I'm not going to pretend to be the most racially savvy person on the planet, and even though it's been within my sphere of academic study, I'm not going to pretend that a white person can ever "get" racism the way someone who experiences it daily can. But I am racially-aware and, as such, I can sometimes feel troubled by the music I listen to.

Now, I know that hip-hop is not all one thing. But I also know that most of what I bump is gangster rap/crack rap/whatever. I know it didn't used to be this way--that I came to more commercial stuff through the underground. And I know that some of what I listen to is made especially for kids like me--white kids from smallish cities who want a taste of the cool. I can accept that, even as I dislike it. I know what I listen to traverses a variety of social conditions and that I need to be conscious, even as I just enjoy the metaphor that hustling brings to my life.

Now ignore that masturbation above, as I am going to talk about this: I love it when people defend rap. I really do. Rap is so often a scape-goat that it's great top see voices from all sides. But too often I feel we see defenses like the Angry Black Woman's.

I'm not arguing that Angry Black Woman is wrong. But it does what so many people do which is classify "real" rap as whatever the problem is not. That is, if the problem is gangster rap, have no fear--"true" rap is nothing like it! On the one hand, there's the great point that no genre of music can truly be as bad as the institutionalized racism within this country. No music causes that problem. On the other hand, there's a line drawn between the good and the bad. And that what is bad is simply not true.

This is a arguement you find everywhere. Art is really not divided into categories of bad and good, but art and non-art. Patriotism is not a complex thing, but patriotic and non-patriotic. Hip-hop is apparently this way too. Something is either truly hip-hop or it's not hip-hop at all. (Gangster fans do this too--claiming that anything not hard enough is "gay" and "not music"--they just happen to be in the majority, in terms of numbers).

Why is it always an all-or-nothing proposition. Yes, the underground is hip-hop. It's a huge part of hip-hop. But that doesn't mean the commercial stuff isn't.

Additionally, I think more than any other genre, in hip-hop the realm between underground and commercial is blurred, thanks in large part to mixtapes. Is Lil' Wayne underground? All his success comes from underground releases (free releases at that)--his commercial stuff doesn't do nearly as well. Is UGK underground, even with commercial success? Even though they're gangster rappers? Can such clear-cut distinctions be drawn these days?

I respect what Angry Black Woman and others like her say. I respect that they try to expand the notions of hip-hop for those who are unfamiliar, for those who really do believe that Fiddy or Jay-Z or 2Pac are the be all and end all of hip-hop. But I also caution them to not do the same thing--to say that true rap, real rap, good rap, entirely about the underground scene. That nothing good can be gangster or commercial.

Rap is both commercial and independent. It's gangster and inspiring. It's misogynistic and pro-female. It's messy. It blurs lines. And hell, that's half the reason it's wonderful.