / But (but what) we don't love them hoes, yeah! / So we gonna smoke a ounce to this / G's up, hoes down, while you motherf---ers bounce to this ...

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Ah, the joys of cultural diversity. But at least he advocates safe sex, right, liberals? This must be the "poetry" John Kerry was talking about when he touted rap as full of "social energy ... important." All must pay homage to Snoop Dogg, the modern-day Shakespeare.

The black community is far more awake to the problems of rap music than the white community. According to Edmund Gordon, professor emeritis at Yale and chairman of the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement, many black males have adopted the culture of the rappers they see on music videos and are neglecting their academic performance in order to perform rap and hip hop. A June 2003 survey by Black America's Political Action Committee found that 52 percent of black voters believe rap music is a negative influence on children, and 60 percent would support banning minors from buying sexually explicit music. Al Sharpton commented on the vulgarity of rap in a speech during his entertaining presidential campaign; rap, he said, was "desecrating our culture – it is desecrating our race."

But it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Gangsta' rap has become mainstream. Almost 25 percent of the CDs sold in the United States in 2003 were hip hop and R&B, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. According to SoundScan, a sales-tracking company, 70 percent of rap-music consumers are white kids from the suburbs. It isn't rare to walk into a private, largely white high school anywhere in the United States and see boys with their pants slung low, dropping last syllables and greeting each other with "'Sup, biatch?"

But as it's gone mainstream, rap hasn't moderated its vulgarity. Take, for instance, Billboard magazine's No. 3 Hot Rap Single for the year 2004, Petey Pablo's "Freek-A-Leek":

Sniff a little coke, take a little x [Ecstasy], smoke a little weed, drink a little bit. / I need a girl that I can freak wit, / wanna try s---, and ain't scared of a big d---. / And love to get her p---- licked, / by another b----, cuz I ain't drunk enough to do that.

We've been told time and time again that all cultures are equal and that all have something to contribute to American life. That is a lie. The gangsta' culture has nothing of value to contribute. Nothing. To say that it is racist to ban gangsta' culture from the pantheon of worthwhile cultures is, in itself, racist: It assumes that violence and degradation of women is central to the black experience in America. It isn't. And it shouldn't be for the rest of us, either. It's time to toss rappers like D.O. double G out on their A double Ses.