Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Upper
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Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Upper Ian Maxwell A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Performance Studies University of Sydney July 1997 Abstract This thesis is my attempt to understand the processes by which social agents negotiate belongingness and being across vast geographical, temporal, ethnic, cultural and historical discontinuities. In Sydney, Australia, m mid 1994, two middle class, educated white boys argue about something that they are calling their culture; a culture they call Hip Hop, most often associated with the rap music of dominantly African-American post-industrial inner cities of the United States. A breach of Hip Hop etiquette has lead to a conflict, to be resolved in a radio studio, live to air, by a rap battle. At stake are a number of questions about appropriate practice: whether it is permissible, or even necessary, in Sydney, in 1994, to be disrespectful of other rappers, and thereby to reproduce what are understood to be the historical conditions of emergence of North American Hip Hop Culture, or whether the Hip Hop Community in this place needs to be nurtured, to be protected from such divisive, potentially harmful practices. Laying their improvised rhymes over a slamming instrumental beat, the boys swap verses until one, beset by technical problems and hamstrung by his own deficiencies as a freestyler (he prefers to carefully compose his raps in the comfort of his bedroom) cedes, defeated by the weight of words and the ferocity of their delivery. The victor is able to assert, through his victory, the correctness of his account of just what Hip Hop is. This thesis examines the context for this episode in order to develop an account of the processes by which these individuals and their various fellow-travellers authenticate their own claims to a belongingness to 'Hip Hop Culture', thereby coming to not only understand, but, I argue, to create their place in a 'post-modern', 'post-colonial' world. ii This account moves through various levels of contextualization. I start out by detailing the battle, using that event and the discourses with which it was framed to mark out the thesis's thematic concerns. After a brief Introduction, outlining some methodological concerns, the thesis proceeds through four parts. The first 1s concerned with the historical narratives and genealogies produced by the social agents in question, with which they authenticate their practices. The second part understands these agents as being located within a complex world of what Arjun Appadurai (1990) calls 'global cultural flows', with which they engage in co-creative processes to produce meanings, discourses and practices. Part Three discusses the various tropes for communality used by these agents to argue for a cultural substrate within which these meanings, discourses and practices are given coherence. In particular, the discourse of Hip Hop Nationalism is examined in the context of contemporary discourses of Australian nationalism and discourses of place. Finally, the thesis moves m on (and moves to) the beat, accounting for this massive labour of cultural production in terms of embodied experience, wondering just what it is that is felt that becomes the grounds for making a claim to belonging to a Culture, a Community, a Nation. iii Acknowledgements Four year's work seems to generate endless lists of people who need to be acknowledged. Generally I am not given to gushings of thanks; in this instance, however, the debt of gratitude is simply too massive to avoid, so allow me this indulgence. Without the help of the following people, these years wouldn't have happened the way that they did. Blaze (Jason) and Angela, MrE, Kane, WizDM, Ed/J.U., Bullwinkle, Miguel, The Sleeping Monk (Raul), The Chief (Cec), E.S.P., Mick E, Def Wish, Unique, Pab, DJ Vame, Pewbick tha Hunter, Absolute Zero, Loco, Puma, Jakl, Marcelo Pena, Minky, Charlene, Tess, Angela, Liverpool Council, Felicite, Andrew, Goie and Pauline, The Loungeroom, all the crews. Many thanks to Brian, Maureen and Stewart Maxwell, who fed me with press clippings, magazines and video material; to Richard Byrne for seeing all the craziness and keeping the faith; to Phil Hayward for his encouragement, and to the members of the Australian and New Zealand Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, particularly Tony Mitchell, Peter Dunbar-Hall and Karyn Duance; massive thanks to Russell Emerson at the Centre for Performance Studies for his attentions; Marjorie Moffatt at the CPS for same; the academic staff and fellow post-graduate students at the CPS for their support, tolerance and willingness to put up with my angry young man performances-Gay McAuley, Tim Fitzpatrick, Tony Day, Penny Gay and Kim Spinks; Jason Saltearn and Karen Martin; Genevieve Souillac, who was there at the beginning; Mark and Lucy who helped me through the darker times; Pippa Leary; Fran Pena; Patrick Nolan; Cameron Tonkin; Michael Morison; Colin Hood; Anna Broinowski, who makes a surprise appearance in the text; 'The Group'-Martin Thomas, Martin Harrison, Diane Losche, Leslie Stern, Cathy Paine, Viv Kondos, Andrew Lattas and Ruark Lewis; Ashley Carruthers and Phil Ma; Lisa Stefanoff, whom I often flatter myself by thinking of as an intellectual peer. And to Genevieve Blanchett, who was there at the end And the biggest "up" to Lowell Lewis, supervisor, supporter, encourager, Peircian. Thank you for the extraordinary education. And to the mighty Souls of Mischief crew out of Oakland, i v California. I've never met these homies, but their beats (the unbelievable '93 til Infinity) are the soundtrack to this writing. This research was made possible through the generous financial support of an Australian Postgraduate Research A ward, and my various employers at the Centre for Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, the University of Sydney's College of the Arts, The University of New South Wales' College of Fine Arts, and the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Western Sydney. v Maps Australia Brisbane ~1elbourne 0 500 !000 km \:j New South Wales Sydney Canberra • 0 100 200 km vi G:::::...:.r.:::e.::a..::;te:::..or,__--""S Y. d n e y I~ \_ WST M>< '\_ ' Tasman Sea ~tclliui~ ; Penrith I St Marys Bondi ] North 10 20 km; This map of Greater Sydney illustrates the approximate limit of urbanisation, principal railway lines, and marks locations mentioned in the text. The sububan spread of the city is limited to the north and south by national parks, to the east by the Tasman Sea, and to the west by the Nepean River and the escarpment of the Blue Mountains. Although the cosmopolitan centre lies on the harbour (marked 'Sydney City', above), the demographic heart of Greater Sydney lies about 10 km to the east of Parramatta. The metropolis is currently encroaching upon the market-garden green belts to the north- and south-west. vii Table of Contents Introduction "MCs should know their limitations . " 1 Making Culture Preliminaries 10 The Diss 14 Battles 16 Tradition 1 8 "Express yourself' 20 Enter J.U. 2 1 Defining Hip Hop 24 Winners write History 26 Tha Boyz: Subcultures and Gender 29 The Metaphysics of Hip Hop 33 Making Culture 34 "Anything for Hip Hop" 37 Theoretical Frameworks 38 Fieldwork 40 Terminology 42 Part 1: Orieins "Fads Don't Last Ten Years!" 50 The 'Standard Narrative" 51 The 'Polychrome Pacific' 54 A Story of Hip Hop in Sydney: Sound Unlimited's narrative of "the Origins of Sydney Hip Hop" 58 The Standard Narrative of Sydney Hip Hop 61 viii Part 2: Global Cultural Flows Where You Find Yourself 7 6 Financescape 8 0 Ethnoscape 8 1 Technoscape 8 7 Mediascape 8 8 The Mediascape and Hip Hop 8 9 A. The Mediascape 'at large' 1. The Mass Media a) As repertoire of images 9 7 b) Hip Hop specific mass media 100 c) Local media and Hip Hop i) Reportage 103 ii) Advertising and television 106 2. Academic Writing on Hip Hop 111 B. The 'Hip Hop Mediascape' 1. The International Hip Hop Press 119 2. The International Hip Hop Recording Industry 120 3. Local Hip Hop Recordings 122 a) Sound Unlimited 123 b) Def Wish Cast 125 4. The Local Hip Hop Media a) The Australian Hip Hop Press 128 i) Vapors 132 - Blaze's Mass Media Critique 135 -Reviews 141 ii) Hype 147 -Global Orientation 148 -Graff 150 -Unity 152 -Letters 156 - "The Nameless Language" 158 iii) Other Publications 160 b) Miguel d'Souza 163 c) Hip Hop Radio 166 ldeoscape 168 Representing 1 170 The Pedagogy of Hip Hop in Practice: 'Legal Walls' 172 Coda ('tag') 185 ix Part 3: The Hip Hop Social Imaginary On Stage 192 'Staging' Hip Hop in Sydney 196 Intercommunal· Studies 198 Conditions of Emergence: Popular Discourses of 'Community' 201 Locating the Sydney Hip Hop Community 204 The Sydney Hip Hop Scene 207 Community as Genre of Social Being 213 Discourses of Community as Strategy 215 Hip Hop Nationalism: "A.U.S. Down Under Comin' Upper!" 221 Corning Under Notice 223 Fear of a Black Planet 225 The Australian Hip Hop Nation 228 "Address to the Hip Hop Nation" 229 "Knowledge Kicks to the Head" 236 "A.U.S.T." 240 West Side 244 The West Side as the 'inscape' of Hip Hop National Identity 247 A Map of Sydney 250 'The Westie Syndrome' 252 "There's no there, there" 262 Coda: Topographical Proliferation 263 X Part 4: Performance "Listen to this . ." 267 From Performance to Representing, or, 'How to make (a) Culture' 268 Music 'True to the Music' 271 Studying Popular Music The Musicology of Popular Music .