University of Groningen The linguistic and lyrical development of 2pac in relation to regional hip-hop identity and conflict Gilbers, Steven Published in: The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59244-2_2 IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2017 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Gilbers, S. (2017). The linguistic and lyrical development of 2pac in relation to regional hip-hop identity and conflict. In The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience: Dissatisfaction and Dissent (pp. 13-36). 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Download date: 28-09-2021 2 The Linguistic and Lyrical Development of 2Pac in Relation to Regional Hip-hop Identity and Conflict Steven Gilbers Introduction From Public Enemy to Jay Z and from N.W.A to Kendrick Lamar, hip- hop has a rich history of artists using their work to “fight the power”, and few—if any—genres of music can be considered as socio-politically engaged as hip-hop. Following in the footsteps of black political activists such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Panthers as well as artists such as The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, rappers have always been the newscasters of “black America’s CNN” (Chuck D, as cited in Thorpe, 1999), voicing their dissent and their dissatisfaction with the treatment of African Americans and other minorities in society, often in aggressive, provocative tone. As a result of this, there are count- less instances of rap songs that criticize police brutality (e.g. N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police”, 1988), racial profiling (e.g. Jay Z’s “99 Problems”, 2003), the war on drugs, governments’ lack of effort to improve living S. Gilbers (*) University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands © The Author(s) 2018 13 A.S. Ross, D.J. Rivers (eds.), The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59244-2_2 14 S. Gilbers conditions in inner-city neighborhoods (e.g. 2Pac’s “Changes”, 1998), corporate avarice (e.g. Lupe Fiasco’s “Words I Never Said”, 2011), and any other issue that may negatively affect the (predominantly black) hip- hop community. Nevertheless, some of hip-hop’s most ferocious expres- sions of dissatisfaction have not targeted politicians, media outlets, or even police; they have been aimed at other rappers. The culture has been marked by conflict among rappers from its inception—which is unsur- prising considering hip-hop’s competitiveness and its battle culture—and rappers have squared off with each other on stage, on records, and unfor- tunately also violently on the streets. Historically speaking, one of the most prevalent motives for hip-hop conflicts has consistently been regional status. The reason for this is likely that the concepts of region and place are central to hip-hop culture and the identity of its aficionados, who express local pride by, for instance, referencing local customs and places in rap lyrics or by using their regional African American English (AAE) dialects to highlight linguistic dissimi- larities with other regional hip-hop subcultures (Hess, 2009; Morgan, 2001). Regional hip-hop tensions reached their peak after hip-hop had spread from New York to California in the mid-1980s and a strong desire emerged among the new West Coast hip-hop community to challenge New York’s regional hip-hop hegemony. Consequently, when the rappers 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G.—representing the West Coast and the East Coast respectively—became embroiled in a personal conflict in 1994, their feud was quickly absorbed into a national conflict which was then further escalated: the infamous 1990s East Coast-West Coast hip- hop war (Forman, 2002). During this conflict, 2Pac came to be the pri- mary avatar of West Coast hip-hop while expressing his grievances with East Coast hip-hop (Hess, 2009). Considering hip-hop’s fundamental concept of (regional) authenticity (Cutler, 2007), this is quite a striking accomplishment, as 2Pac—ironically enough—was born in New York and did not move to California until he was 17 years old. This chapter is concerned with examining the sociolinguistic dimen- sion of dissatisfaction and dissent as expressed in regional hip-hop feuds. It does so by exploring from a lyrical as well as a sociolinguistic perspec- tive how 2Pac communicated his allegiance to West Coast hip-hop dur- ing the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop war and simultaneously distanced The Linguistic and Lyrical Development of 2Pac in Relation… 15 himself from his East Coast roots. The chapter’s first part addresses the importance of region and place to hip-hop culture and the hip-hop com- munity’s sense of identity, paying special attention to the role language use plays in this respect. This section is followed by an overview of how different regional hip-hop scenes developed throughout the United States over time as well as a discussion of different types of hip-hop conflicts. This section focuses on hip-hop battles waged over regional status and pays special attention to the infamous East Coast-West Coast hip-hop war of the 1990s and the role that 2Pac played during this conflict. Next, the selection of 2Pac as a case study subject is outlined, followed by an analysis of regional affiliation in 2Pac’s rap lyrics, comparing his lyrics from before and during the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop war. Finally, the results of a diachronic study on 2Pac’s acquisition of West Coast AAE as a second dialect (Gilbers, 2015) will be discussed and related to the aforementioned lyrical analysis. It is concluded that 2Pac, who was shown to have made a conscious effort to sound like a “native speaker” of West Coast AAE during the conflict, communicated the message that he was the quintessential West Coast hip-hop artist through his belligerent anti- East Coast lyrics, but manipulated his accent to lend his message the authenticity and credibility required for it to be accepted by the West Coast hip-hop community. Regional Hip-hop Identity in Relation to Language Use One of the core characteristics of hip-hop culture is its focus on region and place, and the fact that regionality is central to hip-hop community members’ identities (Forman, 2002; Hess, 2009; Morgan, 2001). Hess (2009, p. viii) points out that hip-hop community members often feel a great sense of local pride and that this sense of pride causes hip-hop com- munity members to: … name-check the regions, cities, boroughs, streets, and neighborhoods that they call home (…) whether the broad regions of East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and Dirty South [Southern hip-hop], or any one of New York City’s five boroughs, or even a specific neighborhood. (p. viii) 16 S. Gilbers By doing so, they invoke a social experience that is shared with others from those places, linking one to the respective region’s traditions. However, following hip-hop’s central concept of authenticity—“keeping it real”— pretending to be from somewhere else than you really are is generally frowned upon and can lead to a loss of reputation or even ostracization (Cutler, 2007; Hess, 2009; Morgan, 2001; Rickford & Rickford, 2000). Morgan (2001) states that next to referencing local places and land- marks, one of the most important means of expressing regional identity and affiliation is through usage of one’s regional AAE variety, arguing that “in [hip-hop] culture, language is not simply a means of communi- cation (…) but is viewed as a series of choices that represent beliefs and have consequences” (p. 190). As Morgan states, when hip-hop was exported across the country during the 1980s, this led to “new speech community formations and a drive to distinguish and articulate linguis- tic characteristics to represent major cities and regions on the East and West Coasts” (p. 188) as well as the emergence of a “locally marked lexi- con” (p. 188). Despite the fact that the differences between regional dia- lects of AAE are very subtle—so much so in fact that it was long erroneously held by sociolinguists that AAE was spoken in a uniform manner across the United States (e.g. Baugh, 1983; Labov, 1972; Smitherman, 1977), the so-called supraregional myth (Wolfram, 2007) or heterogeneity myth (Wolfram & Kohn, 2015)—hip-hop community members are aware of phonological differences between regional dialects of AAE in particular. Moreover, they make use of their regional phono- logical features to distinguish regional differences, especially with regard to vowel duration, which is relatively short in East Coast AAE and rela- tively long in West Coast AAE (Cutler, 2007; Gilbers, 2015; Morgan, 1993, 1998, 2001).