It is, after all, each generation’s solemn duty to outrage the one that came before. Not to mention a little healthy respect for tomorrow’s ability to render today’s fears silly and shrill. Rather, it’s that when said criticism takes on the tenor of fire alarms and air-raid sirens, when there is panic in the streets and a general sense that this song, this artist, this genre, represents a cultural Armageddon, a mortal threat requiring scary headlines or government intervention, it suggests the critics have forgotten how many times we’ve traveled this road and that a little perspective might be in order.

The point is not that popular music ought not be criticized when it is violent, racist, misogynistic or otherwise troublesome. Now they are the stuff of nostalgia, museums and, in some cases, even scholarship. They were all scary once upon a time all threatened the status quo. To the contrary, it’s one we saw with Elvis in the ‘50s, the Rolling Stones in the ‘60s, Alice Cooper in the ‘70s, Prince in the ‘80s. That amnesia notwithstanding, the process is not new.

People tend to forget the power of American marketing to absorb and commodify that which once frightened and appalled. So yes, the arc of their careers, the then-and-now snapshots, would seem to suggest some feeling silly is in order. Ice-T was boycotted and reviled over a speed-metal song called “Cop Killer.” He now shills for a breakfast cereal, an automobile warranty company and a laundry detergent, and has spent the last 22 years playing - wait for it - a cop on NBC. He has since become a movie star, playing a dad, a soldier and a barber shop owner, among many others. Then there’s Ice Cube, who, as a member of NWA, drew a menacing rebuke from the FBI for a certain song that sharply critiqued policing in African-American neighborhoods. The headline: “When is Rap 2 Violent?” These days, Martha Stewart’s best friend is to be seen walking a mythic beach in TV commercials, handing out beer. Snoop Dogg, then billed as Snoop Doggy Dogg, was on the cover of Newsweek giving the camera maximum attitude.

Rap, to hear some of you tell it, was a cultural apocalypse, and rappers, the most frightening men in America. We’re talking about a furor unlike anything we’d seen since men with sledgehammers were smashing jukeboxes, trying to kill rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s. Meaning, all you folks who, 30 years ago, give or take, thought rap music was the end of the world.

Before I Forget by Leonard Pitts Jr.