An Ethnography of the Cultural Politics of New Hip Hop Practices
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Goldsmiths Research Online GOLDSMITHS Research Online Thesis (PhD) Turner, Patrick Hip Hop Versus Rap: An Ethnography of the Cultural Politics of New Hip Hop Practices You may cite this version as: Turner, Patrick. 2010. Hip Hop Versus Rap: An Ethnography of the Cultural Politics of New Hip Hop Practices. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London. [Thesis]: Goldsmiths Research Online. Available at: http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/4745/ COPYRIGHT This is a thesis accepted for a Higher Degree of the University of London. It is an unpublished document and the copyright is held by the author. All persons consulting this thesis must read and abide by the Copyright Declaration below. 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This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. http://eprints-gro.goldsmiths.ac.uk Contact Goldsmiths Research Online at: [email protected] Title of the thesis: ‘Hip Hop versus Rap’: An Ethnography of the Cultural Politics of New Hip Hop Practices Author: Patrick Turner Institution: Goldsmiths College, University of London, Department of Sociology Submission for: Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 Declaration: I the candidate do declare that the PhD thesis here submitted for examination by The University of London to be wholly my own work. Signed: ....................................................................................... Patrick Turner 2 Abstract Using field observations, interview narratives, and lyrical analysis, this thesis argues that the increasing presence of hip hop arts in social spheres not popularly associated with hip hop such as community activism, school-based education and theatre is traceable to an intra cultural political struggle I term ‘hip hop versus rap’. Hip hop versus rap opposes the notion of a temporally prior, authentic hip hop culture to its degeneration into commercial and ‘anti-social’ rap music. As a redemptive discourse hip hop versus rap seeks to annex a socially responsible hip hop culture from its popular caricature by culturally exogenous interests. As part of a progressive grassroots, hip hop’s extension into new educational and artistic domains thus marks, at one level, a continuation of longstanding black diaspora struggles around race and cultural cooptation. Correspondingly, a hallmark of its pedagogic practices on the ground is a continuous reflexive commentary on the progressive uses to which hip hop can and should be put. These new hip hop practices, moreover, are philosophically and politically heterogeneous with respect to their sources, motives, and output. Hip hop versus rap can equally serve racial absolutism and mysticism, on the one hand, and, on the other, an avowed commitment to artistic and pedagogic innovation troubling fixed cultural and ethnic borders. Of equal significance, however, hip hop’s ‘communitarian’ ‘grassroots’ turn is also related to emerging forms of municipal and state sponsorship. In conditions of social risk and individualisation youth and educational services are seen as needing as far as possible to be fashioned around the cultural dispositions and preferences of their ‘at-risk’ users - or consumers. This means that another signal feature of hip hop versus rap – particularly as an educational project – is the way in which it marks a convergent point of vernacular cultural politics and histories and historically novel approaches by the state to the support, control and regulation of problem youth. 3 Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: FROM MUNICIPAL HIP HOP TO HIP HOP VERSUS RAP: .......................................................... 6 Thesis and Remit of the Study ...................................................................................................................... 6 Hip Hop and Youth(work) ......................................................................................................................... 9 Hip Hop Culture and the Municipal: Divergences and Convergences ....................................................... 17 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCHING NEW HIP HOP PRACTICES: ITERATIVE JOURNEY AND METHODOLOGY ................................... 23 Methodological Position of the Study ..................................................................................................... 23 Entering the Field of Hip Hop versus Rap ................................................................................................ 27 Listening, Observing and Reading New Hip Hop Practices ....................................................................... 32 Analysing Hip Hop versus Rap ................................................................................................................ 40 CHAPTER 3 HIP HOP VERSUS RAP: DISCURSIVE FORMATION AND COUNTER-PUBLIC SPHERE .......................................... 43 Hip Hop as Culture and Counter-Discourse ................................................................................................. 43 Positive Consciousness: Hip Hop as Edutainment ................................................................................... 46 Hip Hop, (Counter) Cultural Activism and the Pedagogic ......................................................................... 50 Hip Hop and (Afro) Consciousness .......................................................................................................... 56 Hip Hop Begins: Dislocation versus Centering ......................................................................................... 61 Questioning Authenticity: Tolerating Impurities ..................................................................................... 67 Pedagogy and Policy in the Counter-Public Sphere ................................................................................. 77 CHAPTER 4 TENDING THE CONSCIOUS HIP HOP FAMILY .................................................................................................. 80 Rap is a Modern Cultural Weapon .............................................................................................................. 80 Hip Hop Consciousness: Afrocentricity and Identity ................................................................................ 82 Topographies of the Hip Hop Family ....................................................................................................... 87 Hip Hop and Rap: ‘You Receive that Energy You Become That’ ............................................................... 97 Musical Technology and Consciousness ................................................................................................ 102 Hypodermic Rap versus Authentic Hip Hop .......................................................................................... 105 4 CHAPTER 5 FROM PERIPHRASIS TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: A CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY OF A HIP HOP POET AND TEACHER ...................................................................................................................................................... 108 Experience and Education ........................................................................................................................ 108 Cultural Capital and Social Amelioration ............................................................................................... 111 Orality, Hip Hop Aesthetics and Pedagogy ............................................................................................ 118 Hip Hop Pedagogy and Personal Development ..................................................................................... 126 Municipal Hip Hop and the Therapeutic ............................................................................................... 132 Immanent Critique versus Personal Development ................................................................................ 136 CHAPTER 6 SPITTIN’ LIFE-BARS: DOING GRIME PREVENTION ......................................................................................... 140 Grime Emceeing and Libidinal Energy ....................................................................................................... 140 Words v Flow ......................................................................................................................................