Hip-Hop and Movements
Being a liberal who loves, loves, loves rap music can be hard sometimes. On one hand, it’s a great way to show empathy and forge cultural connections with a marginalized ethnic group. When blacks and whites are becoming more segregated economically and socially, it’s nice that a black form of music (even in a way rock n roll or jazz wasn’t) has come to dominate popular culture. Especially in the Bay Area, where there is very concentrated educational and social segregation, there is fair amount of musical overlap; kids from the hills and from East Oakland (which easily could have been the setting for The Wire) all like the same rappers and the same local subgenre of music. There’s also the fact that much of the hip-hop backlash comes from incredibly square conservatives who can’t seem to understand that rock music has plenty of objectification of women, encouragement of philandery and all the stuff to object to. It’s easy for liberal hip-hop heads to get on their high horses and describe conservative critics as racist, which is always fun.
But even though I love hip-hop music, I think it’s important to recognize that it’s just music, and the possibility of using it organize young black voters, create any political movement or do anything more than have a great track for a banging party is probably an illusion. Samhita Mukhopadhyay has a post at the Nation discussing the possibility of some sort of hip hop movement or the general political possibilities of hip hop.
How could a genre of music whose most prominent representatives celebrate violence and misogyny be a tool of progressive political organizing? This fantasy depends on a certain over-romatnicized, fictional version of “authetnic” hip hop in which in the South Bronx in the late 70s and early 80s, there was this pure art form uncorrupted by violence and misogyny that was about having a good time and/or criticizing Reagan budget cuts and the evil of the Cross Bronx Expressway and Robert Moses. In the white liberal/black activist narrative, things got really good with Public Enemy explicilty taking on the mantle of Malcolm X and Black Liberation. Then, NWA and Death Row records came in, white people became the majority of hip-hop listeners, and black artists became tools of the man and started an arms race to make the most violent, misogynistic records so as to attract white audiences. This narrative needs to be true for there to be any hope of Hip-Hop being poliitically viable, because as currently constructed, or even how the mainstream of the music has been developing for the last 15 years, there’s little hope that Young Jeezy talking about selling cocaine, Too $hort rapping “I busted a nut and killed a bitch” or that any rap music black people actually listen to can be leveraged to anything greater than an album.
So why do people always turn to hip-hop and expect it to be more than a style of music or a subculture? There are a few reasons. For one, it really was a form of music that emerged from a specific political and culture millieu. The South Bronx in the late 1970s was ground-zero for a certain type of paleoliberalism. You had malevolent public planners victimizing urban blacks, you had welfare cuts, you have rising fear and growing paranoia of the urban black population by outer borough ethnic whites. Add on the fact that there was a genuine cultural renaissance, some of which could be interpreted as political expression by marginalized urban blacks who had no other way to speak out. It was also inevitable that hip-hop would be interpreted this way. White liberals like those satirized on Stuff White People LIke have been looking to urban black communities as loci of “cool” and authenticity since at least the 1910s.
It’s too bad that this history of hip-hop is basically false. Early hip-hop was really party music, Grandmaster Flash was a DJ remixing Blondie tunes before he released “The Message.” There never really was an age when the “socially conscious” music was popular among blacks, not popular among whites and was the best selling hip-hop around (and even Public Enemy had clownster-in-chief Flava Flav to sweeten the message a bit).
But the dream of people who see hip-hop as a method for political organization, protest or for activism depend on an idealized world whereby all the “bad” hip hop with the violence, misogyny and materialism (50 Cent, TI, Nelly etc) is only liked by suburban white people and there’s a legion of frustrated, urban black youth who are flocking to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, Dead Prez and all the socially conscious music. Too bad that this isn’t true. From as far back as Jonathan Kozol’s writing about the Harlem family reciting Langston Hughes’ poetry, many just assume that urban blacks are a fount of artistic and cultural enlightenment. But as far as hip-hop goes, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. It turns out that most of the hip-hop that is celebrated as “complex” or “socially conscious” has an audience with similar demographics as Arcade Fire fans. So sure, I’d love Mos Def to get black youth politically active, but it’s no accident that he has his own entry on Stuff White People Like. It turns that black youth basically like the same rap as white youth — the really popular stuff. If you look video clips of Hot 97’s Summer Jam, you’ll see a bunch of black kids, all loving the mainstream hip hop that is supposedly the exclusive domain of clueless, white suburban teenagers.
I’m not trying to say that black youth are uniquely misogynistic, materialistic or violent. I really like mainstream hip-hop. Often forgotten in these discussions is music that isn’t mainstream, liked by black people, and is hardly politically galvanzing. Look at most local sub-genres. Crunk from Atlanta, Hyphy from the Bay Area and Houston’s Chopped and Screwed are all examples of hip-hop at its purest. These are basically autonomous sub-cultures whose music has developed, much like in the late 70s South Bronx, as a response to specific cultural and social conditions. This is the type of music that could be used to spur political action. But when you look at the content of your average Mac Dre song, you’ll hear about smoking a lot of weed, taking a bunch of ectascy and just generally having a good time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
To pretend that for Hip-Hop to be genuine, it all has to sound overbearing like Immortal Technique is to do great violence to those who genuinely love hip-hop.
Is any other genre expected to be the “genuine” voice of an oppressed people or to be leveraged as a uniquely effective tool for political organization? No, and it’s unfair for hip-hop to bear that burden. It’s just music. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but to pretend it’s something more than music that’s tight to listen to is to make a rather large mistake.
You might be interested in two articles written in the late 1950s by Seymour Krim on how whites perceive jazz. “Anti-Jazz” and “Ask for a White Cadillac” are in Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer, available on abebooks.com.
Regards to your folks,
Mark
Mark
March 7, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Is any other genre expected to be the “genuine” voice of an oppressed people or to be leveraged as a uniquely effective tool for political organization?
Well, folk music….especially labor songs…..and damn good at it too….
batojar
March 8, 2008 at 7:24 pm
“it’s just music, and the possibility of using it organize young black voters, create any political movement or do anything more than have a great track for a banging party is probably an illusion.”
I disagree strongly. I’m not sure you fully understand the power of hip hop. I live in the Bay too, in Oakland but I’m also a naturalized African immigrant. I have seen hip hop have a profoundly positive and negative effect in my home country of Kenya and throughout Africa. Anywhere there are black people now, there is a strong hip hop culture (not to mention in places like Sweden where I went to a show and Japan).
I think all that needs to be done is to have a rapper with moderate success, such as Common or Talib Kweli, really do something big or do something together.
I also seriously disagree with your take on Mos Def and the like and Black people’s affinity of them. Most black people have heard of them and even listen to their music. But to understand black culture is to understand that we also like to dance. When we go out its not necessarily to drink, but to dance and perhaps look fly for the other gender (I’m generalizing a bit, but its to underscore my point). So we can’t really play a lot of the “conscious” rap as we call it, in the club b/c its not really dancing music. But we will listen to it otherwise. Now my 14 year old sister, she likes T-pain, Chris Brown, and bubble gum radio rappers, but she knows who Mos Def is and listens to Talib (not through my influence either, I was gone when she got into Hip Hop). So my point it this, don’t be so glum, chum. Hip Hop can still be used yet. It also helps that Common and Talib have mastered the art of radio song and “concious” song. Kind of like actors who do “one for the studio and one indies”. Anyway, be interested in knowing what you think.
afropundit
March 8, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I think the comparison that Batojar made to Folk is apt.
While most folk music is about god, or the old country life, or what-have-you [[or, like most music ever, is about heartache]], folk music is still seen as overtly political & always will be. That’s because folk music hit mainstream listeners in a way that was inexorably tied to politics. Even while folk music seemed to be coming from poor white country folk, the Appalachians, eastern tennessee, etc… it was mostly being made famous by Jewish kids from NYC & Minneapolis, and was being listened to by liberal urban youths across the country.
Substitute “black” for “white,” “inner-city” for “Appalachian,” and “1980s” for “1960s,” & you have rap music.
Rap has hit in a way that folk never did, but that doesn’t make it any less intrinsically tied to the politics in its roots.
Now, most rap music is still never going to be about politics, and it shouldn’t be. As you so aptly pointed out, “It’s just music.”
But that doesn’t mean rap music isn’t political, & it really doesn’t mean that rap music can’t be the backbone of a political/cultural movement involving inner-city youth.
The idea that “it’s just music” ignores both the breadth of what music can be, and the awesome power that music has & has always had in lighting emotional fires in the masses & spurring them to action.
nebraskajohn
March 8, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Hm.
1) Look! Black people using hip hop as an organizing tool: http://www.hiphopcaucus.org/
As a news junkie, you might remember Reverend Lennox Yearwood getting jumped by the capitol police outside of a congressional hearing on the war. That was in his capacity as president of the Hip Hop Caucus.
2) The question of what type of hip hop people in general, and various groups in particular, like is rather complicated. Access in urban areas is extremely limited, and even with new availability through the internet, the radio is still the # 1 media for getting hip hop. In a lot of inner cities that means a few Clear Channel stations playing the same shit. People come to know it and like it, and much of it has great beats, but there’s still a cause and effect question. Reforms like the Low Power Community Radio Act (check out Free Press for more) would give community organizations and other groups the ability to open up FM stations in cities, greatly increasing the availability and diversity of music, and yes, making it easier to combine socially conscious music with community organizing.
3) George Bush doesn’t care about black people.
Sam L
March 9, 2008 at 4:38 am
Access in urban areas is extremely limited, and even with new availability through the internet, the radio is still the # 1 media for getting hip hop. In a lot of inner cities that means a few Clear Channel stations playing the same shit. People come to know it and like it, and much of it has great beats, but there’s still a cause and effect question.
See also:
“It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things.”
–stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com
Brendan
March 9, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I also like comfortable computer chairs.
That doesn’t really change the fact that the Hip Hop Caucus is using hip hop as an organizing tool, or that Black Agenda Report and Color of Change are players in the media reform coalitions that are pushing hard on the radio issue, as well as other media reform.
I think if you followed online Black activism; CoC’s organizing around Jena, Al Wynn’s loss to Donna Edwards, etc., you’d probably see that there is something of a revitalized movement forming, and that hip hop is playing a role, if right now a small one. Maybe, though, it’s all happening because black people want to have the opportunity to be just like me. Right?
Finally, denigrating multi-racial activism shows at best a serious fucking disregard for history, and at worst a desire to see the social justice movement isolated as a purely racial one. Jews and liberal whites gave their lives in the civil rights movement alongside African Americans. Just because I don’t suffer under injustice doesn’t mean I can’t fight to end it. I mean, until “opposing racism” is entry 200 on SWPL, then I’ll be sure to stop doing it, so as not to get mocked by ignorant fucking tools like yourself.
Sam L
March 9, 2008 at 8:57 pm
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