you should listen to saul williams. he may be what you are looking for.

"was i raised to be lowered?"
-saul williams

I believe you are straw-manning rap. 50 cent may be a poor replacement for Curtis Mayfield, but is Kanye (he outsold 50 after all)? Opinions will vary, but it's a more interesting question.

Is there anything in American public culture today, whatever the color, that compares to Mayfield or Ellison?

I think you are missing the point. This aritcle is not about what musical artists actually have talent, it is about loving culture, being who you are, and loving it, being yourself is something we've all got to do. So just do it, and fly.

It's true that in the "Don't Know What You Got" video, there is this beautiful, black, almost African, culture that looks sophisticated and self-possessed. Still it feels liquid and of the moment, which is why it's so sexy and sensual. I think there you aren't seeing anything stereotypical in the least. Possibly the folks there are such hipsters you might be frozen for wearing the wrong shoes, but that's hipsterism everywhere. I agree with Debra that if you look out over mainstream culture, that particular kind of blackness is hard to find.
Sometimes when I watch movies from the sixties that dealt with civil rights issues, there seems to be a 'trying too hard' effect. The black actors seem like they're inwardly walking on egg shells, trying hard to represent black people as middle, white Americans might have needed to see them to be reminded of their humanness, their inherent equality. With Poitier, for instance, the crisp, carefulness of his speech, his tongue seeming to hold consonants for a moment longer than necessary, we might be watching a black man from British Africa as much as anything else. It seems that the pendulum had swung from the Mammy mold to the other side. A sharply-dressed urban professional was now playing a simple black farmer erroneously on trial for rape. Those must have been bittersweet times for black actors because they were able to show themselves in a new image while being an expressive part of a story. Yet after a while, they probably longed to just be part of a story about life, family stuff, love affairs, etc. and not the centerpiece to a social study about ethnic division. Sadly, I'm still disappointed today when a mainstream movie comes out about middle class blacks. One finds tiresome the inevitable scene of the ladies out at a club together convincing the heroine she has to play the game with him, followed tidily by the male equivalent possibly on a golf course. Then there is the flash to the large, lovable matriarch and adorable grandchildren - this last to underscore that black people are all about family even if some of the thirty somethings were just seen out having cocktails and talking about how you got to be the player less you get played. In short, except for the grandma and kids, everyone else in the movie is exactly what I don't like in their white counterparts - jerks. So what am I saying? Think of a movie wherein you thought you were really following interesting people through a compellingly wrought point in their lives. I'm trying really hard. Still thinking. Okay. "Rushmore" or "Ghostworld". Now, to play with the court room scene from "A Time to Kill", imagine that these interesting people are black. I may be painting this with broad strokes, but black art through performance in everyday culture, as rich and compelling as it has been in the past, is on a decline.
I think rap was [and can still be] revolutionary because it went against this idea mentioned above: i.e., that to ensure a place at the table, a black person had to seem polished in a somewhat white mold and/or harmlessly bland and middle class. We embraced the rap culture in a mainstream way in the eighties because we got to see a grittier, more real image of blacks. At least to young people like myself, who weren't from a highly educated or rich family, rap from the hood was far more tangible than the Huxtables. But flash forward and mainstream rap seems to say only these things about black people: 1]we like our drugs and gin; 2] women are bitches; 3] we got cars and money. There are exceptions, of course, and I want to hear recommendations for rap that isn't like this. All the same, this is the general message, and I feel that this is the peril of pop, having execs try to boil down the seething art masses into a power-chocked flavor pack.
Some argue that this fits nicely into the machine that keeps most blacks disenfranchised and it's hard not to see the point.
And as you think about it more, doesn't the originality and realism, the sexiness, of all culture get muddled by popularity and the money machine?

Our culture (Black America's) has been fully assimilated in to capitalist Mediocrity. It's gone from Martin, Marcus and Malcolm's dream to bring our group closer self sufficiency to selling out to the GOD of this country "CASH MONEY." Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Chuck Berry, Fat's Domino and Little Richard paid a heavy price to open the doors for popular music and entertainment today. Our problem continues to be our children looking a glamor and the resulting wealth and not the fundamental issues. Those being a stable family structure with two parents raising their children to strive to get their education and a realistic career. There's nothing wrong with being a ninety dollar an hour Plumber, Carpenter or IT consultant. The same holds true for Doctors, Lawyers, Judges and Business owners.

Our children are focused on to many of the flashy message less twits cursing and degrading our people. When on the other hand the KRS One's, Public Enemy, Common, Mos Def and others with a positive message are for the most part ignored. As long as we allow the entertainment and justice system keep our children captivated we will continue to be trapped with no strong educated role models for our future generations.

I don't put the same value on a nuclear family as you do, CBII. That is largely a myth in all ethnic cultures. Real families come in all shapes and sizes. For one person, the combonation of 1 mom + 2 aunts + one inspiring older cousin might promote success and happiness as much as for another kid a 1 dad + 1 mom scenerio.

Don't listen to Miller, he is a troll.

It's because most of "blacks" aren't cool anymore.... they turned... now too many of them run around and buy into all the garbage of our collective consumerist culture, just like "whites"- including being racist towards whites. There isn't a day that goes by when I am not on the receiving end of blatant racism, in public, from "blacks," or "African Amerikans"... whatever... and I mean me, my children, my "white" friends...

When does it stop? When the icecaps are completely melted and we are all swimming around in the big soup together?

ADL press release, 11/1/07, Foxman said that the 2007 survey found that 32% of African-Americans hold strong anti-Semitic beliefs, more than three times more than the 10% for whites. We have a problem with African-Americans, they need more intense and special education on this subject.

I think we did it to ourselves, by trying to show that we had nothing to prove. Instead of adhering to a higher standard we stood back and watched as our children proved to us they would not follow any standards except this of gangsters and prisoners.

I'm confused... I cant tell if the author of this post is more concerned about the degradation of black culture, or about the integration of black culture into the rest of society. Yes, it is unfortunate that black icons like Marvin Gaye have been succeeded by men like 50 Cent. But as segregation slowly fades, black culture will change as it blends with other cultures. Racial integration is a GOOD thing. It may seem that the cultural heritage of different ethnicities are lost in this process, but they are not, they are just blended. Underneath it all we are all the same, right? So why should anyone care about keeping ethnic identities separate; they are only necessary in societies where racism exists. Black culture has strongly influenced whites in America and vice versa, probably in both negative AND positive ways. Resisting this is just plain old xenophobia.