I think there’s far less of these people than you’d think. How many
hiphop shows have you been to? The people to which you refer would
almost certainly not go see Eminem as they’d be the same deadshits who
call it “rap-crap”.
Yeah, you’re right. I was thinking about that as I wrote it. White kids in the Fifties or Sixties seemed to break through a barrier of listening to Black performers their more racist parents didn’t like. And you hear about some Black musicians who strangely see that their audience is mostly white (a complaint in Mo Better Blues). I don’t know how much that still happens, but it’s the only other good argument I can see against white artists “appropriating” black art, even when they’re giving proper credit and royalties to the songwriters or the culture they’re appropriating from.
If there was really a problem of Black performers not getting jobs because of competition from Eminems and Mileys and Pat Boones, I don’t know how we’d address that, other than shaming white artists into self-segregating their musical culture, playing only genres most associated with white culture. Which would look more or less like the current state of Country music. +shiver+ What’s-his-name would have to give up singing Honkytonk Badonkadonk.
