Chet: Rap may not be communicating your (or my) message, but it is sure as hell political. Of course I agree that the message is too often a very destructive one, and that the lifestyle of the rappers is a large part of that message. I also am a teacher in an inner city high school and have heard my students rapping some hoodlum's rap, violent, sexist, repugnant as hell (to me). But to deny that anarchic, kill-the-cops, brotha's gotta look out for himself (and maybe his homies) riffs are political expression is pretty narrow. The corporations promulgating the messages aren't, of course, doing it for the sake of presenting a political message, but to make a buck (unless you think they might be involved in a genocidal conspiracy to get black people to take themselves out of society).
Maybe what I'm concerned about is our inability to sell our message. Maybe we need a new form of charismatic expression (of course we don't want charismatic leaders--they always seem to end up taking their movements down with them). Is it impossible to produce music that will make people feel passion about what the global economy is doing to rip off everybody? Is it impossible to make people really care about the future of the planet? Maybe we should give Chomsky a guitar.