Oh boo-hoo, look at the big mean website making fun of Kanye West and T-Pain! You know what? I took a little vacation from this site and just sat back and watched the discourse unfold. It was pretty funny! You'd think with all the fervor and vocab people devoted to telling us how wrong and mean we are that they would also be running one of the fastest growing Black music sites on the Internets. Got to put all that energy towards something, right?
I'll admit, it may seem like we're picking on certain folks, but you must understand that we do not execute this site in the spirit of negativity. Frustration, yes. But never out of pure hate. We're way too talented for that. It's just that none of us ever imagined we'd live though a period in music when not only the artists were delusional, imperious, and uninspired, but when the audience and supporting media outlets (including independently-owned and operated blogs) would so readily sip from the same big, communal punch bowl and practically bend over backwards to massage the delusional, imperious, and uninspired cajones of said artists.
Please don't think that because our site looks good and is well-formatted and follows, to some degree, a style guide that it's not simply a place where five people come to talk about music. This is the same thing that happens when friends get on the phone, or meet for drinks, or when they play cards and run into each other at the barber. We talk about culture, new songs, classics, and all the things we love and hate about this wonderful thing we refer to as "Black music." It won't always be pretty. And it is important for us to have this be our outlet, to be able to come to a place where like-minded individuals can also say "You know what? I'm fed up with that garbage, too."
On one hand, you got folks that get it: We don't do this to make friends. We don't do this to be on someone's red carpet, or to be invited to Diddy's White Party. We do this because there is a very specific class of music lovers out there that are just as disenchanted with the turn music has taken, and many of them didn't have anywhere to go to discover and vent at the same time.
On the other hand, you have people that believe that just because it's on the Internet and operated with some basic level of professionalism, that it doesn't have to be honest. SoulBounce is not CNN. It is not Billboard. It does not have to be fair and balanced. It doesn't even have to be friendly. For us to sacrifice one smidgen of our personal beliefs, sensibilities and opinions would be to strip this site of the thing that makes it so valuable. It was not designed to make everyone happy. The quality of our readership has always been more important than the quantity. You have your options, to put it nicely.
So, in moving forward, I would like to thank everyone that visits and recommends us everyday, even the trolls that continue to participate in these discussions per their own accord. You love it here. You love the struggle and you love the passion, which is why you wallow in it daily.
We cannot continue to grow without you.
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