Remember when hip-hop didn’t suck? I remember when I was in third grade and my best friend had all of the tapes that had the parental advisory stickers on them, or better yet, the ones that you had to be 18 or older to buy. His mom bought them for him, and then I would dub them all.

So of course, my initial attraction to hip-hop was a novelty one. I craved the tapes my parents didn’t want me to have. But it was during this last year that I realized how much those records actually said and how little a lot of rappers today have to say and more importantly, how bad they are compared to the golden days of hip-hop.

Those groups or solo artists from my elementary days that I speak of consisted of the likes of Ice-T, N.W.A., Public Enemy, Ice Cube and others along those lines. Behind the wall of profanity and lyrics about sex and murders, they were real stories about life. White people in powerful positions wanted this music banned, it was polluting the minds of our children, they said.

The truth is that they were so clueless as to what was going on in the world, they could never imagine that the things that N.W.A. talked about could be true. Surely cops couldn’t be beating and harassing African-American teenagers in such a manner.

This is what this music did for suburban and small-town white kids across the country. It told the real story about what was happening, it opened our eyes. It told the truth that many people didn’t want to admit. Shit is real fucked up in this country. And we try to censor the people who are telling us.

I welcome anybody’s story about how today’s hip-hop has opened your eyes in such a manner. I know, there are some groups and artists out there who are socially aware and have something to say. But the big acts, the ones that sell the records and grab the headlines, like Ice-T and Public Enemy did back in the day, have nothing at all to say. How many ways can you rap about how much jewelry and how many cars you have? Public Enemy told people to fight the power and how 911 was a joke. Today, Juvenile tells us to back that ass up and Mystikal tells us to shake that ass.

And we can’t let the old artists off the hook completely, because they had plenty of songs like this too. But those were just a small part of their records, just songs done for the fun of it.

That brings us to my second point. Not only do rappers have nothing to say today, but they just aren’t good either. Is it just me or do some of these guys not rhyme at all? I’m talking about the guys who just go ahhh at the end of every sentence so it gives it the effect that it rhymed with the last one. You may be fooling a lot of people, DMX, but not me.

If you don’t have anything to say, at least be funny or be good. Some of my favorite hip-hop hasn’t been the socially conscious stuff I referred to earlier. It’s been acts like House of Pain, Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg and the Beastie Boys. Given, it isn’t as if these artists have nothing to say, but they are no Public Enemy, understand. But they are unusual, have their own niche and, most importantly, can rap. Eminem is the perfect example. He can get away with writing songs about killing his wife because his delivery and skill cannot be matched.

We can’t accept this hip-hop music that record labels are feeding us today. I call for a boycott of this crap. If you want to buy hip-hop, I suggest The Roots, Dialated Peoples or Jurassic 5. Don’t settle for the mindless rhymeless records from Nelly, Mystikal, Juvenile and Ja-Rule. Everyone talks about how they can’t wait for the boy bands and teenie pop to fade out. Well, I can’t either, but I don’t consider Nelly and Ja Rule to be far from that stuff.

Fight the power . boycott shitty hip-hop.

-Trevor Fisher is a junior in journalism from Knoxville and is the A&E editor of the Daily.