Yo Fifty, how much to play us something nice, huh?

In North Carolina, some pro-market opinion scribbler asks: “Hey if you want socially conscious hip-hop, why not pay people to make it? Um, maybe… except songwriters aren’t corporations and paying artists to promote certain values and ideas—isn’t that propaganda? Also: what good stuff ever came out of the impulse to promote values as a way to get paid? That’s how you end up with stanky cultural products like “Seventh Heaven.” I’m no opinion writer for the NewsObserver, but I would think “social consciousness” would be one of those things that has to come out of genuine conviction.