So much effort is put into categorizing and analyzing hip-hop. Is underground better than mainstream hip-hop? Is gangsta rap teaching our youth violence and disrespect? Following from Byron Hurt’s documentary, “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” which aired on PBS last week, CNN decided to do their own little special on the issue. The leading question that served as the title of the Paula Zahn special “Hip-Hop: Art or Poison?” pretty much spells out where CNN stood. Paula and the CNN producers may as well have called it : “Let’s Explore the Evil that Is Hip-Hop.”

This approach, by no means exclusive to Zahn and CNN, creates an “us-versus-them” mentality, where hip-hop culture becomes the scapegoat for everything that’s wrong with American culture. This argument (which is really class-based) was made on CNN partly with a stream of select images of hard-core thugs and mainstream rappers contrasted with the educated suit-clad analysts and in interviews by uptight conservative reporters. But as Michael Eric Dyson points out in a segment on women in hip-hop, the objectionable messages of the music (the misogyny, the homophobia, the violence) only mirror the attitudes of American society as a whole.

Come on America, look beyond the flashing pixels, pay attention to the men and women behind the curtains! Fact is, hip-hop was created by poor, disadvantaged minority youth, but its message was intended for the world. It may have lost some of its focus when it gained mainstream success, but it has never lost its essential power to unite.

I have experienced a great sense of community through hip-hop over the past week. I saw unity at a club, at a concert, on my college campus—among people of every color and age. There was genuine positive energy in each case.

Mike Jones performed at Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles last Friday night. Mike Jones, a Houston-based rapper, got the crowd moving with music that is gritty and commercial.

My friends and I traveled to UC Riverside in Southern Cali’s Inland Empire to see Lupe Fiasco perform last Saturday night. Lupe is a more conscious rapper, a mix of underground and mainstream. We had to wait 2 hours in 40-degree weather to see him finally grace the stage at midnight. Once he came on, though, we forgot about the So-Cal cold and the constant crowd-pushing and just enjoyed the music.

Just as Ice Cube explained after he performed Tuesday night at USC’s “Race, Rap, & Redemption” program, rappers use hip-hop to reveal many of the different faces of the hood. With hip-hop “I can to do what I want, say what I want,” says Cube.

Note to Paula: three different rappers; three different kinds of hip-hop; three different messages; all of it kills, kicks ass, is totally ill!

Tags: hip hop, ice cube, lupe fiasco, mike jones, paula zahn