Petr Homolka
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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.