Don't Blame Fiddy

We did another great interview for the Toronto Rap Project this weekend. Lawyer/Professor/Journalist Alan Young. Alan decided to share his thoughts on the recent 50 Cent controversy in Canada with a piece in NOW Magazine. I really liked a lot of what Alan had to say and figured he would be a great fit for the doc. Unlike so many other journalists who just don't get rap, Alan was in a unique position to comment on the issue. In the early nineties Alan worked one of the few legal cases in Canadian history when rap music actually found it's way into our courts. A London, Ontario music store was brought up on obscenity charges when it was discovered it was selling a banned 2-Live-Crew album. Alan defended the store owner. While he eventually went on to lose the case, Alan can't help but a see deja-vu with the whole 50 cent controversy and so-called gansta imagery of his music. Like the 2-Live-Crew case, Alan once again can't understand why extreme forms of black culture are a target for media and activists but an artist like Quentin Tarantino movies play in our theatres and nobody says boo. I'll be the first to call Tarantino a genius but I'll even admit that any violence depicted in one of his movies is a hundred worse then anything fiddy has ever shown. But in our world, Tarintino is the genius and 50 Cent the villain. You can only wonder why?