The Arts in New York City

Everyone enjoys going to a concert…right? After all, it is always better when you get to see your favorite artists perform live in a big-time venue like Radio City Music Hall. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me at the Boost Mobile RockCorps concert on October 6th at Radio City in New York City. The RockCorps concert, contrary to the name, was not a rock concert at all; it was a rap concert. I have never had much tolerance for rap, mostly because of the obscene antics and the x-rated lyrics that the artists feel necessary to put in to their songs to enhance their work. Yet, this proved to be the perfect opportunity for me to put aside my bias, explore, and try to create a new perspective on this musical genre.

The mission statement was self-explanatory: you GOT 2 GIVE 2 GET. Under this tagline Boost Mobile and Rock Corps partnered to spread a national youth movement: Boost Mobile RockCorps. The movement encourages volunteerism in young people and was created to effect social change. In this program, every volunteer who gives 4 hours of service, receives a ticket to a concert featuring the hottest artists. I was introduced to this program by a couple of friends who were looking to score tickets to a concert they had heard over the radio. I, however, was looking for an opportunity to get some community service time under my belt, and with the added incentive of going to a concert, I was quickly drawn in. After all, the program was called RockCorps, and being a rock fan I was psyched to sign up. When I arrived to Astoria Park in Astoria, Queens I was hit with the hard beats from a truck blasting rap music and the hard truth that the concert was in fact not a rock concert but a rap concert; rap was a genre that I was clueless about. Nevertheless, I went to work and after my four hours of service I picked up my ticket and left.

So yesterday, after caving into the pressure from my friends to attend this event, I went to the concert. It turns out that my anticipations for this event were all on target. I tried to put aside my bias against rap and hip-hop music and tried to take the suggestion that I should listen to the lyrics of the songs and try to get the full meaning of the message these artists were trying to convey. I listened hard, but half the time I wasn’t able to make out what they were saying, sometimes they felt the need to speak so fast that they couldn’t be understood. When I could actually understand, all I could make out were expletives and phrases that pertained to use of drugs and sexual behavior. These artists did have a story to tell in their lyrics, but the way that they conveyed it in their music was very unappealing and uninteresting to me. I am no saint, I feel that my ears can tolerate expletives and sometimes I feel that an expletive belongs in a song enhance its meaning, but the over usage of these words just brought disgust to my ears. At one point one of the artists gestured with his middle finger to the crowd and asked that they all do the same in unison, a totally unnecessary gesture that was done in poor taste. To my surprise and relief, two rock bands had actually made it into the show, but unfortunately they weren’t good and were used as human intermissions as the crowd headed toward the concession stands. Overall I found the show to be a bit tasteless, boring, at times crude and not deserving to be performed at Radio City despite the efforts of host Nick Cannon, nickelodeon child star – now, a big time hip-hop representative. I would like to say that there was one moment during that entire show that I greatly appreciated. It was after the performer Busta Rhymes finished his act and apologized to all his fans about his use of expletives and word selection and thanked all of us for our hard work and how that night was dedicated to people like us who were working every day to make the world a better place. Even though I give this event a bad review for the musical aspect of it, I would like to give it a good review for its overall scope: to promote charitable acts of community service and make the world we live in a better place.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 12:44 am and is filed under Lino Demasi, WRITING ASSIGNMENTS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.