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The other morning I was driving my 15 year old daughter to school when DJ Drama’s latest strip club anthem “Oh My” came on the radio.  As I listened to the lyrics and watched her mouth along to them out of the corner of my eye, I physically cringed.

See, as a parent I intimately feel Dolores C. Tucker-type points, like ones recently addressed in the latest edition of Frequency News Magazine where a Program Director for Radio One discusses what kids like vs. what parents want (read latest issue here).

Now don’t get me wrong. There is a time and a place for everything. We can’t very well expect exotic dancers to make it clap to I Smile by Kirk Franklin can we? But at the same time, unless we want our daughters, nieces, and little cousins growing up thinking it’s more viably appealing to be strippers versus Doctors, Lawyers, or teachers, (and on the flip unless we want our nephews, sons, and little brothers conditioned into thinking their future paychecks are best spent “making it rain”,) it must be asked, where is the balance in today’s music?

It was with this strong conviction of moral and parental authority that I flipped the radio to LA’s and the world’s first Hip-Hop station, KDAY-FM. Nowadays it plays strictly old school rap and I was more than ready to educate my little one on what I consider to be an elevated version of our mutually enjoyed art form. As a new bass beat began to thump thru the car, my head started automatically bobbing. Without thinking I started spitting flows like I was rhyming to be put on, “A car pulls up, who can it be? A fresh El Camino rollin kilo G. He rolled down his window and he started to say it’s all about makin that G.T.A.!” By this point I had the windows down, stereo blasting, feeling like I was back in Junior High when the track first came out. Like Jamie King in a Kickin’ It Old Skool movie scene, when the last verse kicked in, I looked to the right knowing I had officially sonned my daughter by showboating some real hip-hop skills. Her look of ultimate horror stopped me instantly.

“Mom..do you HEAR what they are saying?” Snatched out of my Boyz in the Hood revelry, I felt a sheepish burn creep into my cheeks as N.W.A.’s most charming member continued his poetic diatribe, “dumb hoe said somethin’ i couldn’t believe so i grabbed the stupid *itch by her nappy-ass weave…” Whoa..whoa…whoa!!! My old school was making new school hip-hop sound like child’s play. Like a chastised adolescent, I tried to just grin my way out. It was as if our roles reversed because of a back-in-the-day record play.

If you are anything like me, maybe you also used to joke about the songs we would one day be singing along to after the days of our rebel youth faded away. It was funny then to look forward to a time when “Ain’t No Fun If The Homies Can’t Have None” would be the theme of our senior citizen center bingo party. But now as those days creep slowly closer, how much can we really recoil in disgust at the musical content of today’s lyrics?

After all, isn’t this the Hip-Hop that Hip-Hop created? And if it is, then one has to wonder, what does this mean for the genre’s future generations…

Looks like we all will have to stay tuned and find out.

– @SamanthaGberry

Speak YOUR piece on this topic and leave a comment below.

New Music and Music News everyday at www.frequencynews.com

Frequency News: Inside the Business. . Artists. Radio.

Welcome to the Frequency-News-Sheet (FnS) on The Urban Daily. Our blog is all things industry news related from a fans voice, with an insider’s experience.

Focused on the urban music industry, it keeps you up-to-date on the who, what and where questions about your favorite artists, new music and the industry in general.

THE FREQUENCY NEWS is the official print and digital music industry publication of one of the nation’s largest radio and media conglomerates, Radio One, INC. To find out all things relating to urban and gospel music go to www.frequencynews.com and download the latest edition.

And now we are blogging on our sister site Theurbandaily.com every Monday and Wednesday. On Mondays, we will post the music charts and analyze what is happening with some of your favorite artists and music. And on Wednesdays, our staff writer Samantha Granberry will sound off on a variety of music industry related topics.

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