Even though this should be filed under Rat’s Ass, Could Give A I’ll take the bait and respond.

Dear Ms. O’Neal Parker, after reading your article, Why I Gave Up On Hip-Hop in the Washington Post, I have come to the conclusion that you, sadly, are one of those people that has allowed age to ossify their ability to stretch and grow with the world around them. What makes me say this?

I don’t know the day things changed for me. When the music began to seem so obviously divorced from any truth and, just as unforgivably, devoid of most creativity. I don’t know when my love turned to contempt and my contempt to fury. Maybe it happened as my children got older and I longed for music that would speak to them the way hip-hop had once spoken to me.

Rap and Hip-Hop haven’t stopped speaking, it is you who have stopped listening. Seriously, read what you have just written, you sound like some pathetic has-been whining about how no band can rock as hard as Boston used to, pining for those hot nights in the back seat of an arctic blue Camero all the while still rocking the same feathered hair you had in 1981. Take a moment and get familiar with the world around you because it keeps moving forward all the while you are staring at where it was.

My husband, Ralph, and I try to tell [our daughter] Sydney that rap music used to be fun.

That is just sad. Really, did your parents dictate what you could listen to based on its propensity for “fun”? No, judging by the tale you wove your love affair with Hip-Hop was one rooted in the forbidden and the thrill of the new and novel. Let your daughter experience the same, and if you raised her right she’ll be able to discern hate from love and lies from truth.

That my decision to end our love affair had come only after years of disappointment and punishing abuse. After I could no longer nod my head to the misogyny or keep time to the vapid materialism of another rap song.

Hip-hop had long since gone mainstream and commercial. [Emphasis mine]

That, right there, is the problem. You are so wrapped up in commercial products that you cannot see the world around you. Commercial products are packaged and marketed for the lowest common denominator and by their very nature are often unchallenging and devoid of substance and meaning. Let me put it this way, do you go to TGI Friday’s expecting cuisine that will at once challenge and sate you? Let me answer for you, “Yes.” TGI-Friday’s is Middle-American convenience food and commercial Hip-Hop is exactly the same as it plays into the expectations, stereotypes and prejudices of mainstream America.

Maybe as the coolest black boys kept getting shot on the streets while the coolest rappers droned: AK-47 now nigga, stop that.

Maybe as the madness made me want to holler back: “Niggas” can’t stop AK-47s, and damn you for saying so.

You just made your prejudices crystal clear. Guess what? Not all rap is about gang bangin’ and ho smackin’. Wake up, open your ears, and stop consuming all your food–intellectual, spiritual, and material–from the commercial troughs. There is plenty of work in Hip-Hop that is positive, spiritually engaging, socially and politically conscious, as well as being an achievement musically. Here’s a list:

• Aceyalone
• Blackalicious
• The Coup
• El-P
• Five Deez
• J. Live
• Latyrx
• Lyric Born
• Ohmega Watts
• Talib Kweli
• Sage Francis
• Wale Oyejide

Now take your over-educated-ivory-tower-Hip-Hop-hatin’ ass out to the damn store, buy some CDs from these artists, and learn something before you write about it because you sound like a fool.