It’s Tricky

At first glance, it didn’t look too good for The Kansas City Star. While daily newspapers across the country scrambled to provide front-page coverage of Run D.M.C. disc jockey Jam Master Jay‘s murder on October 30, the Star stuffed the story into its national digest, where it shared sparse column inches with headlines such as “Candy Thief” and “Skydiving Dog.” As the backbone of hip-hop’s first platinum supergroup and the originator of the rap-rock mix, the man born Jason Mizell deserved much more. The insult was compounded by the still-fresh memory of the mammoth A-1 memorial that had marked Waylon Jennings‘ passing in February. It looked as though the paper had kowtowed to its cowtown constituency.

To its credit, though, the Star soon gave the turntable trailblazer a proper editorial burial. Features reporter Jenee Osterheldt eulogized Jay with an informative piece that read as though she’d volunteered for it instead of taking an assignment. Randolph Heaster followed with a preview of the Hip-Hop Youth Empowerment Summit, a November 2 event focused on the positive power of beats and rhymes. Russell Simmons, CEO of the Run D.M.C.-bolstered label Def Jam, had canceled his scheduled appearance at the event after Jay’s death, but other featured speakers, including Summit President Benjamin F. Muhammad, urged cautious coverage of Mizell’s murder.

And even though the Star‘s coverage might have been a little dim at first, at least Kansas Citians didn’t have to read a piece like the one that ran in the Philadelphia Metro. In an inane assault headlined “Rappers often killed by their own lifestyle” (archived at phillyhiphop.com/_features/snowstorm/110602-metro.html), writer Lloyd Williams opines that “to most law-abiding citizens, talking about a good or bad rapper is like talking about good and bad rapists.”

Jay, of course, wasn’t a rapper — he was the record spinner who popularized the use of guitar riffs and rock-ready drums in hip-hop tunes. He was also the beatsmith behind “Peter Piper,” the booms-and-bells behemoth that ranks among rap’s best-ever backdrops. But Williams doesn’t let ignorance slow him down. Ignoring Run D.M.C.’s anti-violent stance, he hypothesizes that Jay’s “gangland-style execution” was connected to “the much-ballyhooed East Coast/West Coast rivalry which blew out Biggie‘s and Tupac‘s brains.” Finally, finding fault even with the Jam Master’s reputation for being a family man, Williams questions why Jay, who was married with three children, “didn’t retire or move on to a less risky line of work after starting a family.”

It’s likely that few publications other than Ku Klux Klan’s The Flame share Williams’ viewpoint, but the tone of hip-hop coverage still often borders on hysterical. When Chuck D, the voice of Public Enemy and a former Run D.M.C. labelmate, warned “Don’t Believe the Hype” back in 1988, he was referring to rampant variations on this Williams generalization: “People are afraid to let their children go to concerts or movies featuring hip-hop for fear of murder and mayhem.”

Despite ample evidence to the contrary (Smokin’ Grooves, Jay-Z‘s Hard Knock Tour, Eminem‘s August stop at Verizon Amphitheater and Tech N9ne‘s Absolute Power party are just a few of the well-attended large-scale rap events to have taken place in Kansas City without incident), venues continue to shy away from hosting hip-hop shows, thanks in part to fears instilled by panic-stricken stories in national media outlets.

Despite living on the outskirts of a medium-size metropolitan area, Grandview-based rapper Profit must look for shows in Hastings, St. Joseph, Joplin and Warrensburg. Far from thugged-out, Profit started his hip-hop career by controlling the open mic at anti-drug rallies. If venue owners would let him get past “I’m a rapper, and — ,” he could tell them he works with gospel artists, presents a positive message and works with the youth in his community. But “they’re just not hearing it,” he says. “I always get the brush-off.”

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Even if Profit were a gangsta rapper, denying a performance because of “violent lyrics” is akin to banning a Stephen King book signing. But the former makes a far sexier news-at-ten story, given that TV news producers love stories linking black men to guns. Virtually the only rapper to receive upbeat coverage is Eminem, a lightning rod for camera flashes who puts a suburban safety cap on rap’s howitzer.

In its heavily hyped “Eminem exclusive,” KCTV Channel 5 recently gave viewers the outside scoop on the St. Joseph product.

The first “exclusive” segment combined scenes from 8 Mile, a movie that had already earned more than $50 million at the box office by the broadcast’s November 11 air date. Instead of weighing in on the film’s cinematic merits, Dee Griffin concentrated on its R rating, chronicling the movie’s naughty parts while the words sex, drug use and violence floated across the scene in heavy white type. It was a tidy summary of many mainstream pieces on rap, in which a reporter queries, “Have they gone too far?”; begs, “Won’t someone please think of the children?”; and then dismisses the music in a sentence, if there’s time.

The second segment was even sillier. Channel 5 played the always-inane “man on the street” card, asking random moviegoers what they thought of Eminem’s starring debut. Two suburbanites gave 8 Mile vague raves; a mother of four contradicted the station’s earlier hard-hitting report by claiming the film had “not much more sex and violence than any other movie”; and one fan was inspired to bust a rhyme. (Freeze-framed images of his freestyle were promptly distributed to area clubs so they’d know to deny him entrance, lest he grab a microphone and cause all hell to break loose.) After the reporting, Anne Peterson and Russell Kinsaul sent it back to Griffin, who revealed she had decided Eminem was “not as bad as people made him out to be,” based on his relationship with his sister (a fictional creation) in a loosely autobiographical film. The anchors nodded in agreement with this bizarre assessment.

The final piece was the network’s trump card, trotting out Mr. Mathers’ yearbook photos, distant relatives and family friends. Here, we learned some truly earth-shattering facts: He wanted to rap even as a teen (his high-school drafting teacher dropped this bomb); he engaged in such advanced rhyming as Good night/Don’t let the bedbugs bite at age five (his mother’s friend Dan DeMark uncovered this early couplet); he disliked being called “Bruce” — perhaps because his name is Marshall (great aunt Edna Swartz shared this knowledge).

To recap, the biggest revelations from Channel 5’s highly hyped Eminem expose: He was burdened with a series of atrocious hairstyles as a youngster; average people who paid to see his critically acclaimed film generally thought it was “pretty good”; movies sometimes receive an R rating because of sex scenes, depictions of drug use and onscreen violence. And the key points of the Star‘s low-key coverage of Mizell’s death: Jam Master Jay was a legend; Run D.M.C. achieved nearly all of rap’s firsts (gold, platinum, multiplatinum sales; Rolling Stone cover; MTV video) while staying true to its community; hip-hop, as Osterheldt put it, “has no victims,” because the art form is not synonymous with thug-life violence.

Fans of this King of Rock might feel slighted that the Star didn’t salute Jay with an immediate, extravagant tribute, complete with timelines and a photo spread. But when it comes to hip-hop coverage, where sensationalist stories outnumber decent, dignified treatment, less may be more.