By

Dr. Sherman N. Miller

October 21, 2007

A visit to Philadelphia International Records, the headquarters of Kenny Gamble one of the fathers of the 1970s Philadelphia Sound, was like being at a museum for fashionable music. His nephew, Chuck Gamble, offered the history of the musical legends whose rise to stardom was molded in different rooms in the building. Yet a picture on the wall that included Kenny Gamble and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons appeared out of kilter.

I was a part of the Trotter Group (African American columnists) meeting at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA listening as Chuck Gamble took us down memory lane. Some Trotter Group members were baby-boomers, so they could sing the words to many Philadelphia Sound songs. The atmosphere was mesmerizing as Betty Baye (Louisville Courier Journal) sang along so well you would have thought she was auditioning to be tomorrow’s next great singer.

Then we got an audience with Kenny Gamble. Gamble lets you know immediately he is a man of the Islamic faith with his kufi. As he spoke of moving out of the suburbs to go back into his old neighborhood in Philadelphia, it became obvious that his motivation is to produce a legacy of doing long term good. We became quickly enchanted by Gamble’s passion about giving something back to his old neighborhood.

The more Kenny Gamble spoke of developing houses of prayer, developing housing, and building schools, the more the picture with him and Russell Simmons became off-putting. I found myself recounting the emotions captured in "HIP HOP’S (UNSPOKEN) TEN COMMANDMENTS" by Stephanie Mwandishi Gadlin.

Some anti-hip hop comments Gadlin wrote in the April 17, 2003 The Black Commentator that shaped my Simmons image are:

"Thou must rarely talk about God and spirituality. You must lyrically condone atheism and a false belief system that negates the existence of a higher being."

"Thou cannot have a sense of history. Never ever refer to any historical event that may cause the consumer to think about his/her relation to history."

"Thou must not advocate. Thou art prohibited from advocacy of anything of social redeeming value. . . The consumer should never assume that thou read newspapers, magazines or books. In other words it must appear that nothing that happens in the "real" non-entertainment world, has any personal affect on your thinking."

"Thou must promote all things ghetto. . . . You must celebrate ghetto language, ghetto living, ghetto housing, ghetto clothing, ghetto hairstyles, ghetto sexual habits, ghetto education, and ghetto economics and ghetto self-hatred."

Hearing Trotter Group members singing along with the Philadelphia Sound music suggested that Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff had created a sound that is music fashion, so it transcends time. On the other hand, I see Russell Simmons with a hip-hop fad that many mainstream people might like to see expunged from United States of America history for its attempts to canonize the ghetto living.

Gadlin sums up the hip-hop mantra "The consumer fan base must identify with your lack of spiritual grounding by believing that the only gods are sex and money. . . . You also vow to never be seen publicly in a church, synagogue, mosque, temple or other house of worship and reflection." I concluded that Simmons needs Gamble’s penchant for garnering credibility in the economic mainstream to avoid being tagged historically as "King of the thug culture."

What may be most troubling for Russell Simmons is he may find himself also tainted with a legacy where some people might argue that his music genre contributed to one million blacks being incarcerated because they lost the moral value that the churches once offered. Hopefully, Kenny Gamble is offering Russell Simmons guidance in building a positive legacy. I look forward to reading that Simmons has taken up residences in several ghetto neighborhoods where he personally can set some positive examples for many young people who idolize his present work.