AUTHENTICITY, OR SELLING OUT? Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice calls readers attention to an academic conference.

"That's just what we need, more mainstreaming of the pimp-gangsta-thug lifestyle."

What irks me so much about this type of rap music isn't that it's so negative and denigrating and, well, vile--but that there just isn't enough positive stuff to serve as a counterweight.That lack of balance with rap music is just one of the topics V.P. Franklin, Ortique professor of politics and history at Dillard University in New Orleans, will be discussing on Wednesday when he provides the opening address for a four-day conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Race, Roots and Resistance: Revisiting the Legacies of Black Power" will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the black power movement. (The conference is free. For more information, call 217-333-7781.)

Performance can be a way of making a statement. Performance can be a way of making a living. Hence the tension.

My focus here is the arts segment of the movement because I look at what's happening today with rap music and I worry that its power--its profound reach and influence--is far more destructive than constructive.

Many of the artists who aligned themselves with black power saw a connection between the arts and the other struggles of the day."The art would serve the larger cause of black liberation," Franklin told me. "The paintings, the poetry, the dance, the song lyrics would raise the consciousness of people of African descent and show them what they could accomplish in solidarity."

But those of us who came of age in that era recall that "sell-out" was an insult. Among white kids, the sell-out would imply acceptance of corporate America. Hence yuppies.

Apparently the tension is present in African-American music as well.

"Now [rap music] is much more individualistic," Franklin said. "Once hip-hop became commercial, then the artists felt they had a broader audience. And, in order to please that audience, they had to do certain things that didn't necessarily uplift the black community.

"Three decades later, rap artists use their voice, their power, most often to attain the "bling" rather than to further some cause.

Franklin believes the new artists undermine artists committed to creating more positive work and images that benefit the collective.

But does art or music have to benefit a collective? Why can't rap artists sing what they want and present the images of their choosing?

"The problem is we no longer have any control over the images or the styles," Franklin said. "A lot of young people don't see the alternatives. There's just one way of dressing, of speaking, of behaving--the negatives are being validated on so many different levels."

But is entertainment -- whether it be music or painting or sport -- the sole instrument of validation for anybody?