Panel: hip-hop's focus is lost in commercialization

Riding dirty and brushing your shoulders off may not be as appealing as it once was. Growing numbers of hip-hop fans see the genre as a stagnant art form with artists preaching consumerism and the same group of producers recycling material, some music critics said.

An all-male panel of record executives and industry insiders acknowledged hip-hop's shortcomings but maintained hope for the musical form last night at Berklee College of Music's "The Business of Hip-Hop" symposium.

M. Warner Enterprises Chief Executive Officer Michael Warner said the "super-commercialization" of the industry has disappointed him.

"There's so many people rapping for all the wrong reasons," he said. "If you want to make music you have to have love for it."

Atlantic Records Executive Vice President of Urban Promotions Morace Landy said the industry needs a balance between trendy and meaningful music.

"The rap you hear right now, 95 percent of it is novelty," he said. "There's not enough balance."

Declining album sales have hit the music industry hard and recording companies may have reason to explore new business models because labels have the ultimate power to affect change in the business, Landy said.

"I think the labels are finally waking up to the fact that they're doing some things wrong," he said.

Source Entertainment President Isaac "Big Hawk" Hawkins said the current era of hyper-commercial rap is affecting the greater culture of hip-hop.

"Every so often, subcultures go up against that [mainstream] culture," he said. "So what makes people want to deal with it? They say, 'I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do something different.'"

If the major record labels recognize the failings of hook-oriented songs and move toward ones with lyrical content, hip-hop is likely to improve, Hawkins, who is also Down magazine's vice president, said.

"They've got to level the playing field," he said. "We've got to make it okay to listen to different kinds of rap."

When a Berklee student asked the panel about the relationship between hip-hop music and the socioeconomic plight of inner-city blacks, members were hesitant to make a connection between the two.

"You can't say music put someone in jail," Hawkins said. "There's hip-hop, and there's crime."

Grace Aldrich, a massage therapist from Dorchester, said the connection is there through the messages inundating young people every day.

"We kid ourselves that we feed children this violent message over and over and that it's not going to affect them," she said.

Fly By Music executive producer Jojo Brim said hip-hop benefits from not having any "rules."

"Whatever you bring to the table is what's gonna be brought to the table," he said. "Truth has a way of rising up and resonating with people."

Jamarhl Crawford, head of the Boston chapter of the New Black Panthers, said he wanted to see the businessmen talk more about the social impact of the music they help distribute.

"The music business exists to make money," he said. "But any hip-hop conference that happens at this point has to incorporate a component of political and social justice."