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Just as in every walk of life, there is good and bad to be found in everything. This included rap music. I would find it highly unusual for a musician to be so judgemental and generalistic when it comes to someone else's material.
There is certainly a lot of content that has been burned onto disc just to satisfy the high demand for new product, and it's just plain crap. However, this is true of all music formats.
What Spike Lee is talking about is the specific message associated with a growing segment of black music/culture that attempts to justify the illegal/lazy/impaired attitude and activities of a group of black people.
I understand some of this. Since the moment that we had recorded music as a product, black music has been co-opted by white musicians and producers and commercialized without profiting the original artists. But, that's not the point of Spike's diatribe, and attempts to move the focus should be avoided.
The technological/industrial revolutions of the last 100 years have not been kind to the black community. Cotton picking machines resulted in a mass exodus north to work as unskilled workers in urban factories. Increased technical innovation and automation in production meant a shift away from unskilled workers and a movement of facilities to the suburbs, resulting in a concentration of black populations left in inner cities with high unemployment.
Embracing this ghetto lifestyle as a culture to be preserved makes NO sense to me! I see this as a problem to be solved, not a community to be embraced. Education is not training to be a white person! It's a strength that is held by the individual.
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