Mike Brown vs Worldstar Hip Hop

AP Image: Q Worldstar, founder of Worldstar Hip Hop

The two have seemingly nothing in common. The first is an unarmed black teen shot dead by white ferguson, missouri cop darren wilson. The other is a video blog, home to salacious videos showing everything questionable, bone-crushing and ratchet in entertainment and hip-hop serving to a majority black audience. By comparing the two i hope to briefly explore their opposing impacts on society. 

There is no denying that the death of michael brown has been felt around the world. From palestine, to tibet, to russia the international community has taken notice. The people from these far off communities do not know mike brown or his family, but they do share the compassion. They feel the injustice from thousands of miles away. The fact that an unarmed black teen was shot dead in the middle of the day and a white cop remains on paid leave for over a month after without explanation makes no sense.

On the other hand, worldstar hip hop capitalizes on everything wrong in black america by simply exploiting black america. Founded in 2005, the site has 1 million unique views a day. It’s a top 300 u.s. site and growing annually. There are great statistics to speak of, but the potential is riddled with videos in poor taste, a detriment to the hip hop and black culture. Videos of poor people fighting over a candy bar, or girls shaking their behinds to a music beat and people doing whatever they can to get on the popular blog. 

We continue to fight an uphill battle to stop the michael brown incidents of the world from taking place once again and yet we allow ourselves to kill each other on a daily basis by not holding each other to better standards, accountable for “worldstar-like” actions. We cannot desire to succeed and ask the world to respect a culture that doesn’t respect itself in many ways. We are not all the reason for the problem, but we can all certainly be some part of the solution because we do not have to visit or promote what the site stands for. In one way or another you or i could have been mike brown. But we weren’t. For that, we owe ourselves the right to respect and honor our lives each and everyday. Michael brown is not worldstar hip hop and we are not world star hip hop.