"Music kind of sucks.  Nobody's into being a musician. Everybody's getting their mogul on.  You've been so infiltrated by this corporate mentality that all the time you'd spend getting great songs together, you're busy doing nine other things that have nothing to do with art.  You know how shitty Stevie Wonder's songs would have been if he had to run a fuckin' clothing company and a cologne line?," says Chris Rock In a wonderful new interview in Rolling Stone  (Nov 15, 2007 issue 1039) in which the magazine accurately notes that in this age of hip-hop it is more than common for most rappers to utter those words that we have heard a zillion times already: "I'm not a rapper, I'm a businessman."   And Chris Rock responds, "That's why rap sucks, for the most part.  Not all rap, but as an art form it's just not at its best moment."

 The always articulate & observant, ever-funny comedian/social satirist Rock, whose career has consistently poked fun at rap music in particular - from his SNL impersonations (including one of MC Hammer) to his hilarious lead role in the 1993 comedy CB4 as the fictional emcee Gusto in the equally fictional but obviosuly NWA inspired, faux-gangsta rap group CB4  (go look for it  in the DVD section at Amoeba Music - it is sooo funny!), to such things as the cover art of his 1999 comedy album "Bigger and Blacker" which mocked the (at the time) predominant No Limit/Cash Money record labels' styled rap album cover art  - never misses a beat in taking shots at rap music and at the music scene, um business, in general.

In the new Rolling Stone interview he notes that "We live in a weird time.  No one knows who's smart - we just know who makes money.  'Hey, somebody invented Viagra!  We don't know their name, but we know Pfizer, because they make the money.'  That guy made a pill that keeps your dick hard, and nobody knows who the fuck he is.  The pharmaceutical companies are like fuckin' record companies.  There's literally the Bo Diddley of medicine walking around, not getting his royalties.  He signed all his fucking pill publishing away."