Hip-hop has provided a forum for African-American and Latino youth to express their respective cultures and speak on a number of issues.  Today, hip-hop is a global phenomenon that appeals to almost all ethnicities and is synthesizing a new culture that goes beyond race, education, and income. 

Despite the growing acceptance of hip-hop within white America and the middle class, hip-hop is also under siege. Consider the analysis of rap or hip-hop by Bill O’Reilly, popular talk show host of the Fox News Channel:

”Did you know that in 1999 alone, 81 million rap albums were sold? Buy, if you wanna buy.

”When I confronted perhaps the most powerful rap and hip-hop executive in the world, Russell Simmons, about explicit lyrics that may be a corrupting influence on high risk children, he looked at me like I was from Mars. ‘These things need to be expressed,’ he said. ‘The plight of black kids is now much more vivid to the white world because of rap.’

”That may well be true. But what about those black kids trapped in ghettos with little parental supervision and guidance? Are rap themes going to help them get out of their dire circumstances?

”The answer is no. If those kids adopt vulgarity in their speech, an anti-white attitude, and an acceptance of dope and violence, the only way they're likely to leave the hood is on a stretcher or in the back of a police cruiser. Hard work and discipline punch the ticket out of poverty. Thinking up rhymes about cocaine is not going to go far on a college admissions application.

”The fatal flaw of the rap world is that it doesn't harness the legitimate rage that exists in the bottom end of our economic system in any positive way. Rap doesn't provide solutions; it provides excuses. And it denigrates the values that Americans need to succeed, like respect for others. You can't run around calling women 'bitches' and expect to be taken seriously. If you do that, you're a fool. Yet those rap songs are loaded with coarse, hostile language that rappers say is cool and ‘reflects what's real.’

”Well here's some more reality for you rapper boys and girls: Many kids who emulate you are going to suffer. You are feeding them cheap, destructive images that will hurt them in the long run. And you're making big bucks doing it. So rap with that, my man. Reality is a bitch.”

Clearly, O’Reilly is “from Mars” and does not listen to hip-hop; he only sees the negative aspects of hip-hop and does not admit that America has created the conditions for hip-hop and that the corporations he represents promote the negative aspects of hip-hop.  Granted, there are negative elements to hip-hop; however, within the context of his “analysis” he implies that there is something inherently wrong with black people and that if they bought into the American myth of hard work leading to success (the notion that hard work leads to success can be disputed by the fact that much of the working poor, regardless of race, do not have health insurance and work for or slightly above minimum wage) they too, will succeed.  Perhaps his concerns regarding hip-hop reflect that he is troubled by the increasing numbers of suburban white youth listening to hip-hop. (If O’Reilly is really concerned about suburban white youth, especially those “with little parental supervision and guidance,” then he should encourage them to listen to more hip-hop; that may reduce the inspiration to build bombs and take guns to school.)  Likewise, if rap is anti-white then why does white rap artist Eminem indicate in his song, The Real Slim Shady: “then you wonder how can kids eat up these albums like valiums.” 

Most importantly, he fails to recognize that white people create ghettos via exclusionary zoning, zoning laws and policies, the real estate industry, the federal government through the Department of Transportation (that built highways through viable urban communities) and Federal Housing Assistance (FHA) loans, which allowed white people to run to the suburbs in the wake of World War II.

Music videos, some of the most popular and influential mediums for hip-hop, often depict black and Latino youth as ignorant, lazy, misogynist, and hypersexual.  Beyond these negative images, probably the most damning image of hip-hop videos includes those that feature performers with the “bling, bling” – expensive jewelry that suggests prosperity on one hand, and extreme materialism on the other.  In reality, these images are part of hip-hop; no artist is forced to write negative lyrics or create harmful videos.  However, the negative videos and music within hip-hop do not represent the depth and breadth of hip-hop.  Hip-hop speaks to all the major issues of the day – spirituality, leadership, crime, politics, economics – and does so in a way that is entertaining, respectful, and prophetic.

Hip-hop has had and will continue to have a profound effect on African-American communities because it is a vehicle for self-expression, a rallying point for activism, and a means for positive youth development.  Ultimately, the way hip-hop is presented to global society has political and social implications for black communities because if blacks are portrayed as lazy or ignorant or hypersexual within compact discs (CDs) and videos, African-American youth will unfairly and unjustly be viewed negatively, especially if people from non-black backgrounds have few, if any opportunities to interact with African-Americans and dispel the negative myths and stereotypes.

We must dispel some of the myths surrounding hip-hop and show that it goes beyond the “bling, bling” image that is presented to the masses.  Furthermore, we must explore the relationship of hip-hop culture, spirituality, political mobilization, leadership (particularly black leadership), and their effects on youth development. 

Hip-hop, like many other art forms, is filled with conflicting, often competing messages. Noted social commentator Dr. Michael Eric Dyson highlighted this trend, in 1993:

”Rap artists sense that as they are inventing a musical genre that measures the pulse of black youth culture, they are also inventing themselves.  From the ready resources of culture, history, tradition and community, rap artists fashion musical personae who literally voice their hopes, fears, and fantasies: the self as cultural griot, feminist, educator, or itinerant prophet of black nationalism; but also the self as inveterate consumer, misogynist, violent criminal, or sexual athlete.  It is this ever-expanding repertoire of created selves that invites up to interrogate the values and visions of rap culture, to perceive the force of its trenchant criticism of racism, historical amnesia, and classism, and to gauge its surrender to American traditions of sexism, consumerism, and violence.” – Reflecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism

The excerpt is significant because Dyson crafts an interesting argument; he points out that America created the conditions for the development of hip-hop and gave the genre its context.  Moreover, hip-hop provides a forum to address racism and reinforce black culture.  Most importantly, hip-hop has empowered African-American youth to define themselves based on their own terms.  Finally, hip-hop forces America to look at itself structurally in terms of race, consumption, and violence. 

Despite the “in-your-face” style of hip-hop in presenting America’s ills, America does not respond to hip-hop as it should.  Hip-hop, particularly through the use of videos, at times shows the bleakest of conditions for African-American youth, with dilapidated buildings, dirty streets, unemployment, incarceration, and violence.  The images are disturbing; they are the antithesis of America’s image of opportunity for all.  Hip-hop videos also challenge the myth that anyone, if they worked hard enough, could experience the “American Dream.”  Based on the bleak images and themes presented in hip-hop, one would think that America would rally around the youth portrayed in the videos and address the poverty and social isolation from which many hip-hop artists originate.  Unfortunately, America chooses to do very little for the youth and, for the most part, considers the violence and bleakness portrayed in the videos as common, everyday life for black and Latino young people.

There are many definitions of hip-hop.  Hip-hop pioneer “DJ Africa Bambaataa” describes hip-hop as:

”…the whole culture of the movement…when you talk about rap…rap is part of the hip hop culture…the emceeing…the deejaying is part of the hip hop culture. The dressing the languages are all part of the hip hop culture…the break dancing the b-boys, b-girls...how you act, walk, look, talk are all part of hip hop culture…and the music is colorless…Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red, white…whatever music that gives you the grunt…that funk…that groove or that beat… It's all part of hip hop.”

This excerpt is noteworthy because Bambaataa is defining hip-hop as a multiracial, multicultural, borderless movement, with its own attitude, style and rhythm. Speaking to journalist Davey D in 1996, Bambaataa also provided insight on the early days of rap and hip-hop culture:

”Hip Hop has experimented with a lot of different styles of music and there's a lot of people who have brought different changes over time with hip hop…which have brought out all these funky records which everybody just started jumpin' on like a catch phrase…All these people brought changes within hip hop music... Unfortunately today a lot of the people who created hip hop…meaning the Blacks and Latinos, do not control it no more...”

Bambaataa, at the end of this statement, reveals the biggest challenge to hip-hop: its originators (black and Latino youth) are losing control of the genre. 

On one hand, the diminishing control and role of African-Americans and Latinos in hip-hop is the natural progression of an international art form; as more cultures become part of hip-hop culture, they will add the uniqueness of their native culture to the art form. Conversely, as hip-hop is distributed by corporate media, its gatekeepers will increasingly define the art form, and only allow certain acts to reach the mainstream.  Many of these acts can highlight the worst elements of black, Latino, and American culture: rampant materialism, aggression, misogyny, moral ambiguity, ignorance, and anti-intellectualism.  This view is represented by Vanessa Altman-Siegal, when she writes about hip-hop culture in Japan:

Even if the Japanese don't understand all the political aspects of hip hop culture, the interest in black culture is loosening the insular fiber in Japanese youth. Stereotypical images of black Americans are disseminated throughout Japan, primarily through the media, but racism in the country is typically directed at gaigin or foreigners, regardless of skin color. Americans, in general, are seen as violent.

"I think that the media has given us such wrong information," says Yugi, a rap concert promoter in Japan, "When the rap artists get here they are different [from what we expected]. They are much nicer."

Nelson George, in his 1992 book, Buppies, B-Boys, BAPS & Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture, highlights how hip-hop has been taken away from its originators and bent to provide a definition of blackness to fuel and enhance other people’s empires:

”Most of the rules I learned as a child in the ‘60s and ‘70s have been corrupted or rewritten.  Hip hop, just to take the most obvious example, has spread from the urban underground where I found it in my early story on Kurtis Blow [a hip-hop artist and pioneer – RNB], to white – or at least well-heeled – suburbia.  During this same period, breakthrough black superstars made more money than ever in history – most of it helping to subsidize multinational corporations that reconfigure black artistry into reproducible formulas.”

George’s outlook is also expressed and confirmed by actor, author, slam poet, and hip-hop artist Saul Williams. Williams, in an interview with MotherJones.com’s Jeff Chang, describes and renders a critique of hip-hop when he says:

“We can say what makes it hip-hop is this black, urban [experience] da-da-da. But no! Hip-hop is no longer that. I mean, hip-hop has existed in Yugoslavia now for 10 years, has existed in France for 10 years, in Japan for at least 10 years – has existed where there are no African American experiences. So what is hip-hop? Well, with Public Enemy and KRS-ONE, hip-hop became the language of youth rebellion. But now, commercial hip-hop is not youth rebellion, not when the heroes of hip-hop like Puffy are taking pictures with Donald Trump and the heroes of capitalism – you know that's not rebellion. That's not ‘the street’ – that's Wall Street.”

Williams’ comment suggests that hip-hop has been watered down and co-opted, while leaving its roots as a medium for protest.

Charles “Chuck D” Ridenhour, lead vocalist for, arguably, one of hip-hop’s seminal groups, Public Enemy, also reflects upon the loss of black control in hip-hop, and the exploitation of hip-hop and black culture by white corporate media:

”Black culture became more marketable during the eighties, and white corporations found that they could make big bucks off of it.  An example is the rise of Public Enemy, and Black male celebrities like Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Arsenio Hall.  Once Black images started to infiltrate mainstream white society via Black celebrities and white kids began to imitate Black people, not only from a physical standpoint like in athletics, but also mentally and culturally, that’s when a big problem began.

“In the early nineties…what occurred during that period was a visual explosion of Black celebrities.  Music videos became more pervasive and entertaining, Black movies made a strong return, and simultaneously the NBA and NFL combined with major corporations to magnify and emphasize the individual.  To the point whereby in 1995 and 1996 there was a subliminal message that stated, “if you’re not a ballplayer, or entertainer, and you’re not living a lavish lifestyle then you ain’t shit.” – Fight The Power: Rap, Race and Reality (1997)

This analysis is very important in that it speaks to the co-optation of hip-hop and Black cultures by white corporations.  Moreover, it points to larger, more demeaning trends – the devaluation of black life (black people being portrayed as only valuing entertainment careers instead of academic achievement, science, or service to humanity), anti-intellectualism, and over-consumption.  Also, Chuck D adds that the media promotes hip-hop via negative images and messages:

”Many in the world of Hip-Hop have begun to believe that the only way to blow up and become megastars is by presenting themselves in a negative light.  The two recently slain Hip-Hop artists, Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., as well as other Rap artists who have come under criticism like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, Ice Cube, or whoever you want to name, talk positivity in some of their records, but those records have to be picked by the industry executives and program directors to be magnified.  MC Eiht talks about ‘I don’t want to get caught in this, I’m trying to go right, but society won’t let me go right, but it’s hard.’  The media just doesn’t focus on those positive songs, they’d rather dwell on the negative.”

Not only do media promote the negative images of hip-hop, but media also encourages those with positive lyrics to water-down their messages in order to become more commercially appealing.  Chuck D substantiates this discourse in his examination of Tupac Shakur:

”Tupac had a loyalty to Black people without a doubt.  His early albums sound like a combination of Public Enemy and N.W.A. (Niggers With Attitudes).  He was raw.  Tupac found that when he said things that were pro-Black and militant, people were not paying any attention to what he was saying so, he decided to go more and more into the side of darkness, like Bishop, the character he played in the movie, Juice. ‘Fuck that--thug life like a motherfucker.’  The more he played the ‘bad boy’ or ‘rude boy’ image, the bigger and bigger he got.  The unfortunate thing is I think Tupac had a plan to bring everybody to the table with the ‘Thug for Life’ image, and then he was going to flip the tables at the last minute and have people thinking.  He was rooted in that.  He was a brother who was strongly influenced by the Black Panther ideology, and by Black revolutionary political prisoners like Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and others.  On Pac’s latest release, Makaveli, he has a song on the album called ‘White Man’z World’ in which he states, ‘Use your brain!  It’s not them that’s killing us, it’s us that’s killing us.’  In the aftermath of Tupac’s murder the conscious, revolutionary, uplifting aspects of Tupac Shakur’s existence were played to the side as being unimportant and irrelevant.  Another victim of this white man’z world.”

Corporate control of hip-hop also presents a serious threat to its significance.  As corporations promote a sort of hip-hop opium or mind-numbing art that does not address issues, its authenticity and relevance become suspect. Jeff Chang underscored this concept in 2003:

”Today, the most cursory glance at the Billboard charts or video shows on Viacom-owned MTV and BET suggests rap has been given over to cocaine-cooking, cartoon-watching, Rakim-quoting, gold-rims-coveting, death-worshiping young 'uns. One might even ask whether rap has abandoned the revolution.”

Although Chang offers a number of valuable observations in his article, there is a more sinister motive to corporate control of hip-hop: to destroy African-Americans and, particularly, African-American youth culturally, socially, and intellectually, while reducing them to economic cattle ripe for exploitation.  Reflect on the following 1983 analysis by political scientist Manning Marable:

”Afro-Americans have been on the other side of one of the most remarkable and rapid accumulations of capital seen anywhere in human history, existing as a necessary yet circumscribed victim within the proverbial belly of the beast.  The relationship is filled with paradoxes; each advance in white freedom was purchased by Black enslavement; white affluence coexists with Black poverty; white state and corporate power is the product in part of Black powerlessness; income mobility for the few is rooted in income stasis for the many.”

This analysis suggests that corporate control of hip-hop represents the politics and economics of illusion; for every artistic and corporate semi-empire created by P-Diddy, Jay-Z, and OutKast, there are tens of thousands of artists that will NEVER achieve the success of those artists.  They will NEVER have the homes or cars of these artists (the homes and settings of many hip-hop artists are not owned by the artists—they are rented), especially those that get people to think about economics, politics, single-parent families, and community on a consistent basis.  When these images are juxtaposed with the constant airplay of certain artists on television and radio, there is the appearance that many black and Latino artists have “made it.”  These images are the essence of illusion or of unadulterated lies and are broadcast around the world and used to perpetuate already established stereotypes like rampant materialism, violence, and ignorance.  The process is examined in a syllabus introduction for a class at Yale University by Steven F. Gray entitled, “Recognizing Stereotypical Images of African Americans in Television and Movies.”

The practice of racial stereotyping through the use of media has been used throughout contemporary history by various factions in American society to attain various goals. The practice is used most by the dominant culture in this society as a way of suppressing its minority population. The Republican Party’s use of the Willie Horton image in the 1988 Presidential campaign is a small example of how majority groups have used racial stereotyping in the media as a justifiable means to an end. The book Unthinking Eurocentrism by [Robert] Stam and [Ella] Shohat supports this notion when they write, “the functionality of stereotyping used in film demonstrates that they [stereotypes] are not an error in perception but rather a form of social control intended as Alice Walker calls “prisons of image.”

(…)Historically the “other source” people developed racial stereotypes were from literature and then radio. In 1933 Sterling Brown the great black poet and critic, divided the full range of black characters in American literature into seven categories; the contented slave; the wretched freemen: the comic Negro; the tragic mulatto; the local color Negro; and the exotic primitive. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. speaks of Dr. Brown’s work in the article TV’s Black World Turns but Stays Unreal. “It was only one small step to associate our public negative image in the American mind with the public negative social roles that we were assigned to and to which we were largely confined.”

The last paragraph can be easily applied to hip-hop.  For the most part, corporate control of hip-hop equates to the worldwide distribution of such clichéd and negative images found in shows like “Amos and Andy.”        

Furthermore, corporate control of hip-hop becomes an exercise in the replication of exploitation; the models in marketing used by the corporation are now assumed by the artists; the outsourcing of product development (clothes and other items) to foreign countries, paying those employees or independent contractors far below living wages, and selling those products to anxious global markets with astounding product mark-ups.  In short, the hip-hop semi-conglomerate learns the following equation: E=MC2, which I translate to Exploitation=Mass Consumption, where the work of underpaid people is used to feed the North American penchant for spending (doubled).

There are other ominous aspects of corporate control of the hip-hop.  Possibly, the most dangerous aspect of hip-hop is its definitions of maleness, transmitted via the lens of the hip-hop artist versus the entertainer.  Within this debate, issues of race and skin color must be explored.  Hip-hop sends a number of messages; many male hip-hop artists are dark-skinned and since darkness is associated with such qualities as “sinister” or “menacing” artists may get additional scrutiny from law enforcement.  Ife Oshun, hip hop editor for About.com, documented the problem in a March 9 article titled, “Miami Police Practice Rapper Surveillance, Learned From NYPD.”

Miami police have admitted to secretly monitoring hip-hop stars such as P. Diddy, DMX [both dark-skinned – RNB] and others who have visited South Florida. The police force claims it is to protect the stars, but many celebrities and critics view the surveillance as unnecessary and racist.

According to a story in The Miami Herald, officers in Miami and Miami Beach have photographed rappers and their entourages at Miami International Airport and staked out hotels, video shoots and nightclubs while consulting 6-inch-thick dossiers of rappers and associates with arrest records in New York State, courtesy of the New York Police Department.

The targeting of a particular genre of music is unprecedented.

"There's been no shortage of rock stars and other musicians scrutinized by police," said Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. "But there has never been anything like this."

The gathering of intelligence began after the Memorial Day 2001 weekend, when 250,000 hip-hop fans converged on South Beach for four days of parties hosted by their favorite rappers. More than 210 people were arrested, double usual number, most for disorderly conduct and intoxication.

Miami police, overwhelmed by a culture they did not understand, decided to do something about it. 

“Doing something” about the artists and followers of hip-hop means control and surveillance – a clash of cultures based on age, race, and forms of expression.  This incident is not limited to Miami; there is an established hip-hop task squad in New York City. 

Still, there has been policing and profiling of hip-hop artists and followers for years; it is called sales projections, artist recognition, artist personality, and the like by the corporate media.  Whatever their backgrounds, those artists that are allowed into the system must be careful not offend white people. At the same time, they are allowed to be “bad,” in that those artists that have been in the prison system or associated with gangs may reflect on their former lives to the public.  Again, this shows the reinforcement of negative black stereotypes – all black men (or those that have been in the prison system and those that grew up in urban areas and ghettos) have this badge of “hardness,” affording them more credibility in the “rap game.”  (Even the white rapper “Vanilla Ice” associated black cool with street credibility and, in order to appeal to black hip-hop listeners and certify his “badness” to young white females, implied that he grew up in the streets and alluded to gang activity when, in reality, he grew up in the suburbs – a lie perpetuated in his “autobiography.”)  Any artist with a dissimilar background, like say, Will Smith (the mega-bucks actor, formerly TV’s “Fresh Prince”), is not viewed as a hip-hop artist – he is an “entertainer.”  In a sense, the hip-hop artist has been tamed. He or she may collect the benefits of the industry – hefty promotions budgets, signature clothing lines, and access to the movie business – while bearing no obligation to be prophetic or critical of society.

There is another caveat to hip-hop success; artists must perpetuate the American myth that hard work, pays.  In reality, there are too many people in America that work hard and have to settle for crumbs.  Yet, youth are encouraged to consume the products of these artists in order to be “hard,” or “down,” or cool.  Fitting into American culture has a price.

Despite the challenges and problems of the hip-hop culture and industry, hip-hop is evolving.  It is moving beyond race, ethnicity, and language to create a new culture.  However, this amalgamation of cultures into one culture has its drawbacks.  Again, the voices of black and Latino youth may be diluted within the culture.

One of the most significant aspects of hip-hop is its teaching function.  Its artists not only exist but, they exist to teach their followers.  However, artists must continually educate themselves, especially if they are to be relevant artists and effective leaders. 

What is leadership? James H. Cone examined the question in his 1991 volume, Malcolm & Martin & America: A Dream Or A Nightmare:

“Both Malcolm and Martin realized that no people can achieve freedom as long as their leaders lack knowledge and understanding regarding how the economic and political systems of the world came into being, and how they function today.  One of the chief roles of the leader is to teach the people how to organize themselves for the purpose for achieving their freedom.  Organizing for freedom requires thinking about the meaning of freedom and developing strategies to implement it in the society.  No leader can teach others what he or she does not know.”

On African-American Leadership and Hip-Hop

Black leadership has always been hard to define.  John White (Black Leadership in America: 1895-1968, New York: Longman, 1985) provides some insights into this dilemma when he quotes James Baldwin:

”[T]he problem of Negro leadership...has always been extremely delicate, dangerous, and complex.  The term itself becomes remarkably difficult to define; the moment one realizes that the real role of the Negro leader, in the eyes of the American Republic, was not to make the Negro a first-class citizen but to keep him content as a second-class one.”  

To quote author Theodore Cross, “Black leadership [and, in my eyes hip-hop] are responses, or, more accurately, challenges to help other blacks reject the mental acceptance and behavioral legitimization of the rules of economic and racial etiquette made by the majority community.”

Black artists within hip-hop have to walk a constantly shifting line as they attempt to serve their record label while maintaining their “street credibility.”  The artist who loses his street credibility, quickly loses his consumer base – which is, strangely, white suburban males.

A great case study in co-optation can be found in an April 2, 2004 article by Ife Oshun:

50 Cent made the list that The New York Press calls "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers."

In its 2nd annual "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" issue the editors had this to say: “This list is not about hate. More like highly enriched concern. In defining the word "loathsome," we cast a wide net and caught all manner of frauds, blowhards and bloodsuckers. 50 Cent comes in at #48 with this blurb:

"WHAT UP, GANGSTA? Look at you, up from the underground with mix tapes and DVDs in hand, riding the coattails of Jam Master Jay's murder into the TRL ether. We probably could have handled the Teen People cover, but the Teen People centerfold was off the cliff: You posed in a bulletproof vest for a glossy magazine aimed at 12-year-old girls. Did you know that the press release for your Grammy performance had you next to Celine Dion and Richard Marx? Time to go get fitted for a pair of MC Hammer pants and bring your act to Foxwoods." 

This brief excerpt shows the duality of the black artist: staying close to his or her base while expanding to reach larger (younger, white) audiences.  Time will tell if 50 Cent will be viewed as an artist that “sold out.” According to The New York Press, the selling out process has already begun.

Back in 1967, Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America) provided an analysis that could be crucial to today’s African-American hip-hop artists:

”Those who would assume the responsibility of representing black people in the country must be able to throw off the notion that they can effectively do so and still maintain a maximum amount of security.  Jobs will have to be sacrificed, positions of prestige and status given up, favors forfeited.  It may well be--and we think it is--that leadership and security are basically incompatible.  When one forcefully challenges the racist system, one cannot, at the same time, expect that system to reward him or even treat him comfortably.”

Today, Hamilton and (now-deceased) Carmichael might argue that true hip-hop (political, prophetic, spiritual, and instructive) is an exercise in risk.  In short, Paris, Public Enemy, Common, KRS-1 (notice that I have failed to mention any women) and others will never sell as many CDs as Petey Pablo, Nelly, P-Diddy, or Eminem. 

This analysis brings us to one of the most interesting issues in hip-hop: satisfying white suburban males and middle-class African-Americans.  To highlight this concern, I wrote a poem, “The Devolution IS Being Televised.”  In this poem I describe how African-American culture and self-definition is being destroyed and co-opted.  Consider this verse:

The devolution IS being shown in your ghettos, suburbs, and exurbs

Bringing you, WITH commercial interruption, niggas talking about triggas

And wiggas wanting to be niggas thinking that it’s good to be a nigga

In the streets but not in THEIR neighborhood

This devolution will not give you food for thought

But will make you think about food brought to you by McDonalds and Subway

Telling you to “eat fresh” while getting fresh with women and showing no love

Brother, this devolution IS being televised

I hypothesize that white males, in particular, listen to rap, the major medium of hip-hop, to add another dimension to their warped concepts of manhood and African-American manhood.  In brief, they want “black cool” without living next to black people.  Therefore, they are not exposed to the true spectrum of black manhood and black self-definition. Subsequently, for the few suburban black counterparts that white males have, they take on the illusion of being “hard” and “representin’” when, in reality, they mimic the mores and actions of their white counterparts.  In short, they want to live “ghetto” and be “hard core” while strictly living suburban middle class, without any connection to the black urban masses.       

In a 1992 commentary, Manning Marable examined the chasm between the black middle class and the black masses:

”[T]he 'strategic vision' for the vast majority of the Black middle class and its mainstream leadership could be accurately described as…the assimilation of Black Americans as individuals within all levels of the labor force, culture and society.  At root, this strategy…is based on…a belief that if an African-American receives a prominent appointment…Black people as a group are symbolically empowered… But in the post-civil rights era, the structures of accountability on the Black professional middle class began to erode.  A new type of African-American leadership emerged inside the public and private sectors which lived outside the Black community and had little personal contact with African-Americans.  'Symbolic representation' no longer works…with (those)…who feel no sense of allegiance to the Black freedom struggle.”

Social and political philosopher Bernard Boxill (Blacks And Social Justice, 1992) also indicts the black middle class by noting that it "uses the misery of the black underclass [more] to…its benefit than to the benefit of the black underclass." This situation is significant in that it challenges the notion of a collective, singular "black community." It also questions the commitment of black leaders from the middle class to effectively meet the needs of the black masses.  This argument can be taken further and applied to the hip-hop artist and his or her roots.

Malcolm X, in many of his speeches and public statements, also pointed out the class divisions ("house Negroes" and "field Negroes") blacks inherited from slavery, which could be applied to the assimilation of black and brown artists of the hip-hop culture and industry into white corporate culture:

“There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro.  The house Negroes – they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food – what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but they still lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself.  They would give their life to save the master's house – quicker than the master would.  If the master said, ‘We got a good house here,’ the house Negro would say, ‘Yeah, we got a good house here.’  Whenever the master said ‘we,’ he said ‘we.’  That's how you can tell a house Negro….

”On that same plantation, there was the field Negro.  The field Negroes – those were the masses.  There were always more Negroes in the field than there were Negroes in the house.  The Negro in the field caught hell.”

Although I could name artists that could be viewed as field negroes, I will leave it to the readers to determine the artists that are the house and field African-Americans.

Cornel West (Race Matters, 1993) provides some of the most damning analysis of the black middle class:

”The present-day black middle class is not simply different than its predecessors--it is more deficient and, to put it strongly, more decadent.  For the most part, the dominant outlooks and life-styles of today's black middle class discourage the development of high quality political and intellectual leaders.  Needless to say, this holds for the country as a whole.  Yet much of what is bad about the United States, that which prevents the cultivation of quality leadership, is accentuated among black middle-class Americans.”

In retrospect, my analysis is a plea for black and Latino segments or the majority of the hip-hop culture to “come home,” accept (or take) the mantle of leadership, develop and enhance their political and social power to confront American hypocrisy.  As an elder member of the hip-hop community, I argue that our time is NOW.  Let us highlight the angry, analytical, and prophetic forms of hip-hop, not hip-pop.  We must reinvent Black Power.            

Black power, according to LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), is more than a means to an end; it is a movement, a process involving a cultural awareness and requiring a spiritual focus:

”Black power cannot be complete unless it is the total reflection of black people.  Black power must be spiritually, emotionally, and historically in tune with black people, as well as serving their economic and political ends.  To be absolutely in tune, the seekers of black power must know what it is they seek.  They must know what is this power-culture alternative through which they bring to focus the world's energies.  They must have an understanding and grounding in the cultural consciousness of the nation they seek to bring to power.  And this is what is being done, bringing to power a nation that has been weak and despised for 400 years.”

The hip-hop nation must use its power to develop networks and other innovative projects that will not only address social issues but provide opportunities for leadership development. It must not let young people "fall through the cracks" of society like the elder generation allowed to happen. This is why the recent hip-hop political convention is/was important – it is the beginning of the revolution!  Long live hip-hop!

Reverend Reynard N. Blake, Jr., M. S. is a recently ordained Baptist minister and president of Community Development Associates, an East Lansing, Michigan-based business dedicated to helping faith-based and nonprofit organizations.  He earned his Master of Science degrees in Community Development and Urban Studies from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the College of Charleston (SC).  He has co-authored an article with June Manning Thomas on the role of African-American faith-based organizations in community economic development, which was featured in the book, Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods (1996).  He has also written articles for the Journal of Urban Youth Culture, Michigan Family Review, and the Charleston (SC) Chronicle. Presently, he is conducting research for a book on hip-hop and youth development to be completed (hopefully) in 2005.  He is a graduate student in the Pastoral Ministry program at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan.

Blake is a Bronx, New York native and witnessed the birth of hip-hop and has been fascinated by the social, political, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of hip-hop as an art form.