Race, Space and Place in Rap Music Author(S): Murray Forman Source: Popular Music, Vol
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'Represent': Race, Space and Place in Rap Music Author(s): Murray Forman Source: Popular Music, Vol. 19, No. 1, [Place Issue] (Jan., 2000), pp. 65-90 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853712 . Accessed: 16/10/2011 18:17 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Popular Music. http://www.jstor.org Popular Music (2000) Volume 19/1. Copyright (C)2000 Cambridge University Press. Printed in the United Kingdom 'Represent': race, space and place . * 1 ln rap muslc MURRAY FORMAN Say somethin'positive, well positiveain't whereI live I live aroundthe cornerfrom WestHell Twoblocks from South Shit and oncein a jail cell Tle sun nevershined on my side of thestreet, see? (Naughty By Nature, 'GhettoBastard (Everything's Gonna Be Alright)', 1991, Isba/Tommy Boy Records) If you'refrom Compton you knowit's the 'hoodwhere it's good (Compton'sMost Wanted, 'Raisedin Compton', 1991, Epic/Sony) Introduction Hip hop's capacity to circumvent the constraintsand limiting social conditions of young Afro-Americanand Latino youths has been examined and celebrated by culturalcritics and scholars in various contexts since its inception in the mid-1970s. For instance, the 8 February1999 issue of US magazine Time featureda cover photo of ex-Fugees and five-time Grammy award winner Lauryn Hill with the accompanyingheadline 'Hip-Hop Nation: After 20 Years- how it's changed Amer- ica'. Over the years, however, there has been little attention granted to the impli- cations of hip hop's spatial logics. Time's coverage is relatively standardin perceiv- ing the hip hop nation as a historical construct rather than a geo-cultural amalgamationof personages and practicesthat are spatially dispersed. TriciaRose (1994)arguably goes the furthest in introducinga spatial analysis when she details the ways that hip hop continuallydisplays a clever transformative creativity that is endlessly capable of altering the uses of technologies and space. Her specific references to hip hop culture and space stress the importance of the 'postindustrialcity' as the central urban influence, 'which provided the context for creative development among hip hop's earliest innovators, shaped their cultural terrain,access to space, materials,and education' (1994,p. 34). As this suggests, the particularitiesof urban space themselves are subjected to the deconstructive and reconstructivepractices of rap artists. Thus, when, in another context, Iain Cham- bers refers to rap as 'New York's "sound system" ... sonorial graffiti' with 'the black youth culture of Harlem and the Bronxtwisting technology into new cultural shape' (1985, p. 190), he opens the conceptual door onto corresponding strategies that give rise to the radical transformationof the sites where these cultures cohere and converge or the spaces that are reimagined and, importantly,remapped. Rap 65 66 Murray Forman artists thereforeemerge not only as aberrantusers of electronicand digital technol- ogies but also as alternativecartographers for what the Samoan-Americangroup Boo Yaa Tribe has referredto in an album title as 'a new funky nation'. Indeed, there is very little about today's society that is not, at some point, imbued with a spatial characterand this is no less true for the emergence and productionof spatial categoriesand identities in rap music and the hip hop cultures of which it is a centralcomponent. Rap music presents a case worthy of examination and provides a unique set of contexts for the analyses of public discourses per- taining to youth, race and space. Rap music is one of the main sources within popular culture of a sustained and in-depth examinationand analysis of the spatial partitioningof race and the diverse experiencesof being young and black in Amer- ica. It can be observed that space and race figure prominently as organising con- cepts implicated in the delineation of a vast range of fictional or actually existing social practiceswhich are representedin narrativeand lyrical form. In this paper, I seek to illuminate the central importanceof spatiality in the organising principles of value, meaning and practice within hip hop culture. My further intent is to explore the question of how the dynamics of space, place and race get taken up by rap artists as themes and topics and how they are located within a wider range of circulating social discourses. The prioritisationof spatial practices and spatial discourses that form a basis of hip hop culture offers a means through which to view both the ways that spaces and places are constructedand the kindsof spaces or places that are constructed. The paper traces the way in which hip hop's popularity spread from New York to other US cities, most notably Philadelphiaand Los Angeles but eventually more geographically marginal cities such as Seattle, and it discusses changes that have taken place in rap production,particularly the rise of artist-ownedlabels. Such developments encouraged the emergence of distinctive regional rap sounds and styles, as well as strong local allegiances and territorialrivalries, as the identities and careers of rap acts became more closely tied to the city and to its specific neighbourhoods ('hoods) and communities. The paper examines the effects of all this on the spatial discourse of rap. It points to a gradual shift within rap from a concern with broad, generalised spaces, to the representationof specific named cities and 'hoods (as illustratedby GanstaRap from the Californiancity of Compton which celebrates and glorifies Compton as well as the street warrior and gang rivalry) and the representationof smaller-scale,more narrowly defined and highly detailed places (as illustratedby rap from the North West city of Seattle which has a distinctively local flavour). Locating hip hop Describingthe early stages of rap music's emergencewithin the hip hop culture for an MTV 'Rap-umentary',Grandmaster Flash, one of the core DJs of the early scene, recalls the spatial distribution of sound systems and crews in metropolitanNew York: We had territories.It was like, Kool Herc had the west side. Bam had BronxRiver. DJ Break- out had way uptown past Gun Hill. Myself, my area was like 138thStreet, Cypress Avenue, up to Gun Hill, so that we all had our territoriesand we all had to respect each other. The documentary's images embellish Flash's commentary,displaying a computer 'Represent':race, space and placein rapmusic 67 generated map of the Bronx with coloured sections demarcatingeach DJ's territory as it is mentioned, graphicallyseparating the enclaves that comprise the main area of operations for the competing sound systems. This emphasis on territorialityinvolves more than just a geographicalarrange- ment of cultural workers and the regionalism of cultural practices.It illuminates a particular relationship to space or, more accurately, a relationship to particular places. As Flash conveys it, the sound systems that formed the backbone of the burgeoning hip hop scene were identified by their audiences and followers accord- ing to the overlapping influences of personae and turf. The territorieswere tenta- tively claimed through the ongoing cultural practices that occurred within their bounds and were reinforced by the circulation of those who recognised and accepted their perimeters. It is not at all insignificant that most of the dominant historicalnarratives pertaining to the emergence of hip hop (i.e., Hager 1984;Toop 1984)identify a transitionfrom gang-orientedaffiliations (formed around protection of turf) to music and break dance affiliations that maintained and, in some cases, intensified the importantstructuring systems of territoriality. Flash's referenceto the importance of 'respect' is not primarily addressing a respect for the skills or characterof his competitors (although, elsewhere (George 1993) he acknowledges this as well). Rather,his notion of respect is related to the geographies that he maps; it is based on the existence of circumscribeddomains of authorityand dominance that have been established among the various DJs. These geographies are inhabited and bestowed with value; they are understood as lived places and localised sites of significance, as well as being understood within the marketlogic that includes a product (the music in its various live or recordedforms) and a consumerbase (various audience formations).The proprietarydiscourse also implies, therefore,that even in its infancy hip hop cartographywas to some extent shaped by a refined capitalist logic and the existence of distinct market regions. Without sacrificing the basic geographic components of territory,possession and group identity that play such an importantrole among gang-orientedactivities, the representationof New York's urban spaces was substantially revised as hip hop developed. Clearly,however, the geographicalboundaries that Flash describesand which are visually mapped in the documentarywere never firm or immovable.They were culturalboundaries that were continually