The chiefs of the US hip hop industry have met in New York to respond to growing criticism in America over the content of rap music. The criticism has risen in the last month following the outrage that followed the racist comments made by radio DJ Don Imus about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. As the black community rallied against Imus they faced accusations of hypocrisy because of the argument that records made by key hip hop artists in their own community contain much more racist and sexist remarks than anything said by Imus.
The swell of opposition to some rap music has been taken on by civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who was due to present the James Brown Memorial Culture Impact Award to former Arista and current Island Def Jam boss LA Reid during the National Action Network's annual conference in New York this week. But with Reid overseeing many of the hip hop artists currently garnering opposition for their lyrics, Sharpton has cancelled the presentation and instead said he intends to focus his energies in targeting corporations that support "gutter rap".
It is in that climate that the bosses of many of those corporations have met at Warner Music's New York HQ for a meeting called by Russell Simmons' Hip Hop Summit Action Network. Among those reportedly at the meeting were Warner Music Group chiefs Lyor Cohen and Kevin Liles, Atlantic Records' Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald, EMI Music's 'Big Jon' Platt, Sony Urban's Lisa Ellis, Universal Music Group's Peter LoFrumento and Chaka Zulu, Universal Motown's Sylvia Rhone, Shady Records' Paul Rosenberg and SRC's Steve Rifkind plus representatives from music broadcasters BET and MTV. No formal announcement has been made regarding the discussions as yet, though some kind of response is expected in the next few weeks.
Of course if that previously reported mass indictment expected from US federal authorities against a number of big hip hop players in relation to various violent crimes in the hip hop community in the last fifteen years is as big a news story as some say it will be (in terms of the people indicted), the hip hop sector's chiefs might have other things on their minds in a few weeks time.