Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Petr Homolka

Black or White: Commercial Rap Music and Authenticity Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature

1 Table of Contents

Introduction 4

1. THE BIRTH OF HIP-HOP

Got No Money to Move Out, I Guess I Got No Choice: The Bronx Becomes Ghetto 7

Keep My Hand on the Gun, „cause They Got Me on the Run: Gangs Take Over 11

DJ Kool Herc and the Rise of Graffiti and Emceeing 14

B-boys, Are You Ready? B-girls, Are You Ready? The Art of B-boying 19

The Elements Are United: Afrika Bambaataa and the Emergence of Hip-Hop 21

2. HIP-HOP GOES COMMERCIAL

Graffiti‟s Flirting with Dead Presidents 25

Hip-Hip-Hop, You Don‟t Stop: Hip-Hop Becomes Rap 27

I'm D.M.C. in the Place to Be, I Go to St. John's University: Run-DMC and the Fall of Old School 32

Run-DMC: The Pioneers of Commercial Rap 38

3. SOUNDSCAN AND WHITE APPROPRIATION

Keep It Real 41

The Introduction of SoundScan 45

Cultural Tourism 49

Am I Black Enough For You? 53

Public Denunciation of Hip-Hop 57

2 Mass-Media Consolidation 58

4. HIP-HOP IS NOT DEAD ... YET. SICK

Thugs, Pimps, and Hoes 63

Corporate Rap and Social Inequality 66

Critical Voices among Hip-Hop Artists 70

Commercial Artists‟ Conscious Moments 73

Giving Back to Communities 75

The Ghetto Is Listening 78

Hip-Hop Lacks Diversity 81

Conclusion 86

English Summary 90

Resumé v češtině 91

Works Cited 93

3 Introduction

Hip-hop is dead. We have heard this radical statement plenty of times before; jazz died, so did rock and roll, disco, and I may continue on and on. As it is not unusual to run into many a youth proudly sporting a “Punk‟s not dead!” T-shirt, we are assured that it is a clear counter-reaction to a death pronouncement too. In the times when the

Kundera‟s so-called imagologists took over, these simplifying slogans are just sufficient for our short attention span and, for that matter, for being printed on our T-shirts. These claims pronouncing various cultural expressions dead are, however, at times based on weighty arguments and can be more than just a trendy catch phrase produced by advertising agencies.

If we tune in to MTV, BET or any other music television in the United States, the bulk of what we see are rap music videos, as the youth culture conquered the mainstream production. Unfortunately, the images do not change. Scantily dressed black women shake their booties to allure macho black men, who flaunt their expensive cars and jewelry, bragging about their hustling and gangster successes to entertain white middle-class kids who sit in front of the screen chewing on chicken nuggets and chasing it down with Coke. The once vital black expressive culture has turned into a caricature of itself in the mainstream media. Being exposed to current rap music circulating the airwaves, it is rather relevant to ask along with Rachel E. Sullivan: “It‟s got a nice beat, but what about the message?” (Sullivan 605). Thus, if we focus on the ever-repeating monotonous content, we might arrive at the conclusion which I used at the very beginning. Hip-hop is dead.

As I will point out in this work, voices announcing its death have appeared repeatedly since it embarked on its long and complicated relationship with the commercial world. Predominantly, the voices came from inside the hip-hop community.

4 As Craig S. Watkins claims, “the most robust debates about hip hop have always taken place within the movement” because hip-hop has always been its own “most potent critic and courageous champion” (Watkins 5). The voices grew stronger as the 1990s unfolded, when it became clear that young white consumers emerged as a prime segment that rap industry targeted. Hip-hop had narrowed to rap music, or emceeing, as the other elements which hip-hop culture consisted of showed little commercial viability. Since the early 1990s, an apparent trend commenced that saw radio programmers and corporate industry executives promoting artists and acts exploiting the existing stereotypes of African-Americans in the United States. However, I will first address the developments in hip-hop culture that preceded the current era of corporate rap music, for to pronounce a cultural form dead means that it once used to be alive and kicking.

I devote the first part of my thesis to the emergence, early history, and commercialization of the youth culture. The purpose of this section is to attempt to understand what established and contributed to the emergence of hip-hop culture and what constituted the concept of authenticity that grew in significance in the era of commercial hip-hop. Hip-hop emerged from the rubble of the South Bronx, as its mostly African-American and Puerto Rican residents succeeded in transforming criminality and violence ruling on the destitute piece of land into an outburst of creativity. Hip-hop became a vehicle for expressing the highs and lows of the life in the ghetto as well as a source of entertainment for the destitute communities. Afrika

Bambaataa was the father of the new culture as he gave it a name and defined the four elements that constituted hip-hop. As most of the death pronouncements emphasized that the form has strayed too far from its roots and have become alienated from itself, the crucial concept I examine in the thesis is thus authenticity in hip-hop. Its emergence

5 and the debates concerning authenticity paralleled the culture‟s undergoing a transition from a local movement to a mainstream industry, which found its most potent symbol in the career of Run-DMC.

In the second part of my work, I will focus on the increasing presence and influence on the form of the representatives of the dominant culture: white people.

Based on the well-known history of African-American cultural expressions that had been appropriated by white mainstream culture, the fears of white appropriation in hip- hop were on the rise. This tension affected the realm of hip-hop authenticity as the emphasis began to be laid on the imperative to “keep it real”. I will discuss the development of this aspect of authenticity in the movement and its role in further development of rap music, which found itself under greater control of corporate industry primarily preoccupied with attending to the tastes of well-off white hip-hop fans who proved to love hip-hop. The white fascination with hip-hop is also a subject of my analysis, whereby I will try to account for this phenomenon and put it into historical context of white fascination with black cultural expression in general.

All in all, the principal focus of my work is to analyze the effects commercialization and white mainstream culture had on the black expressive culture with respect to its cultural ethos and how these developments and fears of white appropriation reflected in the struggles for authenticity in hip-hop. Moreover, I will analyze the different factors that framed the growing tensions within the movement between culture and commerce and lead to rap music‟s reduction to the genre perpetuating clichés and black stereotypes, which saw not only many from outside the movement severely criticise the music and blame it for sanctioning many social ills but, above all, from within maintain that hip-hop is dead.

6 1. THE BIRTH OF HIP-HOP

Got No Money to Move Out, I Guess I Got No Choice1: The Bronx

Becomes Ghetto

If we want to explore the effect commercialization had on hip-hop culture and its

authenticity so that we can ponder the claim pronouncing hip-hop dead, we should first

take a look at the movement‟s coming to life and taking its first breath. This will help us

shed some light on what has constituted hip-hop culture from its very beginnings and

laid the foundations of the much-debated concept of authenticity. Even though hardly

ever listed as such in the movement‟s official accounts (and rather unsurprisingly so),

Robert Moses is the man whom I consider one of the founding fathers of hip-hop. Albeit

his contribution was by all means unintentional and had nothing to do with any of the

hip-hop‟s four elements as „the Godfather‟ Afrika Bambaataa established them, Mr.

Moses laid the foundations of the soon-to-become worldwide phenomenon by radically

altering the face of New York City. His actions led to impoverishment and destruction

of whole communities. However, it was in these destitute neighborhoods that a creative

spark ignited a flame of a new culture.

It all began with a master plan designed by the Regional Plan Association

(RPA), an independent regional planning organization operating in the New York-New

Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan area (“Regions”). Only seven years after its foundation

in 1922, its First Plan would initiate changes vastly exceeding the realm of

transportation network. Its effects would define the shape of the city, life‟s of millions

of its inhabitants, and, subsequently, cultural history of the United States at large in the

years to come. The name of the most significant construction that for some represented

a road to wealth, and a highway to hell for others, was the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

1 Lyrics from “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

7 Building such a road was a monumental and extremely complicated undertaking.

The path of the expressway lay across 113 streets, avenues, and boulevards.

Furthermore, it had to cross hundreds of sewers and water and utility mains, one subway line and three railroads, five elevated rapid transit lines, and seven other expressways or parkways (“Cross Bronx Expressway”). However, beyond the construction difficulties lay those immediately affecting communities living in the neighborhood.

The road cut the Bronx in two and as some 60,000 local residents stood in the way; they were forced to move out. Both the social and physical destruction of the neighborhood that followed is what Marshall Berman, American Marxist Humanist, writer, and philosopher calls “urbicide”:

In the South Bronx alone, more than 300,000 people fled in the 1970s as their

homes were being destroyed. Thousands more in Manhattan and in Brooklyn

went through the same ordeal. These stricken people belong to one of the

largest shadow communities in the world, victims of a great crime without a

name. Let us give it a name now: urbicide, the murder of a city (Berman).

The objective behind this RPA plan seems to be a transformation of Manhattan into a center of wealth with a direct connection to the suburbs. The outer boroughs were to serve as an ideal space through which the arteries would lead. As mentioned above by

Marshall Berman, the population of Manhattan‟s ghettoes that did not fit in the conceived future for the borough was also on the decline. Exercising rights of clearance in relation to the urban renewal, Moses uprooted poor African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish families. These communities, not having enough resources for better housing, had no other choice but to wind up in places like east Brooklyn and the South

Bronx, where affordable public housing was booming.

8 Endorsing Le Corbusier‟s concept of “tower-in-the-park”, Robert Moses built vast housing complexes such as Bronx River Houses, Millbrook Houses, and Patterson

Houses. Each of these large houses comprised more than a thousand units, with the latter having more than 1,700. This approach was supposed to cure many ills of urban living, offering affordable housing for the displaced poor as well as dealing with open space in the urban grid. Yet, in reality, the housing detached its residents from the surrounding environment, as the parks were often desolate and became a hotbed of crime (Chang 11-12).

Nonetheless, the Bronx had not always seemed it would one day be referred to as the worst slum in the United States. In the prewar years, the Bronx was a safe haven for upwardly mobile first- and second-generation immigrant families of working- and middle-class status. Economically, the borough had thrived, as businesses from small printing shops to clothing factories and wholesale trade businesses provided plenty of job opportunities for the Bronx‟s residents. After the Second World War, though, the basis of New York City economy was beginning to shift in favor of information technology. The printing, garment, and manufacturing industries were on the decline and so was the economy of industrialized neighborhoods of the Bronx (Price 6).

Thence, worsening economic situation and the construction explosion initiated by Robert Moses resulted in the commencement of the so-called “white flight”. By the end of the 1960‟s, half of the whites were gone from the South Bronx. The majority of them moved northward to the Westchester County or the northeastern reaches of Bronx

County. They were lured by the promise of ownership in one of the new apartments in

Moses‟ Co-op City. Co-op City is one of the largest cooperative housing developments in the world, located in the northeast corner of the Bronx. It comprises approximately 35 high rise buildings with more than 15,000 residential units. Open in 1968, Co-op City

9 welcomed not only whites, but many working- and middle-class people of all descents,

while economically insecure and impoverished families, for the most part black and

Latino, were moving into the central and lower Bronx (ibid. 6-7).

Not only was safety worsening in the Bronx, the property value also steeply

diminished. Most of the apartment buildings passed into the hands of slumlords, at

which point the destruction of this New York City‟s borough was on the brink of

materializing. The Bronx‟s fall appeared to be inevitable. Rent control, in effect in the

State of New York including the Big Apple since 1943, had a demotivating effect on

landlords to take care of their property and to improve housing standards. Quite the

contrary, they figured out that destruction and money from insurance would bring them

more profit; so many of them decided to set out on a radical path. They hired rent-a-

thugs to set the buildings ablaze, from which profited all, the landlords, the criminals, as

well as insurance companies. Arson was also set by welfare recipients who knew that

this posed the only opportunity to get onto a priority list for more dignified housing. As

Jill Jonnes points out in his study of the Bronx, signs “in the welfare centers stated very

clearly in Spanish and English, THE ONLY WAY TO GET HOUSING PRIORITY IS

IF YOU ARE BURNED OUT BY A FIRE”2 (Jonnes 232).

The burning down of the Bronx began in 1969 and lasted for a couple of years,

with an annual record of over 12,000 fires. In total, more than 5,000 apartment buildings

with 100,000 units of housing were destroyed (ibid.). South Bronx, which had been a

name for a tiny corner of Mott Haven, became a synonym of poverty, abandonment,

crime and drugs. Any other neighborhood in the lower and the middle Bronx struck by

these social ills became referred to as the South Bronx. Jonnes claims that by 1980, the

boundaries of the neighborhood became redefined by the city of New York and the

2 Capitalization is taken from the original source. This is also the case in all further instances of capitalized words and text.

10 media “to include everything south of Fordham Road, […]” (ibid. 8). It is only obvious

in such an environment that the number of job opportunities substantially dropped, so

did average per capita income, while unemployment rate was soaring to unprecedented

heights.

Keep My Hand on the Gun, ‘cause They Got Me on the Run3: Gangs

Take Over

Hip-hop‟s creative spark emerged from the ashes of the Bronx. Destitution,

hopelessness, and no prospects for better future changed the neighborhood into a feared

place where crime was rampant and youth gangs ruled the streets. It seemed unthinkable

that such a destructive environment could spawn the vibrant cultural form hip-hop has

become. And these very origins left an indelible imprint on hip-hop, its discourse, and

modes of expression. Crime and violence were components inseparable from the

environment which hip-hop evolved from.

When the aforementioned Afro-American, Afro-Carribean, and Latino families

moved into formerly Jewish, Irish, and Italian neighborhoods, skirmishes and open

fights involving rocks, bottles, bats, or even fire bombs became commonplace between

the black and brown youths and the resident white youth gangs. First out of necessity,

the newcomers formed into organized groups, to be capable of self-defense and

subsequently to attain power and respect. Between 1968 and 1973, in the peak days of

gang activity, the Bronx territory was literally divided into turfs, which the gangs fought

over and served them as posts. They all had their distinctive colors, clothing style, and

emblems (Cowan).

3 Lyrics from “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

11 Different groups had their own kinds of initiation. Rather in accordance with their day-to-day business, the initiations involved violent activities that ended in death at times. For example, to become a member of the Javelins, the gang residing north of the Cross-Bronx Expressway between Grand Concourse and Jerome Avenue, one had to go through the Apache line. A successful initiation meant touching a genie graffitied on the wall, but, as Jeff Chang illustrates: “Two rows of twenty guys stood in the way. If a kid could make it past the swinging fists and boots and chains and baseball bats to touch the genie, they could don the Javelins‟ colors [...]” (Chang 42). Other initiations often included Russian roulette, such as with one of the most numerous gangs in the Bronx, the Savage Skulls (“Hip Hop Facts”).

After the Ghetto Brothers formed in the Hunt‟s Point section of the South Bronx, many other gangs sprung up in the vicinity, such as the Roman Kings, the Savage

Nomads, and the Seven Immortals. Not much later, one of the most powerful gangs in the borough, the Black Spades emerged from a small band previously called the Savage

Seven. Along the Third Avenue operated the Chingalings, the Savage Nomads, and the

Black Falcons. Below Crotona Park were the turfs of the Turbans, the Peacemakers, the

Mongols, the Dirty Dozens, the above-mentioned Ghetto Brothers, the Roman Kings, and the Seven Immortals. The gangs preyed on the weak and soon became to be viewed as the real law on the streets; some even gave them credit for ridding the streets of drug- addicts and pushers (ibid. 42-43). If one wanted to live in relative safety and looked for protection, joining a gang was a necessity. Living in a particular neighborhood entailed belonging to a certain gang‟s turf. Gang affiliation was also essential in that it offered social status and respect. The gang era, i.e. the pre-hip-hop period in the Bronx, indicated that local identities ruled the environment from which hip-hop culture evolved.

12 Probably the most elaborate illustration of gang life in the Bronx is a classic documentary Flyin‟ Cut Sleeves by Rita Fecher and Henry Chalfant. Fecher, along with her husband Manny Dominguez, were both teachers at the Dwyer Junior high school, one of the centers of gang activity in the neighborhood. They became involved with gangbangers after Mrs. Fecher attempted to interfere with the Ghetto Brothers‟ actions directed at her students. Having become fascinated by their life stories, she began documenting interviews with them (ibid. 53). The film shows a picture of broken homes and families destroyed by drugs and violence, yet it goes way beyond depicting the gang members as aimless criminals. Rather, they come across as people politically conscious and deeply concerned about improving their lives and the lives of their communities.

In particular, the leader and the vice-president of the Ghetto Brothers, Carlos

Suarez and Benjamin Melendez, for whom the teachers became advocates, had their rhetoric influenced by political groups such as Young Lords Party, which promoted

Puerto Rican independence. The Ghetto Brothers advanced peace and even organized emergency summit of gang leaders when the violence in the Bronx escalated in 1971.

Yet, their efforts were of little avail. When their Peace Counselor Cornell Benjamin, aka

Black Benjie (a reference to his African-American descent) came to mediate between rival gangs, he was ruthlessly beaten to death. This put the neighborhood into chaos

(Price 9).

However, the Ghetto Brothers, despite the tragedy, resisted the temptation to retaliate and insisted on a peaceful solution. Hence, on December 8, 1971, the gangs‟ presidents, vice presidents, and warlords gathered in the Bronx Boys club and signed a truce consisting of four short articles and the concluding statement read “PEACE

BETWEEN ALL GANGS AND A POWERFUL UNITY” (Chang 61). After the treaty

13 was signed, gangs were not done with, but their hierarchies gradually dissipated and the gangs fragmented, as one generation of leaders had grown up and police and vigilante groups were thoroughly chasing out gang members from the streets (ibid.).

DJ Kool Herc and the Rise of Graffiti and Emceeing

Nevertheless, in the heyday of gangs‟ operations, one could find more than just rubble, ash, blood, and desire to escape. Even this burial ground of human potential witnessed some artistic aspirations. The Melendez brothers of the Ghetto Brothers were ardent fans of rock and roll bands such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and doo-wop, and set up their own band. They became popular acts at block parties and their performances made them local celebrities. They even recorded a studio eight-song album, Ghetto Brothers Power Fuerza. Their music was a precursor of the birth of hip- hop, yet rather more in general terms as a proof of existence of some kind of cultural expression in the South Bronx than a similarity in style.

The genre they produced could be best described as Latin rock. As Jeff Chang argues, unlike many Bronx Puerto Ricans, like Willie Colon, who tried to draw on

Cuban roots music and wrote anthems for the street kids, the Ghetto Brothers‟ “post- bugalú music seemed closer to the teen-themed Latin pop of California than the salsa of the Bronx, […]” (ibid. 65). Yet, ghetto was soon to be swept by hip-hop. With a touch of irony, I called Robert Moses hip-hop‟s founding father as he literally prepared the ground for the hip-hop culture, yet Clive Campbell is regarded the true founding father of the movement. He is better known as DJ Kool Herc.

What later became known as hip-hop music was significantly influenced by developments in Jamaica. As the 1960s unfolded, blasting sound systems replaced live bands, making music and dance parties available even to the poor. And it was this

14 technology that stood at the beginning of the new culture. The culture of sound systems especially thrived due to technical skills and entrepreneurial prowess of early soundmen

Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd. Between these two soundmen, as well as in the sound system culture in general, there was a fiercely competitive spirit. And as the number of sound systems went higher, the urge to outplay rivals was stronger. The operators longed to get ahead by upgrading their equipment and also by making effort to acquire exclusive records. In his analysis of dancehall culture in Jamaica, Norman C. Stolzoff claims that soundmen would scratch off the name of the artist and title of the song to protect their specials (Stolzoff 51). He adds that rival sounds would even “send out scouts to spy on their competitors in order to find out the names of certain tunes” (ibid.).

The competitiveness among the sound operators and selectors soon found its parallel in rivalries of DJs and their crews in hip-hop.

Inspired by the sound system culture in Jamaica, Clive Campbell pioneered the music in the Bronx. He was born in Jamaica, where he spent his early childhood with his five younger siblings in a housing project in Trenchtown. The very same area, also known as the government yard, produced reggae icons Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and

Alton Ellis. There he noticed the magnetic power of sound systems for the first time.

His mother moved to New York in the mid-sixties, sending money back home to her large family. Soon, the rest of the family followed. The twelve-year old Clive found himself in the United States in 1967. Even though he had been too young to attend the dance parties in his homeland, peeking through fences and listening to the mighty sounds determined his career in the years to come (Marshall 2-3).

In New York City, Campbell‟s father sponsored a local R&B group and therefore purchased a PA system and an amplifier. Clive learned how to operate the system, the right way to wire it, and his sonic power went unmatched in no time. He

15 made his name on one night in August 1973, as his sister organized a back-to-school fund-raiser in a community center on Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx and had him deejay the party. The experience from Jamaica and his parents‟ love for collecting reggae, jazz, gospel, and country records provided Clive with the sense of expecting what the audience demands and extraordinary knowledge of plethora of tunes. He had a powerful system, exclusive collection of records, and a distinctive way of playing them.

On that night in August Clive Campbell transformed himself into DJ Kool Herc (ibid.).

In the Jamaica of his childhood, it was popular to mix new local styles (the term reggae had not yet been coined), developing from rocksteady and absorbing elements of foreign styles, with American soul and R&B songs. However, Herc was aware that the

Bronx crowd had slightly different preferences. Just as he had to adopt a different accent and clothing style to fit in the new environment, he selected predominantly soul and funk hits instead of Jamaican music to please the crowd. He had to reinvent himself and create a new identity, which secured him a celebrity status in the neighborhood. His success paved the way for him to play regular parties (ibid. 3).

His transition appeared to be symptomatic of a larger generational shift with the post-gang youth, as defining individuality began replacing emphasis on collective identities. Originating in Philadelphia in the mid-1960s, the graffiti movement gained momentum and spread to urban areas throughout the country. It developed from simple tags to attract attention or mark a turf of a particular gang to an art form pushing the envelope in individual style and creativity. Borrowing the idea Norman Mailer expressed in The Faith of Graffiti, Jeff Chang claims that “the writers were composing advertisements for themselves” (Chang 74). The number of people eager to have their names across walls, buildings, and subway stations grew. The recent development,

16 violating notions of property and propriety, Chang argues, offered a new kind of freedom; above all, it was a strike against their generation‟s invisibility (ibid.).

One of the most influential early artists was a Greek American named TAKI

183, whose appearance in the media ignited explosion of tagging across the city.

Developing signature styles meant honing one‟s artistic identity, which brought respect and fame among peers and in the community. Even Campbell immersed himself in the graffiti scene along with his friends, and here he took on the name CLYDE AS KOOL.

He also collaborated with the legendary writer and innovator PHASE 2 and the EX-

VANDALS crew (ibid. 75). However, Campbell made his name and refined his identity and reputation elsewhere.

As noted above, Herc had the edge over other DJs in his remarkable record collection, many items of which gained popularity with producers of sample-based hip- hop of the 1980s and 1990s. But his trademark style that made him a legend was the practice of isolating and extending breaks. Herc noticed that what the crowd enjoyed the most were the songs‟ instrumental breaks, when the melodic part would drop out and the percussive rhythms were most aggressive and hard driving. He transformed these intensive moments that lasted for a few seconds on the original recording into loops of many minutes, hence creating the so called break beats. He achieved this by employing two turntables and two copies of the same record; just as the break was about to end on one record, he played it again on the other one. He called this technique the merry-go- round (Marshall 10).

Thus, DJ Kool Herc invented his own style, while keeping many aspects of the

Jamaican reggae tradition alive, such as his orientation on drum and bass or removing labels off the records to retain his exclusive style. Along with his immigrant friend Coke

La Rock, who became hip-hop‟s first noted MC, Herc set off their dances by giving

17 shut-outs and dropping little rhymes in their own slang. This vocal routine referred back to the practice of DJs in Jamaica, who drew inspiration from jive-talking and disc jockey performance of African American radio hosts. This early non-singing accompaniment, in the African-based musical tradition referred to as “toasting”, was one of the earliest incarnations of emceeing in the rising hip-hop culture (ibid. 4).

The role of a hip-hop‟s MC, or master of ceremonies, drew influence from many earlier forms. MCs existed even before them being incorporated into the hip-hop culture. Rapping continues the oral tradition of African storytellers, the so called

“griots”, who served as an important source of information, wisdom, and entertainment for local communities (Price 35). As immigrants, such as Kool Herc, brought aspects of the Jamaican sound system culture to the US, the competitive DJs enlarged the crew including the MCs, who initially imitated the practice of “toasting” of Jamaican DJs. In the American cultural tradition, artists like Pigmeat Markham, Gil Scott Heron, and the

Last Poets paved the way for rappers.

Gradually, DJ Kool Herc became surrounded by what we would now call a crew, the Herculords. This group of his supporters and performers included early DJs and MCs such as Coke La Rock, Clark Kent, and Timmy Tim. Women too were numerous in his crew, as one of the first female MCs, Pebble-Poo, Sweet and Sour, and

Smiley performed alongside Herc at the parties. Furthermore, Herc had a dance section, for the members of which he coined the term b-boys and b-girls, standing for “break boys” and “break girls” who were supposed to stir the crowd particularly when Herc put on the break beats. The extended break was exactly the time when the dancers could show off their skills. Another of hip-hop‟s basic elements slowly expanded (ibid.).

18 B-boys, Are You Ready? B-girls, Are You Ready?4 The Art of B-

boying

According to Fab 5 Freddy, a former graffiti artist, the musical director for the

classic hip-hop film Wild Style, and Yo, MTV Raps5 host, break-dancing or b-boying

began when rapping did “as an intuitive physical response to the music” (Banes 17).

Sometimes the movements were dictated by the lyrics and its cadence, as the MCs

directed performances of the dancers by calling out their names. Break-dancing is

closely tied to rapping as they both are means of self-expression, a way to play out

one‟s fears and hopes, but also brag about one‟s skills and outshine opponents. The

competitive component is very strong in b-boying, almost essential, as it is in fact one

of the constitutive elements of the style. On one hand, break-dancing displays physical

prowess, acrobatics, and creative wit, on the other it is pure warfare. Competition

permeates the entire hip-hop culture and its close association with hip-hop expression is

related to the rise of individuality discussed with respect to graffiti.

Without battling, none of the two forms, rapping or break-dancing would exist as

we know them. In his interview with Alien Ness, Joe Schloss asserts that every aspect

of the dance “was created for competition, and every move is judged according to its

effectiveness as a weapon” (Schloss 27). And Alien Ness, a former member of the

legendary b-boys in Rock Steady Crew, the New York City Breakers, and the president

of the Zulu Kings, commented on his approach to the dance and other b-boys: “Oh, I

hate b-boys – that‟s why I break” (ibid. 31). Clearly, he is not speaking about hatred as

such, which the opponent would take personally. Rather, as people within the

movement like to say, it is a part of “the game”. Alien Ness claims that he likes and

respects b-boys, even though admits: “But when I walk into a cipher, man? Everybody

4 Kool Herc‟s way of addressing the dancers at his jams (qtd. in Pabon 19-20) 5 First hip-hop music program on TV

19 there is my enemy” (ibid.). B-boying has been a street competition and a style

symbolizing identity. As soon as the early 1970s, many gangs usually had a group of

dancers. However, it was in the post-gang era of the emerging new culture that dancing

became a means of settling disputes, thus reducing violence in the ghetto.

The pioneers of the dance performed their moves in the upright position, a form

later called “top rockin”. In its structure and form, there are noticeable influences from

many dance forms, such as uprocking, tap, lindy hop, capoeira or James Brown‟s the

Good Foot and various Native American and African dances, namely juba. As

mentioned above, the nature of the dance was very competitive, and the urge to apply

creativity and originate new moves therefore strong. Top rockers soon extended their

repertoire with “footwork” and “freezes” (Pabon 20). Freezes were the most important

parts of the dance, flashes of personal style, wit, and skills. It was in the freeze section

of the dance that legends like Crazy Legs built their reputation. Freezes were the

components of the performance that won honor and status for the dancer and his crew

(ibid.).

In the late 1970s, the b-boys and b-girls formed crews according to

neighborhood or family ties and the membership was guided by a code of ethics and

loyalty. The crews challenged others to battles, which featured spins and moves rather

than bats and knives. Yet, it could be seen that the dance styles had their roots in the

gangs. As Chang notes, sometimes “a dance was enough to settle the beef6, sometimes

the dance set off more beef” (Chang 116). The crews that formed in this period included

Starchild La Rock, Rockwell Association, the Nigger Twins, the Bronx Boys, and the

Zulu Kings. The most renowned and innovative, the Rock Steady Crew came into

existence in 1977 (Price 32).

6 A term referring to animosity between artists in hip-hop culture

20

The Elements Are United: Afrika Bambaataa and the Emergence of

Hip-Hop

In the initial stage of hip-hop‟s history, the music revolved around DJs. Kool

Herc pioneered the movement and provided raw material, which his successors molded and perfected. When one of the most influential DJs to this day, Grandmaster Flash, came on the scene, hip-hop took a giant leap. Born Joseph Saddler, Grandmaster Flash has had a reputation for a scientific approach to deejaying. He considered Herc‟s record collection impeccable, yet not his style. Kool Herc did not seem to be concerned about the break going around, but never coming back on beat. Grandmaster Flash took inspiration from disco DJs such as Pete “DJ” Jones, who was able to extend disco records seamlessly by mixing two copies of the same record. Flash perfected the art of mixing two records and developed a theory based on sectioning off the record like a clock. He called this the Quick Mix theory (Chang 113).

However, his innovative endeavors met with rather cool reception. At this point,

Flash realized he needed vocal accompaniment as well. Thus, he linked with a former member of the Black Spades gang, Robert Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins, and two more regulars at his jams, Melvin “Melle Mel” Glover and his brother Nathaniel “Kidd

Creole”. They gave their crew the name Furious 4, which later became the Furious Five as the posse grew. Flash was also the first DJ to introduce acrobatic tricks – scratching with his elbows, manipulating the record from behind his back, and using his feet or mouth on the mixer (Williams 28-43). On his legendary single, “The Adventures of

Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” from 1981, one of the first instances of the technique of scratching is featured. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were to

21 become one of the most influential groups in hip-hop. From the holy trinity of hip-hop, only the last piece is yet to appear.

Afrika Bambaataa, a member of a youth gang called the Black Spades, was only fourteen when the peace treaty was signed at the Bronx Boys club. Yet, there was no other person who contributed more to peace and unity among the Bronx youth in the post-gang era. He became a Black Spade warlord and was not afraid to cross turfs and forge relationships with other gangs. After having visited Africa, his enthusiasm for the peace cause intensified as he started The Organization, the precursor to the Universal

Zulu Nation. His main objective was not politics, but personal transformation as he organized people emerging from the dissolving gang structures and engaged them in the newborn cultural movement. Bambaataa clearly conveyed his vision, when he stated:

“This is an organization. We are not a gang. We are a family” (qtd. in Chang 96). He was a dexterous DJ as well, primarily influenced by Kool Herc‟s break-centered style.

Bambaataa began throwing block parties and organizing gatherings, for which the Organization became a vehicle. He established a code of conduct that was based upon the so-called Seven Infinity Lessons. These were presented in the same question- and-answer studies and keyword glossary forms used by the Nation of Islam and the

Five Percenters. The Lessons shared certain aspects of the rhetoric of Nation of Islam and Black Panthers, but disdained dogma and orthodoxy. Rather than politics, they emphasized knowledge, wisdom and understanding. In fact, Bambaataa was integrating a new generation in the Bronx, whose motto was “Peace, Love, Unity and Having Fun”

(Chang 105). Bambaataa‟s organization included MCs, DJs, graffiti writers, b-boys, and b-girls. Afrika Bambaataa was the one who united the distinctive art forms that had been developing in the Bronx and coined the term hip-hop to include its four elements: deejaying, emceeing (or rapping), b-boying, and graffiti writing. Last but not least, he

22 worked to promote what he called the fifth element – knowledge (ibid. 101). With

Afrika Bambaataa, the culture of hip-hop was born.

Afrika Bambaataa and his Zulu Nation attempted to enhance community life and effect change in the lives of post-gang youth in the Bronx. He was a pioneering hip-hop activist, who believed that the poverty facing young people only provoked disdain directed at one another. According to this street philosopher, the only way out of this misery was to empower people to tackle the problems troubling their community. He strived to make people socially and politically engaged, and thereby realize the political potential of their culture. Bambaataa believed in hip-hop as a means to elevate lives smothered in the neighborhood‟s pitiful existence. The young Bronxites were endowed with a voice, a vehicle for their distinctive outlook that was to be heard at last (ibid.

106).

I should add that the emerging culture in the Bronx, and especially the dance and graffiti crews, was not strictly a domain of African Americans. As the crews proliferated, mixed or dominantly Puerto Rican groups were not exceptional. For example, the Crazy Commanders and the aforementioned Starchild La Rock, Rockwell

Association, and the Bronx Boys were all mainly Puerto Rican. The Latino, especially

Puerto Rican influence was substantial, yet it has rather been associated with graffiti and b-boying, which, although fashionable for some time, have become marginal in the years since hip-hop/rap music went commercial. As the focus of this work is above all on the state of commercial rap music, I will approach hip-hop as a cultural form associated with African-American community.

Improbable though it may seem, this abandoned, God-forgotten, run-down piece of land in America‟s metropolis gave rise to a youth movement that would conquer the world‟s cultural stage in the years to come. All the hip-hop‟s elements developed in a

23 seven-mile area of the most poverty-stricken neighborhood in New York City, where the residents succeeded in turning destitution, violence, and destruction into creativity and the politics of having a good time. For the Bronxites, it was a means of expression and empowerment, the pillar of their everyday, their way of life. As a vehicle to play out the highs and lows of their existence, the culture they originated gave them voice that would soon be heard far beyond their “„hood‟s” borders.

If we are to trace hip-hop‟s roots, we find them closely related to the South

Bronx, New York City. At the initial stages of the history of hip-hop, hip-hop identity was spatially delimited by the neighborhood‟s boundaries and it related to the lives of its poor, predominantly African-American communities. Thus, race and class were also inherent aspects of hip-hop identity. However, later developments associated with hip- hop‟s commercialization have redefined the exclusiveness of South Bronx as the only source of “real” or “authentic” hip-hop culture, as it would cross boundaries, real and imaginary, with the speed of light. With hip-hop‟s spread came manifold new voices from different places and backgrounds. Along the way from the local to the global, hip- hop‟s authenticity was questioned and fought over; some even began writing obituaries as the mainstream culture opened its gates to welcome the newcomer.

24 2. HIP-HOP GOES COMMERCIAL

Graffiti’s Flirting with Dead Presidents7

Hip-hop‟s commercial potential soon transpired, if initially for a limited period

of time. Although generally deemed a passing fad, hip-hop was gradually gaining

spotlight. It was people from downtown New York City, who were first captured by the

youth culture coming from the Bronx. The downtowners, such as white baby boomer

outsiders and black post-jazzsters, were also those responsible for showing hip-hop to

the world. Hip-hop‟s flirtation with the world outside and subsequently with

commercialism started with a sculptor Henry Chalfant. Chalfant, an upper-middle class

white artist from Pennsylvania moved to New York in 1967, and immediately fell for

the new visual expression covering subway cars (Chang 142).

Chalfant started documenting the train art, thence initiating hip-hop

photography. In fact, he and a documentary photographer Martha Cooper, who

embarked on shooting Crazy Legs and the Rock Steady Crew, are considered “the

form‟s mother and father” (Adler 102). First public display of his photos took place at a

Soho gallery in 1980. The exhibition was an enormous success and events snowballed.

Graffiti won media coverage, such as a cover story in The Village Voice called “The

Fire Down Below”, including Chalfant‟s photos and portraits of prominent artist such as

PINK, ZEPHYR, and FUTURA 2000 (Goldstein). Museum curators and gallery owners

suddenly did not hesitate to invest in graffiti art and writers themselves considered

making a living at it. Graffiti became a hit and it spawned a new breed of street artists

such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf.

Hip-hop settled in the downtown art scene and merged with post-punk and no-

wave musical movements to establish a very unusual and surreal cultural partnership.

7 A term referring to money in hip-hop language

25 Jeff Chang claims that what we could witness at the time was “fabulous new pluralism”, where “segregation was out” and “cultural crossover was in” (Chang 151). As a matter of fact, graffiti shook off the label of illegality and became public. The success of graffiti also brought music along to the downtown clubs, where it connected with the above-mentioned white (post-) punkers, and influenced the sound of bands such as The

Clash on their Sandinista! album and Blondie‟s song “Rapture” from the record called

Autoamerican (Clarke). The expression of the outsiders attracted an improbable following of high society, and “dead presidents” were within reach.

Perhaps the most representative feat documenting the spirit of the times was the hip-hop film Wild Style directed by Charlie Ahearn, starring many prominent participants from the hip-hop scene, be it graffiti artists or b-boys and b-girls. The famous graffiti artist Lee Quinones plays the lead character Zoro, whose passion is to write on walls, and apart from that, he has to deal with problems in relationship with his girlfriend Rose. Yet, the strength of the movie is not its simple storyline but the truthfulness with which it depicts the movement‟s vigor. Jeff Chang sees the brilliance of the movie in showing hip-hop‟s “ferocious competitive energy, the feverish call-and- response, the phantasmic sense of possibility present in a hip-hop moment” (Chang

186). Nevertheless, not before long, the affair graffiti had with the galleries and museums and with the downtown rich and famous would turn into sobering reality.

The incident symbolic of the way hip-hop culture was truly viewed by the outside world took place in late summer of 1983. Michael Stewart, a young writer, was arrested after scrawling a tag at a subway station. After Stewart tried to escape, he was reportedly beaten by several officers and died a few minutes later in the hospital. Yet, a year later, all the officers involved were acquitted of all charges. Officially, Stewart died of a heart attack (Levine). This event spurred heated debates about police brutality

26 toward young males of color. Undoubtedly, the hip-hop culture was an outsider culture

as at the outset.

The elite‟s fascination with street writing faded. The exhibition at the Sidney

Janis Gallery in 1983 called “Post-Graffiti” was the art form‟s last sigh in the world of

high culture. It received very cold reviews, such as that from Grace Glueck, the New

York Times critic, who apart from calling graffiti “a scourge” summed up the review by

saying the displayed pieces “are as much an eyesore on canvas as they are on the trains”

(Glueck). Eventually, the idea that graffiti crossed the boundary and the art world

became integrated proved to be an illusion. Many artists thought they had been used. As

Jeff Chang points out, several years later Lee Quinones made his living by repairing

wheelchairs and FUTURA delivered messages by bicycle (Chang 199-200). Unlike

graffiti or b-boying, the commercial potential of hip-hop music turned out to be

enormous. And, despite general beliefs, hip-hop was here to stay.

Hip-Hip-Hop, You Don’t Stop8: Hip-Hop Becomes Rap

It all started in 1979. In that year, hip-hop presented itself to the wider public

and set off on a journey from a kind of folk art to a significant cultural, social, and

economic phenomenon worldwide. However, the ensuing events brought along censure,

heightened concern about authenticity, and fears of co-optation. The culture‟s

boundaries grew blurry. As hip-hop left its small safe world and became exposed to the

world at large, its drift was harder to control and predict, and the tension between

authenticity and exploitation a pivotal issue within the movement. Numerous debates

took place regarding who and what constitutes authentic or “real” hip-hop.

8 Lyrics from “Rapper‟s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang

27 Prior to 1979, which was a turning point in the history of hip-hop, the idea of

putting the music on a record was deemed obscure by practitioners of the style, as it ran

contrary to the very spirit ingrained in the musical roots. DJs were used to playing their

long sets on the spot, in which records blended into one another to rouse the crowd.

Spontaneity and the element of surprise were essential to the production, as one of the

criteria to determine a quality DJ was their ability to react to changing moods of the

audience. There was no need or demand for squeezing the set into a three-minute

recording. For example, Grandmaster Flash repeatedly refused to record his

performances. On one occasion, he was approached by a representative of a record

company two years before “Rapper‟s Delight” came out, but Flash admitted not to have

seen the “buzz” it would generate: “I didn‟t think that somebody else would want to

hear a record re-recorded onto another record with talking on it. […] I didn‟t see it”

(George 52).

Nevertheless, as competition among DJs grew in the mid- and late seventies, live

sets began to be recorded on the so-called mixtapes9. Distribution of mixtapes spread

quickly in the community, since they turned out to be an excellent vehicle for self-

promotion and gaining reputation. Because, ever since the gang days, earning a

reputation had been enshrined in the social environment from which hip-hop grew.

These concepts were all the more desirable as other markers of social status such as

wealth and material goods were inaccessible. Initially, MCs were rather secondary to

DJs in a hip-hop performance, however, their role proved to be much more attractive for

the style‟s future on commercial records. With this development, hip-hop forever

changed. The revolution came with “Rapper‟s Delight”, the first commercially

successful hip-hop recording produced by Sugar Hill Records. Its genesis points to an

9 Unofficial releases, produced and distributed outside the support of a record label (Hess 59)

28 interesting fact; rather than coming from within the hip-hop music scene, those who exploited the genre‟s youthful energy, secured radio airplay for it, and earned money through it, were mostly outsiders or people marginal to hip-hop‟s pulsating cultural life.

A former R&B singer, songwriter, and producer, Sylvia Robinson and her husband Joe founded their own record company in 1979. Mrs. Robinson, having attended a show of a New York DJ Love Bug Starski, discovered a burgeoning new scene and decided to produce a rap record. After she had the musical track ready, Sylvia intended to find somebody to rap over it. She eventually found her crew in a New Jersey pizzeria. One of the employees, a local rapper Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson, was found suitable for the cause. In addition, impressed by the way he connected with two of his friends in an attempt to present their skills; Sylvia took all three of them to her studio. Thus, Jackson, Guy “Master Gee” O‟Brien and Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright became the first signings of the Robinsons. They named the record company Sugar Hill

Records after a largely African-American neighborhood of the same name in

Manhattan. The group‟s name would be the Sugarhill Gang (Watkins 12-13).

The three MCs of the Sugarhill Gang rapped over the then popular disco tune by

Chic called “Good Times”. The Robinsons decided to cut a 12-inch single of the record instead of the common 7-inch single, which allowed each MC to develop his style and resulted in a fifteen-minute-long track. Such a length was rather unusual in the pop industry and it put the record at a disadvantage in promotion, which made the attempts to secure airplay for the record even more difficult. Nonetheless, Sylvia Robinson‟s hard work and perseverance bore fruit. After an abundance of negotiations, she finally convinced two radio stations, WESL-AM in St. Louis and WBLS-FM in New York to play this rap record for the first time (ibid. 16).

29 The stations were instantly bombarded with phone calls by astonished listeners curious about the whereabouts of the record, and flooded with demands for more spins.

The record had such an impact that many radio stations around the country had to play the fifteen-minute single twice every hour (ibid. 17). “Rapper‟s Delight” went double platinum and became the best-selling twelve-inch single ever pressed (Chang 131). The enormous success the record had and the reverberations it produced both in the hip-hop community and pop music industry was completely unforeseen. As noted above, hip- hop music simply had not been considered compatible with the way commercially viable music was produced. In Can‟t Stop, Won‟t Stop Chuck D, who would later come to prominence as a leader of Public Enemy, described his reaction to the idea of recording hip-hop: “„Fuck, how you gon‟ put hip-hop onto a record? „Cause it was a whole gig, you know?‟” (qtd. in Chang 130). As soon as he heard “Rapper‟s Delight”, he was surprised at how short they made it: “It was a miracle” (ibid.).

Ironically, it was not hip-hop‟s pioneers or local Bronx star performers who brought fame to the musical expression of the urban youth. The Sugarhill Gang, a crew established ad hoc for the purpose of recording a single, gained nationwide recognition overnight. Therefore, it came as no surprise that they were not embraced by the grassroots of the movement. Assembled in New Jersey, they were just a studio creation never having performed live together before. Furthermore, Grandmaster Caz of one of the pioneering rap groups Cold Crush Brothers claimed that Big Hank, his then manager, stole the rhymes for “Rapper‟s Delight” from him (Hess 33).

The case of the Sugarhill Gang demonstrates the clash between culture and commerce as it became one of the main issues in hip-hop. Hip-hop was taken from the street to the studio, which the hip-hop community deemed inauthentic. The Sugarhill

Gang thus lacked authenticity, the crucial commodity in hip-hop. Not having

30 participated in the competitive environment of block parties and with no reputation to build upon, the group met with disdain from the hip-hop community. They had not lived hip-hop culture and were detached from the ghetto: they did not possess the so-called street credibility (Ards 312). The concept of street credibility has become an important marker of authenticity in hip-hop since the music‟s transition. In fact, these tensions presaged many of the enduring issues in the movement with respect to whom and what is hip-hop (Watkins 18). Sensitivity to the perceived inauthenticity heightened.

However, the development was irreversible. Out of the blue, the scene was transformed.

Hip-hop entered another stage of its existence, whether or not to the liking of hip-hop‟s pioneers.

Enticed by the potential profits in the new market, labels scrambled to sign new contracts. Hip-hop artists could not resist. The ambition to escape from hopelessness and poverty has been strongly present within the movement and artists gradually secured recording contracts, including Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. In the first few years of hip-hop‟s new era, Sugar Hill Records was the primary hip-hop record label, yet this state of affairs would not last long. Competition among labels grew, as majors took interest in the market. One of the events that contributed to the label‟s marginality after 1983 was a controversy over the second big hit, “The Message”. The song was composed by a Sugar Hill songwriter and house band percussionist Ed “Duke Bootee” Fletcher. Sylvia Robinson wanted Flash to record it but he and his crew, save Melle Mel, found the song dull and refused. Melle Mel contributed to the creation of the song with his verse, and, subsequently, Flash made the rest of the crew join in and rap Bootee‟s lines. However, the result proved dissatisfactory and they were only included in a closing skit. This was followed by disputes over authorship and royalties between the group and the label and between Mel

31 and Flash (Chang 178). Flash went on to sue Sugarhill Records for $5 million and left

the label (Hess 164). By the end of the year, there were two crews called the Furious

Five competing for the rights to the name. The company never recovered from the

collapse of its biggest act, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (Chang 180-184).

Paradoxically, Flash and his crew fell victim to the record industry they had not

been keen on joining in the first place. As Chang aptly observed, they became “a

dramatic casualty of rap‟s realignment towards copyrights, trademarks, executives,

agents, lawyers and worldwide audiences” (ibid. 178). Moreover, “The Message” also

confirmed the direction the movement seemed to follow ever since the “Rapper‟s

Delight”. The focus of the music shifted from DJs to MCs and its importance far

exceeded that of the other elements of hip-hop. In its second life in the popular media,

hip-hop narrowed to rap. The Sugarhill Gang never had a DJ; there was none on the

recording of “The Message” either, despite the credits given to Grandmaster Flash. This

model would prove viable in the years to come. Not until the rise of the turntablism

movement in the mid-1990s did DJs return as full-fledged members of hip-hop crews

(Price 27). Hip-hop music became a recorded medium dominated by the rappers and the

music industry‟s influence on the form and its content was increasing.

I'm D.M.C. in the Place to Be, I Go to St. John's University10: Run-

DMC and the Fall of Old School

No wonder the development in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to first claims

that hip-hop is dead. By then, graffiti had been on its way back to the antechamber of

the art world and the life of b-boying was more intensive on the TV screen than in the

clubs. The hip-hop dance received wider attention in the movie Flashdance (1983) and

10 Lyrics from “Sucker M.C.‟s” by Run-DMC

32 others that followed such as Breakin‟ and Beat Street (Light 139). But, in accordance with rap becoming the focal point, b-boys and b-girls were slowly disappearing from the dance parties. Furthermore, as Alan Light observes, maybe due to the rapidity, with which b-boying was appropriated by Hollywood and advertising industry on Madison

Avenue, the breakdancing sound and look “quickly fell into self-parody – much of it was dated by the time it even got released” (ibid.). Breakdancing became commonplace in the media, films and commercials, yet its presence in places where it originated dwindled.

On one hand, the Sugarhill Gang helped revive the club scene, however, on the other, club-going turned into a passive experience. Hip-hop music moved away from the parks, community centers, and clubs and into the lab (Chang 132-133). Charlie Ahearn, the director of Wild Style, became the first to pronounce hip-hop dead. He straightforwardly described the changes at the parties: “Nobody was dancing. Period!

MCs were onstage and people were looking at them. […] hip-hop is dead by 1980. It‟s true” (qtd. in Chang 132). It is by all means true that the face of hip-hop underwent radical changes. The attention of the media was drawn exclusively to rap music, which itself became substantially altered, and the other forms wound up in the background.

That is why, as I focus primarily on the recent developments in commercial hip-hop, I use the terms hip-hop and rap or rap music interchangeably from this point. Definitely, hip-hop was no longer a folk culture; it would become a lucrative business.

Nevertheless, the spirit of the movement, its creative energy, and ideological appeal lived on in the musical expression. As it was opening to the world, hip-hop found itself in a whirlwind of new influences and issues that only added to the diversity and complexity of the culture, which many hip-hop scholars and artists nowadays seek to revive in the era of corporate rap.

33 Despite its A&R- (Artist and repertoire) and market-driven origin and the conflicts it triggered, “The Message”, officially credited to Grandmaster Flash and the

Furious Five, gave hip-hop new momentum. The depiction of the ghetto life, vivid descriptions of the miserable environment, and the potent chorus,

Don't push me „cause I'm close to the edge I'm trying not to lose my head It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder How I keep from going under made the song an instant pop hit. The song‟s lyrics connected easily with the street kids and hip-hop‟s growing audience outside the ghetto. Moreover, “The Message” was the hardest-hitting rap heretofore recorded, promoting socially conscious rap, which inspired a lot of artists to follow (Light 139). The popularity of conscious rap was a proof that hip-hop could stay true to itself and provide a medium for the people of the ghetto even in the commercial arena. Two years later, also a “product of „The Message”

(ibid.), Run-DMC came on the scene with their eponymous debut album and the modern era of hip-hop began once and for all. The so-called old school hip-hop, identified mostly by simple lyrical technique and party-related subject matter, was replaced by new acts, which brought hip-hop to new horizons, while presaging as yet unthought-of concerns.

The emergence of Run-DMC marked the tipping point for hip-hop. If the success of the Sugarhill Gang, Flash, or Kurtis Blow, the first rapper to sign a contract with a major label, only foreshadowed the path commercial hip-hop would follow, Run-DMC fully capitalized on its potential. Not only were they the first artists to become real hip- hop celebrities, they became ambassadors of the music to the nation and the world. By pushing the hip-hop‟s commercial potential to its limits at that time, the group also

34 made hip-hop confront the challenges that the new era in the music industry posed to the movement.

First, hip-hop had had a very local character, the ghetto of the Bronx being its birthplace and the neigborhood‟s street corners and clubs its stage. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when hip-hop flourished in local clubs such as the Roxy, the Bronx “was the place to be for hip hop” (Middlebrook 72). However, a second generation of performers, Kurtis Blow, Whodini, and the Queens-based Juice Crew and Run-DMC, to name a few, emerged in the environment, where the promise of cash, prestige, and commercial success began materializing in the rap game. Hip-hop‟s epicenter was shifting away from the Bronx, and Queens was the place where things were happening.

Jeb Aram Middlebrook called it a time “for the Bronx to sit down, and for Queens to stand up” (ibid.), as these acts were all managed by Run‟s brother Russell Simmons.

Drawing on what was mentioned above, at that time it was primarily Queens‟ labs which replaced the original sites of hip-hop culture.

The two MCs, Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and a DJ

Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, who formed the rap group Run-DMC, came from

Hollis, a black district of Queens in New York City. Unlike the Bronx, which was filled with apartment buildings, Hollis was dominated by private houses of upwardly mobile

African Americans. Thus, Joe, Darryl and Jason could not witness the movement‟s beginnings, nor the life in the ghetto hip-hop addressed. All the members of the group were raised by hard-working and supportive parents in middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhood – a stark contrast from the underclass youth of the impoverished Bronx.

Yet, their upbringing nothwithstanding, Run-DMC became role models and icons for the street youth of color and attracted the hitherto insignficant white middle-class audience (Middlebrook 69-89). Run-DMC achieved a huge commercial success, while

35 managing to stay true to the grassroots of hip-hop and to the life experience of black communities.

While inducting them to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 4, 2009,

Eminem used the mantra “two turntables and a microphone” (“Eminem Inducts Run-

DMC”) to summarize the means by which Run-DMC were able to produce the double framework of crossover appeal and authenticity. In fact, there were more aspects at play behind their iconic status. Run-DMC‟s objective was to represent hip-hop as it existed in the street and stay true to it. Without ever living the street life, they embraced a calculated distance, which would, in their own words, enable them to see the real power in ghetto culture (Middlebrook 71). Furthermore, it would give them the edge over the early MCs who “didn‟t see their theatrics in their own lives” and who “would polish it up for mass consumption by wearing what Rick James or a rock band would wear”

(ibid.).

In their mission to represent the street, Run-DMC were meticulous. Unlike earlier acts, who wore flashy outfits inspired by disco and R&B styles, Run-DMC dressed in street clothing of b-boys, chiefly sportswear, creating their own signature style of lace-less shell-toe sneakers, dark jeans, leather jackets and black fedoras. Like no one before them, the three Hollis natives offered the urban youth of color a style they could identify with. Two important hip-hop fashion trends were started by Run-DMC: golden rope chains and hard-shell Adidas shoes (Hodges). They also pioneered new sound, raw and minimalistic, often consisting solely of a drum machine and rapping.

Combined with street language they used in their bold rhymes, their music symbolized an authentic and urgent voice from the ghetto (ibid. 69-89). Not only did Run-DMC deliver vivid accounts of life in the hostile environment, they gave motivation and hope to the street kids too. Commenting on the dire situation in America‟s ghettoes and the

36 lack of opportunities there, the group endeavored to empower the community to improve their lives. In other words, they were able to tell the story of the American dream through the perspectives of three young black males (Middlebrook 69).

For example, in the song “Hard Times” from their eponymous debut, they acknowledge the pitiful existential situation in the urban ghetto, but emphasize that hard work and determination can elevate its residents:

Hard times can take you on a natural trip So keep your balance, and don't you slip Hard times is nothing new on me I'm gonna use my strong mentality Like the cream of the crop, like the crop of the cream B-b-beating hard times, that is my theme Hard times in life, hard times in death I'm gonna keep on fighting to my very last breath

They asserted themselves as a consciously black group, committed to the uplift of the black community. Even though iconic status and fame was something yet unknown to a rap artist, Run-DMC did not fall victim to their own celebrity. They still hung out with their old friends, among whom there were also convicts, murderers, and drug dealers.

As Middlebrook remarked, they would “stand on the corner and smoke weed and drink beer in broad daylight with people from the neighborhood” (ibid. 87).

In consequence, their carefully-wrought style, the innovative sound that they refused to polish, and their lives offstage, which were all committed to the hip-hop culture from the street, earned them respect of the hip-hop community. They were perceived as representatives of the authentic culture, despite not sharing some of the hitherto important preconditions: a proof that hip-hop entered another stage of existence. Their “realness” rested in maintaining connection and accountability to the experience of black inner-city America, i.e. their street credibility. Since the times of

Run-DMC, many peculiar local hip-hop scenes came into existence across the United

37 States, but, despite the spread, the social conditions from which local acts emerged were fairly similar to the culture‟s birthplace.

Run-DMC: The Pioneers of Commercial Rap

Run-DMC actually presented the street fashion to the world as they were the first rap group to be granted airplay on MTV (“Run-DMC”). Their style thus sparked imitations around the globe and informed the establishing hip-hop fashion. Moreover, they were the first to introduce branding to hip-hop. Hip-hop brands, as the music was becoming a powerful social force, gained popularity as markers of a certain lifestyle and worldview. Some have even ranked among the most important among fashion-apparel labels in the United States. On the first single from their third album Raising Hell, “My

Adidas”, Joe, Darryl and Jam Master Jay rapped about the favorite sneakers they wore.

Their brand influence seemed to develop on its own terms, without their conscious effort. They were not attempting to sell the brand or make people dress like them; they only wanted them to like their beats and rhymes (Middlebrook 80).

It was not until the trio toured extensively with the song and had everyone in the crowd hold their Adidas up that the officials at Adidas noticed and decided to take advantage of the potential new market. In 1985, they signed a sponsorship deal with

Run-DMC. Adidas adjusted their marketing strategy to aim at a different segment, black urban population, which was a groundbreaking effort yet to be made by other large companies and marketing firms. In this way, they set the stage for product placement and brand loyalty in hip-hop long after their time (ibid.). As Middlebrook suggests,

Run-DMC “was iconic because they lived and branded a street lifestyle true to their native Queens but marketable enough for Wall Street” (ibid.).

38 Musically, the minimal, spare, hard-hitting beats the group applied in their music

were only part of the innovations Run-DMC brought to hip-hop. Alan Light observes

that “what has sustained rap for its […] history is its ability to rise to the challenge of its

limitations” (Light 140). And that is exactly what happened in 1986. It seemed hip-hop

reached a dead end in the previous year. The second album by Run-DMC, King of

Rock, although successful commercially, offered nothing new to the genre‟s

development, and seemed unconvincing and stale (ibid. 139). Indeed, there were other

artists emerging on the scene, such as LL Cool J, who picked up on Run-DMC‟s style,

and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince; acts that gravitated toward a more accessible

expression referred to as pop rap. However, hip-hop‟s creative energy appeared to

stagnate. In the following year, though, hip-hop gained momentum once again.

What the hip-hop magazine The Source referred to as “The Hip-Hop Drought”

would end with the 1985 release of Run-DMC‟s Raising Hell. With this record, hip-hop

music established itself as a viable form in the world of popular music, as it made

explicit rap‟s connections to the traditional rock and roll spirit (ibid. 140). Especially the

group‟s collaboration with a rock band Aerosmith on a remake of their single “Walk

This Way” from their 1974 album Toys in the Attic marked the resurgence of hip-hop.

Raising Hell sold three million copies and was the first rap album to go multiplatinum

(Hess 127). The song reached number four on the pop singles charts and the video of

“Walk This Way” became one of the early hits on MTV. However, realizing hip-hop‟s

crossover potential did not mean Run-DMC were what would later be called a “sell-

out”11. As Alan Light argues, Run-DMC made the record “without compromising what

made rap so special […] the beats and aggressive, declamatory vocals made it an

undeniable rap record” (Light 140). In keeping with Bambaataa‟s vision of “Peace,

11 Selling out means giving up some part of self identity in order to increase profit (Hess 60).

39 Love, Unity and Having Fun”, hip-hop became ever more diverse and varied musically as well as lyrically, as it incorporated political voices, social criticism, as well as light and entertaining rhymes of pop rap.

The embrace of a relatively new black musical expression and a former African-

American phenomenon of rock and roll, which had already been appropriated by white executives, fans, and artists, resulted in exposure of white suburban youth to hip-hop, which only confirmed its wide appeal and inspired new musicians, who saw rap as “a last vestige of rock and roll rebellion” (ibid.). Hip-hop opened itself to artists and listeners from different backgrounds rushing in to explore the vibrant musical form. The mainstream culture and music industry began to mold the shape of hip-hop. Indeed, such a development sparked a further wave of authenticity debates in the movement, as the rising influence of whites bore a resemblance to the fate of the aforementioned genres pioneered by African Americans such as jazz and rock and roll.

40 3. SOUNDSCAN AND WHITE APPROPRIATION

Keep It Real

Since hip-hop music went commercial and opened itself to the mainstream, there have been many whites tapping into the culture and fears of white co-optation of the music were on the rise. In result, the acceptance of whites in hip-hop went by no means smooth, as they employed different authenticating strategies to legitimize their identification with the African-American urban expression. From the first major white act, the Beastie Boys, to the most successful commercial hip-hop artist of all time,

Eminem, whites strove for securing their position in the black music, which, despite exceptions such as Vanilla Ice, demonstrated hip-hop‟s inclusiveness.

The first white person to establish himself in hip-hop was a record producer of

Jewish descent, Rick Rubin. He made his name by working with Run-DMC and the

Beastie Boys and has become one of the most important and sought-after record producers in popular music in the last twenty years (Tyrangiel). Rubin authenticated himself through what Mickey Hess calls “cultural immersion” (Hess 112). He was absorbed in black urban music and became involved with it early on, as he set up his own hip-hop label Def Jam during his university studies. Furthermore, the fact that he was associated with an African-American hip-hop insider, Russell Simmons, also accounted for Rubin‟s solid position in the hip-hop movement. They began to collaborate and in this way Rubin became involved with a black person directly attached to the burgeoning Queens scene. Consequently, they sealed their partnership as co-owners of Def Jam (Middlebrook 71). Rubin‟s acceptance in a way paralleled the one of Def Jam‟s next major signing: the Beastie Boys.

The three white middle-class New Yorkers, Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock, had to face up to some resistance as critics marked them as cultural pirates “infringing on other

41 people‟s territory and cultural practices” (Price 143). Nevertheless, they tried to stay as close to the culture as possible. They closely collaborated and toured with Run-DMC, who even wrote a song for the Beastie Boys, “Slow and Low” (McDaniels). Throughout most of their career they performed onstage with a black DJ, initially with Dr. Dre

(there is no association between him and the N.W.A. member of the same name), who would later be replaced by DJ Hurricane (Hess, “Beastie Boys” 99). Furthermore, the

Beasties addressed racism in their songs such as in “Looking Down the Barrel of a

Gun” (from the album Paul‟s Boutique) and “Alive” from the 1999 compilation Beastie

Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science, in which they rhyme:

So fed up with racism today Time to speak up and not turn away Make the sun shine when it's cloudy and gray

In addition, the Beastie Boys did not fail to emphasise in their work that they had grown up in New York, thus explicitly establishing their connection to the origins of the culture (ibid.). Therefore, all these above-mentioned features of their production showed the Beasties acknowledged that they participated in African-American musical expression and asserted they too had a right to be a part of it.

The Beasties‟ way of authenticating themselves falls into the category of cultural immersion as well. This is exactly what Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, the member of Run-

DMC, points out in his article about the group in the Rolling Stone magazine: “What bugged me out about the Beasties was that they knew everything about hip-hop – the

Cold Crush Brothers, the Treacherous 3 and Afrika Bambaataa, all the old-school shit”

(McDaniels). Even though the Beastie Boys secured their hip-hop identity by embracing the origins of the culture, the themes they dealt with in their lyrics were not reflective of the lower-class experience of the ghetto. They rapped about topics relevant to their own

42 life experience, which turned out to be the decisive aspect in their acceptance in the movement.

McDaniels recalls Run-DMC‟s Raising Hell tour with the Beastie Boys in 1986 in the Deep South, when “it was just black people at those shows” (ibid.). He admits the members of Run-DMC were worried that the audience might not accept the white crew.

However, the fact that the Beasties stayed true to themselves had a positive effect on the reception they received. McDaniels recollects that the crowd “loved them, because they weren‟t trying to be black rappers. They rapped about shit they knew about: skateboarding, going to White Castle, angel dust and mushrooms” (ibid.). In the same vein, in the interview by Tricia Rose, Carmen Ashhurst-Watson, the former president of

Def Jam Recordings, says that the Beastie Boys “did not attempt to pretend to be black.

[...] They didn‟t try to be urban” (Rose, “Contracting Rap” 545). Confirming the

Beasties‟ solid status within hip-hop, McDaniels concludes: “Real recognizes real”

(ibid.).

Another white rapper Vanilla Ice skyrocketed onto the rap scene in 1990 with his debut LP To the Extreme, which sold 14 million copies just in the United States

(Lusane 353) and went platinum (Hess 106). It became the biggest-selling hip-hop album ever up to that point. It featured the hit single “Ice Ice Baby”, which depicted

Miami street life as Ice cruised in his car and witnessed gunfights (Tsiopos-Wills 484).

The song sampled the catchy bass line of “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie and became the first hip-hop single to hit number one on the Billboard charts (Kihn).

Unlike the Beasties before him, Vanilla Ice did not stay true to himself. Instead, he tried to imitate the rags-to-riches narratives of black artists to earn himself a fake street credibility. The rapper acknowledged his white skin in his very stage name, yet, tried to

43 identify with blackness on another level. He claimed his authenticity by the extent of

his association with lower-class African-American existence.

But when a journalist Ken Parish Perkins of the Dallas Morning News revealed

that SBK Records‟ marketing of Vanilla Ice was based on invented street credibility, his

attempts at authenticity were destroyed. Instead of in Miami lower-class neighborhoods,

Van Winkle spent his teen years primarily in Dallas suburbs. This disclosure initiated a

backlash against Vanilla Ice from the public, media, and the hip-hop community (Hess

113-114). From that time on, calling a white rapper Vanilla Ice became a common

means to humiliate them. In her analysis of co-construction of whiteness in an MC

battle, Cecelia Cutler mentions a transcript of a battle12 between an underground white

rapper Eyedea and a black MC Shells, where the latter ridicules his opponent‟s

whiteness and skills by exclaiming: “I‟ll be damned to lose against Vanilla Ice” (qtd. in

Cutler 88).

All in all, Vanilla Ice symbolized a white usurper of hip-hop culture, for which a

derogatory term “wigger” developed. The term is a combination of the words “white”

and “nigger”. It usually refers to white suburban youth trying to emulate hip-hop

culture, its music, vernacular, and lifestyle. As Tsiopos-Wills claims, wiggers suffer

from “ghettoitis” – “a denial of their white upbringing and craving for hip hop

credentials” (Tsiopos-Wills 483). Today‟s wigger parallels the postwar phenomenon of

white Americans appropriating the manners, language, and values of the black

underclass, the so-called “white Negroes” Norman Mailer wrote about in his essay The

White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. Vanilla Ice did not draw on his life

experience; he faked his own biography, which is why he was not “real”. Having turned

12 Traditional competition among MCs in which two freestyle rhymers go head to head (Hess 34)

44 out to be a wigger, Vanilla Ice‟s credibility was ruined and his career in hip-hop was over. The case of Vanilla Ice considerably reinforced the fears of white appropriation.

The last quote by McDaniels with respect to the “realness” of the Beastie Boys identifies a crucial aspect of authenticity in commercial rap as analyzed in this work. It is rooted in African-American rhetorical traditions such as testifying and bearing witness, where special emphasis is put on the performer‟s staying true to themselves and the authority to speak “is negotiated through claims to knowledge gained through lived experience” (Hess 115). The more hip-hop grew in diversity in terms of artists coming from different racial and social backgrounds, the more overtly materialized the imperative to stay true to one‟s own lived experience. It was not a upper-middle class artist rapping about dropping out of school (e.g. Kanye West) at whom all the scorn of the community was leveled, but the same person pretending to have grown up in the

“„hood” and possess street credibility could anticipate ostracism (e.g. Vanilla Ice). The concept of “keep it real” thrives in hip-hop culture. The importance of representing, staying true, and being real lends itself to a common understanding of rap lyrics as autobiographical in nature (Hess 44). Hence, a part of the genre‟s appeal has been the truths it claims to expose. Ironically, this very accentuation of authenticity to preserve the black expressive culture and prevent it from white mainstream co-optation turned the concept of “keep it real” against hip-hop and African-American community itself.

The Introduction of SoundScan

Apart from the enormous success of Eminem, whose street credibility based on his growing up in hip-hop culture in lower-class district of Detroit secured his acceptance, no major influx of white rappers took place. White artists remain a minority in the genre, so hip-hop has not been appropriated by white rappers as many insiders,

45 including Eminem himself in a song “Without Me”, envisaged. Yet, it was the white record industry, furnished with new data about the whitening demographic of hip-hop‟s record-buying audience and subject to media consolidation, which, using the concept of hip-hop authenticity for the purpose of accumulating profit, had a massive impact on the direction of commercial hip-hop. What had only been presumed about commercial hip- hop‟s true appeal among young white population began to take real shape with the introduction of SoundScan. Its implementation pointed out the true influence the dominant culture had on the African-American music.

Until the summer of 1991, the record industry depended on a method of counting record sales used by Billboard magazine, the music industry‟s most important trade publication. Yet the system was substandard and unreliable, as it relied on the observations of record store clerks and managers who produced weekly reports ranking sales trends. Billboard would question a jury of retail personnel and ask them to rank albums according to their perceptions of how popular they were and how they sold. As a result, the data was subjective and open to interpretation (Watkins 36). Watkins summarizes the limitations of the method in that it was possible to “gain a sense of which albums were “hot” but not how many copies were actually sold” (ibid.).

However, the “two Mikes”, Shalett and Fine, would replace the archaic data collection with a new system.

SoundScan was introduced by a record industry executive named Michael

Shalett and Michael Fine, the then president of George Fine Research, national and international market research and public opinion company. SoundScan, a computerized scanning system, provided hard data, which were more reliable. It measured the number of records sold nationally by scanning the bar codes at cash registers. This enabled the music industry to analyze detailed information about the market performance of specific

46 albums, artists, and the companies that distributed them. In addition, SoundScan could measure an album‟s sales week by week, city by city, and even store by store. The music industry executives soon began devising elaborate marketing strategies based on the reports meticulously generated by the new system (ibid. 33, 37).

SoundScan‟s big break came on May 25, 1991 when Billboard started using the service to compile its music charts (ibid. 38). The novelty turned the record industry upside down, as the SoundScan data proved that the previous method of ranking reports by retail staff was severely inaccurate. David Samuels claims that “America awoke” and found out that its favorite record “was not Out of Time, by aging college-boy rockers

R.E.M., but Niggaz4life, a musical celebration of gang rape and other violence by

N.W.A. […]” (Samuels 147). SoundScan revised the very notion of pop music, as it had been defined by aesthetic attributes such as sweet melodies, and lyrical and stylistic conservatism. After SoundScan, economics and marketplace resonance determined what could be labeled pop (Watkins 39). On one hand, the new system confirmed the earlier reports of some genres‟ privileged position in the charts. While on the other hand, its application demonstrated three genres in particular had been considerably underrated: country, metal, and rap (Chang 416).

The industry had considered these mere niche markets, so the fact that these genres were the biggest things going was rather unexpected. Unlike the country industry, which was well established, and the heavy metal market that had already peaked, the rap industry remained underdeveloped. Despite the previous commercial successes of Run-DMC or the pop rap acts LL Cool J and MC Hammer, big labels had had hip-hop music for a passing fad, and their prejudiced attitude made them overlook rap‟s boundless crossover potential. Many big-bank rock acts fell off the charts, as the pop‟s center had given away. It was replaced by the politics of “all cool is local” of the

47 niche model (ibid. 416-417). Whether or not the executives harbored ill feelings toward hip-hop, they could not ignore the huge financial gain it offered (Watkins 42). Rap was

“hot” and on the rise.

In 1989, the year in which Billboard magazine held the first briefing devoted to improving the way it collected sales data, the annual report by the Recording Industry

Association of America (RIAA) stated that hip-hop music‟s market share was 6 percent.

Rap music shared fourth place among all genres, which indicated its growing impact among record buyers, the majority of whom were between ten and twenty-nine years old, but it was not too substantial. However, between 1990 and 2000 rap‟s market share more than doubled at the expense of rock, pop, and R&B. The same Consumer Profile by RIAA in 2000 reported the market share of hip-hop was second only to rock. Yet, its influence reached far beyond its own generic boundaries and official collected data of album sales. The resonance of hip-hop could be detected especially in R&B, as it began adopting grittier beats and street-oriented lyrics. Even pop teen idols Britney Spears and

Christina Aguilera collaborated with successful hip-hop producers, performers, and choreographers to stay “in” (Watkins 34).

The innovation SoundScan brought to the pop music industry had an enormous impact on hip-hop. But there was another eye-opener that the system exposed: the true racial makeup of rap music‟s audience. Proportionally, the genre was still more popular among black population, however, the data SoundScan provided clearly signified that its primary audience is white and lives in the suburbs (Samuels 147). Some hip-hop artists, such as Public Enemy‟s Chuck D, anticipated that the proportion of whites listening to their music may be rather high. The late Eazy-E of the gangsta rap crew

N.W.A. reflected on the white youth‟s preference for the black music: “[…] the big secret before SoundScan was there were some white kids picking up the records too.

48 Now everybody knows the secret” (qtd. in Watkins 96). Unveiling of that secret altered the character of hip-hop music, or at least its commercial identity. White consumers, representing the cultural and economic mainstream, emerged as “a primary consideration rather than an afterthought” (ibid.) in the making and marketing of hip- hop-related products. After SoundScan‟s implementation, hip-hop was manufactured with young white suburban consumers in mind.

Cultural Tourism

As I noted above, one of the initial reasons for the attraction of white suburbia to ghetto-theme narratives was the rebellious ethos of the music. The energetic, hard- hitting beats and the rappers‟ sharp rhetoric certainly had the potential to catch the attention of young people in their resistance to parental and adult authority. Taking also into account successful careers of white figures such as Rick Rubin, and the Beastie

Boys, we could argue that white youth‟s fascination with rap music indicated closing of the racial divide. Nevertheless, as S. Craig Watkins suggests, the reverse claim was more likely to be true. Watkins contends that rather than a sign of declining significance of race, hip-hop‟s appeal among young affluent whites was more likely “a more complex expression of racism” (ibid. 97), as it represented a strange form of “cultural tourism” (ibid.).

David Samuels takes a similar position, as he also speaks about cultural tourism

(Samuels 153). This concept is similar to the practice of “slumming”, or frequenting places and interacting with people below one‟s own socio-economic level. Seth Koven defines it as “a movement, figured as some sort of „descent‟, across urban spatial and class, gender and sexual boundaries” (Koven 9). Yet cultural tourism as presented by

Samuels and Watkins involves the factor of race and the stereotypes blackness has

49 historically bore in the United States. Samuels claims that the kind of cultural tourism that bred white fascination with rap was pioneered by the Jazz Age novelist Carl Van

Vechten and his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, in which he pictured a masculine, criminal, but friendly black ghetto serving as a refuge for both Van Vechten and his readers from white middle-class boredom. In the same vein, he also mentions the white jazzman

Mezz Mezzrow‟s autobiography Really the Blues. In the book, Mezzrow says that living in the black community transformed him into a Negro (Samuels 153). Mezzrow‟s statement found its parallels in hip-hop music as well. For instance Young Black

Teenagers, a group of five white kids who debuted in the post-Vanilla Ice era, besides rejecting their whiteness in their name, asserted that their love for hip-hop culture made them black (Hess 123).

The examples of Van Vechten and Mezzrow lacked the racist dimension

Watkins points out in his conception of cultural tourism, as these two “sought to undermine the prevailing racial order” (Samuels 153). Nonetheless, according to

Samuels, at the time of mainstream appropriation and commodification of hip-hop culture, the moral inversion of racist stereotypes Van Vechten‟s and Mezzrow‟s approach suggested, lost its transformative power. His argument echoes that of Watkins, as he says that the ways in which rap has been consumed and popularized “speak not of cross-cultural understanding, […] but of voyeurism and tolerance of racism […]”

(ibid.). Similarly, Watkins observed that hip-hop was a “fantasy island” for white consumers, “where they could live out some of their wildest desires” (Watkins 97).

As the buying power of white kids began to determine the commercial success of a particular rap record, some observers pointed out that the images of street life represented on hip-hop albums began to be manufactured in line with the fantasies of their consumers. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the African American scholar, maintains that

50 both “the rappers and their white fans affect and commodify their own visions of street culture, like buying Navajo blankets at a reservation road-stop […]” (qtd. in Samuels

153). What the white kids seemed to desire and the labels in turn began offering them, was an image of “authentic” black experience, without the necessity of human contact between the races. A hip-hop producer Hank Shocklee of the production team Bomb

Squad, well-known for their collaboration with Public Enemy, agrees that what the consumers get is an experience of a black street culture at a safe distance. If a suburban white kid wants to get to know the life in the ghetto, they buy a record of N.W.A.: “It‟s like going to an amusement park and getting on a roller coaster ride – records are safe,

[…] and you always have the choice of turning it off” (ibid.). This kind of experience does no harm to the consumer and gives them full control. Taking a train to 125th Street in Harlem would be “a whole other ball game” (ibid.).

Hence, the idea of cultural tourism as practiced by Van Vechten and Mezzrow differs immensely from the kind developed after hip-hop music became popular with mainstream audience. Rather than leading to cross-cultural understanding, the interracial interaction as portrayed above only reproduces the existing racial stereotypes and separates the black urban population from the affluent white consumers of their music. The rift between the races, as whites appropriate hip-hop is reflected in Kevin

Coval‟s hip-hop poem “L-vis Is a Pioneer; or, Legacy”:

white folks feel safe at hip-hop concerts cuz there are no more black kids in raider jackets and timberlands, stalking bathroom ciphers, they are in the basement, again banished to the segregated cities and suburbs, plotting new shit in pidgin, we‟ll hear in 50 years, [...]

51 It is by all means difficult to say to what extent the demand of white youth for

“real” ghetto culture influenced the supply, yet it is undeniable that throughout the

1990s, the producers of rap music continued to dissect the appeal of the ghetto music, especially hard core rap, among white consumers. Other industries also joined in to exploit its commercial triumph; film production, television and radio programming, music videos, video games, sport franchises, and youth fashion trends all bore the marks of hip-hop culture (Watkins 98). The pop culture landscape white youth inhabited became a ghetto (ibid.).

As I have already mentioned, according to SoundScan, the major consumers of rap music were teenagers and older children. Therefore, advertising companies did not lag behind and used the influence rap had on the mainstream audience to promote products to these age groups. M. Elizabeth Blair examined advertisements broadcasted on Saturday mornings in October 1990 and 1991. She found out that in the first year, shortly after SoundScan provided the first data, advertisers seemed to believe that because rap was popular, “kids would like any message in which rap was used” (Blair

503). Almost any product was, no matter whether or not compatible with the rap meanings of rebellion and socio-economic deprivation, accompanied by typical hip-hop fashion and words spoken in rhythm. In this way, children could see Ronald McDonald, usually portrayed as being kind, light-hearted, and child-like, doing breakdancing moves, and “Chicken McNuggets” as rappers, looking like brown puppets wearing baseball caps. Other products‟ advertisements containing rap were for example Barbie

Trading Cards and the “Cool Tops” Skipper doll from the “Barbie doll” line. Apart from dancing together, the little girls who appeared in the ad were shown mouthing the words to a rap song (ibid. 502). Thus, in the chase for monetary gain, advertisers were able to

52 convert the ghetto into a playground for children, which only validates the genre‟s commercial prominence.

Am I Black Enough For You?

What SoundScan revealed in 1991 cast light on a trend that had been underway for some time. As I illustrated in the chapter devoted to commercionalization of hip- hop, rap music broke through to mass audience with Run-DMC‟s eponymous debut. It was the white Jewish producer Rick Rubin who helped bring the genre to the mainstream. However, rap music did not follow the fates of previous musical African-

American musical expressions. The appearance of white artists in a black form historically led to the mainstreaming of the form, the growth of the white audience, and the resulting dominance of white performers. Nonetheless, in hip-hop, this process took an unexpected turn. The form entered into the mainstream, the white fan base grew as well, what they longed for, though, was music more defiantly black (Samuels 149).

The doors were open for the Public Enemy. Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and Professor

Griff came with a style marked by sonic boom of the Bomb Squad, the music was faster, harder, and more abrasive than anything ever produced in rap music. They were renowned for their political radicalism and theatrical demeanor. By promoting politically and socially conscious messages, Public Enemy represented the street. They called themselves “the Black Panthers of rap” and the music press reacted to their radical Black nationalism and antagonistic stance toward the media by referring to them as “the world‟s most dangerous band” (Chang 248, 251).

Public Enemy moved beyond the issues traditionally addressed in pop culture, they expressed pro-black attitudes, targeted racism, miseducation, and media misrepresentation. Especially with their first two successful albums Yo! Bum Rush the

53 Show and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy audaciously brought radical politics into pop culture and made it possible to talk about the pressing matters that frustrated the hip-hop nation. Public Enemy‟s radicalism pushed the genre toward what was later packaged and marketed as the so called “reality rap”, which gravitated toward the ghetto underworld of crime, crack, and street hustling (Watkins

116-119).

After the release of the single “Fight the Power” for the soundtrack for Spike

Lee‟s Do the Right Thing, Public Enemy went a bit too far with their radical rhetoric, ironically lambasting Jews for the “majority of wickedness that goes on across the globe” (qtd. in Chang 285). Although PE was criticized by the media for what Chuck D termed “errors in judgment” (Samuels 150), they did not seem to have a bad effect on the group‟s credibility with both its black following and white youth who seemed to revel in their aggressive black radicalism (ibid.). However, as Watkins observed, the political themes Public Enemy raised in their music became “vulnerable to the volatile and viciously short attention span of the youth marketplace” (Watkins 119). The rap music‟s audience was ready for harder, more aggressive style, and raw lyrics, which brought acts such as Schoolly D and, most importantly N.W.A. into the game.

Schoolly D, a rapper from Philadelphia, emphasized his blackness by rapping about street hustling, smoking crack, and using women for sex. David Samuels argues that this was what the mainstream audience had been waiting for, a misogynist and a thug: “a rapper from whom you would flee in abject terror if you saw him walking toward you late at night” (Samuels 151). Schoolly D lives up to this image, as he raps in his song “Original Gangster”:

Make it known that I‟ll never, never, never be stopped There ain‟t a brother in the place any tougher There ain‟t a sucker in the house any rougher

54 So tell me why that you wanna be a prankster? There's only one Original Gangster

With a touch of sarcasm, on his fourth album he asked the hip-hop fans with his fierce voice “Am I Black Enough For You?” In fact, Schoolly D, despite not getting much attention of the mainstream media, sold more than half a million records by 1991.

However, the rap group from South Central (now South Los Angeles) N.W.A., who drew on his stylistic advances, could not complain about lack of public interest in their music (Samuels 151).

N.W.A., or “Niggaz With Attitude”, are considered one of the pioneers of hip- hop subgenre of gangsta rap. The Compton-based group, whose core consisted of four

MCs, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and MC Ren, drew inspiration from PE‟s sonic breakthroughs, albeit ignored their revolutionary and socially conscious message.

Rather, they focused on celebration of street violence, selling drugs, and sexual hedonism in an especially coarse language (Erlewine). In fact, they decided to go as far as they could. Jeff Chang an interview with Dr. Dre, where he brags: “I wanted to make people go: „Oh shit, I can‟t believe he‟s saying that shit.‟[…] I wanted to go all the way left. Everybody trying to do this Black power and shit, […], let‟s give „em an alternative. Nigger niggernigger niggernigger fuck this fuck that bitch bitch bitch bitch suck my dick, all this kind of shit, […]” (qtd. in Chang 318). This strategy obviously paid off, as shortly after Billboard‟s use of SoundScan, the top-selling album proved to be the N.W.A.‟s 1991 album Efil4zaggiN (Niggaz4life spelled backward). Actually, it was the highest-charting entry by any album since Michael Jackson‟s Bad entered number one in 1987 (Watkins 94). The album‟s success documented the consumers‟ appetite for hard core rap. Specifically, white suburban teenage males were the demographics constituting the majority of the album‟s buyers (ibid. 95).

55 White kids, N.W.A.‟s core record-buying audience were obviously fascinated with the brutal lyrics and shocking imagery, as the album is rich with misogynistic, sexually explicit lyrics in songs such as “Findum Fuckum & Flee” and “I‟d Rather Fuck

You” and detailed description of violence and murders, as in “Appetite 4 Destruction”:

He took de swing from my hand - thought I was faded Start runnin‟ for the door but the fucker never made it The sound of the 9 went bang And all over the wall was his mothafuckin‟ brain

The executives at the company distributing N.W.A., Priority Records, including its young white owner Bryan Turner, were delighted. Dismissing the concerns about the album‟s foul content, the vice president of Memphis-based distributor Select-O-Hits,

Johnny Phillips said: “This is something we need. Any business is better than no business and this is real good business” (qtd. in Watkins 94). The group claimed that they were “down with the ghetto”, just reporting the grim realities of life in the impoverished urban setting. However, at the same time, it is safe to maintain that, based on Dr. Dre‟s and Phillips‟ above-mentioned quotations, their celebration of violence and vulgar delivery was a calculated desire to meet the fans‟ growing demand for “authentic blackness” and make money.

N.W.A. met with severe criticism from the press. David Browne argued in The

New York Times that N.W.A. was selling records “to thrill-seeking white teenagers – by reducing themselves to self-parody” (Browne). TIME magazine observed that rappers like N.W.A. “[…] want to scare the living hell out of white America – and sell it a whole mess of records” (“N.W.A.: A Nasty Jolt for the Top Pops”). N.W.A. was playing out the negative stereotypes of black males as aggressive, violent, materialistically oriented, and sexually-charged, and thus allowing their mostly white suburban audience to take a safe trip to what was portrayed as real life in the ghettos of

Los Angeles. Although N.W.A. warned of artists who “forget about the ghetto and rap

56 for the pop charts” (qtd. in Hess 75), their performance was by all means directed at the mainstream. As the 1990s unfolded, rap‟s critical and conscious voices faded into the background. It was not coincidental with the fact that, as Rachel E. Sullivan claims, rap‟s audience was “widening and whitening” (Sullivan 607).

Public Denunciation of Hip-Hop

The wave of gangsta rap that swept the airwaves and flooded MTV in the early

1990s encountered fierce criticism from many public figures, including politicians.

When a gangsta rapper Ice-T reacted to the police brutality in the infamous Rodney

King incident with a song “Cop Killer”, a backlash against hip-hop intensified. The then

President George H. W. Bush attacked the song for being “sick” (Chang 396). In the same vein, the Vice President Dan Quayle also voiced his anti-rap sentiments as he lambasted the record company, Time Warner for not caring about family values. As

Sullivan notes, this crusade against hip-hop even ignored the fact that “Cop Killer” was a song recorded by Ice-T‟s side project, Body Count, which was in fact a heavy metal band (Sullivan 608).

The campaign against hip-hop spanned a wide political spectrum; it involved

Presidents, presidential candidates, congressmen, senators, and academics. They saw hip-hop as sending socially irresponsible and offensive message. One of the most vocal critics was Tipper Gore, the wife of the then Tennessee Democratic senator and future presidential candidate Al Gore. In an article for The Washington Post, she compared

Ice-T‟s message to Hitler‟s anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (Chang 393). Among the most outspoken critics ranked for instance the Kansas Senator Bob Dole, a conservative politician William J. Bennett, and political commentator Robert H. Bork, who claimed that rap helped push America “towards Gomorrah” (qtd. in Ogbar 166). African-

57 American public intellectuals of the Civil Rights Movement generation, such as

Reverend Calvin O. Butts and C. Delores Tucker, president of the National Political

Congress of Black Women, joined in public denunciation of violent and misogynistic lyrics (ibid.165-166).

Gradually, as gangsta rap attracted a lot of publicity, it ceased to be viewed as a hip-hop‟s subgenre, but rather as a representative of the movement in general. The public debate revolved around the notion that hip-hop music promotes wrong values and glorifies pathological behavior. The concept of “keep it real” and the resulting perception of hip-hop lyrics as autobiographical unarguably fueled the outcry. The public view of hip-hop became monolithic. Hip-hop equaled gangsta rap equaled social irresponsibility and bad influence on youth. In the hip-hop music industry, some genres and images were promoted while others were pushed aside. Gangsta rap was the most appealing thing on air. Moreover, a certain piece of legislation further threatened hip- hop‟s diversity, the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Mass-Media Consolidation

After SoundScan dramatically altered the record industry‟s conception of what music mainstream youth desired, record labels reacted accordingly. They increasingly invested in distribution and production of hard-edged hip-hop on radio. Gangsta rap soon dominated the FM airwaves. The post-Soundscan triumph of gangsta rap music was paralleled by another very important development that affected radio programming and media industries as a whole: consolidation of mass-media industries. In fact, it resulted in more rigid and limited playlists that promoted specific genres and artists apt to generate the best profit, while ignoring others, thus devaluing diversity.

58 In a few years, mass media industries that previously operated relatively independently of one another were swallowed by corporations. Therefore radio stations, television, newspapers, etc. that had merged within their given industry before were now owned by single corporations. Acquisitions and mergers took place at great speed.

The Telecommunications Act President Bill Clinton signed in February 1996 only sped up the process and reinforced the impact of mass-media consolidation on the record industry. Its purpose was to allow for more competition and easier access to media for all Americans. By means of deregulation, the legislation relaxed ownership rules, particularly, in broadcast media such as radio and television. Before the enactment of the legislation, broadcasters could own only two radio stations in a given market and forty stations nationwide. By the end of 1996, more than two thousand stations experienced ownership change. The public airwaves were becoming increasingly dominated by a few large corporations (Rose 17-19).

The symbol of the consolidation in radio industry is Clear Channel

Communications. In 1996, the company owned thirty-six radio stations. By the year

2002, it owned more than 1,200 commercial stations, which is thirty times more than previous congressional regulation allowed (Watkins 137). Apparently, the enormous changes in ownership reflected in the radio programming. The large corporations attempted at maintaining the widest possible market share by cuts in idiosyncratic local programming and news that cannot be rebroadcast elsewhere. Playlists also became consolidated and shortened, as major-label acts could easily be packaged for a national audience, whilst local, non-record-industry-sponsored artists were disregarded (Rose

19). As radio airplay and rotation of videos are the primary means of promotion for an artist, many hip-hop voices had little chance of being heard.

59 Moreover, record companies tried to exercise their influence to convince radio and music video program directors to play their artists‟ music. S. Craig Watkins mentions “pay-for-play” arrangements, which were accepted as a legitimate practice for determining playlists. Certain songs enjoyed heavy rotation on the radio, not because they “were necessarily good or genuinely preferred by listeners” but, because the labels paid out “huge sums of money to gain the spins […]” (Watkins 135). Tricia Rose refers to the same phenomenon with the term “payola” (Rose 21). It was almost impossible for acts outside the mainstream industry to get airplay. Artists that did not fit into the proven formulas were “virtually obsolete in the new world order of pop music”

(Watkins 135).

As hip-hop began to realize its commercial potential in the early 1980s, many independent labels flourished, such as the above-mentioned Def Jam, Profile, and

Tommy Boy. These small labels managed to generate sales that could not be matched by any of the majors, as they had better understanding of the cultural logic and specificity of hip-hop music. However, to be able to compete with these “street-savvy labels” (Rose, Black Noise 7), the majors started buying them. The small labels were allowed to function relatively autonomously, while the majors reaped the benefits. This development, well underway in the 1990s, was further supported by the

Telecommunications Act and lead to greater uniformity of the hip-hop product.

Quoting Paul Porter, a former radio programmer, Rose compares the pre- and post-Telecommunications Act era in terms of the song rotation. Whereas in the early

1990s a popular song was played 40 times a week on average, by the end of the decade the number of spins rose to 140 plays per week (Rose 87). Thus, commercial hip-hop was narrowed down to a limited range of themes and images, which were reproduced again and again. The predominantly white record industry executives packaged the form

60 to meet the demand of the predominantly white middle-class audience, as Soundscan suggested. Nevertheless, as I pointed out earlier, many black artists founded and run their own labels, as instances of black ownership became commonplace in hip-hop as a reaction to hip-hop‟s growing mainstream appeal and influence of major record labels in the early 1990s.

These artists usually accentuate the importance of artistic control and keeping hip-hop in the hands of blacks. Yet, even these artists often admit to have simplified or

“dumbed down” their music to fit into the radio-friendly pattern. For example, the hip- hop mogul and one of the most commercially successful hip-hop artists of all time, Jay-

Z, admits that he sacrifices his skills in order to sell more records. In his song “Moment of Clarity”, he reveals his approach to lyrics in his songs:

And the music I be makin‟ I dumb down for my audience And double my dollars They criticize me for it Yet they all yell “Holla” If skills sold Truth be told I'd probably be Lyricly Talib Kweli

Jay-Z refers to the status quo in the record industry, thereby implying that, whether or not releasing on one‟s own label, the industry mechanisms determining airplay are beyond control of the artist or a small label owner. He is aware of the fact that if he produced more complex and thought-provoking lyrics, he would find himself marginalized within the industry. He would face the same fate as, for instance, many of the current “conscious rappers”, such as Talib Kweli, whom Jay-Z mentions in the song as a skilled lyricist. Hence, even though a lot of rappers-turned-CEO‟s boast that they are in control of their music, it is obvious they are not the ones who really pull the strings. Content offensive to mainstream does not pay.

61 In Why White Kids Love Hip Hop, Bakari Kitwana describes the situation in hip-hop industry: “While the artistic and creative sides of hip-hop remain largely dominated by Blacks, the business side [...] is firmly in the hands of white American men, mostly baby boomers” (46). The most successful black hip-hop entrepreneurs such as Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Master P, and even the hip-hop‟s business icon Russell Simmons are at the top of the midlevel of the chain. Russell Simmons himself claims that “in comparison to my white counterparts, my company isn‟t even significant – at least financially” (qtd. in ibid.). The corporate hip-hop industry packages and sells hip-hop in the way that follows sales figures, trying to generate a product that would appeal to the mainstream audience. Hip-hop‟s traditional ethos and accountability to black community play a peripheral role when it comes to big business. And hip-hop has become big business. Hip-hop has not become another black musical expression dominated by white artists, yet the industry gatekeepers are, as a hip-hop activist and entrepreneur Wendy Day says, “white men in their fifties” (qtd. in ibid.). The associated developments such as homogenization and “dumbing down” of the music marked hip- hop‟s death in the eyes of many people from within the movement.

62 4. HIP-HOP IS NOT DEAD ... YET. SICK

Thugs, Pimps, and Hoes

To be able to consider plausibility of the assumption that hip-hop culture died as a consequence of developments in commercial hip-hop, I have to grapple with a few questions: Are the artists and images in heavy rotation on TV, radio, and other media all hip-hop has to offer? Has all hip-hop‟s diversity and vitality really been smothered by commercialism and mainstream culture, i.e. by white record executives? It is exceedingly difficult to answer these questions, yet I find it very important to attempt to do so. After the implementation of SoundScan, the notable success of gangsta rap, and media consolidation, the trend of promoting raps dealing with criminality, violence, misogyny, and excess continued. Under the guise of hip-hop authenticity based on street credibility, record labels have sold stereotypical images of African Americans, which have done a disservice to both hip-hop and African-American community.

As I discussed above, the hip-hop subgenre of gangsta rap emerged in the late

1980s, and as SoundScan indicated, by the early 1990s gangsta rap had established itself as one of the highest selling music genres. The violent stories of black ghetto life connected with white youth, who constituted the majority of consumers of hip-hop.

According to the statistic of RIAA, between the years 1995 and 2001, the market share of white consumers ranged between 70 to 75 percent of the whole hip-hop customer base (Rose 4). The celebration of thug life by gangsta rappers informed the way commercial hip-hop would be defined in the following years. Gradually, commercial hip-hop has come to be dominated by what Tricia Rose calls the “trinity of commercial hip hop – the black gangsta, pimp, and ho [...]” or, in short, “the gangsta-pimp-ho trinity” (ibid. 4-5).

63 These three street figures prevail in commercial hip-hop and have a profound influence on the way its consumers respond to the music as well as on the perceptions of the public in general. Last but not least, it considerably impacts the direction of hip-hop music. Glorification of violence, denigration of black women, and excessive materialism with emphasis on flashy jewelry (the so-called “bling-bling”) has become lucrative commodities that sell in today‟s hip-hop. When challenged by criticism, the executives and artists in question defend their product by claiming that the content of the lyrics only reflects the true situation in American ghettoes, that they are “keeping it real”.

Philippe Dauman, a president and CEO of Viacom, Inc., the American media conglomerate, said that it is not their role in Viacom to censor the “creative expression of artists whose music often reflects the pain they‟ve suffered or seen in their lives and communities” (qtd. in Rose 134). Likewise, when gangsta rap was gaining popularity,

Robert Morgado, a former executive vice-president of Warner Communications argued that rap music provides “a window to our urban culture” and to listen is “to hear from a population desperately in need of attention, slipping headlong into despair and destruction” (Morgado). He concludes his open letter to the editor of the New York

Times by stating: “We must confront that reality, however it may offend or disturb”

(ibid.). 50 Cent, a successful black rapper defended his exploitation of the trinity of commercial hip-hop with the same argument: “I write about harsh realities – the things that actually go on in the environment that I came up in – and I ain‟t going to change that” (Vineyard). Thus, what we see and hear in rap songs is supposedly the real ghetto.

Undoubtedly, thugs, pimps, and prostitutes are a part of the ghetto environment.

Rappers claim they speak about the environment they are familiar with and refer to situations that occurred in the neighborhoods they come from. This is what has secured

64 their authenticity within the movement in general. However, in the world of commercial hip-hop and its overemphasis on these features of the ghetto, the negative images are reproduced over and over again. In consequence, this leads to their stereotyping, as the content of most of the commercial production, when relating to the social ills in the ghetto, seems to glorify them rather than draw attention to their destructive impact on black communities. Commercial hip-hop revels in social pathologies and excess, which mainstream audience seems to desire.

For instance, in his song “The Boss” from his 2008 album Trilla, which reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart (“Rick Ross Is Boss at No. 1”), brags in first person about his wealth made by selling drugs and how he uses it to “get down” with attractive black girls (“shawties”):

I made a couple million dollars last year dealin‟ weight Still in the streets, strapped with them thangs She in love with the G so she tatted my name I'm the biggest boss that you seen thus far Ten black Maybachs back to back in a lane

Rick Ross boasts that he is a gangster, which enables him to buy luxury goods and, in turn, women. “The Boss” clearly represents the current commercial hip-hop production characterized by Tricia Rose as the “thug-pimp-ho” trinity. In the same vein, we can see this development in the work of the majority of commercially successful hip-hop acts.

50 Cent, a rapper discovered by Eminem, who grew to become one of the highest selling hip-hop artists, raps on his album Get Rich or Die Tryin‟ that there is “no business like hoe business” (“P.I.M.P.”). In the song “P.I.M.P” 50 Cent explains his only objective is money and this fact affects the way he treats women:

I ain‟t that nigga trying to holla cause I want some head I‟m that nigga trying to holla cause I want some bread I could care less how she perform when she in the bed Bitch hit that track, catch a date, and come and pay the kid

65 50 Cent adopts a different approach as his persona is not trying to entice women by flaunting his money and possessions. His relationship to women is limited to the one of a procurer to a prostitute. In the “hoe business”, women are mere “bitches” who earn money for their pimps. These are some of the examples of the direction commercial hip- hop has taken in terms of lyrical content. As his protégé 50 Cent, the famous white rapper Eminem has not been an exception, as his lyrics, although outstandingly creative, contain vivid descriptions of criminal acts, violence, and abuse of women. In this respect, his lyrics do not diverge from mainstream hip-hop production, which proves his status of another “black rapper”, as his tremendous success rests in his white skin and, above all, black persona.

Corporate representatives and rappers, both black and white, profit from re- creating this kind of blackness, defined by stories of ghetto street criminality and bling- bling. As mentioned above, their authenticity cannot be denied. But the question remains whether this is all that reflects life in poor inner-city communities. Unarguably, there are other stories, reflecting “fullness of black life, humanity, and depth of perspective” (Rose 146), yet they do not turn a profit. Hip-hop industry promotes a distorted portrait of black ghetto life, equating it with criminality. David Banner, a representative of the flourishing Southern rap scene, summarized it aptly: “The truth is that what we do sells. Often artists try to do different types of music and their music doesn't sell. In America, the media only lifts up negativity” (Banner).

Corporate Rap and Social Inequality

The industry executives are telling us only half the truth. The picture of the ghetto at display is reductionist. The kind of hip-hop production they promote is not a window, but rather a keyhole through which they let hip-hop‟s numerous white

66 audience voyeuristically peek at the supposedly authentic life of inner-city blacks.

Moreover, they pretend to only fulfill desires of hip-hop fans. Since SoundScan revealed the demographics of hip-hop fans, record-label executives and radio-station program managers have been claiming that this is the type of music the audience requests. It is an attitude Rose characterizes as “What do you want from me? We‟d love to play more Talib Kweli, but we gotta pay the bills!” (Rose 86).

In fact, radio programming is scarcely determined by fans‟ demands. Many of the large conglomerates own a vast number of radio stations and determine the playlists for them. Moreover, it is fairly common that record labels hire promoters to pay off these radio programmers, which ensures that most of the singles and artists record labels promote get regular airplay. This indirect method of payoff replaced the previous method of direct paying for airplay I discussed above. At any rate, the record labels and radio programmers have enough power to shape the consumers‟ listening habits, not the other way around (ibid. 22, 86).

The genre‟s accentuating of staying true to oneself, the assumption that rappers create rhymed autobiographies, works against hip-hop culture in the era of corporate hip-hop in that it assists in promotion of racial stereotypes. The promoters of the music form capitalize on this illusion that the artists are not performing but “keeping it real” and the gangsta personas that most of the rappers adopt serve as supposedly true images of black men. These racial images of black men as “naturally” violent and criminal draw on the way African-American population has been perceived throughout history.

During the last two centuries, these racially motivated stereotypes were used to rationalize slavery and the violence and disenfranchisement that followed emancipation.

In the twentieth century, they persisted to justify the development of urban segregation

(ibid. 38).

67 The scientists, too, have helped to sustain the notion of racial hierarchy, one of the last cases being the recent statements of a Nobel Prize-winning biologist James D.

Watson. Mr. Watson stated in an interview that all “our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”

(Nugent). He added that intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated evolved differently and our efforts to “reserve equal powers of reason [...] will not be enough to make it so” (ibid.). Historically, there has been a powerful discourse seeing black people as genetically inferior in terms of intelligence, and thus more prone to poverty, crime, violence, and sexually unsanctioned behavior.

Inevitably, the portraits of black community we can see in contemporary hip-hop contribute to the discourse, as they reinforce the historical associations of blacks with these negative characteristics. Andrew Rojecki, coauthor of The Black Image in the

White Mind, claims that in the 1940s the majority of white Americans explained lower black achievement in the society as evidence of intellectual inferiority. Gradually, the perceptions changed from biological differences to social injustice, which secured the success of the Civil Rights Movement. However, this development also gave whites a

“license to discount discrimination as an explanation for the difference between black and white achievement” (Rojecki). Rojecki adds that contemporary research shows that most white people believe the lesser position of African Americans is “due to individual moral failing or flaws in black culture itself” (ibid.). To support their argument, they often referred to media images of sexuality and violence (ibid).

Thus, it is obvious that the images corporate hip-hop creates, among others in the media, have a substantial effect on public perception of African Americans and their culture. White consumers of popular culture largely view the images as authentic portrayals of life of blacks in urban areas. As these images apparently represent the only

68 access whites have to the life in the inner city, their conception of black culture becomes distorted. As Rojecki further argues, these images “substituted for the absence of sustained contact between whites and blacks” (ibid). The significance of the media images for people‟s knowledge of the ghetto thus points to the continuing existence of segregation by race in American society. Contact between the races still seems to be insufficient for wider public to overcome its racial prejudice. Commercial hip-hop does not help in breaking this vicious circle, as it rather works to retain it.

Promotion of the images as the “real” ghetto and their perception as such lead to constant reproduction of the above-mentioned stereotypes and to the belief that black people should principally be held accountable for their generally unfavorable position in the society, leaving aside any systemic forms of racial discrimination against black people. The white consumption of hip-hop is compounded not only by few lived experiences with black people, but also by a general lack of knowledge of the history of black culture or racial oppression. Without this knowledge and context, white consumers of hip-hop only reinforce problematic ideas about race, class, and the state of urban America (Rose 228, 232).

Unfortunately, the development of commercial hip-hop I analyze here contradict the words of Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam and a successful hip-hop entrepreneur, who said: “I don‟t see color. I see culture. Hip-hop is the most unifying cultural source this country has ever seen” (qtd. in Mervis). In contrast, as Rose claims, rather than “becoming a hopeful sign of shared lived experiences and community connection,” the “white-pleasure-driven” form “has a strong likelihood of reproducing the long and ugly history of racial tourism that requires black people to perform whites‟desires [...]” (Rose 232). Commercial hip-hop has become a peep hole for giving voyeuristic pleasure to its mostly white followers. It does more harm to the community

69 from which it emerged, to which it gave voice, and which it had ambitions to empower, than it contributes to its well-being. The black musical form has gotten squeezed between white gatekeepers in executive offices and young hip-hop fans. Corporate interest brought about hip-hop‟s crisis.

Critical Voices among Hip-Hop Artists

As I noted above, hip-hop has faced criticism from both outside and inside the movement. Not only have the media, politicians, public figures, and black intellectuals attacked hip-hop production since the developments in commercial rap music in the early 1990s, but many rap artists themselves addressed these issues on their recordings.

In 2006, Nas, a New York-based rapper and a respected lyricist, released his eighth album entitled Hip Hop is Dead. On this record, Nas deals with the current state of hip- hop culture, which ignited debate in the movement. On the album cover, Nas is leaning forward to put a black rose on a grave while there are crows circling behind his back.

The imagery sends a clear message. It is hip-hop‟s funeral, as the cultural expression is no longer alive.

In the eponymous song “Hip Hop is Dead” Nas comments on the direction hip- hop has taken:

Everybody sound the same, commercialize the game Reminiscin‟ when it wasn‟t all business It forgot where it started So we all gather here for the dearly departed

Throughout the album, Nas criticises current MCs for straying too far from hip-hop tradition and for being concerned only with accumulating wealth. In “Carry on

Tradition”, he indicates that despite the ever-present braggadocio concerning their skills and control of the means of production, rappers cannot be leaders, as blacks historically

70 suffer from self-hatred and lack of confidence. He does not blame the forces of commercial world (the reference to Sylvia Robinson) so much as the hip-hop artists‟ being too weak to be in control of their music:

Wasn‟t Sylvia‟s fault or because MCs‟ skills are lost It's because we can‟t see ourselves as the boss Deep-rooted through slavery, self-hatred The Jewish stick together, friends in high places

A hip-hop poet and musician Saul Williams used a similar metaphor on the eponymous album, as he considers hip-hop “half dead to itself” (“Telegram”). In the song “Telegram”, he sends a telegram to hip-hop, in which he writes:

Please inform all interested parties that cash nor murder have been added to the list of elements. (stop) We are discontinuing our current line of braggadocio, in light of the current trend in “realness”. (stop)

As Nas does, Saul Williams also talks about tradition, as it has been ignored in recent developments. He mentions the hip-hop elements as Afrika Bambaataa defined them and argues that the topics dealt with in rap music nowadays have hardly anything in common with the foundations of hip-hop movement. Williams also points to the issue

I grappled with in the previous section: the exploitation of hip-hop‟s “realness” narratives.

The discussion among rap artists about the state of hip-hop music in their lyrics is extensive, spanning from mainstream to underground acts. A southern rap duo

Outkast also declared hip-hop dead in their song “Funkin‟ around” that appeared on their compilation album in 2001. The song “I Used to Love H.E.R.” by a rapper

Common (formerly known as Common Sense) features a nostalgic view of hip-hop as the rapper likens it to a girl he was in love with until she became a part of show business. The song was released as early as 1994 in a reaction to gangsta rap and the prominence it was gaining:

71 Now she‟s a gangsta rollin‟ with gangsta bitches Always smokin‟ blunts and gettin‟ drunk Tellin‟ me sad stories, now she only fucks with the funk Stressin‟ how hardcore and real she is

Lupe Fiasco, a rapper from Chicago praised for his sophisticated rhymes, provides an interesting antithesis to Jay-Z‟s defense of the decision to simplify his lyrics. On his album Lupe Fiasco‟s The Cool, Lupe Fiasco included a song called

“Dumb It Down”, in whose chorus a rap music fan reacts dismissively to the rapper‟s seemingly boring delivery, which is in stark contrast to the “thug-pimp-ho” trinity of corporate hip-hop:

You‟ve been shedding too much light Lu (Dumb it down) You make „em wanna do right Lu (Dumb it down) They're getting self-esteem Lu (Dumb it down) These girls are trying to be queens Lu (Dumb it down)

There is a great deal of irony, as Lupe Fiasco is advised to “dumb it down” because instead of recreating the same rap clichés, his lyrics seek to uplift the community, which is perceived as undesirable and, above all, unprofitable. The message is clear when he is told that if he dumbs it down, he would become more successful commercially:

Yeah I heard Mean And Vicious nigga (Dumb it down) Make a song for the bitches nigga (Dumb it down) We don‟t care about the weather nigga (Dumb it down) You‟ll sell more records if you (Dumb it down)

An underground political hip-hop group Dead Prez also joined the ranks of the critical voices in hip-hop. On their debut album Let‟s Get Free, they express their outrage at both MCs‟ and record labels‟ preoccupation with money, while hip-hop music is languishing and the conditions in ghettoes are not improving. In a song named simply “Hip-Hop”, the duo delivers their lines of disapproval:

MCs get a little bit of love and think they hot Talkin‟ 'bout how much money they got Nigga all y‟all records sound the same I‟m sick of that fake thug, R & B

72 Rap scenario all day on the radio Same scenes in the video, monotonous material

They accuse rappers of ignoring the situation in inner-city America and instead of drawing attention to the hardships these communities are facing and generating pressure for systemic change; they focus on selfish pursuit of money and material things:

You would rather have a Lexus or justice A dream or some substance A Beamer, a necklace or freedom?

These are some examples of criticism that has appeared in the movement since the early 1990s.. This development steered the music toward simplified lyrics concerned mostly with replicating the same patterns of stereotypical depictions of black people, which fitted the public conception of blackness resulting from historical experience, and thereby helped to reproduce it further. Some of the artists maintain that the transition from block parties to big business has killed off the culture.

Mickey Hess thinks hip-hop is able to cope with the situation, as he calls our attention to an idiosyncratic feature hip-hop possesses unlike other music genres: the lyrics themselves. He argues that it is the attention that artists pay to the transition in their lyrics, “in the form of warnings about shady record executives, accusations of sell- outs, and criticism of white involvement in the music” that create hip-hop‟s system of checks and balances. Thereby, MCs use their music to hold each other accountable to hip-hop‟s original culture (Hess 159). However, I have noted that artists whose lyrics do not conform to the corporate ideal of “real” hip-hop tend to be neglected by mainstream media. Therefore, the critical voices can only be a faint cry in the hubbub of commercial hip-hop.

Commercial Artists’ Conscious Moments

73 The previous section proves that there are many hip-hop artists calling for a change of direction rap music has taken, as it has capitulated to the commercial dictates of people standing outside of the culture. As Professor Michael Eric Dyson argues, that includes a lot of white music executives, people who “would rather see rappers talk about a sister shaking her behind [...], or a brother „rolling on twenties with the top down‟, than thinking about critical forms of resistance to racial injustice and economic oppression” (Jones). Nevertheless, the picture is by no means black and white.

Commercially successful rap artists are able to emancipate themselves from the principles of corporate hip-hop and deliver more socially-committed rhymes and lyrics that deal with controversial issues in current rap music.

For example, the above mentioned 50 Cent, in song “Hate It or Love It”, collaboration with Game, a successor to the West Coast tradition of gangsta rap, is far from glorifying life in the ghetto or sexuality of black women as opposed to his hit single “Candy Shop”. Instead, he reflects on the hardships of growing up in a dysfunctional family where “daddy ain‟t around” and in an environment where to “live good” means to “sell dope”. There is no bragging involved, rather a clear implication that he does it out of necessity. He concludes his verse by admitting that living in a poor urban area is a nightmare:

Ain‟t nothing good in the hood I run away from this bitch And never come back if I could

This is a plausible instance of the “window to urban culture” Robert Morgado talked about, which we are more likely to hear on records of underground hip-hop acts or socially conscious rappers. Furthermore, Jay-Z‟s collaboration with a rapper and producer Kanye West on the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” provides an insightful self-criticism and cultural interrogation, as the two MCs question the violence and

74 suffering black people in Sierra Leone have to go through so that black rappers can have chains around their necks:

The diamonds, the chains, the bracelets, the charmses I thought my Jesus Piece was so harmless „til I seen a picture of a shorty armless And here‟s the conflict

These are some examples of observations high-profile rappers also make in their work, which prove that even the commercial artists, who are signed at major record labels, are capable of critical reflection of their position within the hip-hop movement and the consequences thereof, and the fact that their work is not always detached from the communities they come from and to which they claim to be accountable. However, commenting on such issues does not usually compose the bulk of their musical production. Rather, this lyrical content is apt to be exceptional in commercial hip-hop.

Thus, as much as the decisions about production are in the hands of white executives, the situation in rap is not a simple either/or; either the artists play according to white corporate rules or they stay pure and undistributed (Jones). There is still room to maneuver. I will elaborate on this notion in the next section.

Giving Back to Communities

A great deal of rappers also prides themselves on giving back to their communities, which they use as a justification for their focusing on selling records and becoming rich. As Tricia Rose points out, giving back has a long tradition in African-

American communities, going back to 1700s, when members of black churches raised funds to found trade schools and improve living conditions in their communities. In fact, these communities have long had to rely on community-based strategies since they have been denied equal access to jobs, mainstream organizations, civil servant positions,

75 and so on (Rose 205). Moreover, Buffy Beaudoin-Schwartz, in her article on African

Americans and philanthropy, claims that according to the recent study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, African Americans give 25 percent more of their discretionary income to charity than do others of similar income (Beaudoin-Schwartz).

In light of this powerful ethos present throughout African-American history, it is hardly surprising that black rappers are willing to give financial aid to the communities they grew up in. The main proponent of philanthropy in hip-hop is Russell Simmons, who founded the Hip Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), an organization aspiring to realize hip-hop‟s political potential to fight poverty and injustice (Watkins 152).

Simmons encourages others with fortune earned through hip-hop to give back and

HSAN awards artists for their charity. He is also the head of the Rush Philanthropic

Arts Foundation, which he founded with his brothers, to help “disadvantaged urban youth with significant arts exposure, access and education [...] (“Mission”).

Furthermore, he gives in smaller, more targeted ways as well (Rose 206).

Diddy (previously known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy), a rapper and entrepreneur created several educational initiatives for inner-city youth collectively called Daddy‟s House Social Programs. Among other charity work, he also collaborates with a pediatric AIDS charity. 50 Cent has a G-Unity Foundation that provides grants to nonprofit organizations aiming at improving the quality of life for low-income communities. Numerous other hip-hop artists, such as Ludacris, who founded the

Ludacris foundation in 2001, Eminem, Jermaine Dupri, and Queen Latifah launched their philanthropy projects (Rose 206-209).

Jay-Z, one of the hip-hop‟s most successful entrepreneurs, sees giving back to the ghetto as one of the objectives of his participation in rap industry. He founded the

Shawn Carter Scholarship Fund (Shawn Carter is his civil name), which helps helps

76 underdeserved students and seeks to provide higher educational opportunities to inner- city youth (“Company Goals”). He organizes annual Christmas toy drives to give presents to children from the Marcy Housing Projects in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and hosts a Christmas dinner each year at Marcy‟s Recreation Center. His philanthropy covers local as well as global issues, such as clean water shortage (Hess

37-38). As I already noted, Jay-Z admits that he has been simplifying his lyrics to sell more records. Thereby, he claims, he intends to get rich and give back to the community. He chooses to produce radio-friendly music and thus puts his community above his own artistry (ibid. 37).

Not only Jay-Z, but other rappers also use philanthropy as a reason for making millions through corporate hip-hop, in other words, exploiting stereotypical images of black people. This notion captures a fundamental conflict in the concept of giving back in hip-hop, as the music these artists create is often degrading to African Americans. On one hand, they secure their earnings by rhyming about gun fights, drug dealing, and exploiting women, while on the other, they give the money back to the community to support them. Their celebrity is fueled by harmful images of black men and women that are thereby reproduced and offered as examples of authentic blackness to both white and black audience. Yet, this strategy certainly proved profitable and immense amounts of money pours in for people in need, who might in turn be able to live a better life.

However, the question is whether or not this conflict undermines the spirit of giving back. Tricia Rose compares this behavior to the manipulative pattern of a pimp

“who insults and injures and then showers his victim with gifts” (Rose 210). She considers it ultimately destructive as “the celebrated path of such compelling icons

(gangsters, pimps, and hoes) continues to get more press than a handful of scholarships”

(ibid. 211). This line of argument brings us back to Rojecki‟s comments about the

77 portraits of black people in hip-hop substituting for the absence of sustained contact between African Americans and white population in the United States. Therefore, it is doubtful if the money can compensate for the loss of self-worth on the part of black communities and the perpetuation of stereotypes in the minds of white people, which can distract attention from the issues of social justice and equality. Rose goes as far as calling the financial help “blood money” and claims that philanthropy cannot “undo what constant repetition in mass media reinforces” (ibid.).

Rap celebrities mostly celebrate negative aspects of black life and fail to provide hope and empower black communities with accentuating different images, of spirituality, education, resistance, love, and community health. They also like to point out the example they set that it is possible for anybody from the ghetto to achieve their status, to follow the same path. But still, the potential aspirations of black youth are informed by the same images, there are hardly any prospects rappers offer besides

“hustling”, in other words, participating in the illegal street economy. If they do not possess enough lyrical skills to pursue a rap career, black inner-city youth is not offered many other options from their idols. Hence, commercial hip-hop, instead of reflecting on the life in the poor urban areas in all its complexity and attempting to uplift the communities from which it rose to fame, maintains the status quo. As President Obama stated in his speech at the N.A.A.C.P. convention, young African Americans still mostly aspire to be “just ballers and rappers” (Stolberg).

The Ghetto Is Listening

The question remains whether hip-hop has strayed too far from its origins so that we can proclaim it dead. Has its encounter with the mainstream characterized by the

78 influx of whites and their subsequent profound influence on the form destroyed the spirit of the movement? From my argument above, it can be inferred that rappers became too detached in their production from the inner-city youth and are merely highly paid entertainers for white upper- and middle-class youth. In this light, the relevance of my previous concerns about corporate rap‟s effects on black communities would be no longer relevant. Yet, even though statistically the majority of hip-hop record buyers are white, there is some potent reason to think that whites‟ majority among rap‟s audience in general is not overwhelming. In fact, black urban ghettoes are listening intently. That is why many hip-hop scholars, activists, and artists call for more socially conscious and community-uplifting voices to be heard in the mainstream media.

The more accurate tracking of sales introduced by Soundscan, renamed Nielsen-

Soundscan in 1997, confirmed the trend that had been underway since the emergence of

Public Enemy: white middle-class teenagers became an increasingly significant audience. It does not mean, however, that black urban population turned its back on hip- hop. Actually, if we consider the loopholes in the system of Nielsen-Soundscan‟s sales tracking, it is quite possible that the difference in proportion between white and black hip-hop audience is not very dramatic. There are still many limited chain music store outlets, mom-and-pop stores, local corner stores, small independent record stores, etc. including big retailers such as Starbucks, Hallmark, Burlington Coat Factory and others who do not report their sales to Nielsen-Soundscan (Kitwana 88).

In addition, as poor inner-city blacks certainly have less disposable income, we can assume that their “pass-along rate”, the rate at which one purchased product is shared among consumers, is higher than among white hip-hop fans. In Black Noise,

Rose reports that according to the former editor of The Source, whose readership is predominantly composed of black teenagers, the magazine‟s pass-along rate is one

79 purchase for every 11 to 15 readers (Rose, Black Noise 8). Similarly, downloading music from the Internet makes it difficult to assess the demographics of the genre‟s consumers. Moreover, Nielsen-Soundscan tracks only download companies charging a fee for downloaded music. The racial make-up of Internet users downloading rap music for free is thus unidentifiable (Kitwana 90).

Yet, the most significant indicators of the official statistics‟ disproportionate representation of black hip-hop fans are the bootleg street sales common in poor communities and the mixtape market. Unlicensed and mass-produced, mixtape CDs have been a phenomenon of hip-hop since the 1980s. By the 1990s mixtapes had become a business and a powerful tool for an artist‟s breakthrough, “the entry level of hip-hop” (Reid), as 50 Cent put it. As the heading of Reid‟s article aptly described them, mixtapes constitute “the other music industry” (ibid.). Until recently, in the era before music downloading where the demographic data are not available, the primary consumer audience for mixtapes was black inner-city youth. All in all, the fact that whites buy the most albums cannot disguise hip-hop‟s privileged position in the

American ghetto.

Furthermore, as Rachel E. Sullivan contends in a study on the way race informs perceptions of rap music, hip-hop plays an important role in lives of black youth.

According to the survey Rachel E. Sullivan executed, African-American youth also seem to have higher commitment to the music. They tend to have broader knowledge of hip-hop and are more interested in the message than white fans, whereas whites largely indicated that they are listening to rap because of its “good beat” (Sullivan 616).

Sullivan claims that hip-hop culture is seen as a potential form of resistance by young blacks and that it has broad-reaching implications for their identity development and maintenance. The music is a source of information about their peer groups and can

80 serve as an affirmation of their identity, as they are less likely to have their experiences reflected in the dominant culture (ibid.). Therefore, rap music seems to have a tremendous impact on lives of young blacks, who, although not represented appropriately in the official statistics, form a substantial and devoted audience of hip- hop.

Hip-Hop Lacks Diversity

Apart from reproducing stereotypical notions about black people and reinforcing problematic ideas about race, sexuality, class, and the state of urban America with the mainstream audience, the music promoted by the rap industry mostly fails to positively inspire, uplift, and educate the communities to which hip-hop artists claim to be primarily accountable. In spite of the state of commercial hip-hop analyzed above, I would not go so far as to maintain that hip-hop is dead. Hip-hop culture has undergone a number of changes throughout its history that led to the prominence of rap music and its gradual reduction in scope of lyrical content to cater to the tastes of hip-hop‟s growing white audience. However, hip-hop has not been killed, since there are still many individual as well as organized efforts within the movement that keep the spirit of hip- hop alive.

Hip-hop is not dead, but neither is it healthy. The kind of rap music receiving heavy rotation is not everything hip-hop has to offer, but alternative voices are not afforded appropriate exposure in the media. Commercial hip-hop lacks diversity and for the most part produces negative images of poor inner-city neighborhoods and the people living in them. For what Tricia Rose calls the “thug-pimp-ho trinity” has all but a monopoly on the content of contemporary hip-hop production and by far the most

81 publicity out of all aspects of hip-hop culture, these images serve to reproduce and confirm the existing stereotypes of African Americans. The point is not to eradicate this content, because, as Rose claims, it is not solely about “the subject of the story being told but also about how and how often that story is told” (Rose 244). The topics associated with commercial hip-hop I analyzed here are by all means part of the hip-hop culture, they also say something about life in the ghetto, yet they are potentially harmful to the poor urban communities when other subjects are ignored.

As I noted above, it is mistaken to assume that the pressure on commercial rappers is such that hinders any possibilities of lyrics that avoid pandering to the worst images of young black people. There are many acts having record contracts or some kind of distribution deal with a major label that produce more socially conscious content, namely Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, Nas, the Philadephia-based band The Roots, etc. They are not as heavily promoted as artists who rely on the “trinity” and they sell fewer records as well, yet they prove it is possible for them to make a choice about their raps without losing the opportunity to be seen and heard. Lupe Fiasco admits that he realized the effect that advancing negative content had on his audience and that is why he decided to “put something out there a little bit more positive, „cause the worst thing you can do in this world is lead people astray” (“Lupe Fiasco Speaks...”). He recognizes the responsibility of speaking to young black people who see rappers as their role models.

As I noted a few times in this work, the rappers who discuss social issues and are concerned about advancement of black communities are usually referred to as conscious rappers. Besides those I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there are many other conscious artists such as Talib Kweli, Mos Def and their project Black Star, KRS-One,

Common (previously known as Common Sense), De La Soul, The Coup, Immortal

82 Technique, Dead Prez, and many others. The themes these acts deal with range from criticism of violence and advocating spirituality, which we can find for example in the work of Common and KRS-One, to revolutionary political messages present in the music of Immortal Technique and Dead Prez.

Some of the progressively minded artists, such as Immortal Technique and Dead

Prez, operate through local distribution networks or independent record labels, others have contracts with major record labels. Yet their common denominator, apart from getting less exposure, is a content that does not conform to the themes promoted by the mainstream rap industry. One of the most well-known songs of socially conscious rap comes from Talib Kweli‟s first solo album Quality, entitled “Get By”. Over a catchy beat, Kweli raps about the system that sends young men of color to prisons and forces young people in the ghetto to participate in illegal street economy. However, unlike many commercial rappers, he tries to inspire the community and suggests that to change their situation they should start with themselves. The message of the song thus echoes

Run-DMC‟s “Hard Times” discussed above:

This morning, I woke up Feeling brand new and I jumped up Feeling my highs, and my lows In my soul, and my goals Just to stop smoking, and stop drinking And I've been thinkin‟ – I‟ve got my reasons Just to get by, just to get by

Many critics of current hip-hop scene see these artists as saviors of the genre, the representatives of pure hip-hop. Yet, as commercial rappers sometimes have conscious moments, conscious rappers too want to “make love sometimes, have fun, and go to parties” (“Michael Eric Dyson...”). In a song “Ms. Fat Booty” Mos Def makes sexually explicit remarks in reference to a black woman and describes her physical appearance in a rather stereotypical way:

83 I seen her on the ave, spotted her more than once Ass so fat that you could see it from the front

Mos Def‟s song serves as an example of the fact that the so-called conscious rappers incorporate various themes into their music, including those promoted by mainstream rap, such as violence, drug dealing, and sexual objectification of black women. These artists themselves reject the categories of “conscious” and “gangsta” with their respective focus on particular topics. Mos Def aptly explained that the point is not to reject particular artists, but to fight against the corporate system that supports only a thin slice of what constitutes hip-hop at the expense of diversity. He said he was not mad at

MCs celebrating violence, riches, and prostitutes, but upsetting is “when that‟s all I see.

I would be mad if I looked up and all I saw on TV was me or Common or the Roots, because I know that ain't the whole deal” (“Conscious Hip Hop...”). He adds that variety of different voices is what defines “real” hip-hop: “The real joy is when you can kick it with everyone. That's what hip-hop is all about” (ibid.).

This category of rappers representing alternative voices in hip-hop called

“conscious” emerged as a counterbalance to the commercially promoted kind of rap, oftentimes despite the MCs themselves, such as Mos Def and Talib Kweli, who disapprove of the categories and the ensuing segregation in hip-hop. Some scholars thus began referring to these artists as “progressive” (Rose 241). These voices from the underground or from the margins of commercial radio and industry promotional agendas prove that hip-hop is not dead. What makes it seriously ill, though, is the accent that is put by the overwhelmingly white industry executives on the images exploiting black stereotypes that appeal to the majority of hip-hop‟s record buyers, who are mostly white and suburban. In other words, current hip-hop‟s biggest problem is the disproportionate representation of the variety of voices present in the movement.

84 There is diversity in hip-hop, yet some imagery and lyrical content, unfortunately rather featuring negative aspects of life in the ghetto, gain spotlight while other voices are pushed to the margins. To heal hip-hop, to expand the vision and critical language of hip-hop, hip-hop artists are the ones to make an effort and generate pressure for a more balanced exposure of a more creative and progressive content. Hip- hop fans can also contribute, as they can apply a strategy of thoughtful consumption, which might prove very important in a market “where sales often determine visibility and power” (Rose 245). Only ongoing challenge to corporate agendas can re-create hip- hop‟s creative energy and bring hip-hop closer to its traditional ethos, and make it “real” again.

85 Conclusion

The issues related to authenticity in hip-hop and the debates about the soul of the movement are rather multi-layered and so vast in scope that to cover them in their complexity would require far more space than this kind of work allows for. However, I provided the basic insight into the most pressing issues and concerns present in the discussions about the culture within the hip-hop movement. I initially outlined the history of hip-hop with its major figures and influences and showed that, even though considered a mere passing fad, it was not only a potent cultural expression, but a lifestyle consisting of different forms later labeled elements. I traced the origins of the four elements with an emphasis on emceeing, as hip-hop music and its interaction with commerce is the basis of my analysis.

The music drew inspiration from cultural expressions of African Diasporas in the

Caribbean and incorporated features the origins of which can be traced back to traditional cultures of Africa. Hip-hop emerged as a vehicle for articulation of African-

American experience and it had a liberating effect on the poor ghetto communities, as it was a source of entertainment as well as political empowerment and education. The period of destruction that climaxed in the gang era eventually ended and hip-hop crews ruled the streets of South Bronx. However, it turned out to be impossible to contain such an original and vivid form within the confines of the borough. Mainstream culture posed a threat to hip-hop and I pointed out that its going commercial was the turning point that concerns about authenticity stemmed from.

In fact, the very first commercial act launched by Sylvia Robinson in 1979, the

Sugarhill Gang, faced criticism since it lacked an important aspect closely tied to hip- hop culture, street credibility. Street credibility became a crucial commodity to preserve hip-hop and guard it from the influx of people who would exploit the street culture,

86 whilst having no relation to it. However, inevitably, hip-hop could not resist and people from different places and backgrounds started participating in the music. The mantra of authenticity became “keep it real”. Being true to yourself and your own life experience was the prerequisite most accentuated by hip-hop gatekeepers. On the other hand, the variety of new voices in the commercial realm actually caused that there was greater creativity and diversity in the movement. The major issue in the authenticity debates proved to be the increasing white presence in hip-hop, be it on the artistic and production side, or the executive, as the historic fears of white appropriation were on the rise.

Therefore, in the latter part, I closely examine the increased influence white people exerted in hip-hop and their interaction with hip-hop insiders. As I showed on the examples of Rick Rubin and white artists such as the Beastie Boys and the infamous

Vanilla Ice, there were certain authenticating strategies they used to be able to establish themselves in hip-hop. Coupled with the fact that white artists still constitute a minority in rap music, I maintain that hip-hop music has not been appropriated by the influx of white rappers. It remains overwhelmingly black, on the artistic side. However, commercial rap remains overwhelmingly black in terms of content and images it promotes as well. And this is ironically its Achilles‟ heel.

As Robert Moses in a way laid the groundwork for hip-hop culture, the introduction of the new sales tracking system, SoundScan, in a similar fashion stood at the beginning of the developments leading up to the current state of rap music in the corporate mass media. The groundbreaking innovation showed that rap music‟s market share far exceeded the expectations of everyone in the music industry and that young white people composed the bulk of rap record buyers. It was overtly clear that this demographic has some share of the market, yet the actual numbers were stunning.

87 Overnight, N.W.A., the gangsta rap crew from Compton, turned out to be one of the most prominent groups in the United States. White consumers were at the center of attention of radio promoters and industry officials and, as I proved on the examples of the then commercially successful acts, they seemed to desire music that was defiantly black.

The kind of music in heavy rotation was characterized by more uniformity in terms of lyrical content and video images. Apart from the innovations initiated by

SoundScan, I shed light on another important development that reinforced this trend, mass media consolidation after 1996. More and more record labels found themselves in the hands of a couple of big corporations and subsequently fewer people made decisions about what music would be distributed and reach playlists. I examined some instances of the commercial production in the latter part of the 1990s and early 2000s and noted that the majority of what gets promotion corresponds with Tricia Rose‟s corporate rap‟s

“thug, pimp, ho” trinity. In fact, as I described in the last chapter, these images are nothing but another instance of African-American stereotypification whites have historically revelled in, as I showed on the subchapter devoted to white fascination with all things black. The emphasis on “keep it real” turned against hip-hop, jeopardizing its authenticity itself.

Hence, production promoting black stereotypes sells whilst other voices in hip- hop glean on the margins. Hip-hop‟s “realness” became exploited as some aspects of ghetto life, principally the negative ones, have been glorified, while others have been ignored. This state of affairs poses a dangerous threat to hip-hop and African Americans in general, since its messages support the existing stereotypes about black people and offer hardly more than destruction to the communities the culture emerged from. As I noted, while black inner-city youth might not be the leading demographic in official

88 sales, they are by all means proportionately at the top of rap music consumption. Poor black kids looking up to rappers as their role models have a right to feel left behind, as hip-hop‟s accountability to these communities becomes questioned. Corporate hip-hop‟s primary goal is to sell as many records as possible, which results in its detachment from

African-American communities, its being trapped in cliché, limited creativity, and lack of diversity.

These are the developments that spurred the latest debates in hip-hop about its authenticity and saw artists such as Nas and Outkast claim that hip-hop is dead.

However, in the last section of my thesis I prove that such a dismissive judgment is premature, as the existence of such statements is in itself one of the reasons the spirit of hip-hop is still alive. In addition, I mentioned that there are many artists in the underground or those having contracts with a major label who do not get so much distribution, who promote positive messages, embracing the Bambaataa‟s motto “Peace,

Love, Unity and Having Fun”. Moreover, many commercially successful rappers also have their conscious moments, demonstrating that hip-hop has not reached a dead end.

Through applying enough pressure, hip-hop artists, journalists, fans, and the hip-hop community in general can bring hip-hop back on track. Hip-hop fell ill, but it is not dead.

89 English summary

Hip-hop culture emerged in the Bronx, New York City. A consequence of the forced relocation of many communities related to the construction of Cross Bronx

Expressway, the neighborhood of South Bronx became a synonym of destitution, poverty, and violence. The area was virtually divided into turfs as the local gangs ruled the streets. In the early 1970s, the gangs were dissolving and the Bronxites succeeded in transforming the negative energy into an outburst of creativity. Influenced by the sound system culture in Jamaica, African-American and Puerto Rican youth began to develop a new expression. The new cultural movement included several forms of expression that flourished and influenced one another. The so-called godfather of hip-hop Afrika

Bambaataa united them theoretically, calling them four elements of one movement and coined the term “hip-hop” to refer to the culture.

Leaving the other elements behind, hip-hop music soon became widely popular, defying boundaries of the Bronx. In no time, it became a part of mainstream culture that deeply affected hip-hop‟s further development. Hip-hop opened itself to the world, which brought more diversity, yet concerns about the movement‟s authenticity were on the rise. From the early 1990s, hip-hop production deliberately targeted white youth, as this segment had been discovered to compose the majority of rap record buyers. Rap industry found itself reproducing stereotypes and clichés about African Americans to appeal to the tastes of its white audience. Moreover, hip-hop music has become rather uniform, as alternative voices have been pushed to the margins in terms of airplay, publicity, and distribution. There have been heated debates about authenticity within the movement, yet their very existence as well as the existence of many a progressive artist who embraces diversity keep the hope for hip-hop and its spirit still alive.

90 Resumé v češtině

Hip-hopová kultura se zrodila v newyorské čtvrti Bronx. Její vznik byl důsledkem nuceného stěhování mnoha komunit v závislosti na výstavbě významného tahu Cross Bronx Expressway. Bronx se stal útočištěm nejchudších afroamerických a portorických komunit a stal se synonymem pro bezvýchodnost, chudobu a násilí. Tento prostor postupně ovládly místní gangy fungující na základě příslušnosti k té které ulici.

V první polovině sedmdesátých let se struktury těchto uskupení začaly pomalu rozpadat a místním se podařilo všudypřítomné násilí proměnit v kreativitu, která dala vzniknout nové kultuře. Místní mladé Afroameričany a Portoričany ovlivnila kultura sound systémů, která do New Yorku pronikala spolu s četnými imigranty převážně z Jamajky.

Toto nové kulturní hnutí obsahovalo několik různých forem, ať už hudbu, tanec, nebo vizuální umění. Afrika Bambaataa, zvaný kmotr hip-hopu, tyto formy teoreticky sjednotil, nazval je čtyřmi základními elementy jedné kultury a zastřešil je pojmem

„hip-hop“.

Hip-hopová muzika, na rozdíl od ostatních elementů, se stala velice populární i mimo hranice Bronxu a zanedlouho se stala pevnou součástí mainstreamové kultury.

Hip-hop se otevřel světu, což mu na jedné straně dodalo na pestrosti, na straně druhé se však v hnutí častěji ozývaly hlasy, které se jaly zachovat ohroženou hip-hopovou autenticitu. Od počátku devadesátých let se hip-hopová produkce zaměřovala na mladé bělochy, kteří podle nového systému sčítání prodaných alb tvořili většinu konzumentů rapové hudby. V honbě za tímto cílem začal rapový průmysl postupně reprodukovat historické stereotypy o Afroameričanech a hip-hop se ocitl v zajetí klišé a uniformity.

Umělcům, kteří vybočují z této šablony, se nedostává v porovnání s komerčně

úspěšnými rappery dostatečné distribuce a publicity. Proto v hip-hopové komunitě

91 probíhá živá diskuze na téma autenticity, jejíž samotná existence i existence mnoha progresivních umělců a organizací drží ducha hip-hopové kultury stále při životě.

92 Works Cited

Adler, Bill. “Who Shot Ya: A History of Hip-Hop Photography”. Chang, Total Chaos

102-117.

Ards, Angela. “Organizing the Hip-Hop Generation”. Forman, That‟s the Joint 311-325.

Banes, Sally. “Breaking”. Forman, That‟s the Joint 13-21.

Banner, David. “David Banner‟s Speech to Congress Over Hip-Hop Lyrics”. Baller

Status. September 27, 2007. 21 Feb 2010.

hip-hop-lyrics/>

Beaudoin-Schwartz, Buffy. “Philantropically Speaking – A Rich Tradition of African

American Philanthropy”. The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers.

February 2004. 7 Mar 2010

url_show.htm?doc_id=208328>.

Berman, Marshall. “Among the ruins”. New Internationalist. 178 (1987) 13 Sep 2009

.

Blair, Elizabeth M. “Commercialization of the Rap Music Youth Subculture”. Forman,

That‟s the Joint 497-505.

Browne, David. “Recordings View; For Adults Only: Love and Sorrow … Lust and

Hate”. The New York Times 23 June 1991. 16 Nov 2009

and-sorrow-lust-and-hate.html>.

Chang, Jeff. Can‟t Stop, Won‟t Stop. Picador, New York: St. Martin‟s Press, 2005.

---. ed. Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. New York: BasicCivitas,

2006.

Clarke, Paul. “Post-punk will never die. It‟ll just get reissued”. Collective. BBC Home.

93 July 11, 2003. 12 Oct 2009

“Company Goals”. Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation. 7 Mar 2010.

“Conscious Hip Hop vs Gangsta Rap?”. Misnomer. 29 Dec, 2003. Mar 17, 2010

.

Cowan, Paul. “On a Very Tense Frontier: Street-Fighting in the Bronx”. Village Voice

22 June 1972.

“Cross Bronx Expressway”. nycroads.com. Historic Overview. 13 Sep 2009

.

Cutler, Cecelia. “You Shouldn‟t Be Rappin‟, You Should Be Skateboardin‟ the X-

Games: The Coconstruction of Whiteness in an MC Battle”. Global Linguistic

Flows. Ed. by H. Samy Alim, Awad Ibrahim and Alastair Pennycook. New York:

Routledge, 2009.

“Eminem Inducts Run-DMC Into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”. Show Hype. 7 April

2010

_roll_hall_of_fame/>

Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “N.W.A.: Biography”. Allmusic. 16 Nov. 2009

.

Flyin‟ Cut Sleeves. Dir. Henry Chalfant and Rita Fecher. 1993. MVD Visual, 1993.

Forman, Murray and Marc Anthony Neal. ed. That‟s the Joint. New York: Routledge,

2004.

George, Nelson. “Hip-Hop‟s Founding Fathers Speak the Truth”. Forman, That‟s the

Joint 45-57.

Glueck, Grace. “Gallery View: On Canvas, Yes, But Still Eyesores.” The New York

Times 25 Dec 1983. 14 Oct 2009

94

eyesores.html?&pagewanted=3>.

Goldstein, Richard. “In Praise of Graffiti: The Fire Down Below”. The Village Voice.

The Writers Forum. 24 Dec 1980. 12 Oct 2009

.

Hess, Mickey. “Beastie Boys”. Hess, Icons of Hip Hop 91-117.

---. ed. Icons of Hip Hop. An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture,

Volumes 1 & 2. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007.

---. Is Hip Hop Dead?: The Past, Present, and Future of America‟s Most Wanted

Music. Westport: Praeger, 2007.

“Hip Hop Facts”. Mr. Wiggles.biz. 28 Jan 2010

.

Hodges Persley, Nicole. “A Timeline of Hip Hop History”. Hess, Icons of Hip Hop

xxi-xxx.

Jones, Meta DuEwa. “An Interview with Michael Eric Dyson”. Callaloo. 29.6 (2006)

786-804.

Jonnes, Jill. South Bronx rising: the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American city.

New York: Fordham University Press, 1986.

Kihn, Martin. “Charles in Charge”. New York Magazine. May 18, 1992. 7 Nov 2009.

Kitwana, Bakari. Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and

the New Reality of Race in America. New York: Civitas Books, 2005.

Koven, Seth. “Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London”. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2004.

Levine, Richard. “Charge Against Officer In Stewart Case Is Dropped”. The New York

95 Times. 28 Oct 1987. 12 Oct 2009

stewart-case-is-dropped.html>.

Light, Alan. “About a Salary or Reality?” Forman, That‟s the Joint 137-147.

“Lupe Fiasco Speaks on Why He Doesn‟t Spit Gangsta Lyrics”. RealTalkNY.net. 7

April 2010

lupe-fiasco-speaks-on-why-he-doesnt-spit-gangsta-lyrics/>.

Lusane, Clarence. “Rap, Race, and Politics”. That‟s the Joint. Ed. by Murray Forman

and Marc Anthony Neal.New York: Routledge, 2004.

Mailer, Norman. “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster”.

Learntoquestion.com. Resources Database. Fall 1957. 7 Nov 2009

.

Malibu‟s Most Wanted. Dir. John Whitesell. Perf. Jamie Kennedy. Warner Bros.

Pictures, 2003.

Marshall, Wayne. “Kool Herc”. Hess, Icons of Hip Hop 1-27.

Mervis, Scott. “Diversity Training: The Gangsta Alternatives”. Post-gazette.com. Arts

and Entertainment 17 Feb 2004. 26 Feb. 2010

.

“Michael Eric Dyson on Rap and Hip-Hop”. Big Think. 13 June, 2008

.

Middlebrook, Jeb Aram. “Run-DMC”. Hess, Icons of Hip Hop 69-91.

“Mission”. Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. 7 Mar 2010

.

Morgado, Robert J. “We Don‟t Have to Like Rap Music, but We Need to Listen”. The

96 New York Times. 4 Nov 1990. 17 April 2010

but-we-need-to-listen-295790.html?pagewanted=1>

Nugent, Helen. “Black People „Less Intelligent” Scientist Says”. Times Online 17 Oct

2007. 24 Feb 2010

article2677098.ece>.

“N.W.A.: A Nasty Jolt for the Top Pops”. TIME. 1 July 1991. 16 Nov 2009

.

Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. “Slouching Toward Bork: The Culture Wars and Self-Criticism in

Hip-Hop Music”. Journal of Black Studies. 30.2 (1999) 164-183.

Pabon, Jorge. “Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip-Hop Dance”. Chang, Total Chaos

18-27.

Price III, Emmett. Hip Hop Culture. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006.

“Regions”. Regional Plan Association. 13 Sep 2009

.

Reid, Shaheem. “Mixtapes: The Other Music Industry: An MTV News Feature Report”.

MTV.com. 13 March 2010

.

Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.

Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

---. “Contracting Rap: An Interview with Carmen Ashhurst-Watson”. Forman, That‟s

the Joint 541-557.

---. The Hip Hop Wars. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

“Run-DMC”. Full Biography. MTV.com 26 Oct 2009

.

97 Samuels, David. “The Rap on Rap: The „Black Music‟ that Isn‟t Either”. Forman,

That‟s the Joint 147-155.

Schloss, Joe. “The Art of Battling: An Interview with Zulu King Alien Ness”. Chang,

Total Chaos 27-33.

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. “Obama Gives Fiery Address at N.A.A.C.P.” The New York

Times 16 July 2009. 9 March 2010

.

Stolzoff, Norman. Wake the town and tell the people: dancehall culture in Jamaica.

Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Sullivan, Rachel E. “Rap and Race: It‟s Got a Nice Beat, But What About the

Message?” Journal of Black Studies. 33.5 (2003) 605-618.

Tsiopos-Wills, Katherine V. “Eminem”. Hess, Icons of Hip Hop 481-503.

Tyrangiel, Josh. “Rick Rubin: Hit Man”. TIME. 8 Feb 2007. 31 Oct 2009

.

Vineyard, Jennifer. “50 Cent Calls Himself a „Role Model,‟ Says „Watch What I Do,

Not What I Say‟”. MTV.com. 21 March 2005. 17 April 2010

Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.

Wild Style. Dir. Charlie Ahearn. Perf. George Quinones, Patti Astor, Sandra Fabara and

Fab Five Freddy. Pow Wow Productions, 1982.

Williams, H. C. “Grandmaster Flash”. Hess, Icons of Hip Hop 27-51.

Lyrics

50 Cent. “P.I.M.P.” Get Rich or Die Tryin‟. Interscope Records, 2003.

Beastie Boys. “Alive”. Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science. Grand Royal, 1999.

98 Common Sense. “I Used to Love H.E.R.” Resurrection. Relativity Records, 1994.

Coval, Kevin. “L-vis Is a Pioneer; or, Legacy: The VH1 Special”. Chang,

Total Chaos 175.

Dead Prez. “Hip-Hop”. Let‟s Get Free. Loud Records, 2000.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. “The Message”. The Message.

Sugar Hill, 1982.

Eminem. “Without Me”. The Eminem Show. Interscope Records, 2002.

Fiasco, Lupe. “Dumb It Down”. Lupe Fiasco‟s The Cool. Atlantic Records, 2007.

Game and 50 Cent. “Hate It or Love It”. The Documentary. Aftermath

Entertainment, 2005.

Jay-Z. “Moment of Clarity”. The Black Album. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2003.

Kweli, Talib. “Get By”. Quality. Rawkus Records, 2002.

Mos Def. “Ms. Fat Booty”. Black on Both Sides. Rawkus Records, 1999.

Nas. “Hip Hop Is Dead”. Hip Hop Is Dead. Def Jam, 2006.

N.W.A. “Appetite 4 Destruction”. Efil4zaggin. Priority Records, 1991.

Ross, Rick. “The Boss”. Trilla. Def Jam, 2008.

Run-DMC. “Hard Times”. Run-D.M.C. Profile Records, 1983.

---. “Sucker M.C.‟s”. Run-D.M.C. Profile Records, 1983.

Schoolly D. “Original Gangster”. How a Black Man Feels. Capitol Records, 1991.

---. “Am I Black Enough for You”. Am I Black Enough for You? Jive Records, 1989.

The Sugarhill Gang. “Rapper‟s Delight”. Sugarhill Gang. Sugarhill Records, 1980.

West, Kanye and Jay-Z. “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”. Late Registration. Roc-A-Fella

Records, 2005.

Williams, Saul. “Telegram”. Saul Williams. Fader, 2004.

99