I Believe In Your Right of Freedom of Speech…Until You Say Stupid Shit.

I don’t know where to start honestly when addressing ignorant comments … especially when it seems that they’re so many. But, here’s the latest … It seems that singer Tiffany Evans has called out fellow R&B singer Rihanna as a Devil Worshipper or a Satanist as some would say. As a musician within the realm of alternative rock who is African/Afro/etc. descent, I urge you to shut the fuck up. To show neutrality, I have to say I’m not a fan of either Tiffany Evans or Rihanna. I find Rihanna’s music kind of vanilla swirl pop music with an “urban” edge.  It’s part of the latest trend, and I actually despise the trend of these as I call, “Band Tee brats” or Hip-Hop kids that bought stuff at Hot Topic because there was a sale.  But I digress, in this case I have to commend Rihanna’s managment team for giving her an image that Grace Jones used back in the 70’s (and yes I’m being sarcastic.)  The frustrating idea is that I understand how strong religion is within the black community and how strong ignorance can be as well within parts of the black community. When you mix those two components, progress lacks.

I do agree with Tiffany Evans on a few points, such as, people will listen to whatever is given to them. If you play it long enough, they’ll like it.  The industry knows this, so they market souless, homogenized rap and R&B because they know people will listen. So, you have marketing teams, A&Rs and labels coming together to market their image of what “black” is and have weak minded people to adapt to that image of “black” culture.  Then you have generations of people living in a mold of what society expects from black people and other people in this “factory” shunning anything different from there mold.

As a musician, I respect all music. But, I’ve noticed a hostility towards rock or music with loud guitars.  In this industry, music isn’t created equal, I’m not trying to bring race into this, but, most Top 40, Rock, Adult Contemporary, all considered “pop” or “white music.”  Radio stations play a mixture of music by different people, but, it seems that if you’re a Black musician who plays rock music, you looked upon as being out of character, because from what I’m seeing, as far as the music industry is concerned, if you’re Black, then you’re expected to stay within the relm of either Hip-Hop and/or R&B, or some variation of that same formula.

So, with people like Tiffany Evans’ ignorant comments echoing the many asinine comments of ignorant people, it’s mind control that the industry wants.

Here are some comment’s from people I discussed this with … “Tiffany Evans made a strong assumption from a picture on a CD cover! Poor thing.

“If a CD cover can get Tiffany that upset, then maybe the music industry is not he right place for her, she is new to the industry and it shows!”

“I hope people don’t agree with her small minded comments because, we don’t know enough about Tiffany to care about her opinion. Who knows, she might be a little off balanced, or an easily excitable person, the kind of person who jumps to conclusions based on her own opinion … dogmatic!”

“I hope no one listens to Tiffany’s crap because, it’s just a picture that Rihanna took to describe the edginess of the music on that CD. The barbwire is made of plastic for goodness sakes! What’s real so about that? I wonder what Tiffany thinks of Lady GaGa?”

Another controversial issue regarding the cover art is former Extreme Championship Wrestling promoter/co-owner Paul Heyman has mentioned the similarities of the cover art of 1998’s ECW: Extreme Music compilation.  That album (ECW: Extreme Music) is near and dear to me because it’s one of the albums that got me into rock music.  Also, I was a huge ECW fan back in the day before it was neutered by WWE.  Paul, as much as I respect and admire your work in pro wrestling and I even consider you an inspiration to my writing.  I really want to agree with you on this ECW/Rihanna, but, The cover art just might be a coincidene,Paul.