The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Communications TRAP(PED) MUSIC AND MASCULINITY: THE CULTURAL PRODUCTION OF SOUTHERN HIP-HOP AT THE INTERSECTION OF CORPORATE CONTROL AND SELF-CONSTRUCTION A Dissertation in Mass Communications by Murali Balaji ○c 2009 Murali Balaji Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2009 The dissertation of Murali Balaji was reviewed and approved* by the following: Matthew P. McAllister Professor of Communications Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee C. Michael Elavsky Assistant Professor of Communications Matthew Jordan Assistant Professor of Communications Keith B. Wilson Professor of Education Ronald L. Jackson Special Member Professor of Communications Dean, College of Media, University of Illinois John S. Nichols Associate Dean, Graduate School College of Communications *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Black masculinity has been represented and reproduced in hip-hop since its beginnings in the 1970s. However, the production of Black masculinity in rap has relied increasingly on problematic cultural tropes, particularly variations of images such as the thug and the playa. Geographic space is also used in this cultural construction. The cultural industries have long conflated ―authentic‖ Blackness with the Northern urban ghetto, particularly in cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. However, the expansion of the cultural industries in the U.S. South and images of Southern Black masculinity in popular media even rival ―the North‖ in terms of exposure and sales, and Time Warner, Sony and Universal have invested millions in producing Southern-based rappers. To what extent do Southern rappers and their labels engage in a type of cultural production that evokes masculinity in rap and integrates claims of space and place? And how can such constructions in the dialectical push and pull of ―keepin it real‖ in a context of corporate capitalism be understood? The purpose of this study is to examine the construction and production of Southern Black masculinity in hip-hop, with an emphasis on two particular rappers in Atlanta, at the intersection of 1.) corporate interests that control the production and dissemination of these representations; 2.) the ideologies that shape the discourse on Black masculinity and manhood; 3.) the impact of location as a factor in performance; and 4.) the rapper‘s self-conceptualization. How does the convergence of these four factors influence particular representations of Southern Black masculinity in rap music videos? While the first three have been studied in various degrees, the last is arguably as iv important and is perhaps overlooked by scholars who study the economics and cultural production of rap and Black masculinity. Atlanta – which has been called the ―Motown of the South‖ – is a potentially fruitful site because of its centrality as a site of cultural production and as home to numerous rappers who have achieved commercial success over the past decade. This project will be a comparative case study of two rappers (Jody Breeze and Gorilla Zoe), their labels, their subgenre (which has become popularly known as trap music) and their city (Atlanta) as a site of cultural production. It will attempt to show how Jody and Zoe, the city of Atlanta as a site of cultural production, constructions of black masculinity and the various cultural industries converge in the cultural production process. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures………………………………………………………………………...vi Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………...........vii 1: Introduction………………………………………………………...........................1 2: “Meet Me at the Trap”…………………………………………………...............16 3. “Puttin’ in Work”…………………………………………………………………60 4. The Making of Trap Music and Shaping of Black Masculinity, ATL-style...…83 5. The Struggle to “Stay Fresh”…………………………………………………….145 6. “Hood Figga” and Upward Mobility from the Trap…………………………....189 7. Knockin’ The Hustle………………………………………………………………227 Appendix A: List of Questions for Interview Subjects…………...………………..273 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….276 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3-1: List of Interview Subjects By Role. .......................................................... 72 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this dissertation has been exhausting, challenging, rewarding, and in many ways, life changing. I entered graduate school with a series of assumptions that were quickly challenged and rebutted by my experiences in Happy Valley. I truly believe I have been humbled by my three years at Penn State, and the profound changes I have experience in both my perspective and my approach will prepare me well for the rigors of academia and a lifetime of social and political activism. I would like to thank my family – my parents Kodumudi and Vijaya, my siblings Lakshmi and Arvind, my dog Bhaskar, and the love of my life, Devi Ramkissoon – for their unconditional support. There were times when I became frustrated by the challenges of living in a bubble, but they always encouraged me and prayed for my success. My friends, specifically Dan Robbins, Darrin Rowe, Don Sanders, Meera Srinivasan, Letrell Crittenden, Wil Marquez, Eugene Paik, Steve Bien-Aime, Lorelei Narvaja, Tesfaye Williams, Travis Severson and Jontue Austin, were always there to lend a sympathetic ear. I lost contact with many people when I moved from the Philly area to State College, but I was fortunate to have friends who understood the kind of time commitment involved in graduate school and the dissertation writing process. I would be remiss not to mention the close friendships I forged with Ashley Sims and Tina Worawongs, who were my grad school peer group. They appreciated my sense of humor, especially when it came to watching episodes of Family Guy or making postcolonial jokes. viii As far as this academic process has been concerned, perhaps no one has had more of an impact on me than my chair, Matthew McAllister. He has been one of the most encouraging and positive people I‘ve ever come across, and in many ways, he has been my guardian angel. I only hope I can pay his support forward to the next generation of intellectuals and activists. My committee members have each had a significant impact on my intellectual and personal growth, and I feel I owe them my career. Additionally, scholars such as John Nichols, Amit Schejter, Marie Hardin, Ron Bettig, Kevin Hagopian and Shyam Sundar have assisted me as both friends and mentors. Credit also goes to Joe Selden for recruiting me to come here, and to BB Mure, who helped whenever I needed it. I cannot overstate their importance in this process. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this graduate school process could have gone as smoothly as it did without the help of Betsy Hall. She is a priceless asset to the college‘s graduate community, serving as a counselor, friend, organizer, money manager, and ―mother hen‖ to any and every graduate communications student. Lastly, I have to thank Gorilla Zoe and Jody Breeze for agreeing to participate in this project, and Tahira Wright for facilitating their participation. I hope the following pages give readers an insight into what you go through on a daily basis, and that the ―grind‖ is as much of an internal process as much as it is an external one. Thank you for challenging my assumptions about you and your music. One love to all – Murali ix I dedicate this in memory of my paternal grandparents, K.V. Subbaroyan and Jayalakshmi. 1 1 Introduction In the early 1980s, the dawn of the Reagan era had its swiftest and most severe impact in poor, urban Black communities, particularly in metropolises such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Job loss, crime, and the introduction of the crack economy in those cities created a media and politically driven perception that young Black men were often hopeless and represented a threat to (white) America. As Mike Davis (1992) points out in his study of Los Angeles, poor blacks and other minorities were essentially cordoned off into self-enclosed areas of the city, suffocated by the lack of economic opportunities and kept away from the upper-class business interests charged with ―redeveloping‖ Los Angeles. Urban displacement, job loss, and the degradation of inner cities through the ―malign neglect‖ of neoliberal policies did not go unnoticed among the people it affected the most (Rose, 1994; Forman, 2002; Quinn, 2005). In fact, the tales of woe, the narratives of communities declining and opportunities lost, became intertwined into certain Black cultural forms, including the story of hip-hop and its most visible form of expression, rap. Rap music grew in the early 1980s into a powerful voice outlining what was taking place to young Black men in the city. Its reach had become so widespread, and its message so tied to socio-economic realities, that rapper Chuck D called rap music the ―Black CNN.‖ The idea of speaking the truth, or ―keepin‘ it real,‖ became rap‘s mantra. However, the story of rap also includes the genre‘s co-optation in the late 1980s 2 and early 1990s by multinational corporations intent on marketing its Otherness. The tensions involved with ―keepin‘ it real‖ and being embedded within corporate capitalism influence the specific themes, directions and cultural impact of hip-hop and rap. As implied by the above, since its birth in the basement house parties in the Bronx in the 1970s, hip-hop and rap have been dominated by three major themes: Blackness, masculinity, and geography. The commercialization and the globalization of hip-hop have not changed the genre‘s essence, as Blackness, masculinity, and location almost always converge at the site of musical production. All three factor in the cultural production of rap, yet Black masculinity and geography have also become powerful commodities in rap and in the consumer market. Rap is used to sell almost anything from cars to cookies, while Black men and the spaces they occupy are used as powerful signifiers of Otherness in popular media.