NEW YORK -- A syndicated hip-hop disc jockey was arrested Friday on charges of harassment and endangering the welfare of a child amid an uproar over his on-air racial and sexual rants about a radio rival's wife and 4-year-old daughter. [moderator edit: see AP for complete story. Due to copyright laws, we can not post complete articles. You can post a brif excerpt with the link to the article. Thanks!]
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Star Arrested!
- Thread starter DickDasterdly
- Start date
What a fool. It is every radio DJS dream to make it big in New York and he threw it all away for something so trivial. Unfortunatly for him, his radio days are over.
GOOD!! * jocks like him are of no value to this industry !!! I hope they throw the book at him and he never shows up on the dial again. This sorta behavior is WAY out of line. The only cells he should be targeting is the one w/ bars !!! [edit: * name calling. Please refrain from using derogatory comments. I understand the anger and frustration as a result of his comments. However our forum is not a place to spew. Please conduct yourself in an appropriate manner. There are ways to convey your anger without resorting to name calling, and derogatory comments. Isn't that what he was doing, too? Don't play that game. Thanks for your understanding.]
It was NO shock to hear this.Queens Councilman Arthur Liu and other politicians were pushing for this arrest to happen.Granted (and disclaimer...NOT SAYING I ADVOCATE THIS) but hip-hop has always been about pushing things to extremes and the radio shows reflect that (on Hot 97 as well as Power). To the hip-hop/R&B community, what they might find as hilarious isn't necessarily so for those outside of it....such as the case with the Tsunami parody. But at the same time, when something crosses over the line (as Star CLEARLY did here) that is when we can all come to an agreement that something should be done. Even the hip-hop/R&B community was shocked when Star (on 97) played an airplane crashing behind an Aaliyah song (a couple of days after her tragic death).The one thing that disturbed me with this was how Star came off on the media/cameras. If he was TRULY apologetic for what happened, he should have acted "humble" as opposed to being all "smug and brazen" as if he feels he IS the next Lenny Bruce :
With everything that has gone on with the music and radio (from this, shootings, murders, etc.)..perhaps hip-hop IS starting to lose ground as everyone (including African-American columnists) are getting sick of this. At the rate this is going hip-hop may "implode" on itself.
With everything that has gone on with the music and radio (from this, shootings, murders, etc.)..perhaps hip-hop IS starting to lose ground as everyone (including African-American columnists) are getting sick of this. At the rate this is going hip-hop may "implode" on itself.I agree with you that Star's comments were wrong, but why do you have to blame the entire genre of HIP HOP music, saying it goes to far. I get sick of people who don't know or understand anything about Hip Hop music saying things like it is losing ground. Don't blame the entire genre of music for one person's illegal comments.Tony Santiago said:It was NO shock to hear this.Queens Councilman Arthur Liu and other politicians were pushing for this arrest to happen.Granted (and disclaimer...NOT SAYING I ADVOCATE THIS) but hip-hop has always been about pushing things to extremes and the radio shows reflect that (on Hot 97 as well as Power). To the hip-hop/R&B community, what they might find as hilarious isn't necessarily so for those outside of it....such as the case with the Tsunami parody. But at the same time, when something crosses over the line (as Star CLEARLY did here) that is when we can all come to an agreement that something should be done. Even the hip-hop/R&B community was shocked when Star (on 97) played an airplane crashing behind an Aaliyah song (a couple of days after her tragic death).The one thing that disturbed me with this was how Star came off on the media/cameras. If he was TRULY apologetic for what happened, he should have acted "humble" as opposed to being all "smug and brazen" as if he feels he IS the next Lenny Bruce :
A little history....Back in my college days, I used to spin "rap" (going back to the mid 80's, mind you) on the campus radio station. I took a lot of flack for that. The campus population was mainly white, suburban, with a 2% population of people of color...I could count in my hand the number of Puerto Ricans. The administration was scared that I was "ghettoizing" the college. This, mind you, was when the big rap artists at that time were The Fat Boys, Doug E. Fresh, LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Dana Dane, UTFO, Grandmater Flash. NOTHING even REMOTELY close to cursing, endorsing violence and berating women. Yet, I got crapped on for it. To which when I went back to my 15th college reunion and heard that the campus station was hip-hop, I just rotflmao, figuring to myself....I KNEW IT! Just was too ahead of my time!And in that sense, when we compare to the old skool...hip-hop HAS gone too far. I think the ONLY incident of shooting in the old skool (and correct me if I am wrong) was DJ Scott LaRock (from KRS-1). Other than that, there was mainly "peace".No, it wasn't just Star's comments that did this. The recent shooting of Gravy outside of Hot 97 (along with MANY OTHER incidents..Lil Kim, 50 Cent/The Game)...the recent murder of a hip-hop artist (I forget his name but he was associated with Eminem) in Detroit, the shooting of Busta Rhymes' bodyguard (to which Busta still hasn't said a word about it). Perhaps to the hip-hop community it's just vis-a-vis, all in another day. But when you keep seeing this nonsense, you eventually wonder....what the hell is going on? And when you think back to the East Coast/West Coast shootings back in the 90's..it's "deja vu all over again".And yeah, hip-hop is starting to lose ground when you consider that the Latino population has started flocking over to reggaeton. Hot 97 and Power 105.1 don't pull the same numbers like they used to. Are they still in the top 10 of New York in the arbs?...yes. But the numbers are slowly dwindling.Hip-hop WILL not die....and I have NEVER said that it would. But I think it's starting to get to the point with all of this crap going on that people are realizing...enough is enough!
This incident doesn't have a damn thing to do with hip-hop nor is it just a "bad piece of schtick". This was an "incident" born of arrogance, stupidity, and criminality. Asking where the little girl went to school? On public airwaves? Making threats etc. I'm am glad he was arrested. That absolutely needed to happen. He was fired yes, but time will pass, and he'll either get his job back, or be hired by another company,,No worries for him there. There are real life consequnces for what he did. The companies who hire DJ's like this, and encourage them while they look the other way are equally at fault. No amount of memos, indecency training etc should shield them from taking responsibility. And proactive responsibility doesnt mean censoring the ten bad words (or making everyone sit through training) it means knowing what kind of shows you put on the air. Actually promoting the people who dont do this kind of show. The way the business is, budgets are set up for morning shows and the rest of the station seperate. If you want to make that kind of money, you need to play like the ones who make it, so people do. There is growing belief now that-thats what it takes to get ratings...there is a way to fix this, but someone needs to step up.
I think at some point people need to seperate the music from the personal life. The music may be racy to some it may even push go overboard at times but Star does not represent the entire Hip Hop industry nor does these little artist beefs. HIP HOP is here to stay whether you like it or not.
Agreed...hip-hop is not going ANYWHERE.But in terms of separating the music from the personal life...it's something the HIP HOP ARTISTS should practice up on first. The majority of artists today talk about the money, hotties, violence, diss each other, etc. and appears to "glorify" it. And in some ways, it appears that when artists throw their "beef" to other artists in the lyrics of their tracks and on radio interviews, that ignites the fire which therefore causes these nonsensical incidents to happen. Granted, not all of them do. But then again, I don't think hip-hop fans would consider someone like a Will Smith as "hip-hop". Is it fair to say that hip-hop fans think of a Will Smith as a "sellout?" because there is NOTHING mean-spirited at all in his lyrics?No...Star does not represent the entire hip-hop industry but as an on-air professional, he has a bigger responsibility to the listening public in terms of what he does. And when one crosses the line like he did, he has to deal with the consequences. I would say the same thing with Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony or any other shock jock.Yet, and you have to admit, with all these incidents going down lately, hip-hop is definitely taking it to the chin. It won't go away and your core fans will SWEAR to it (the same way I did back in the 80's). The genre has to "clean up house" somehow and quit these beefs.You don't see this in rock, dance or any other musical genre out there.
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