Hip Hop Matters

HIP HOP MATTERS HIP HOP MATTERS Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement S. Craig Watkins Beacon Press, Boston Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. © 2005 by S. Craig Watkins All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992. Text design by Patricia Duque Campos Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig) Hip hop matters : politics, pop culture, and the struggle for the soul of a movement / S. Craig Watkins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8070-0986-5 (pbk. : acid-free paper) 1. Rap (Music)—History and criticism. 2. Hip-hop. I. Title. ML3531.W38 2005 782.421649—dc22 2004024187 FOR ANGELA HALL WATKINS, MY WIFE AND BEST FRIEND CONTENTS PROLOGUE Hip Hop Matters 1 INTRODUCTION Back in the Day 9 PART ONE Pop Culture and the Struggle for Hip Hop CHAPTER ONE Remixing American Pop 33 CHAPTER TWO A Great Year in Hip Hop 55 CHAPTER THREE Fear of a White Planet 85 CHAPTER FOUR The Digital Underground 111 PART TWO Politics and the Struggle for Hip Hop CHAPTER FIVE Move the Crowd 143 CHAPTER SIX Young Voices in the Hood 163 CHAPTER SEVEN “Our Future...Right Here, Right Now!” 187 CHAPTER EIGHT “We Love Hip Hop, But Does Hip Hop Love Us?” 207 CHAPTER NINE Artificial Intelligence? 229 EPILOGUE Bigger Than Hip Hop 249 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 257 NOTES 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 279 INDEX 283 PROLOGUE Hip Hop Matters Stakes is high. —DE LA SOUL Throughout its career hip hop has produced its share of unusual moments, walking the fine line between the theater of the absurd and the genuinely profound. One such moment occurred on the night of October 29, 2003, when Minister Louis Farrakhan sat down to con- duct an interview with well-known rapper Ja Rule. Like most celebrity interviews this one was staged by the rapper’s record label, Murder Inc., to promote a forthcoming project, his album Blood in My Eye. But there was also a more sobering reality that prompted Ja’s sit-down with the Minister. Significantly, the event was arranged because there was genuine fear that the already violent feud between Ja Rule and his chief nemesis, superstar rapper 50 Cent, was spiraling toward another hip-hop tragedy. The elements of their unfolding drama, two talented MCs trapped in a potentially deadly game of ghetto one-upmanship, was painfully familiar to hip hop. Ja Rule had made a name and niche for himself by combining a rugged hip-hop exterior with less edgy R&B-styled crossover hit sin- gles that appealed to an all but forgotten market in hip hop’s soaring economy—girls and young women. The “sensitive thug” moniker he earned was an oxymoron in the coarse world of corporate rap music. But while the kinder and gentler thug-life persona Ja Rule concocted had increased his record sales, it also opened him up to charges that he was not “street” enough. That is exactly what happened when 50 Cent burst on the scene in 2003, unleashing a torrent of taunts that 1 PROLOGUE questioned Ja Rule’s masculinity and place in hip hop. Though his record label, Interscope Records, packaged him as a new style pop figure 50’s image harkened back to a darker and more cynical era in hip hop, a period when ruthless gangstas defined the movement’s pop persona and made its move on the nation’s pop music charts. Many blamed the celebration of all things gangsta for the senseless murders of two of hip hop’s most talented figures, 2Pac (Tupac Shakur) and the Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace). The marketing of 50 Cent came straight from the script that guided 2Pac’s meteoric rise and tragic fall. While his music was a stirring mix of party anthems, hypercapi- talism, gangsta swagger, and pop posturing, it was really the selling of 50’s background that upped the ante. His life as a petty drug dealer, the death of his crack-addicted mother, and his miraculous survival of nine bullets formed a classic ghetto tale that put him on the pop map. That biography earned him the most important credential in corporate hip hop, street credibility. Hip hop’s claim to fame is the claim of authenticity in its undaunted portrayals of ghetto reality. Cloaked in the armor of authenticity 50 boasted that his rhymes about ghetto life, struggle, and survival were real and not commer- cially premeditated. Equally important, the bid for street credibility is also part of the marketing and selling of hip hop, how the movement’s entrepre- neurial elite manage to generate that all-important buzz and hip presence in a cluttered and competitive pop culture economy. It was, in essence, hip hop’s own Faustian bargain. In exchange for global celebrity, pop prestige, and cultural influence hip hop’s top perform- ers had to immerse themselves into a world of urban villainy that by the new millennium had lost sight of the line between pop life and real life. It was, without question, one of the cruelest ironies in the rise and transformation of hip hop: the fact that its livelihood—indeed its very survival as a pop culture juggernaut—rested almost entirely on its ability to sell black death. The embrace of guns, gangsterism, and 2 PROLOGUE ghetto authenticity brought an aura of celebrity and glamour to the grim yet fabulously hyped portraits of ghetto life. From the gangsta- inflected anthems of the nineties to the thugged-out caricatures of the new millennium, hip hop or, more precisely, corporate hip hop, played its role with chilling precision. But there was nothing glam- orous about the problems that characterized America’s decades-old urban crisis. Both Ja and 50 had experienced the harsh realities of ghetto poverty. Like so many in rap music’s star-studded world, every decision they made—from movie appearances to product endorse- ments—was a calculated maneuver designed to insure they never re- turned to the ghettoscapes valorized in their lyrics, music videos, and carefully orchestrated image. The meeting between Ja and the Minister was charged with mean- ing and added yet another intriguing dimension to hip hop’s unbe- lievable career. The fact that it was broadcast by MTV, BET, and on Clear Channel–owned urban radio stations across the nation high- lighted hip hop’s aura and relevance in the pop media spotlight. For most of its public life hip hop has poignantly reflected the steadily shifting currents in American social, political, and pop cultural life. So much of what hip hop adored and abhorred about itself surfaced during the interview. Over the years the financial stakes in hip hop had grown to once unimaginable heights. But the stakes that brought Ja and the Minister together were considerably higher than the num- ber of radio spins or units sold an artist could count. In the end, the meeting was not only about the life and potential death of two artists, it was, quite simply about the rise and demise of hip hop. Ja confessed to Farrakhan that he responded to 50’s lyrical attacks because hip hop’s swelling legion of fans and code of the streets ethos insisted that he do so or run the risk of appearing soft, the ultimate slur in the hard-edged world fashioned by the chieftains of corporate rap. But there was something in Ja’s bright eyes, unusually tamed grin, and equally apologetic and apocalyptic demeanor that hinted even he knew a line had been crossed in the vitriolic rhymes that pul- sated throughout his latest album. By reaching out to Farrakhan, Ja 3 PROLOGUE and his label, Murder Inc., were acknowledging what many of hip hop’s most devoted followers had maintained for years: Something had been lost in hip hop’s journey from the feisty subcultures of ghetto America to the lavish corridors of media conglomeration. During the broadcast Ja Rule told Farrakhan, “They [the hip hop audience] want you to stay ‘hood.’” But the pressure to stay hood had severe costs; namely, the devotion to the thug life that ran counter to hip hop’s claim that it represents the voices and experiences of a gen- eration of marginal youths. It was yet another indication of how market forces rather than commitment to some essential truth drove corporate hip hop. Talking to both Ja and the wider hip-hop world, Farrakhan, playing the role of ghetto oracle with his usual flair and intensity, got real, “See, if you let the public dictate and you continue to follow that, the end result will be death, destruction.” That Far- rakhan was called in to try to mediate the potentially calamitous clash between Ja and 50 revealed the telling links between America’s racial and political past and a pop culture phenomenon that, at its core, has always embodied the nation’s historic racial struggle. Drawing a connection between his own past with the Nation of Islam, the 1960s struggle for civil rights, and the state of hip hop, Far- rakhan explained, “When Malcolm [X] went down, Elijah Mo- hammed was the one that they really wanted so they killed two birds with one stone and darn near destroyed the nation.” Farrakhan knew firsthand how violent speech, racial infighting, jealousy, and bitter- ness could lead to true tragedy and real bloodshed.

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