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.
|