ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINNNED?!

(I advise you find a song on the playlist for this one 'cuz I'm bout to go IN. [II])

So I just finished watching L.A. drop game 2 to Denver and not 10 minutes after the game ended, there was already like 10 anti-Kobe Facebook statuses up. This got me thinking about the extent to which people go out of their way to hate on Kobe, rather than just congratulate Denver. I put these four people up because I think right now, they're the most polarizing figures in pop culture some for certain personal reasons others for no reason at all really.

I use the word polarizing because there is no in between with these guys. I dare you, right now, to whisper the name "Kobe Bryant" in the privacy of your own home and I bet at least 3 or more people will either come running in screaming "F*** Kobe" or yelling "GO LAKERS!" Same w/ Bow Wow, it's either "F*** Bow Wow" or "OmG, don't talk about my husband like that. I will take a bullet for that man."(Miss you Arj!) Kels is like that too, but it's different in the Chi because we all know he did it, yet are still unshaken in our belief that he is a musical genius.

Lemme say off top and BE CLEAR that I'm not trying to justify anything that any of these dudes have done. Adultery is WRONG. (Alleged) Rape is WRONG. (Allegedly) having sex with little girls and then (alleg...lol, who am I kidding. U saw the tape) peeing on them is DESPICABLE....and WRONG. Hitting any female (and of all females RIHANNA?!) is BITCHASSEDLY WRONG. And whatever it is that Bow Wow does outside of entertainment....WRONG. I am not sticking up for them or trying to assert my own opinions (well, clearly it's gonna be my opinion, but still). I'm just tryna start dialogue and stick to facts.

Now that being said, let's be real. Does hitting a female effect the quality of a song at all? When Chris Brown was arrested, did someone flip a magic switch that made all of his vocals go flat and caused him to forget how to dance? Do they revoke Grammy's for peeing (she coulda moved...but that's a whole 'nother argument)? No, they don't because at the end of the day, those things are completely unrelated. We as an audience need to learn how to separate art from life. If you decide to stop dancing because "Take you down" comes on in the club, not only are you potentially missing out on opportunities and depriving yourself of a good time, to me, you're displaying a sense of ignorance and making big deal out of something that should not be taken as such. The songs that these artists create are culturally potent because a large population enjoys the music and finds it entertaining. This has nothing to do with what the artists do in their personal time. Now if Chris Brown had made the song "Whoop that trick", then it becomes a different issue because art is imitating life and that's not cool when it comes to hitting women. But that's not the case. Sure you can bring up the fact that R. Kelly sings about sex and he could've been talking about little girls, but the fact of the matter is that he doesn't explicitly mention underaged girls in any of his songs so you can take it how you want. Luther Vandross sang about making love and he was gay, does that make any of his songs any worse?

I always hear people say "I don't wanna support someone who would do that". Fair enough but be real, did you even buy said person's album? or did you download. And furthermore if you already own the music (whether legally or illegally) you can't go to Best Buy and UN-buy the music, so you might as well just enjoy it.

Now with Kobe and Bow Wow you start to enter entirely different realms of hate because although Kobe went through the whole rape trial, most of the people I encounter don't even cite that as being the reason they hate on him. It's always "I just don't like the way he plays", "he whines too much", "he's a snitch" (insert personal hate mantra for Kobe here). Now that's all fine with me, but when you try to say that he's a bad basketball player or refuse to watch him play because "he's a snitch", that's delusional and you're depriving yourself of one of the great basketball players of our time. When it comes to Bow Wow, there are a million reasons why people hate on him. I'm not asking you to like all of his music, but I just wanna know why do people feel so strongly about him one way or another? Y'all act like it's personal, like homie stole your Super Nintendo back in grade school or something. Step back and really think about why you dislike Bow Wow (not his music) for a minute. You'll prolly laugh and proceed to never speak that mans name ever again in life cuz it's really not worth it.

I always say that "Hate" thrives off of "Great". While I won't sit here and say each one of these figures are necessarily great, I will say that they all have numbers, and numbers don't lie. With the exception of Chris, they all have longevity. Kobe has been in the league 13 seasons, has an MVP and 3 Championship Rings R. Kelly has released 11 albums, has 3 Grammys and countless other accolades. Bow Wow has released 7 albums, 4 of them platinum (Your favorite rapper probably doesn't have 4 platinum albums), and has a roll on a Emmy award winning TV show. I can't hate on that. He's getting money!

I say all of that basically to say this, STOP THE HATE. It's not worth it and it's unhealthy. You're wasting your time hating on someone who doesn't even know who you are when you could be out getting money too. It's amazing the extent to which people will go to bring down another human being. If we as people spent half the energy we do hating on people to uplift or do something positive, imagine how much further along we would be. People make mistakes at all levels, but at some point we have to be able to separate that from the product that they put out. And furthermore, we need to appreciate art for being just that: art and not a personal evaluation of the person who created it.