MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA
FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA
KATEDRA ANGLISTIKY A AMERIKANISTIKY
MAGISTERSKÁ DIPLOMOVÁ PRÁCE
HIP HOP: RAP MUSIC AS A WAY OUT OF AN ECONOMICAL AND
SOCIAL ISOLATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS BETWEEN
THE 1970s AND THE 1990s
Zdeněk Půža
Vedoucí práce: PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil. Ph.D.
Brno 2006
12 Prohlašuji,že jsem diplomovou práci vypracoval samostatně, s použitím uvedené literatury. …………………………………. V Brně dne 29.11. 2006
13 CONTENTS
i. Introduction 4
ii. Hip hop culture: 7
iii. Other rap genres 8
PART ONE – THE GHETTO
Chapter 1 A Dead End : A summary of social and economic phenomena
between the 1920s and 1990s responsible for emergence of black
urban ghettos 9
Chapter 2 Fight the Power: Riots in black urban areas in the 1960s and 1990s 19
PART TWO – RAP MUSIC
Chapter 1 – Gimme the break beat : Beginnings of rap music, cultural sources
for early rap pioneers 27
Chapter 2 All we got left is the beat : Black music as a mean of resistance 37
Chapter 3 – Hip Hop Rules: Construction of a rap song 40
Chapter 4 – In the limelight: Rap music goes commercial 48
PART THREE – GANGSTA RAP
Chapter 1 – “Gangsta” rap : An Introduction 52
Chapter 2 Origins of gangsta rap and its history 56
Chapter 3 Ay yo baby, your mother warned you about me : Young Black
Males as a "Menace to Society” 63
Chapter 4 Why do I call myself a nigger, you ask me? Recontextualization of a
meaning of a word nigga 65
Chapter 5 Mack daddies, pimps and hustlers: adoration of a criminal figure 68
14 PART FOUR – MESSAGE RAP
Chapter 1 Prophets of Rage: Message rap 76
Chapter 2 – Allahu Akhbar: An influence of the teaching of The Nation of
Islam on message rap in the middle 1990s 80
Chapter 3 – Message Rappers and the Reconstruction of the Black
Community 82
Conclusion 95
Bibliography 101
Abstract in Czech 105
15 i. Introduction
A primary aim of this work is to present rap music as a way for African Americans how to escape from the miserable economic and social conditions of the ghetto, in which it has also been created. This work follows not only the development of rap music since its beginnings in
American ghettos in the middle 1970s to the late 1990s, but also examines political and economical phenomeona, which were significantly responsible for pauperization of these urban areas and must be taken into a consideration.
Reducing the area of our research into only two decades has the its reasons: it would be almost impossible to analyze all the styles and genres into which the rap music has diversified till nowadays. The more important reason for this limitation is that stereotypes, which are today seen as typical attributes of hip hop, had been formed and defined just in these two decades and later created the basis for the upcoming cultural phenomenon known today as hip hop.
At this point I should also set out the way I use the term “hip hop” in this work. This term, although it is today sometimes used as the term for musical style, should cover a whole set of cultural areas like rap music (rapping and “deejaying”), dancing (break dancing), urban inspired art (graffiti) and later also fashion, rather than music only. While in a contemporary context the term hip hop can be used as a synonym for a lifestyle of its exponents, I use this term as a label for the cultural phenomenon as it was mentioned above, where the term rap music represents just one of its elements. However, the term rap music should be also more precisely specified. In rap music there is equilibrium between music (represented with “deejaying”) and lyrics (rapping), and thus this work will examine both its elements.
Even though I suggested that the work will be focused on a rather present period of two decades between the late 1970s and the middle 1990s, its second part will also examine roots of rap music, which were drawn not only from musics, developed on American continent (like gospel song, jazz, funky or rhytm’n’blues), but also more or less subconsciously from traditional music
16 of the ancient Africa. This historical background is important for an understanding both of its elements – “deejaying” and rapping, as these are closely connected with African oral and musical tradition.
While rapping was not a prominent part of rap music from its very beginnings, its position within hip hop culture has quickly changed. The main reason for such change was the ability of rap music to “to articulate the pleasures and problems of black urban life in contemporary America”
(Rose, 1994:2). This function was, however, in history of black music not new – the same function had gospel or jazz music, but rap music articulated the problems of the American ghettos in a brand new way. Rap music is a voice of the ghetto and thus the area from which it could draw an inspiration is almost infinite – a specific and considerably large group of rappers, who narrated violent, but often exaggerated tales, in which they have praised their economic status and sexual power over women, developed a genre which was later labeled as “gangsta rap”, while the other group of rappers, which have created genre of “message” rap, rapped about how to get out of the miserable economic and social conditions typical for the ghettos, how to rebuild a negative stereotypes of the black man or an integration within the American society – following excerpt is from a group Boogie Down Production’s (a classic representative of message rap genre) an its son
You Must Learn (Edutainment, 1992):
It seems to me that in a school that's ebony
African history should be pumped up steadily, but it's not
and this has got to stop, See Spot run, run get Spot
Insulting to a Black mentality, a Black way of life
Or a jet Black family, so I include with one concern, that
You must learn
The rebellious, antisocial and sometimes also violent character, which was typical for both genres, attracted much notoriety not only from a general public (represented with parental, religious, feminist or civil rights groups) but the FBI as well. I will analyze these genres in more
17 detail in Part Four and part Five of this work, because both these genres represent two most notable approach to advancement of the black man from its miserable position and have significantly influenced the image of contemporary music, which will be discussed in the end of this work.
One of the most criticized aspects of rap music was its stress on materialism, which was explicitly presented in overwhelming number of rap lyrics, just like in a song In the Ghetto (Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em, 1990) by rappers Erik B. and Rakim:
No more props, I want property, in every borough
Nobody’s stoppin me, because I’m thorough
Rhymes I make gimme real estate for me to own
I will try to show that the materialism, for which are contemporary rap stars criticized by both white and black communities, is a typical feature of hip hop culture since its beginnings and has also its reasonable historical and social explanation.
ii. Hip Hop culture
Because the main purpose of this work is to analyze rap music, its history, development, cultural sources and its impact on contemporary American society I should also place rap music in
18 a proper cultural context, which is in this case hip hop culture. I would like to also briefly describe also its remaining elements – break dance and graffiti, which were developed together with the emergence of rap music, however due to limitations of this work they can be explained only briefly in this chapter.
All these elements of hip hop have created “new kind of families forged with intracultural bonds that, like the social formation of gangs, provide insulation and support in a complex and unyielding environment and may serve as the basis for new social movements” (Rose 34). These new families were group of dancers (like Rock Steady crew), crew of graffiti artists and than later music groups. These artistic forms share several common features:
1) a very strong ties with urban background
2) individuality and uniqueness
3) and rebellious, antiestablishment and provocative character
Breakdancing
This artistic form of hip hop culture, was just like rap music, a rebellious answer to disco, which dominated dancing floors across the United States in the late 1970s. While disco dances stressed to continuity and circularity, breakdancing highlights (just like rap music does) and extends breaks in and between songs. According to Rose “at these break points in the DJ’s performance, the dancers would breakdance , executing moves that imitated the rupture in rhytmic continuity as it was highlighted in the musical break” (Rose 47). When this style of dancing was invented in the Bronx, it was set of several moves and specific footwork, but this was quickly changed and a various number of acrobatic moves were added including handstands, headstands, freezes, headspins, windmills, backflips an others, which were a result of the competitive spirit, which is typical not only for breakdancing, but for the whole hip hop culture as well. First breakdance crews used to compete with each other, which forced individual dancers to improve their technique and develop an own style. The style could also become so distinguished from the
19 style of the other dancers and bring its inventor an appropriate nickname Crazy Legs, Frosty
Freeze, Ken Swift etc. Even though these dancers tried to mainly present themselves, the competitions they were taking part in, were competitions of dance crews, representing a particular neighborhood (in case of Rock Steady Crew it was the Bronx, Rockwell Association was representing Manhattan) – and the winning side was determined by the dancer(s) who could outperform the other by displaying a set of more complicated and innovative moves (Wikipedia).
Graffiti art
These gathering were often also an occasion, where also graffiti artist were meeting together and compared either their “already done pieces” or their future layouts. I think that graffiti art is the most typical urban art, which reacts naturally on the post industrial reality of an urban background. Origins of graffiti will also show its original purpose. Graffiti has its origins in a tag
TAKI 183, which was a sign of a foot messenger named Panayiotakis (the number 183 stands for his street number), who was on his everyday traveling through New York city leaving this sign on walls and subway train cars. This tagging was the way how to express one's own existence in an urban complex, whose complexity is partially for loss of an own identity – “the goal of most artists at this point was called "getting up" and involved having as many tags and bombs in as many places as possible” (Wikipedia).
This tagging was followed by many others, and just like breakdancing, it was quickly developed into more profound artistic form. Original tags were slowly replaced by more elaborate graffiti, which were bigger, their shapes were distorted and they contained many colors and patterns and they often were a result of a cooperation of several artists. The graffiti should attract public notoriety just as new moves in breakdancing or new musical and oral techniques in rap music. All these three art forms are interwoven together as Jafa points out “stylistic continuities between breaking, graffiti style, rapping and musical construction seem to center around three concepts: flow layering and ruptures in line” (Rose 38). This cohesion was also common in practice some rappers were former graffiti artists (Fab Five Freddy) and some graffiti artist were
20 celebrating their favorite rap songs (Futura) and rappers, breakdancers and graffiti artist were often wearing clothes with graffiti design.
Due to the limitation of this work all these phenomena can not be analyzed in more detail, however, more information about them can be found in documentaries Wild Style (1982) or Style
Wars (1984).
iii. Other rap genres
I also suggested that the work will be focused on rap music, however, this statement also needs further specification. This work focuses on two most significant rap music genres, which have emerged in the middle 1980s and their influence on rap industry and popular culture was most significant. However, beside these two genres, which have emerged from the same impulses
(Latino rap) or as a reaction on rap music itself, which is the case of female and white rappers. The emergence of female rappers was partly a reaction on gangsta rap, which was often very
21 misogynistic and served to female rappers as a platform, where they can defend themselves. Even though this phenomenon also contains topics worth deep examining, I will mention this problem only marginally.
The reason why I have not included white and Latino rap in the study is, that it is primarily focused on African Americans.
22 PART I
Chapter 1 A Dead End : A summary of social and economic phenomena between the 1920s and 1990s responsible for emergence of black urban ghettos
Hip hop was in the introduction described as a typical urban cultural phenomenon. Urban background not only helped to transform the ancient oral tradition, but was a source of inspiration for many rap artists. The urban areas, which turned through the course of decades into pitiful ghettos, were thus in many cases the sources of many social negative effects – such as gang violence, prostitution, drug dealing/abuse and racism. In this chapter we will take a closer look at the problems of these ghettos and point out factors, which were mostly responsible for pauperization of these areas. These problems have their roots not only in a domestic policy of the
USA and social stratification of the American society during the second half of the 20 th century, but in economical globalization and changes of a world market as well. Because most of rap artists react more or less directly on these problems, it will be necessary to take a closer look on them.
African Americans have always represented a significant part of the population of the large northern cities, even though the numbers have changed through the course of centuries. DuBois estimated that the number of blacks living in New York in 1800 was approximately 1,500 and till
1900 this number rose to 60,000; most of them were employed as servants and laborers. A greater flow of African Americans also followed after the Emancipation proclamation, but the will of many blacks to move North was discouraged with an impossibility to buy land and to lead the agricultural life they were used to and in some cases they were not welcomed in northern rural communities.
More massive flow of southern blacks to North occurred between 1910 and 1930 – this migration, which is in American history known as the “Great Migration” dramatically changed the demographic structure of the nation. According to some estimates the number of blacks, who have
23 moved to north, is somewhere between 300,000 and 1,000,000. Black migration remained strong till the 1960s, except during the Great Depression. More than 6 million southern blacks made the move to the North during this period. The black population in the city of Chicago rose between
1920 and 1930 from 109,458 to 233,903 and till 1970 Chicago attracted approximately 500,000 blacks (Grossman 1989) and the situation in other northern cities such as Detroit, New York, and
Cleveland was the same. The main reasons, why blacks migrated to North were mainly economical
– World War I interrupted the flow of immigrants from Europe and many American males had to enter the Army, which left enough job opportunities for unskilled black laborers. These were driven out from southern rural areas because of a progressing automation in agriculture and a boll weevil infestation of the cotton crop that ruined harvests. Later, when the demand for workers was weakened by the Great Depression and later World War II, the exodus from south continued because of rising race hatred from groups like the Ku Klux Klan and insufficient access to schools and other public facilities, leisure activities and voting rights. The blacks very quickly created a significant part of manufacturing labor force which rose from 19% in 1900 to 26% of total workers in 1950 (Tindall 1991: 584).
It would be naïve to think, that the race hatred, even though it was always associated with the
American South, was not in the northern cities present. This animosity between blacks and whites had two significant impacts on the black community. During the 1950s many whites had moved to new suburbs leaving city centers predominantly black – a tendency typical for most of American major cities. However, when blacks wanted to move to these new suburbs they had to face many obstacles, which usually prevented them from moving away. White inhabitants and landowners tried to keep their neighborhoods ‘white’ by any means necessary. These white neighborhoods, which were located in the West side of Los Angeles, were “covered by legally enforced, racially restrictive covenants or deed restrictions. This practice, adapted by white homeowners, was established in 1922 and was designed to maintain social and racial homogeneity of neighborhoods by denying non whites access to property ownership” (Alonso 1996). This significantly helped to
24 define areas, which would be within several decades turned into ghettos. Another way how to keep blacks in their neighborhood were white clubs, which often intimidated or attacked Negroes and forced them to stay in city centers. Moreover, the emergence of these clubs triggered a counter reaction in the form of black clubs, which were later transformed into gangs and they will be discussed later in this chapter.
It was suggested that the Great Migration from southern states ended approximately in the late
1960s, however, the flow of blacks to the North continued because of a favorable social climate.
Even thought President’s Kennedy proposals, which were supposed to reduce the rising unemployment among low skilled workers, seemed to be forgotten after his assassination in 1963,
President Johnson managed, relatively quickly, to carry through Kennedy’s proposal for a tax cut and few months later an expanded version of the civil rights bill (outlawing segregation in public accommodations and promoting fair employment practices). These steps were a part of what
Johnson called “The Great Society” – a program, which main purpose was to reduce the rising unemployment and poverty. These were not the only mechanisms of Johnson’s administration which were put in practice. Office of Economic Opportunity was established as a coordinating agency and later directed number of social programs established by the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964. Thus many low skilled workers found jobs, no matter of which ethnicity or origin they were. By 1960, 40% of all blacks lived outside the South, while 75% of all blacks lived in cities
(Johnson 2006).
However, it was clear, that financing of the “Great Society” program and Vietnam War was depleting the national budget more, than it could sustain. When Richard Nixon came into an office he had to face the problems, which were an outfall of generous policy of previous cabinet and for which the economists coined the term stagflation. Nobody ever assumed that such conditions can coexist. Stagflation was an economical syndrome, when economy slowly grew, but inflation and unemployment were growing as well. People expected that prices of goods would grow and started to buy more, which led to an increase of prices. This increased demand pushed up prices and led to
25 demand for higher wages, which pushed prices higher still in a continuing upward spiral. The government's ever rising need for funds swelled the budget deficit and led to greater government borrowing, which in turn pushed up interest rates and increased costs for businesses and consumers even further. With energy costs and interest rates high, business investment languished and unemployment rose to uncomfortable levels (Conte, Carr 2001).
When Nixon came in to the office in 1968, the unemployment rate was approximately 3.3 %, but till the end of his administration in 1974 it climbed to almost 6% (U.S. Department of Labor,
2001). This growth had several reasons. Nixon’s cabinet was forced to accept several environmental laws (Clean Air Law, National Environment Policy Act) restricting building and functioning of heavy industries in urban areas, which led to shutting down of several factories, which decreased employment opportunities for unskilled workers there. More rapid rise in shutting down factories came with the beginning wave of globalization. Much American consumer goods became suddenly too expensive in comparison to the same products manufactured in Japan or
West Germany. This forced many companies to relocate their manufacturing lines abroad and thus to rising unemployment in the USA. It is also important to take demography into a concern – since
1965 till 1980 there was a 40% rise in a labor force number (more than 30 million people who were either effect of baby boom or women’s right for equal job opportunities) – and the number of newly created working opportunities could not satisfy demand for jobs (Tindall 725).
The situation got even worse, when the new Nixon’s cabinet, in effort to decentralize government’s responsibility for cities’ social programs, issued an act, which distributed more than
30 billions dollars among cities, which they could spend in a five years period on any project they needed. As the cities loose governmental support, they have to fight against existing problems on their own, which often included dramatic financial cuts in city budgets, particularly the city New
York. When New York City was near bankruptcy in 1975, its mayor Abraham Beame was forced to make massive cuts in the city's capital budget and to reduce the municipal payroll by 65,000.
This loss of public jobs, which served since the New Deal as an important factor in reducing
26 unemployment, influenced most harmfully low skilled workers – mostly the black minority and
Hispanics.
Although Ronald Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign promised to lower employment, his attempts to do so and rise the lingering economy, failed. Steps of the second
Reagan’s administration 1984 to restore market stability were a harsh disappointment especially for blue collar workers, who had been hoping for social improvement for years. Reagan favored a policy, that more money in hands of the rich, would be good for the rest of the society, because the rich would invest productively. Thus he proposed massive personal and corporate tax cuts and reductions in government spending. He cut back social programs, including school lunch programs for poor (approximately 3 million children were removed from the program) and canceled 340.000
CETA jobs for unemployment workers (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act issued in
1973).
To fight inflation, running at the rate of 14 percent per year, the Federal Reserve Board had increased interest rates. Recession was the inevitable result. Blue collar workers who had largely supported Reagan were hit hard, as many lost their jobs. According to Federal Reserve, as the 80’s were coming to a close, the top 1 percent (834,000 households with a net worth of about $5.7 trillion), was worth more than the bottom 90 percent of Americans (94 millions households with a net worth of $4.8 trillion) (Kitwana 2001:27). A considerably high number of these 90 percent was living under the poverty line.
Probably the worst situation was in the large cities, as it can be illustrated on Los Angeles and
New York. According to Scott and Brown the poverty rate for Los Angeles in 1969 was 2.8 percent lower than that for the rest of the country. This quickly changed as Los Angeles' poverty rate continued creeping upward while the poverty rates for the nation remained stable (Table 1).
By 1979, the poverty rate for Los Angeles was one percent higher than that for the nation. And, as of 1989, the Los Angeles poor had grown to over 15 percent of the population (Brown, Scott
1993:2).
27 Table 1
Poverty Statistics for Los Angeles
Persons Below Poverty Poverty Rate
(in thousands) (in percents)
1969 1979 1989 1969 1979 1989
Total 753 985 1,301 11.1 13.4 15.1
Groups:
Anglo 378 288 229 7.8 7.5 6.6
Black 180 215 203 24.2 23.2 21.2
Latino 169 388 744 16.6 19.2 22.9
Asian 26 94 125 11.2 14.6 13.2
Source: Scott, Allen J., Brown, E. Richard . South Central Los Angeles: Anatomy of an Urban Crisis . 1993
The situation in New York was much the same in 1986 approximately 30% of New York's
Hispanic households and 25% of black households lived at or below poverty line. The development of poverty rate for US is displayed below (Graph 1).
Graph 1.
These groups have suffered the worst globalization consequences of the strengthening globalization, probably the worst was, that it spurred the trend of American corporations to move their factories abroad, where production was cheaper, which was heavily damaging American labor force since the 70s. The large quantity of cheap workers abroad the country also led to a
28 weakening of power of labor unions in the United States and their ability to negotiate with employers about favorable working condition, which till the 1990s resulted, among others, in establishing of an international minimum wage and a decreased motivation to search job elsewhere.
The retreat of employers also had left large number of real estate, which were neither torn down and replaced with luxury residential zones by corporate developers or turned into information service companies. As number of people living in or near poverty has been increasing, affordable housing stock has been decreasing because of decreasing governmental housing assistance, rising rents, high end new construction, conversions to luxury residential zones, neighborhood gentrification, and demolition of deteriorating existing units. Under circumstances like these, blue collar workers had neither available working opportunities nor affordable living.
A classic example of this negative tendency, where new construction damaged poor inhabitants of the urban centers were several, lets name the construction of New York's Express Highway in
Bronx designed by Robert Moses. An approach, which he had chosen was for many residents very insensitive – thousands of people were displaced from their homes (approximately 250.000 people) and their neighborhood changed forever. Most of the relocated people were blacks, Hispanics and most of them were poor. The relocation, which was very quick and massive, broke the existing community bonds and thus the older social programs, which had been in previous decades successful, became suddenly ineffective. These displaced people did not benefit from the highway construction at all, because most of them did not own a car; the highway was built for upper and middle classes suburbanites, that could afford to own an automobile. The demolition of deteriorating housing units and the other negative aspects mentioned should not be resulted in the
90s in a massive housing crisis which stroke the whole country while in the 1970 there were 7.4 million low rent units with 6.5 million poor renters (with incomes of $12,000 or less), making a surplus of 900,000 low rent units. But by 1993 there were only 6.5 million low rent units for 11.2 million low income renters, which meant, that there was a shortage of 4.7 million affordable rental
29 units. According to US Labor Department 54.4 % of overall Blacks inhabit city centers, (compared to 21.4% of whites) (Kitwana 28).
Moreover, the money used for New York Express Highway construction, was city and federal money set aside to city projects, such as schools, hospitals, libraries sewer system and subways and alternatives to automobile. Instead, Express Highway completely had destroyed business on
3rd Avenue, which led to considerably higher unemployment, violent crime rate, drug distribution, slumlords, easily available weapons, prostitution and vacancy. Such approach from municipal authorities and government helped to shape in relocated people a sense of inutility and isolation.
Above all it has also highlighted the gap between the poor and the rest of the society (middle and upper class whites and “black bourgeoisie”). For those poor the society became sharply divided on
“us” and “them”.
However, this division was quite reasonable and it was described by many scholars like
Mollenkopf and Castells who in their study about New York notice that blue collar workers, who had represented quite important part of the American economy in post war years, were gradually loosing this importance, till it was completely marginal and as Moellenkopf further noticed in their place “three new groups have emerged as dominant stratum. The largest group of the three were white male professionals and managers, followed by female and black or Latino clerical and service workers, and finally Latino and Asian manufacturing workers” (Rose 29). The situation in
New York can not be applied to New York only this change was taking place nationwide. With beginning of the 80’s and continuing computerization and automation, many traditional manufacturing branches together with warehousing and trucking – typical jobs of many African
Americans and Hispanics vanished. According to the U.S Department of State, the goods producing sector (which includes manufacturing, construction and mining) provided 17.2 million jobs (41% of non farm employment) in 1946, but this number grew only to 25.2 million (19% of non farm employment).On the other hand. Service related industries accounted for 24.4 million
30 jobs, or 59 percent of non farm employment, in 1946. By late 1999, that sector had grown to 104.3 million jobs, or 81 percent of non farm employment. (US Department of State 2001).
The replacement of traditional technologies with more sophisticated ones, which can be in the case of Los Angeles illustrated on a shutdown of Goodyear or Ford factories and an emergence of new computer and software companies like Microsoft or Apple in Silicon Valley and which inevitably led to a demand for different working skills than in the previous decades. It is quite reasonable that suitable employees were not recruited from blacks and Hispanics, who did not have a required skills and knowledge. I think that this state has two possible reasons: a) a traditional orientation of blacks towards manufacturing jobs, or b) it was the result of previous decades, when blacks had been denied an access to higher education and thus they were not ‘prepared’ as their white counterparts. The striking difference between these groups is shown below (Table 2).
Table 2
Percent of students between 3 and 34 by race/ethnicity with complete college education
White Black Latino
1960 93.6 5.4 1
1970 91.2 7.0 4.2
1980 83.0 9.8 4.4
1990 78.7 10.3 5.5
1994 73.8 11.9 8.0
Deindustrialization and restructuring of the market and under education of the most vulnerable groups, i.e. African Americans and Hispanics have significantly affected them. The minimum wage and an absence of benefits offered in service sectors, which are the easiest accessible job for unskilled and mostly uneducated laborers, could not cover expenses needed for decent living. In addition, these wages very often do not exceed incomes of their parents and often did not offer any benefits. It was crystal clear, that under given circumstances, i.e. few employment opportunities,
1 Earlier statistics not available
31 insufficient job information system and poor school network all the work gradually disappeared.
These negative factors had a negative impact on young black males among which, was the unemployment rate considerably high – among groups of black males 16 to 24 years in 1984 it reached 42.7% (compared to 14,4% among whites) and this number dropped till 1995 only to
27.5% (while in case of whites it has dropped to 11.8%).(US Department of Labor 2001) Wilson in his book When Work Disappears describes it this way: “this only led to one thing: In case of young people, they may grow up in an environment that lacks the idea of work as a central experience of adult life – they have a little or no labor force attachment. These circumstances also increase the likelihood that the residents will rely on illegitimate sources of income, thereby further weakening their attachment to the legitimate labor market” (Kitwana 34).
32 Chapter 2 Fight the Power: Riots in black urban areas in the 1960s and 1990s
It is quite obvious that under such circumstances the attitude of the blacks living in the ghettos towards the government was harsh. The oldest generation of rappers, like Chuck D of the group
Public Enemy remembers, when their neighborhoods were functional and relatively free of any negative social problems, which were typical for the 90s. In his book Autobiography of Mista
Chuck , Chuck D recalls his childhood in one of the New York’s city part: Roosevelt, Long Island, in the 1960s and 1970s was a total black town, and the people who moved into Roosevelt at that time had a different mind set. We were a black community . Black fathers were not just fathers to their own children, but they responded and contributed in different ways to the entire community, doing things like running the Boys Club, coaching the Pee Wee football teams, baseball teams, and the junior basketball leagues. Youngsters, who didn’t have fathers in their homes had their coaches, and there were also more male teachers (Chuck D 1997:28). Majority of blacks accused those who were responsible for pauperization of urban areas – the government, municipal authorities, middle and upper classes or large ‘white’ corporations. The fact that these institutions and groups were partially responsible for the poor state of American urban blacks, however even they were not innocent. Miserable living conditions were also result of excessive drug abuse, intraracial violence and loss of traditional ‘father role models’, which had accelerated such trend and significantly contributed to the gradual destruction of functional black communities. It was only matter of time when this steaming pot will explode and blacks will revolt.
The following paragraphs will examine and show the impact of the riots, which took place in
American major cities in the 80s and the 90s. Although this work focuses on these recent riots, the riot in Watts, L.A, which had burst out in 1965 should be also taken into a consideration. This riot, as many other riots (Detroit 1967, Chicago 1966/67, Cleveland 1966 and others) had exhibited some signs typical for more riots in the 90s, on the other the riots of the 90s uncovered other, till then, unknown trends.
33 All these riots shared the consciousness of social and racial inequality and most of them have been sparkled by inadequate police brutality. But unlike the riots of the 90s which broke out in
Miami, Florida or Watts, Los Angeles, Watts rioting in 1965 burst out in an atmosphere of the struggle for civil right and search for social justice. The worst violent uprisings followed after the assassination of Martin Luther King and signaled that Malcolm X appeal for an armed self defense had found a fertile soil. Riots in Miami and Los Angeles in the 90s have highlighted painful social problems severely pinching the United States but mostly ignored by the American society.
1, Class warfare – As was mentioned above Watts riot in 60s was a primary effect of inequalities between Blacks and whites. While in 60s the discontent of young black was targeted against white, riots of the 80s and 90s add to this racial aspect a social context, and although some white people were also physically assaulted, the rage of rioters was focused on store owners no matter if the were white, Black, Korean or Latino. It is evident that this unexpected level of solidarity was formed by lack of working opportunities in their neighborhoods.
2, Police brutality – police oppression is something, to which African Americans were used to since they had been brought to the United States. Civil rights generation, like hip hop generation was also a subject of police brutality, but for the Civil rights generation it was a part of everyday routine in the racially segregated America and therefore it was natural, why this generation had fought against the police brutality and for the equality before the law. However, the following decades uncovered that this struggle was almost useless – not only the police brutality had not been erased, but it was increased instead. Police brutality was very often excused with rising numbers of gangs and drug abuses in the urban areas. Policemen, who were charged with inadequate response, often claimed that they had feared their lives, because young drug dealers were very often armed. But very often their shooting and use of excessive force in given situations are hardly lawful. Every one today know the name of Rodney King, who was severely beaten, violent act was filmed, but none of the guilty policemen was punished. King’s name became notorious, because it had sparkled the L.A. riots, but there were hundreds other, who were beaten
34 or killed during routine traffic stops, drug raids or were a result of inadequate reaction. Following events happened during 1998 and 1999 and variety of places, where they took place, only shows, that problem of police brutality is a national problem (Amnesty International 1999):
California : In August 1999, in an early morning narcotics raid, a SWAT team(8) from the El
Monte police department burst into the home of a Mexican immigrant family and shot dead an unarmed elderly man, Mario Paz, in his bedroom. He was reportedly shot twice in the back. No drugs were found in the raid and a different name to that of the residents was on the search warrant.
New York City : In May 1999 unarmed 16 year old Dante Johnson (black) was shot and critically injured after running away from three police officers who had stopped to question him and a friend while they were standing in the street. The officers were from the same street crime unit which had shot and killed Amadou Diallo in February 1999 (see above). Johnson’s case was under investigation by the Bronx District Attorney at the time of writing.
New Jersey : In June 1999 Stanton Crew, an unarmed African American, was shot dead in New
Jersey, after he tried to maneuver his car out of the way of two police cars which had boxed him in after a car chase. The officers fired 27 shots at his vehicle, as he tried to drive back and forth. A female passenger in the car suffered police gunshot wounds to her leg.
No wonder, that such display of police superiority and reasonable feeling of unlawful approach, led to rising mistrust in police and renewal of Malcolm X /Black panthers thesis of armed self defense. That was the reason for an emergence of gangs, who represented a counterpart to the enemy in police uniforms.
3, Gangs and drugs – Scholars like Spergel suggest that “gangs are more prevalent in areas where limited access to social opportunities and social disorganization, or the lack of integration of key social institutions including youth and youth groups, family, school, and employment in a local community, were found" (Alonso 2001).
35 However, first gangs in Los Angeles were noticed in the beginnings of the 20 th century but they were known as clubs. These clubs were groups of teenagers who were stealing bicycles and car accessories. Later, when black communities in Los Angles were more numerous, the main function of these clubs was to protect them from the attacks of white clubs, which had emerged as a reaction on the growing number of blacks. But the interracial structure of these inner city areas, which was changing through decades, influenced activities of gangs. While in the 1940s the inner city was inhabited by blacks and whites, till the 1950s presented blacks the major group. White inhabitants, together with white gangs, moved to new suburbs, where the have isolated themselves using legal methods described above rather than the violent ones. Also the better organization of black gangs also discouraged many white gangs from any further activities. The retreat of whites to suburbs thus took away from gangs their traditional enemy and the interracial violence, common earlier was slowly transformed into an intraracial one. The reason for this division in the black community were social and economical differences between Westside and Eastside of South Los
Angeles blacks – Alonso “East side youths resented the upwardly mobile West side youths, because East side residents were viewed as economically inferior to those residents who lived on the West side. On the other hand, West side youths were considered less intimidating and lacking the skills to be street savvy and tough. In an effort to prove themselves equally tough, West side youths engaged in several confrontations with East side youths during the early 1960s (Alonso ).
Nevertheless this rivalry was partly stirred in the middle 1960s because of Civil Rights movement which gained a significant popularity in black communities and decreased tensions between rival gangs, which very often were involved in civil activities. Many gang members joined or “built political institutions to contest social injustices, specifically police brutality, which sparked the 1965 Watts Riots” – most of these organizations like Black Panthers Party (which often recruited gang members), US Organization, Sons of Watts or Community Action Patrol were trying to monitor the brutality of LAPD on blacks and often substituted state social institutions.
Till the 1960s the most prominent groups of Los Angeles – BPP and the US Organization gained a
36 nationwide popularity and were viewed as a potential threat toward the US. But within several months the bonds between both organizations started to break – different attitudes and aims resulted in murdering of the BPP leaders. The answer on the question, whether if this tragedy was rooted in the former gang rivalry is not remains unknown.
The dismissal of the BPP encouraged some black juveniles to restore former gangs and to continue in efforts of the dispersed BPP. That was the case of the first gang the Crips which has been founded shortly after the assassination of the BPP leaders. Their initial intensions were, as
Alonso suggested “to continue the revolutionary ideology of the 1960s and to act as community leaders and protectors of their local neighborhoods“. Alonso further claims that it was immaturity of members of the gang and lack of political leadership, which disabled the Crips to formulate any clear program and thus this revolutionary efforts were soon abandoned and the gang began to involve more in criminal activities instead. After six members of the gangs had been arrested for murder in 1972, the popularity of the gang even rose and the gang easily recruited new members.
According to Alonso “In three short years, the first Crip gang on the East side on 78 th Street had spread to Inglewood, Compton, and the West side, totaling eight gangs, as ten other non Crip gangs formed.” This was the beginning of problems which would last for more than 30 years – intraracial violence. Most of these newly formed gangs were intimidated by the Crips , in some cases their members were shot – Alonso noted that number of homicides was 29. However, this number started to rise dramatically very soon. This massive rise in the number of gangs was spurred with a weakening confidence of urban black males in legal economy and as Rosenzweig claims also “the violence was said to have been committed to attract attention and to gain notoriety
(Alonso). The 70s were also a decade, when a drug business started to flourish which had also supported the emergence of new gangs (Table 3). Because the Crips were still the most influential gang, other gangs, which were daily attacked and intimidated by its members, had formed a coalition, which was called Bloods in order to coordinate non Crips gangs and to fight with the
Crips more effectively. Rivalry between both groups increased the number of homicides:
37 according to Alonso in 1974 there were 40 Crips gangs and 15 Bloods gangs and the number of homicides rose to 70 and these numbers had been increasing till the early 1990s, when the had reached unbelievable heights – number of gangs in reached more than 250 gangs and the number of gang related homicides in 1992 was 803! Gang activities were not focused only on the inner city as the gangs started to operate in city parts, where no gang activities were previously reported
(Pasdena, Florence, Long Beach, Pomona or Gardena).
Gangs were not a problem for the city of Los Angeles only, but other major cities as well. In
1975 Los Angeles and New York were said to be home of 580 gangs or 394 gangs respectively.
However, gangs from New York outnumbered those of Los Angeles 27.000 to 13,500 in number of gang members. Deeper statistical research has shown that there were one hundred cities reporting gang activity in the United States in 1970. In 1996 the same statistics confirmed that, the number of cities in the United States reporting street gang activity was 769. By the mid 1990s there were an estimated 650,000 gang members in the United States, including 150,000 in Los
Angeles County. In addition, in 1996 there were over 600 Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles County along with a growing Asian gang force of about 20,000 U.S. (Department of Justice 1997). These numbers have shown that gang members present a considerably strong group, which can be viewed as a combination of the answer to the police brutality (which was a heritage of the 1960s) and as the need in running drug business (which started in the 1970s).
Table 3
Number of black Gangs in Los Angeles County, 1972 1996
Gangs number Change in % De functional New gangs
1972 18
1978 60 233 2 44
1982 155 146 6 101
1996 274 76 31 150
38 The reason why I described the historical background of gangs is simple. Gangs and their activities are very often topics of the controversial rap genre – ‘gangsta’ rap, which had caused a great upheaval among Americans and brought the question of gangs back to a table.
4, Generation gap – The fact that gangs members are young (in most cases 18 24 years old), highlights another important factor – a generation gap, which has been formed within last decades.
There were several reasons, which lead to widening of the gap between older and younger generation. One might be a loss of belief in non violent teaching of Martin Luther King, which was very strong among the Civil Rights generation. An inclination to a violent solution of the desperate situation was closer to a teaching of Malcolm X, which had a relatively strong influence on gang members. His teaching also attacked the older generation, which was in his eyes significantly responsible for Negroes undignified position within American society: „the miracle is, that the white man’s puppet Negro ‘leaders’, his preachers and the educated Negro laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now” (Hailey 1992:284).
Most of the young black males felt double crossed and cheated by the generation of their parents and grandparents, who have fought for equal working and social conditions. While the
Civil rights generation was brought up in an era, when different forms of racial oppression were on everyday program and an institutional racism was enormous, younger generation was brought up in an atmosphere of equality and open opportunities. Even thought the Civil Rights generation won its struggle for equal access to education, in the early 1980s there was a poor school system for their children unable to give them a proper education. The unemployment rate among their children was unusually high in spite of equal job opportunity rights. TV shows depicting a “real life: of black middle class family ( Prince of Bel-Air or The Cosby Show ) were in sharp contrast with the reality in American black urban areas.
I believe that this chapter has shown economic and social changes, which took place within several decades, were so intense that they had decimated African Americans so, that their position
39 was equal to inhabitants of African countries in a sub Saharan region. Even though these changes were also partially influenced by the strengthening globalization of financial markets, the greatest part of responsibility lies upon the government and municipal authorities, which were making crucial decisions. Negative social phenomenona such as vacancy, drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution and crimes were as it was suggested above the natural outfalls of these sometimes contra productive decisions.
Nevertheless, African Americans were not viewed as inferior in economical and social spheres only. Next chapter, which focuses on an origin and a development of rap music also uncovers, that even traditional cultural forms, oral or musical, were also regarded as inferior, which was a result of deep seated prejudices, which had been either formed during the slavery or were the result of the different perception of culture based on European standards.
40 PART TWO
Chapter 1 – Gimme the breakbeat: beginnings of rap music, cultural sources for early rap pioneers and a construction of a rap song
To fully understand the importance of sound organization in rap music, it would be helpful to pay attention to Snead's observation who claimed that “music is fundamentally related to the social world, that music, like other cultural creations, fulfills and denies social needs, that music embodies assumptions regarding social power, hierarchy pleasure, and worldview” (Rose 70).
Rap music had always had a difficult position in musical industry since its beginnings, which was a result of several factors. Many people claimed (and this attitude has remained till nowadays), that rap music can hardly be labeled as music, because it is chiefly a recitative art form accompanied with beats and dully repeating sound loops (samples). This chapter thus explains the reason which had led the general public to look upon the rap music as an inferior musical form.
Despite the initial obstacles which hindered the more rapid progress, the rap music had evolved and till the middle 1990s it has developed into many forms.
Although the beginnings of rap music genre are traditionally connected with three rap pioneers
– Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaata and DJ Kool Herc, who are considered to be the founders and pioneers of rap music and hip hop culture, it would not be correct to claim that these artists have invented rap music, however, their credits can not be diminished. Rap music drew various numbers of stimuli from the traditional black culture, which had been preserved in music and oral traditions of former slaves. Before I will focus on the rap music itself and the process of its creation, it would be appropriate to take a closer look on its inspirational sources, which helped to shape of contemporary rap music.
Although rap music is a relatively young genre, its origins can be, like the other genres of the black American music, traced back to an ancient Africa. Enslaved Africans brought to Americas
41 managed to preserve their cultural tribal habits, rituals and music that in the course of centuries presented a considerable part of their resistance against an oppressive white society. Probably the best known examples of this resistance were the spirituals or gospels, which had preserved traditions of call and response chants (spoken or semi sung lyrics resembling rapping), which could be also traced in the rap music centuries later. However, these traditions underwent the process of specific changes, which reflected the actual needs to preserve black culture, which later proved to be a powerful instrument in their struggle against dominant white culture. Rap music is, just like the gospels, the way how to articulate joys and pains of the black folk in America. Rap music, together with other genres of black American music like gospels, jazz, soul, rhythm and blues and funk represented the cultural current which was observed by Frazier already in the 50s in his study Black Bourgeoisie : “there have been only two really vital cultural traditions in the social history of the Negro in the United States: one being the genteel traditions of the small group of mulattoes who assimilated the morals and manners of the slaveholding aristocracy; and the other the culture of the black folk who gave the world the Spirituals” (Frazier 113). This other group of poor black folk remained an active carrier of black culture basically for the upcoming fifty years, which consequently resulted in a birth of rap music and the number of musical styles, which had been developed within the course of these fifty years provided an almost bottomless well, from which rappers would later draw their inspiration. On of the most prominent rappers, Afrika
Bambaata, claimed, that the vocal performance resembling rapping, could be already traced in songs of jazzman Cab Calloway, who had developed his distinguished style of scatting, which can be regarded as a predecessor of rapping. It was created by an accident as Cab Calloway recalls:
“Lyrics went out of my head… I had to fill the space, so I just started to scat sing the first thing that came on my mind. Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho. Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho. Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hee…The crowd went crazy. Then I asked the band to follow it with me and I sang, “Dwaa-de-dwaa-de- dwaa-de-do. And the band responded. By this time, whenever the band responded some of the
42 people in the audience were beginning to chime in as well. So I motioned the band to hold up and I asked the audience to join in. And as I sang the audience responded; they hollered back and nearly brought the roof down ” (Perkins 1996:3 ).
This “call and response” technique, which has its origin in African chants, will be later used by the first rappers. Even though jazz later compromised with other black music styles – soul and rhythm and blues – the rapping was still present. Artists like Barry White, Isaac Hayes and Millie
Jackson and their recitation of slow monologues (were very similar to rapping), over a simple melodic line, became legendary and have became the golden era of soul. Jackson’s raps on men, love and cheating were later an inspiration for female rappers of first rap’s wave like Roxanne
Shanté and Jackson’s duets with Hayes became legendary, just like Barry White romantic raps against a complete orchestra. All these three artists very quickly have crossed over into the white middle class mainstream an on radio and thus their music has became accessible for black consumers as well.
The elements of resistance in black oral culture were developed by the militant group The Last
Poets and Gil Scott Heron. These artists emerged in the era of civil rights movement, thus their wordplays tried to educate and awake their folk. They refused the Black media culture, which was described above and took their inspiration from the poet Imamu Amiri Baraka, Black Panthers or the Nation of Islam and recited their text over African flavored jazz rhythms (using of conga drums) rather then R’n’B, following excerpt, which illustrates their political views is from a song
Time (When the Revolution Comes, 2005):
I understand that time is running out [tick tock, tick tock]
Running out as hastily as niggaz run from the Man [tick tock, tick tock]
Time is running out on our natural habits... [tick tock, tick tock]
Time is running out on lifeless serpents reigning [tick tock, tick tock]
over a living kingdom [tick tock, tick tock]
43 Time is running out of talks, marches tunes, chants, [tick tock, tick tock]
and all kinds of prayers [tick tock, tick tock]
Time ... is running out of time. [tick tock, tick tock]
I heard someone say things are CHANGING [changing, things are changing]
Chain ... chain chain CHANGING [changing, things are changing] from Brown to Black, time is running out on
[changing .... tick tock]
bullshit changes! [tick tock, tick tock]
The Last poets laid the basis for political/message rap, which was rediscovered in the 1980s by many rappers like Public Enemy, X Clan, LL Cool J or KRS One and many others. Most of the albums of The Last Poets were banned and the group itself was put on a list of counter intelligence program, introduced by President Nixon.
The 1970s and the technical innovations like an electric organ allowed soul music to mutate into a new musical style known as funk. Funky was extremely popular not only among the black audience, but white as well, because it was an ideal music for dancing. Although the artists like Sly and the Family, James Brown and many others can hardly be rated as rappers their impact on rap music was quite significant. Not only by their verbal expression – ecstatic outcries which were adopted by the first rappers (which will be shown later) and it was their music, which would be sampled thirty years later by the first rappers. However, the growing popularity of the funky coincided with the upcoming of disco music, where “string sections, thudding drum machine beats and sugary vocals replaced live percussion, swinging horn sections and the gritty voice of urban funk” (RM Hip Hop Magazine 1986).
The disco music thus drove the funk music into the position of the underground culture. But it was disco, which gave birth not only to rap music, but heavy metal and punk rock music as well, which were just like rap music a reaction on the domination of disco and pop music. Afrika
Bambaata explains:
44 “It was motivating. It was something new and people were tired of disco at the time. The hip hop at that time came on strong because at that time they (music industry) were trying to shove disco down our throats. Everybody was into it for the first year or two and then they got tired of it.
Also New York itself was losing the funk… You stop hearing those hard beats on those records coming through the radio. You stop hearing the soul music of James Brown. All you heard was disco, disco and disco. Hip hop was a rebellious answer to disco ” (Davey D 1991).
It must be also taken into a consideration, that new disco clubs were quite prominent and thus inaccessible for young black, who often did not have enough money. That is why the black youth rejected the disco music and began to orient back on funk music of the 1970s – this trend was most visible in the Bronx, the poorest city part of New York, where the hip hop culture was born. To pinpoint an exact date is difficult, but Bambaata, Herc and Flash agree, that it was in 1974. The name rap was founded later and the term hip hop (which would later be used as a general term for the whole cultural movement), as Afrika Bambaata himself proved, has been invented by Lovebug
Starski, who used to play with him earlier and Bambaata used this term when he started deejaying:
“I started to call my jams “hip hop jams”. Before scratching there was just plain mixing. You would take a 30 second portion of a record and kept it going. Then you had break-dancing, the
Hustle, deejaying and then came rappers who just talked regularly over the music…When rhyming started, that’s when everybody started boasting about themselves, the flyest girls and how many girls you could get in one night” (Davey D 1991).
Bambaata was right, when he suggested, that the rapping, even though it later would became most prominent part of the hip hop, was invented as the last of its elements. In the beginnings central figures of rap music were DJs, who provided break beats for break dancers and played music during gatherings of graffiti crews. Thus the primacy of being the founder of rap music
45 should be ascribed to DJ Kool Herc (born Clive Campbell), Jamaican native who had moved to the
Bronx when he was a child. He is being credited for bringing the traditional form of roots reggae which was very popular in the slums of the West Kingston. Jamaican DJs, used to bring huge speakers and turntables to the slums of Kingston and to rap over the simple bass line of the ska and reggae beats. Herc brought this tradition to the streets of the Bronx, where he used to play in small parks, on street corners or playgrounds and organized dance parties. Soon he had been followed by others, who later developed and redefined the original style. Herc became famous, not only for using probably the loudest stereo system in New York City, which he had nicknamed the
Herculords, but for invention of so called break beats (or b beats) as well. Rose defines break beats as a practice of extending obscure instrumental breaks, that created an endless collage of peak dance beats, which were in sharp contrast to Eurodisco’s unbroken dance beat, that dominated the dance scene in the mid to late 1970s (Rose 51). He usually used funky records, which was an effect of a still enormous popularity among the inhabitants of the Bronx, however, the samples of
New Orleans jazz or Isaac Hayes can be found in his music as well.
Kool Herc used to play mainly in the West Bronx, and thus the other neighborhoods quickly produced other DJs, who were organizing their own block parties, where they tried to gain local respect for their dope beats. Consequently, the rule over southern and central sections of the Bronx was in hands of Grandmaster Flash, while Afrika Bambaata ruled over the Bronx East River. The rule in case of Bambaata is not a metaphor he had won the respect of his neighborhood as a tough leader of the gang Black Spades, who later, after his life changing journey to Africa transformed the gang into the Zulu Nation – group of racially and politically aware rappers, dancers and graffiti artists and became a prominent DJ. These DJs (together with break dance crews) began to compete with each other for a reign over a particular territory via their skills behind the turntables or on the dance floor respectively. These battles, which very often lasted several hours, defined the territories where the particular DJ had won the respect from locals. Probably the first battle was the one that took place between Afrika Bambaata and Disco King Mario in 1976 and others followed
46 immediately. This rivalry among DJs had produced certain kind of pressure, which drove them to develop and to perfect their skills, which is the feature typical for hip hop. DJs were forced to improve their skills to be able to survive in the competition. Due to this competition Grandmaster
Flash perfected the break beats invented by Herc and developed backspin and scratching – crucial elements of hip hop music. Scratch technique is produced by moving a vinyl record back and forth with your hand while it is playing on a turntable. This creates a distinctive sound that has come to be one of the most recognizable features of hip hop music. Although it had been invented by
Grandmaster’s friend, Grandmaster Theodore (who was only 13 at the time), it was Grandmaster and Kool Herc who pioneered the scratching and an took it to a new level, as Rose notes “this innovation extended their use of turntables as talking instruments, and exposed the cultural rather than structural parameters of accepted turntable use” (Rose 53). Both elements, deejaying and scratching, will be discussed later in this chapter, where the composition of a rap song will be analyzed. The third element – rapping, an oral component of rap music – emerged as the last.
Even though the DJs tried to attract as much people as possible and broaden their respect further, their virtuosity began to draw the attention of visitors away from the performance of dancers, and thus there arouse a need to redirect this attention back to dancers. When DJ Kool
Herc, was hired at Hevalo Club in 1975, he brought Coke La Rock with him, who informed the audience where they were, who the DJs and dancers were and also uttered “crowd pleasers” – e.g.
“DJ Herc is in the house and he’ll will turn it out without a doubt”, and used the call and response method to incite spontaneous reactions from the audience. Coke La Rock later had invited Clark
Kent and together they formed the first “MC” team known as DJ Kool Herc & Herculoids. An early rapping of these “MCs” (or “emcees” which stands for Master of Ceremonies) resembled the vocal style of the 70s and James Brown, traditions of Jamaican “boast and toast” and signifying.
These traditions had been pioneered by Muhammad Ali in his braggadocio (bragging raps), who recited them to promote his qualities and to embarrass his opponents.
47 “I'm so fast man I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet, when George Foreman meets me he'll pay his debt. I can drown and drink the water and kill a dead tree, wait 'til you see
Muhammad Ali”. (Wikipedia)
Such rhymed couplets and a metaphor of a fight were an inspiration for the black urban males, who developed a whole set of rules and hidden meanings, in order to insult and humiliate their opponents, while boasting own skills and perfection. Other groups who inspired the early rappers were various popular radio disc jockeys, whose introductions of played songs and a word juggle were sometimes more popular than the introduced songs and their performers. Rappers soon adjusted these impulses to fulfill their needs and transformed these simple rhymed sayings into more profound and lyric texts. The first raps were therefore either about respect, skills and domination, like in Grandmasters Flash's The Fastest Man Alive (The Source, 1986):
Born in a ghetto, lived in a slum
But he was raised high and mighty to be number one
The park was his stage, cost didn't exist
And everybody was invited to be a witness
Running things on the South Bronx streets
Known for great feats of skill and techniques
He's the priest of the beats, the king of the scratch
And all the rest are just a product of wacks!
He's The Fastest Man Alive
Cut it up Flash
He's The Fastest Man Alive
Or they were, like in the case of rapper Melle Mel, about the problems they were facing every day in their neighborhood. Thus he had laid the basis for the message rap, which was fully
48 developed a decade later by groups like Public Enemy, XClan an others, following excerpt is also from Grandmaster Flash and his hit The Message (The Message, 1982):
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I can’t take the smell, I can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far
Cause the man with the tow truck repossessed my car
Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to loose my head
It’s like a jungle, sometimes it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under
Despite the fact, that rap artists were attracting more and more listeners, they were ignored by the commercial mainstream for a long time. It was a result of steady popularity of the disco music, as Hank Shocklee confirmed:
We got kind of dogged in the disco crunch. After '79, '80, companies weren't signing anybody.
To make a record was like the most incredible thing in life. The only people we really had on wax were Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, and Earth, Wind and Fire. These were major groups…Others were distributed out of the backs of cars: Enjoy Records, Sugar Hill Records, the
Sound of New York. And if you made a 12-inch, it was considered, like, wow. But if you made an album-now, that was inconceivable. I mean, rappers never got to do an album.”
49 The other reason why the rap music had problems to find its way to a wider audience was, that the major white audience did not regard rap music for music. Rappers had to defend their new musical style, which might seem new, but only at first sight. Thus before I will continue to map the development of rap music, I would like to take a closer look on the music itself.
50 Chapter 2 All we got left is the beat : Black music as a mean of resistance
While the rap music, which was produced in the middle 1980s (gangsta rap or message rap) was denied access to mass media because of its negative reputation – depiction of violence, racism or misogyny, the reason why early rappers had had problems to gain access to wider audience
(people outside ghettos) was rather of cultural and racial character, which had been formed through centuries of slavery. It must be taken into a consideration, that the mainstream audience and more importantly the music producers were representatives of upper and middle class whites together with “black bourgeoisie”, for which the refusal of black cultural traditions, denying its aesthetic values and tendency to separate Western European (and especially Anglo Saxon) cultural traditions were a sign of their social superiority. This instinctive feeling of racial superiority was so strong, that it managed to keep “white music” separated from other musics basically till the 1950s.
However, the musical evolution was stronger; the elements of black music had been penetrating into white musical forms, or as in a case of jazz music it has used elements typical for an European musical tradition and thus it would not be correct to view jazz as pure African music. Jazz music has its roots in combination of African music (including spirituals, blues and ragtime) and New
England’s religious hymns and hillbilly music, as well as European military band music and jazz musicians were exploring different techniques such as increased use of the seventh and extended chords – a result of work of Europeans in music theory and Western European classical music tradition (Wikipedia 2006). Rap music, on the other hand, tried to separate and distinguish from the mainstream “white” culture, and present itself as a completely black art by going back to
African roots and transforming them for its actual needs.
Thus, in case of rap music the influence of the Western classical music was marginal while the influence of the African music was dominant, which was the reason why rap was perceived as simple and repetitive. Denying the complexity of rap music was a result of the double perception of music, which was formed through the centuries. However, rap music should not be viewed as
51 inferior, but rather different, as Rose accurately notes, “unlike the complexity of Western classical music, which is primarily represented in its melodic and harmonic structures, the complexity of rap music, like many Afrodiasporic musics, is in the rhythmic and percussive density and organization” (Rose 65). Defining the distinction between African and European music as a simple dichotomy between harmony and rhythm might look too simple, but it is quite appropriate.
Rhythm is crucial in the sound organization of rap music, unlike classical works, “which often display great musical complexity through the composer's use of development, modulation
(changing of keys), variation rather than exact repetition, musical phrases that are not of even length, counterpoint, polyphony and sophisticated harmony”(Wikipedia 2006). Besides this double perception of complexity, there are other differences distinguishing both techniques from each other. Complex structures of classical music were preserved in written notation and the hierarchical structure of the European music led some to the conclusion, that this hierarchy mirrors a social structure of monarchy. The African music on the other hand, was preserved in an oral form and common method of call and response exhibits its character of all inclusiveness. So what is the harmony for the music derived from Western European music, this is the rhythm for rap music.
According to Hasty “among the attributes of rhythm we might include continuity or flow, articulation, regularity, proportion, repetition, pattern, alluring form or shape, expressive gesture, animation, and motion (or at least the semblance of motion). Indeed, so intimate is the connection of the rhythmic and the musical, we could perhaps most concisely and ecumenically define music as the ‘rhythmization’ of sound” (Wikipedia 2006).
Of course, that African musical tradition was not the only factor, which helped to shape the rap music of the 80s. The second important factor, why the rap pioneers looked for inspiration in a folk music, were the miserable living conditions of the black population in the USA in the late 70s as they were described in previous chapter. It has been also mentioned, that folk music was particularly during the slavery era a significant part of black resistance against their oppressors.
The rap music, almost two hundreds years later had a similar role it was a way how to express
52 joys or sorrows of urban life. The rap music thus has become a voice of urban black males, who were gradually forced to accept the image of social outlaws – these negative images are often the main topics of many rap songs.
The third important factor, which is also responsible for the form of rap music, was a level of technology available and more importantly its accessibility. Many of the early rappers could not afford to hire an expensive studio or buy expensive instruments, thus they had to find another ways how to make their music. The following section will describe the way how the rap song is constructed and problems which the sampling brought forward.
53 Chapter 3 – Hip Hop Rules: Construction of a rap song
The previous section has hinted upon the key role the rhythm and rhyme had played in the black musical tradition through the centuries – from the slavery till the end of the 20th century as an underground counterpart to the white culture, which in the case of rap music, can be represented by disco. The importance the rhythm has played in rap music can be illustrated on the following example of a rap classic Let the Rhythm Hit'Em (Let the Rhythm Hit’Em, 1987 ) from the duo Eric
B. and Rakim:
My rhyme is the rhythm of thoughts
That kill a man
Ideas for the ear to fear
Might split 'im
He'll never forget 'im
He'll rest in peace wit' 'em
At least when he left he'll know what hit 'im
The last breath of the words of death
Was the rhythm.
It is important to realize that besides its musical function, the rhythm also bears other information, which became the subject of many researches. Rose suggests that these “musical elements that reflect worldviews, these ‘rhythmic instinctions’ are critical in understanding the meaning of time, motion and repetition in black culture and are of critical importance to understanding the manipulation of technology in rap”(Rose).
The rhythm and repetition has always been an important part of the music of western Sahel and
West Africa, where most of the American slaves came from and it always had both aesthetical and social function. The rhythm of the talking drums differed according to the importance of the utterance and the repetition played an important role during the social gatherings in ritual chanting
54 to gods or ancestors, where the technique of call and response was employed. These chants can be performed for several hours and can consist of very short phrases repeating seemingly monotonously, but they can subtle vary. The all inclusiveness of repetition enables members of a particular community to join the ritual or song whenever they want to in such context it should be mentioned Snead’s observation, who claims that “repetition is an important and telling element in culture, a means by which a sense of community, security and identification are maintained”
(Rose). This is an explanation for the stress the black music puts on repetition, because it presents one of the means how to resist a hostile environment – however, this is typical not only for black culture, Snead argues that “all cultures provide coverage against loss of identity, repression assimilation or attack” (Rose 69).
Harsh social and political conditions under which African Americans had to live through centuries caused, that rhythm and repetition became in African American culture dominant, unlike the European culture, which according to Snead “secrets repetition”. In European culture the repetition is not a key factor – “it is a progression or regression, assigning accumulation and growth or stagnation or motion”, according to Attali – “repetition has been suppressed in favor of the fulfillment of the goal of harmonic resolution” (Rose 69). It is obvious, that both approaches toward music are results of different social and cultural conditions under which they were evolved
Middleton distinguishes them in the following way: “the political economy of production; the
‘psychic economy’ of individuals; the music technological media of production and reproduction
(oral, written, electric); and the weight of the syntactic conventions of music historical traditions”.
Middleton also claims that high level of repetition in popular music is a certain sign of mass culture, others, like Adorno suggests that repetition is a sign of infantilism and psychosis. I do not think that in case of the rap music such statements are reasonable; they characterize rather techno music or industrial music (represented with German electronic bands like Kraftwerk) where the rhythm and repetition are undoubtedly are used with specific aims – to create a dance music for a
55 huge masses of people or to express the influence of an industrialization on cultural sphere of modern society respectively.
Rap music also reacted to the technological progress society was making, which turned out to be a key factor in rap music. Using of samplers gave DJs an enormous field of opportunities.
Beside the rhythmic complexity and repetition, rappers also have found an interest in melodic bass frequencies and breaks in pitch and time. All these attributes were common in black music long time before the development of rap, but the technology progress enabled the rappers to alter the rhythm to their needs. According to Rose, “rap music techniques, particularly sampling, involve the repetition and reconfiguration of rhythmic elements in ways, which illustrate a heightened attention to rhythmic patterns and movement between such patterns via breaks and points of musical rupture” (Rose 67).
Using of samplers was not an invention of rappers, they were often used by many popular music producers as time and money saving devices, because they can substitute any sound needed for a song. However the early DJs revolutionized their use – unlike rock and disco musicians, who were using samples as particular part of their production, the rappers on the other hand used samples as a basic material, from which they were able, with the assistance of the modern technology, create endless variety of new loops. As Grandfather Flash, developer of many rap techniques explains: “I was known for taking a particular passage of music and rearranging it. I called it the quick mix theory. It consisted of backspinning, the double back, cutting and scratching
(Davey D 1991). These techniques are redevelopment of Africandiasporic musical traditions, which were described in previous paragraphs and for understanding the way, in which the rap music is composed, these cultural historical context must be taken into a consideration. Rose thus suggests, that “rap music production resonates with black cultural priorities in the age of digital reproduction”(Rose).
The usage of samplers by rappers had several reasons. One of them was already mentioned it was financially available for most of DJs and they practically could sample any sound they wanted
56 to. But unlike other mainstream musicians, the rappers redefined the using of samplers in a completely new way. It was already said, that rappers favored the low frequency beats, bass melodies and rhythmical drums and the samplers allowed them to take out of a song practically any sound, which they liked and work with it. However rappers’ use of samplers was different from established method of samplers use. While mainstream musicians used for an example horn sections or guitar parts to fill in an empty space in their work or highlight particular part or only to save money for live musicians, rappers pioneered another style. In the spirit of African musical traditions, which were described above, they have created their own distinguished style while mainstream artist takes a sample as a final product, rap artist, on the other hand, takes samples as a new material which is ready for another processing. The samples could be rearranged and create a sound loop, which could also be modified DJs could alter the tempo, play the loop backwards, repeat whole loop sections, create sudden ruptures and breaks Or completely distort the sound of a loop. Erik B in the song I Ain't No Joke (Paid In Full, 1987) claims, that:
Even if it's jazz or the quiet storm
I hook a beat up, convert it into hip hop form
The primary aim of rap musicians was to produce the “dope beats” (sometimes also called jeep beats ) – heavy, low and loud sounds, which would be heard in the whole neighborhood. The
Herculords, famous stereo system of DJ Kool Herc, illustrate the stress, which DJs put on the sound volume of the rap song. Rap music becomes in the hands of DJs a sonic force, which tries to be as strong as possible – the names of some songs illustrate this tendency quite clearly – Musical
Massacre, Let the Rhythm Hit ´Em (Eric B and Rakim), I'm Blowin Up (Kool Moe Dee) or Let the
Funk Flow (EPMD).
To create such a dope beats DJs used various types of samplers, many of them favored Roland
TR808 for its specific features as Kurtis Blow explains: “The T808 is great because you can detune it and get this low frequency hum. It's a car speaker destroyer. That's what we try to do as
57 rap producers break car speakers and house speakers and boom boxes. And the 808 does it. It’s
African Music!” (Rose 77). Others, like Hank Shocklee producer of rap group Public Enemy explains the use of particular samplers: “SP1200 allows you to do everything with a sample. You can cut it off, you can truncate it really tight, you can run a loop in it, you can cut off certain drum pads. The limitation is that it sounds white, because it is rigid. MPC 60 allows you to create more of a feel...it is best for R’n’B producers, because it is a slicker machine. For house records you want to use TR 808, because it has that charging feel, like a locomotive coming at you” (Rose 78).
This profound use of samplers exhibits a very sensitive approach to sound organization and musical feeling. Some rap producers claimed, that selection of an appropriate sample was sometimes more difficult than to record a guitar riff. In some rap music can hundreds of samples be traced, which is the case of Public Enemy's album It Takes a Nations of Million to Hold Us
Back (1990) and leader of the group Chuck D suggests that the use of samples is very similar to traditional music composition, sampling is to him: “just like a musician would take the sounds off of an instrument and arrange them their own particular way.”
While samplers represent partners for DJs, for rappers and MCs such a partner was a microphone. The microphone in the hands of a MC is not only a microphone – it is being transformed into a verbal gun, just like in Erik B and Rakim’s songs Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em or
Musical Massacre (Follow the Leader, 1988):
Cause when I grab the microphone just like a gun
You know them doo run run run, them doo run run
…
The mic is a drano, volcanoes erupting,
Rhymes overflowing, gradually growing
***
I'm the arsenal
I got artillery, lyrics of ammo
Rounds of rhythm
Then I’m ‘a give ‘em piano
58 Bring a bullet proof vest
Nothin’ to ricochet
ready to aim at the brain
Rakim, who is still recognized as one of the rappers with a perfect flow and oral technique, is aware of his lyrical qualities, and even though he metaphorically ascribes lethal effects to his microphone, he claims that microphone limits his verbal skills, which are beyond the borders of the modern technology, as he does in Microphone Fiend (Follow the Leader):
A menace to a microphone, a lethal weapon
An assassinator, if the people ain’t stepping
You see a part of me that you never seen
When I'm fiending for a microphone, I'm the microphone fiend...
And the mic that I’m holdin’s golden
Cordless cause the wire caught fire like a fuse
The microphone thus becomes a victim of superb verbal skills of its master an MC, whose skill to destroy the modern technology device can be also used against those, who are not willing to admit rapper’s supremacy. Rapper’s supremacy over the microphone and DJ’s skills with sampling machines symbolize the primary aim of the rap music – to be the greatest, fastest and most skilled in the rap industry.
Rose in her effort to demonstrate the primary aim or rap music culture pays also a great attention to graphic layout of CD covers and skits (short dialogues or monologues of rappers in the studio), which also exhibits signs of supremacy and domination. Rose analyzes Erik B and
Rakim's album Paid In Full (1987) , but there were of course many others like EMPD’s Strictly
Business (1991), Business as Usual (1987) or Ice T’s Rhyme Pays (1987), which indicate the main purpose of rap music – the music is a means of escape from miserable economic conditions. A cover of the album Paid in Full also stresses the economic factor on the front we can se Eric B
59 and Rakim with “dookie chains” (heavy golden chains, typical attribute of the rappers of the first wave), on the back side there is a lot of money, “dookie chains” and personal checks signed personally by Ronald Reagan – this should symbolize, that Eric B and Rakim are enormously successful, even so successful that they are paid by the government. The dialogue which is a part of the song Paid in Full (Paid In Full, 1987) and the song itself prove, that the creation of a rap song is primarily motivated by an economic need. Because Eric B made some dope beats, he encourages Rakim to make some def rhymes, so they can get paid in full:
Thinkin of a master plan
Cuz ain’t nuthin but sweat inside my hand
So I dig into my pocket, all my money is spent
So I dig deeper but still comin up with lint
So I start my mission leave my residence
Thinkin how could I get some dead presidents
I need money, I used to be a stick up kid
So I think of all the devious things I did
I used to roll up, this is a hold up, ain’t nuthin funny
…
So I walk up the street whistlin this
Feelin out of place cos, man, do I miss
A pen and a paper, a stereo, a tape of
Me and Eric B, and a nice big plate of
Fish, which is my favorite dish
But without no money it's still a wish
Cos I don’t like to dream about gettin paid
So I dig into the books of the rhymes that I made
To now test to see if I got pull
Hit the studio, cos I’m paid in full
60 After they finish the rhyme, Rakim starts counting the money they have earned with their music, while Eric B's scratching solo only suggests that they are earning enough. When Rakim stops counting, they both leave the studio and return back on the streets. Similar situation can be seen on EPMD's album Strictly Business - Eric Sermon and Parrish Smith, members of the group, sit in a recording studio, both with heavy “dookie chains” – so there is no doubt that they also earning a good living with music. According to Rose, “the acknowledgment of the presence of the recording studio juxtaposed against rapper's rhyme about life on the street without money, demystifies technology and its production and highlights the reality of rap as a means of upward mobility for meaningful for young blacks for whom meaningful jobs for meaningful pay is scarce”
(Rose 94).
61 Chapter 4 – In the limelight: Rap music goes commercial
Despite the fact, that the rap music tried to remain as “black” as possible and to present a counterpart to mainstream white culture, first commercial success of rap music came with a hit
Rappers Delight (1979) by the group Sugarhill Gang. This song was not a classic rap song in the sense as it was described above, but still its impact on the rap and basically the whole music scene was significant. Not only the disco melody line was used and there were three MCs, who were changing through the song. More important was the fact, that the success of the new style opened the mainstream music industry for other rappers. Soon after Rappers delight was released,
Grandmaster and Furious Five came with his Superappin’ (1979), which can be regarded as a really first commercially successful rap song. Musical studios, which were constantly looking for something new and thus attractive, could not ignore the rap music for long – this searching resulted in signing the first rapper by a major recording company. Kurtis Blow was not only the first rapper signed by a mainstream studio, but he was also the first rapper who performed solo, which is nowadays quite common. The term rap music was invented by the recording companies to label properly the new musical style.
By the early 80s rap music has diversified and the number of rap artists, rap albums and black and independent music studios (Sugarhill records, Def Jam) was rising. The first wave of rappers –
Bambaata, Herc or Flash – was being slowly replaced with the second wave of rappers, (LL Cool
J, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Moe Dee or groups Run DMC), who were very often very uncritical towards their older predecessors. They attacked their music, labeling it is an “oldschool” style, which should make room for their new music.
I'm DMC, I rock and roll. I'm DJ Run, I rock and rule
It's not a Trick or Treat and it's not a April Fool
It's all brand new, never ever old school
62 Run DMC are known as the first rap band, which cooperated with white rock musicians – this was a case of their single Walk this Way (Raising Hell, 1986) they had recorded with a rock group
Aerosmith and their video was the first rap video appearing on MTV. The name of the song illustrates the progressive tendency and shows the other rappers the way they should follow.
Run DMC continued “dissing” the older colleagues on their album Tougher than Leather
(1988) – here too, the name expresses their contempt with “leather suits and homo boots”, which was a common attributes of many older rappers and their song Sucker MC (Run D.M.C., 1984), which “disses” the other artists, who refused the cultural crossover Run DMC had made and decided to stay in the role of an underground culture.
You sucker MC's, you bad face clown
You five dollar boy and I'm a million dollar man
You’se a sucker MC, and you're my fan
You try to bite lines, but rhymes are mine
You’se a sucker MC in a pair of Calvin Klein
Comin’ from the wackest, part of town
Tryin’ to rap up but you can't get down
You don't even know your English, your verb or noun
You're just a sucker MC you sad face clown
However, despite the commercial success they had made, Run DMC was not so popular among their rap colleagues, which has two reasons. Unlike the early rappers they were coming from middle class families from Hollis in Bronx, they had a college education and, which they kept stressing and thus they were representatives of the social class, which was viewed by many rappers
(especially in the middle 80s) as their enemy.
I’m D.M.C. in the place to be
I go to St. John’s University
And since kinde garten I acquired the knowledge
63 And after 12th grade I went straight to college
I’m light skinned, I live in Queens
And I love eatin’ chicken and collard greens
I dress to kill, I love the style
The knowledge, Run DMC claimed they had acquired, was not the knowledge of the other rappers, coming from poor background of the ghetto. The knowledge (or Erik B and Rakim's
“know the ledge" or N.W.A.’s street knowledge) could be acquired only in the competition with the others on the streets, just like Erik B and Rakim did in their song Know the Ledge (Don’t
Sweat the Technique, 1992):
I grew up on the sidewalk where I learned street talk,
And then taught to hawk New York
…
Standing on shaky grounds too close to the edge
Let's see if I know the ledge
The street knowledge, which is constantly celebrated in gangsta rap songs, covers whole range of abilities to survive, prosper and gain respect in the ghetto. The knowledge how to escape police raids, how to attract the most attractive women, how to earn a lot of money in illegal business with drugs or prostitution or how to outwit someone’s opponent can be also acquired in the streets.
Thus many rappers attacked Run DMC, that their knowledge was acquired from then popular movies or TV series like Shaft (1971) or Kojak (1973 1978), the Run DMC were according to
Havelock Nelson and Michael Gonzales “a part of the Black middle class that was able to romanticize the images of distinction and chaos: nodding heroin addicts, bombed out buildings, thrash filled streets” (Perkins 14).
Other middle class rap star LL Cool J (born Todd Smith), developed his own style, which was lately labeled as “lover’s” rap. His single I Need Love (Bigger and Deffer, 1987), was a slow
64 whispering rap, with frequent panting should create his image of ladies man (LL Cool J stands for
Ladies love cool James). Not only that such music was viewed by many genuine rappers as sweet and womanish, but his carefully maintained neat image and stress on materialism (represented with cell phones, expensive alcohol and cars and beautiful women) were in a sharp contrast to political rappers, for whom the stress on materialism and personal property of dominant white society became a main subject of criticism. Thus the middle class rappers reached the peaks of their careers in the middle 80s, where it was confronted with rappers, whose social ties with ghetto were more authentic. However, the rap with a message, as we might also call this new wave of rap music, has developed into several currents with particular messages and aims. Following chapters will be focused on two following issues, which will analyze the impact of social and economical conditions on rap music and dual development of social rap. While gangsta rap, which advocated young blacks who took counter actions against police and government, dealt with violence as a matter of an everyday routine and was very often expressing quite nihilistic attitude, the political rap, which was pioneered mainly on the East coast, preferred more profound solutions and stressed the importance of reforms and changes, which were crucial in order to improve the situation of
African Americans in the middle 1980s.
65 PART THREE
Chapter 1 Gangsta’ rap: An Introduction
Gangsta rap, which will be subject of my research in this chapter, emerged together with another important rap genre – message rap in the middle 80s as a reaction to gradual commercialization of rap music. Rap music gained till the middle 80s quite significant popularity not only among urban blacks but it also started to attract a white audience. This commercial rap was represented with macho rap of LL Cool J, middle class rappers like Run DMC (although later they exhibited a political awareness which brought them closer to message rappers, just like in a song Proud to be Black ) or sexist rappers like Sir Mix A Lot. Rap music was slowly transformed into a subject of entertainment and was loosing its underground and anti establishment character.
Because gangsta rap music emerged and grew popular mostly in poor and predominantly black metropolitan areas in California (Compton, Long Beach or Watts in Los Angeles for an example), it was crystal clear that the subject it would deal with would be closely connected to the ghetto. An enormous success the gangsta rap gained within couple of years helped gangsta rap to expand beyond borders of California (New York's rappers Notorious BIG, KRS One and others).
However, gangsta rap was not as homogenous as it could seem on the first look. Basically it can be divided into two major currents: the gangsta rap and G Funk. While gangsta rap, tried to point to problems of the ghetto, criticized an approach of the government, the police and black power movements, G Funk rappers, who often stylized themselves into a role of “pimps” or
“hustlers” were rather considered with their own personality, success and materialistic wealth – they found their role models in “blaxploitation” movies from the 1970s especially The Mack
(1973) or Superfly (1972).
Adoption of a criminal as a role model and the name of the genre have aroused number of negative reactions from various concerned parental, religious or civil rights groups and this trend
66 continues more or less till nowadays. The FBI and various parental groups blamed gangsta rappers of an assumed inciting of violence against police and whites and a celebration of gang related violence, while feminist movements attacked gangsta rappers for their approach toward women, which in some cases was really extremely misogynistic. However, most of the critical voices, proved, that these objections were a result of the rooted prejudices and stereotypes, which beginnings can be traced back to the slavery and have been either misunderstand or omitted by most of those critics. This chapter focuses on the criticized issues of the gangsta rap– adoption of criminal figure as a role model and depicted violence – and explains them from cultural and social points of view.
Gangsta rappers were repeatedly refusing accusations that they would celebrate gang violence and opposed, that their lyrics should be viewed as the work of underground reporters, whose primarily aim is to substitute in certain aspects the role of mass media journalists or social scientists. Ice Cube, the leader singer from a prominent rap group NWA (letters stand for Niggaz with Attitude ) tried to explain what the group was actually trying to do: “It’s all about five brothers from the streets of Compton, tellin’ it like it is. No shorts. We’re just tellin’ it exactly how it is, like a newspaper reporter. We don't water it down” (Davey D, Moerer 1991). Glorification of gang related violence or favoring one gang over other as the central theme of gangsta rappers’ lyrics is present but hardly it can be taken literally. It is a continuation of the tradition defined in the era of rap beginnings, which also exhibited a high level of competition among rap musicians on a stage and as it was already mentioned, had sometimes overlapped with gang activities (Afrika
Bambaata and the Zulu Nation). The cases where the gang glorification is present should be seen
“as boasting raps in which the imagery of ‘gang banging’ is used metaphorically to challenge competitors on the mic” (Kelley 1996:121). The song Jackin’ for Beats (Kill At Will, 1991) by Ice
Cube illustrates this stylization quite clearly:
67 But I don't party and shake my butt
I leave that to the brothers with the funny haircuts
And it'll drive you nuts
Steal your beat, and give it that gangsta touch
Like jackin at night
Say hi to the three fifty seven I'm packin
And it sounds so sweet
Ice Cube and the Lench Mob, is jackin for beats
Of course that cases where this imagery of crime is not used metaphorically do exist. In such cases this imagery of crime should be viewed as a part of a larger set of signifying. Lyrics depicting gang violence or crimes are very often exaggerating and comic – much more stress is put on the way, how the crime is committed, not the crime itself – rapper is celebrating his ability to
“play out” other gangsters, which is a parallel to the competition behind the microphone. This exaggerated pose has its direct parallel in the black cultural history, in traditional toasts like
Signifying monkey .
Adoration and imitation of a black criminal hero has two possible explanations. First and more important is the political and economic background It is important t realize that “gangstas”of the
90s were the product Reagan/Bush economic policy of the early 80s, which had more devastating influence on black communities that any of the previous situations. What these two groups have in common is their ability to survive in a hostile and economically non perspective background, even to make a profit on it. Gangsta rappers, just like real pimps and gangsters, are able to make money in a network of underground economy and thus they can satisfy their materialistic needs, which were formed by TV shows or classical gangster movies:
Punk ass bitches, sucka ass niggaz
I can't take this shit no more, dogg.
What?! Man you wanna get out the game, come on man
You can, smoke a pound of bud everyday
You got a big screen TV, man, you wanna give all this up?
68 You got the dopest shit out on the streets
Nigga, is you crazy? That's the American Dream nigga
Well ain't it?
This dialogue is a paraphrase from the movie Superfly , which was very popular among gangsta rappers, and illustrates how media’s focus on materialism shaped the consciousness of many young blacks. However, the movies, which helped to shape it, were not always “black movies” – a majority of rappers (and not only from the West Coast) identified themselves with non black criminal characters like Tony Montana (from the movie Scarface (1983) – it shows the rags to riches story a Cuban criminal in the USA) or Don Corleone from the first part of The Godfather trilogy. This also illustrates that gangsta rappers do not pay that much attention to racial issues as their counterparts represented by the political rappers. Although they do net neglect them completely they rather focus on their personal success and wealth.
While these movie gangsters did not hesitate to use violence to gain their wealth, means used by gangsta rappers are different – it was already mentioned above, that gangsta rappers denied they would have glorified violence or crime, but it was rap music that enables them to transform themselves into a fierce competitor who can also show his superiority and eliminate their particular opponents by using their “lethal” musical skills, just like a real gangster on the street can do with a gun. Nevertheless, this adopted negative image of gangsta rappers, remained misunderstood and became the most criticized aspect of gangsta rap.
69 Chapter 2 Origins of gangsta rap and its history
Gangsta rappers (and rappers in general) were not the first musicians, who had chosen violence and crime as a subject of their lyrics. Jalal Uridin, member of a militant ex cons group The Last
Poets recorded an album, which contained songs such as Four Bitches Is What I Got and
Sentenced to the Chair , also know as “toasts” in which the gangster way of life was glorified, already in the 1970s. The life of the criminal was also a central theme of the song Stagger Lee,
(murder following after a loss in a dice game) from 1958 or of an even older song Alligator Wine by Screamin‘ Jay Hawkins. The tradition of “toasting”, which is closely connected with a term
“signifying”, plays a crucial role in understanding the roots of gangsta aesthetics in rap. The black oral tradition of toasting (or signifying) is traditionally connected with the trickster in African
American vernacular tradition, and its history can be traced back to nineteenth century, and as some scholars have proven, even back to tradition of African tricksters or griots (not necessarily always human beings). Even thought it has changed and evolved through the course of the twentieth century, it preserved all its typical features, which remained almost constant through centuries. Toasts were extensive narrative poems, which were quite popular among black male working class groups and were usually recited in the street, barber shops or prisons and exhibited a high degree of verbal mastery, wit and “street knowledge”, gaining respect for a particular performer.
What would later connect gangsta rappers with “pimps” and African tricksters, is their ability to profit or to earn a rich living from their wit, guile and dexterous language use. Later in this work we will show the obvious parallels between traditional toast (in our case the toast The Signifying
Monkey, which origins date back to Reconstruction period) and a gangsta rap songs, where “a pimp” is its central figure.
Even though I suggested that gangsta rap has its origins on the West coast, the first gangsta rap songs come from cities on the East coast. One of the early stylization into a role of a gangster
70 could be seen in Charlie Ahearn's documentary Wild Style (1982), where a rapping duo Double
Trouble performed on the stage in gangster outfits and hold a gun replicas in one hand and a microphone in the other, which happened in 1982 already. The first rap album, which might be labeled gangsta rap album is probably a New York’s duo Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal
Minded (1987)and Smoke Some Kill (1987)from Philadelphia’s rapper Schooly D. But the greatest deal of shaping and development of gangsta rap belongs to West coast rappers. Thus the first gangsta rap album, is traditionally considered Ice T’s Rhyme Pays (1987). This primacy is sometimes also ascribed to Oakland rapper Too $hort, who produced some albums, which could be described as gangsta rap albums, but Too $hort stylized himself into a role of a pimp, which was later typical for gangsta rap’s subgenre called G Funk. He is regarded as the most active continuator of traditional toasting which is one of the typical G Funk features which will be discussed later in this work. Ice T’s main contribution to gangsta rap was the certain level of authenticity, which is present in his songs he openly admitted his involvement in gang activities and his image of a real product of the ghetto attracted many listeners. This was the reason for Ice
T’s popularity listeners liked Ice T lyrics, because he rapped about problems they knew from their own experience and his past of the former gang member gave his stories the flavor of credibility. It can be illustrated on his song Push the trigger (Rhyme Pays), where he describes his social background and conditions, which have forced him to be involved in gang activities:
I've been dogged out by cops, shackled and socked
Paid my dues to the streets, took my hard knocks
Disrespected by snobs, damn near trampled by mobs
Persecuted by squares workin' nine to five jobs
The album Rhyme Pays sold almost 500,000 copies, which was an enormous success for the underground rap scene, but the enormous popularity gangsta rap later gained was caused by an emergence of a rap group NWA (letters stand for Niggaz with Attitude ). Ice T himself admitted,
71 that “NWA did it louder, crazier, and better for what it was. They took gangsta rap to a whole other level”. The impact of NWA first album Straight Outta Compton (1988) was tremendous.
Members of the group were also connected with gangs activities (Eazy E born Eric Wright was a former cocaine dealer) and their lyrics are often aimed at a police brutality or on unfair working opportunities for blacks. The success their first album had made, should be ascribed to Ice Cube
(born O'Shea Jackson), probably the most dominant and influential figure of the whole band. Ice
Cube, who was born in Compton, drew most of his inspiration from the lyrics of Too $hort, and combined it with an experience he had made as a young black male raised up in Compton.
Fuck the police comin straight from the underground
A young nigga got it bad cause I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
they have the authority to kill a minority
Fuck that shit, cause I ain't the one
for a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun
to be beatin on, and thrown in jail
This is a short extract from the song Fuck the Police (Straight Outta Compton) such lyrics was the reason, why the album attracted much notoriety for the group, not only from fans, but from the FBI and concerned citizen and parent groups as well.
Large number of fans and sold copies, proved, that the gangsta rap, which was considered by many to be just a short lived and seasonal matter, was a phenomenon with which should be counted with.
G Funk represents a subgenre of the gangsta rap. And its name was coined from words gangsta and P funk, which was a name of a musical style of a funky artist George Clinton, whose music G
Funk rappers very often sampled. G Funk rappers put much more stress on melodic and multilayered synthesizers, background female vocals and heavy funk samples and beside the
72 Clinton’s music they have sampled other funk artist, like James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone and others. The music was accompanied with rich and descriptive lyrics, which subject were mostly violence, smoking of marijuana or sex. G funk is also interesting because it was the most genuine follower of a tradition of ‘signifying’ and a restoration and a re contextualization of a
‘pimp’ image.
First albums which can be regarded as a typical G Funk albums are those of Snoop Doggy
Dogg, Nate Dogg, Dr.Dre or Kurupt. Probably the first on was Dr. Dre’s album The Chronic
(1992), but probably the most successful was Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle (1993), which sold four million copies, despite the fact that many “original gangsters” attacked this style of music as watered down. With no respect to these critiques, G funk grew quickly popular, because used funky samples have made it an ideal music for parties.
As soon as they earned enough money, some rappers had invested them in purchases of recording studios and established several recording companies like Ice Cube’s Street Knowledge
Production or Dr.Dre’s Death Row Records. Those companies were responsible for major rise in number of g funk releases. Commercial success of Warren G and Nate Doggs’s Regulate (1994), which was a title song of a movie Above the Rim (1994) and Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle opened the mainstream scene for another G funk rappers.
Following years between 1992 till 1996 can be undoubtedly marked in hip hop history as an era of gangsta rap. These years were followed by album releases from artist like Compton’s Most
Wanted, Capital Punishment Organization, Dj Quick, MC Eiht, Hi C, the DOC, Mob Style or
Above the Law. In recordings of some rappers like the Pharcyde or Souls of Mischief there is an clear incline from the traditional gangsta lyrics and thus a comparison with the New York abstractionists artists like De La Soul or Tribe called Quest rather than those of Snoop Dogg would be more appropriate. No one expected that gangsta rap would find such a fertile soil; the influence it had gained within couple of years was for people outside the ghettos too scary.
73 Chapter 3 Ay yo baby, your mother warned you about me: Young Black
Males as a "Menace to Society”
Needless to say that every release of a new album was accompanied with protests and
discontent from different parental, religious or feminist groups, no matter if they were white or
black. These groups, which were formed from people outside the problematic ghettos, fiercely
attacked gangsta rap for its celebration of violence, misogyny and drugs. However as was shown
above, these problems were not new, but they were often ignored and overlooked by the people
living outside the ghetto. Impact of the gangsta rap on American culture was far more significant,
these groups had expected. A brief comparison of number of sold copies (e.g. Ice T’s Rhyme Pays
sold 500,000 copies, NWA’s Straight Outta Compton sold 3 millions copies and Snoop Doggy
Dogg’s Doggystyle sold 5 millions) and a purchase power of the urban blacks (who were usually
listening to illegal copies on cassettes) indicates, that considerably large number of gangsta rap
albums had to be bought by white teenagers outside the ghettos. The fascination with the black
culture (often overlapping with the life of the criminal) among the white youth was not new in
American cultural history. Already in the middle 60s Eldridge Clever in his collection of essays
Soul On Ice spoke about the loss of traditional white heroes, which pushed many artist, the beats
for an example, to search an inspiration among black and Hispanics minorities and to celebrate
such a way of life, which was very often not legal. In music this fascination was reflected in jazz
and blues music and than later in rock’n’roll music and thus most of the gangsta rap critics
expected, that the situation in the early nineties might be analogical to the situations of the
previous decades. In this context it is important to realiye that the social situation in the 50s was
diametrically different from the situation in the 80s and 90s, as it was realistically depicted in the
movies Boyz N Tha Hood or Menace II Society. While in the fifties the crime rate was
considerably lower and the most common law violations were petty crimes such as theft, gambling
and burglaries, in the nineties these were crimes were quicky replace by crimes like homicides,
74 drug dealing and prostitution the number of victims of homicide per 100,000 among blacks 15 to
24 years old rose from 46.4 in 1960 to 154.4 in 1992 (U.S Department of Education, 1996)!
Concerned parental groups suddenly realized what potential threat this adoration of negative characters might present for their children present and thus started to incite protests calling for a banishment of gangsta rap from TV. These attempts not only increased the popularity of gangsta rap, but also indicated that these concerned citizens were not still aware of the real problems which were taking place not on TV screens but literally few block away from their homes. Their effort to hide these negative characters from their children only contributed that gangsta rappers became for their children even more attractive. While back in the 50s Kerouac and the beats admired happy, ecstatic and free Negro, the role model of the 1990s was in Kitwana’s words “young, black and don’t give a fuck” male, who was labeled himself as a „nigga”. 2
2 However, Kitwana has borrowed this characteristic from Albert and Allan Hughes' movie Menace II Society (1994), where it is used by one of the main character (Lorenz Tate) to describe himself.
75 Chapter 4 Why do I call myself a nigger, you ask me? Recontextualization of a meaning of a word “nigga”.
It was not only the emergence of the new negative role model, what had irritated the concerned general public, but a resurrection of the word nigger, which was frequently used in gangsta rap lyrics and served as a common addressing. While a white majority was rather concerned with a possible negative impact this new „nigga” character might have on their children, the situation among a black community was different. Most of the criticism came from the older Civil rights generation, who considered the gangsta rap to be a “current form of genocide of black people”.
These were words of Miss C. Delores Tucker of the National Political Congress of Black Women, but she was not the only one who was indignant at hip hop generation for disrespecting the values they had fought for few decades before. The word nigger, which had been a symbol of racial oppression for hundreds of years, suddenly became a common addressing among young black males. This shift was a result of the generation gap discussed earlier in this work. The young black males felt that using the word nigger is more suitable for describing their social and political positions, which were the same like in an era of slavery, when such addressing of a black people was common. Thus, in the 80s and 90s there was no need to call each other African American,
Negro or Black, because for describing the real status of a blacks in America was the word nigger most appropriate term, as it can be seen in lyrics of Ice T’s Straight Up Nigga (O.G Original
Gangster, 1991):
Damn right I'm a nigga and I don't care what you are
Cause I'm a Capital N I double G E R
Black people might get mad Cause they don't see
That they're looked upon As a nigga just like me
I'm a nigga, not a Coloured man
Or a Black, or a Negro
76 Or Afro American, I'm all that
Yes I was born in America true
Does South Central look like America to you?
There are two ways how to explain the frequent use of “nigga” among young blacks, because it was being used in two different ways. The growing popularity of the word forced many rappers to revise and give the word a new connotative meaning, which was a case of L.A rapper 2pac (also known as Makaveli, born Tupac Shakur), who named his album Strictly for my N.I.G.G.A.Z (1993)
– where the word “nigga” stands for “Never Ignorant, Getting Goals Accomplished”.
Others, like the group NWA stripped the word “nigga” of its racial connotation and used it as a synonym for “oppressed”, like in the song Niggaz 4 Life (EFIL4ZAGGIN, 1991). In each verse they deal with a negative factor, which have forced them to accept a status of a “nigga”. This includes criminality, unemployment or police harassment:
Why do I call myself a nigger, you ask me?
Well it's because motherfuckers want to blast me
And run me outa my neighborhood
They label me as a dope dealer
Why do I call myself a nigger, you ask me?
I guess it's the way shit has to be
Back when I was young gettin a job was murder
Fuck flippin burgers
Why do I call myself a nigger, you ask me?
Because police always wanna harass me
Every time that I'm rollin
They swear up and down that the car was stolen
77 It is obvious, that when placed in this specific context, the word “nigga” describes the social status rather than the racial. The racial issue in this context is not relevant, because it is not the color of the skin, which makes one a “nigga”. The “nigga” refers not only to the color of the skin but includes the social experience of young ghetto male at once (involvement in the drug business, gang membership, police harassment or unemployment). According to Kelley “to be a “real nigga” is to have been a product of the ghetto. Thus by linking their identity to the hood instead of simply to skin color, gangsta rappers acknowledge the limitations of racial politics black middle class reformism as well as black nationalism. Again this is not new. “Nigger” as a signifier of class and race oppression has been a common part of black rural and working class language throughout the twentieth century, if not longer. In fact, because of its power to distinguish the black urban poor from upwardly mobile middle class, “nigger” made a huge comeback at the height of the Black
Power movement” (Kelley 138) Nowadays, weakening racial connotations of the word “nigga” can be illustrated on its frequent use among white youth.
It is apparent, that the word “nigga” chosen by gangsta rappers was not coincidental. It was a reaction to abstract and contemptuous treatment from their more successful fellows, and thus it not only defined the “real nigga”, but his enemy at once. Beside the white man, who had been his oppressor since the Negroes were brought to America, it was middle and upper class blacks.
This wealthier group, to which the gangsta rappers usually refer as a “burgoise”, used the word
“nigga” as a product of their self hatred, springing up from their feeling of extirpation within
American society. This trend was not in the American social history new. It was described already in the 1950s by Franklin Frazier in his book Black Bourgeoisie (1955), in which he had examined the rise of the new black middle class and noted that middle class blacks “while they are pretending to be proud of being Negro, ridicule Negroid physical characteristics and seek to modify or efface them as much as possible. Within their own groups they constantly proclaim, that
“niggers” make them sick. The very use of the term “nigger”, which they claim to resent indicates, that they want to disassociate themselves from Negro masses” (Frazier, 1955:187).
78 This declension of the middle class from the rest of the black community and its set of cultural value and attempts to adopt white cultural and behavioral codex, infuriated many gangsta rappers.
Thus the middle class blacks were under a constant attack from gangsta rapper, who blamed them for a disinterest in their folk, contempt or their efforts to ban gangsta rap because of its possible harmful influence on their children. Ice T expressed his attitude quite clearly, when he said that he
“does not think the negative propaganda about rap comes from the true black community it comes from the burgeois black community, which I hate. Those are the blacks, who have an attitude because I wear a hat and a gold chain, I’m a nigger and they are better than me” (Kelley
138). Similar attitude was expressed in NWA’s Fuck the Police (Straight Outta Compton, 1988) as well:
Fuckin with me cause I'm a teenager
with a little bit of gold and a pager
These objections targeted at middle and upper class blacks were not unreasonable. Despite the fact that, some African Americans of its members were in charge of important authorities, they had done, in the eyes of gangsta rappers, very little for the black community. These were people like
Tom Bradley, first black mayor of Los Angeles in years 1973 1993, or Willie L. Williams, first black Chief of L.A. Police department between years 1992 – 1997. Not only did they take an identical stand with white politicians after Rodney King’s trial, but when the Watts riots burst out they also called for restoration of peace by police force and National guards (together with another important person Benjamin Hook, who was the NAACP executive at the time). Thus they became the symbols of intraracial superiority and reluctance to help the poor black community.
This approach helped to turn nigger’s distrust created in the 50s into the hatred typical for the 90s.
(Ironically, Bradley’s terms of office were full of attempts to bridge racial barriers, especially between blacks and Jews, where there were always tensions, springing mostly from economical
79 reasons.)The riots in Watts in May 1992 also showed a growing distrust in religious groups, after some members of Episcopal Church had reported being attacked or shot at by juvenile gangs.
This animosity towards black religious and Civil rights movements which “puppet” leaders had been criticized since the 1960s from the Nation of Islam and others was quite intelligible.
However, it is interesting that gangsta rappers show a similar negative attitudes toward such movements like the Nation of Islam or the Five Percenters, which were highly respected among message rappers. These movements were, together with the white society and black bourgeoisie, on gangsta rappers’ list of enemies, as Ice Cube suggests in his Nigga You Love to Hate
(AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, 1990):
When I’m shooting let’s see who drop
The police the media and suckers that went pop
And motherfuckers that say they too black
Put ‘em overseas they be begging to come back
The criticism of gangsta rappers, which was aimed at the contemporary position of American urban blacks, was in a sharp contrast to Afrocentrism aims of black religion and Civil rights movements, which were focused on blacks abroad the United States. Gangsta rappers considered such aims to be hypocritical and unreasonable. According to them, the rap music should be focused of America’s internal social and economic problems instead of searching for and African identity and unity. Eazy E harsh criticism of these movements speaks quite clearly:
“Fuck that black power shit: we don’t give a fuck. Free South Africa: we don’t give a fuck. I bet there ain’t nobody in South Africa wearing a button saying: ‘Free Compton’ or ‘Free
California’” (Kelley 139)
It would not be appropriate to claim that gangsta rappers lack any political awareness – but most of them tend to sympathize with the political message of Black Panthers Party, Malcolm X
80 and Huey Newton – to control their neighborhoods and keep them black or to protect themselves by any means necessary which brings them closer to the individualistic aims of criminals rather than to those of Civil rights leaders and message rappers, who advocated an integration. The word nigga, which was frequently used by gangsta rappers to address other males, is used by message rappers only to describe the status of an oppressed. Thus the word “nigga” seems to have a individualistic meaning, while the word “brother” bears more unifying meaning. Some gangsta rappers later abandoned their negative attitudes and adopted a teaching of the NOI or the Five
Percenters.
81 Chapter 5 Mack daddies, pimps and hustlers: adoration of a criminal
It was suggested that the word “nigga” in the context of the ghetto refers to someone who is a product of the ghetto, someone oppressed or pursued by dominant forces. The most representative model of such experience was a criminal – member of a gang or “a pimp”. The social status position of urban blacks – “niggas” in the 90s became equal to the status of criminals who, however, represented the way how to escape the miserable life in the ghetto. I have already described the upheaval which caused the frequent usage of the word “nigga” among the Civil rights generation and “black bourgeoisie”. The word also contained everything they did not want to be associated with. Parnham has formulated an interesting question, which is related to the position of the “black bourgeoisie” within the dominant and major white society: “How do I maintain a sense of cultural integrity in a world which does not support and affirm my humanity as an African American?” (Parnham, 1992:795). An answer is simple – to accept the cultural (and social) standards of the majority and thus to become its integral part. This was what most of the
“black bourgeoisie” tried to do since the moment they were able to hold some property allowing them to consider themselves the middle or upper class (as it was already described by Frazier).
However, this integration or socialization, which Parnham described as an “invisibility syndrome” has one condition – he claims that “black people are socialized to seek approval and validation from the larger White society and/or their White counterparts. Concurrently, a Black person understands at a deeper level that even superficial validation will not be achieved absent the adoption of specific modes of thinking and feeling, language use, and behaviors that conform to a
Eurocentric standard” (Parnham 796).
These Eurocentric standards that were obligatory for whites and later for “black bourgeoisie” were something to which gangsta rappers tried to find the opposite standard. Black criminals were an ideal choice, because a) they were, just like gangsta rappers products of economic and social changes, which had pushed them to a margin of the American society b) and their standards of
82 behavior (which were often anti social), language use, which was often offensive and sexist and thinking, which was explicitly solipsistic, were in a sharp contrast to the Eurocentric standards.
This case is in a certain aspect similar to the position of the African diasporic music, which has also been marginalized, its position within and American culture was misjudged and its artistic values misinterpreted.
A defense of African traditional music was closely related to the reconstruction of an image of a black man, who was through the courses of centuries depicted in a negative way already mentioned. Of course, there had been attempts to prove that African Americans have the same opportunities as their white counterparts – this was purpose of TV shows like The Bill Cosby Show
(1968 1971) or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990), which should persuade poor urban blacks that the possibility to fulfill one’s own “American dream” was opened for everyone. However, the lifestyle of the African American black “TV families” presented was considered by many urban blacks the lifestyle of the black bourgeoisie, which they could never achieve. The gap between the poor urban blacks and middle class blacks was thus becoming even wider. If Frazier described that
“the black bourgeoisie has been uprooted from its ‘racial’ traditions and as a consequence has no cultural roots in either the Negro or the white world” (Frazier 112) in the 1950s already, than the situation in the 1990s has remained almost unchanged.
Refusal of the standards defined by the white majority was a typical not only for gangsta rappers, but message rappers as well and can be considered the most visible motif of newborn hip hop culture. The reason why rappers started to build up a culture, which would be exclusively black, i.e. made for blacks and more importantly by blacks, is obvious. An image of African
American males, which was defined and maintained by the dominant white class for centuries, depicted black man only in negative, inferior or primitive ways. Both groups of rappers, message and gangsta, had the same goal they tried to recontextualize the distorted image of black man, however, the means they were using were different.
83 A suppression of black man’s qualities has had a long tradition on American soil, which can be, according to Janette Dates and William Barlow in their book Split Image – African Americans in the Mass Media , traced back to 1781, which was the first time when the character of Sambo appeared on public in a funny play called Divorce . However, we can hardly speak about acting; this was reduced to singing nonsense songs and dancing around the stage. Historian Joseph
Boskins suggests that this reduction, which had set a standard for depicting Negroes in public sphere, has been done on purpose “to make the black male into an object of laughter, and conversely, to force him to device laughter, was to strip him of masculinity, dignity and self respect. Sambo was then an illustration of humor as a device of oppression, and one of the most potent in American popular culture. The ultimate objective for whites was to effect mastery, to render the black male powerless as a potential warrior, as a sexual competitor, as an economic adversary” (Chuck D 6). This status was carefully maintained by the whites for centuries therefore this situation lasted till 70s, when Parnham confirmed that “it is true that African American men are portrayed in negative and stereotypic ways throughout society. Nowhere is this reality more true than in the electronic media and television. Random viewing of most TV shows (including the news) will reveal that African people are usually portrayed in one of three ways. These include the athlete, entertainer (usually a comedian or clown), or criminal” (Parnham 796). There is no doubt that (mass) media have had a great influence on shaping of public opinion. This one sided point of view openly neglected to focus on “intellectual” aspects of African American culture, but instead kept depicting black men in the context cited above. Blaxploitation movies did not have any intellectual ambitions neither, they depicted the life of a criminal (although in the terms of survival on a street a successful criminal) whose moral codex was completely different from common standards and his behavior was motivated with a desire to fulfill his simple materialistic needs.
However, movies like Shaft (1971), Superfly (1972), Dolomite (1975) or The Mack (1973) gained a quite significant popularity among a future generation of gangsta rappers who later reincarnated their “bad” heroes and adopted their ways, which was the case of rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg who
84 claims that “seeing those movies in the 1970s, like The Mack and Superfly , that helped me to more or less pick who I wanted to be in life, how I wanted to live my life, how I wanted to represent me.”
I suggested that the adoption of the figure of “a gangsta” was a reaction on negative or submissive portrayal of a black man as it was represented with the character of Simbo. If Sambo had to present “black male powerless as a potential warrior, an economic adversary or sexual competitor”, gangsta rappers tried to rebuild such image and recontextualized the black male as an equal or even dominant counterpart to the white man in those areas. The reason why “pimps” had became gangsta rappers’ heroes was explained by Quinne, who claimed that “first the pimp is a trickster. By the use of wit and guile he earns a rich living and maintains aristocratic tastes without having to resort either to violence or to physical labor”(Quinne, 2000:118).
A domination of black characters over white characters was one of the most typical features of blaxploitation movies; it was not new, though. Its tradition goes back to traditional pimp toast and narrative poems like the Signifying Monkey . The Signifying Monkey was a traditional part of black oral culture and thus it has been changed through the courses of centuries. Quinn, who analyzed the parallels between the Signifying Monkey and the pimp noticed, that in a version from 1965, these parallels became obvious:
Say deep down in the jungle in the coconut grove
Lay the Signifying Monkey in his one button roll.
Now the hat he wore was on the Esquire fold,
his shoes was on a triple A last.
You could tell that he was a pimping mother fucker by the way his
Hair was gassed.
The reason why the pimp figure and The Signifying Monkey got so close is that both of them were essentially trickster figures. Their ability to manipulate others, to signify is probably the most visible attribute which they have in common. While the character of The Signifying Monkey is
85 based on a fable with a strong racial context about a shrewd monkey ( black character) which is not able to defeat his opponent the Lion (white, superior character), because of his size, thus he uses his wit and language skills to persuade a third party the Elephant to use his power to beat the
Lion down, the character of the pimp and signifying have their tradition in history. According to the Hughes Brоthers’ documentary American Pimp (1999), the pimp has its origins in the
Reconstruction Era, when freed slaves, who were economically very weak, had no other choice than to send their wives to their former masters, and had ordered them to ask the master for some food or money. The master labeled the Black man a pimple because he was considered a pimple of a real man to allow such a thing happen to his wife or a daughter. He became known as a “pimp”, short for pimple. However, the pimp of the 1970’s was not in a subordinate position anymore. His ability to master his ladies placed him in the superior position, which was the opposite of the image so carefully maintained by whites and described above. The pimp suddenly became an equal economic and sexual competitor – selling the ladies earned him money and the fact that most of the black pimps “employed” white women and provided sexual services to white men only confirmed his sexual superiority. This sexual dominance was expressed in the number of girls a particular pimp had. Pimps are not usually connected with violence; their “verbal mastery is equated with sexual dominance” (Quinn 118). This verbal mastery is common for all three figures
– the signifying monkey, the pimp and the gangsta rapper. The Monkey uses signifying to persuade the Elephant to beat the Lion, the pimp uses it to manipulate with his girls and gangsta rappers adopted the method of signifying for the reasons, which were described by Geneva
Smitherman; according to her, signifying includes: “exaggerated language (unusual words); mimicry; proverbial statement and aphoristic phrasing; punning and plays on words; spontaneity and improvisation; image making and metaphor; braggadocio; indirection (circumlocution, suggestiveness)”(Quinn 118).
This is the point where gangsta rappers and pimps meet together, “the toast is often interpreted as a racial fable in which the dominant white character is outdone by the superior guile of the black
86 protagonist: a discursive reversal of historically prevailing power relationship, and indeed of the racist stereotype which casts black as ‘brawn over brains’” (Quinne, 119).
Gangsta rap songs are basically such toasts – rappers narrate stories as they would have experienced them themselves, they use typical wordplay and hidden meanings, which distinguish them from the other rappers. Their proclaimed uniqueness and superiority are the most typical features and they distinguish gangsta rap from message rap, which, as I will try to show, is less individualistic and replaces the individual “I” with a collective “we”. The original sense of the signifying, i.e. a black character outwitting or manipulating a white character, has been shifted gangsta rappers compete with other black males as well, they all “play the game”. Following examples are gangsta rap classics by Snoop Doggy Dogg and Ice Cube and illustrate the way gangsta rappers glorify themselves and celebrate their uniqueness:
It’s Snoop Doggy Dogg I'm at the top of the stack
I don’t lack for a second, and I’m still checkin
The dopest motherfucker that ya hearin on the record
It’s me, ya see, S N double O P
D O double G Y, the D O double G
I’m fly as a falcon, soarin through the sky
And I’m high till I dizzie, rizzide
So check it, I get busy, I make your head dizzy
I blow up your mouth like I was Dizzy Gillespie
Quinn in her study noticed that these rapping “pimp daddies” are primarily focused on a display of material wealth, supersexuality and dandified spectacle, which include naming, reputation and recognition. All these features are presented in most of the gangsta rap songs, where rapper stylizes himself into a pimp or a mack daddy, as can be seen in following song Somebody
Gotta Do It (Rhyme Pays) by Ice T:
87 My lifestyle’s crazy, I'm luxury lazy
So much gold that jewelry don’t phase me
Cordless phone, eight or nine homes
Girlies on my Jammie with Ice T Jones
Bank account boomin’, fast lane zoomin’
Known around the world for my high post groomin’
Mac like a preacher, love like a teacher
Got a girl who lives in Paris
When I want her I beep her
Too many clothes, gotta rag top rolls
1,000 Watt system and my speakers are bose
I kick it like a champ, I thought you knew it
But pimpin’ ain’t easy
Although Ice T does not open the song with an introduction, which is a common practice among rappers, he informs a listener about his lifestyle, which is “crazy and luxurious”; he can afford to be lazy because he does not need to work and he also displays his wealth – he has “so much gold”, “cordless phone”, “eight or nine homes” or “too many clothes”. He, of course, has a lot of girls and because he “loves like a teacher”, women have to be also very beautiful because one of them “lives in Paris”. This is the reason why everybody says that he “kicks it like champ” or “macs like preacher”, he has got the reputation and is recognized in his neighborhood because
“he thought you (listener or potential opponent) knew” he was champ.
The spectacular demonstration of wealth and supersexuality is common for both rap “pimps” and real pimps. This parallel was probably the most commented and criticized attribute of gangsta rap, despite the fact that it has also its cultural and sociological explanations, as it was shown above. This excessive demonstration of rapper’s personal success will be discussed at the end of this work.
88 Quinn concludes that “pimp constitutes an icon of upward mobility for black working class males, spectacularly refusing the subservient typecasting that has been historically imposed by the dominant social order” (Quinne 124).
To change the dominant social order and the refusal of subservient typecasting was also an aim of message rappers; however, the approach they take is completely different from gangsta rappers.
Unlike the gangsta rappers who praise individual abilities, message rappers tend to unity and collective power. The next chapter will thus focus on features typical for the genre of message/political rap.
89 PART FOUR
Chapter 1 Message rap
Message rap (sometimes also called political or visionary) emerged together with gangsta rap in the middle 80s. Although the general public noticed an emergence of message rap after a release of Public Enemy’s album Yo! Bum Rush The Show (1987), the first rap albums that can be also described as message/political were already mentioned, when I have described the beginnings of rap music represented by Grandmaster Flash, Gil Heron or Afrika Bambataa. Although this specific subgenre represents only a small part of rap music, its content had a significant impact on the black community, and especially young blacks, and it has also be part of mainstream music for a while.
Just like gangsta rap, also message rap belongs to the third wave of rap music, which replaced individualistic boasting and “macho rap” of the middle 1980s. Message rap has also grown from poor urban areas as a reaction to the subordinate state of African Americans in the United States in the 1980s and the 1990s, and thus they are not that different as it might seem at first sight. Some scholars in their classifications often merge these two genres into one category; Allen for an example, categorized rap music into three following categories: 1) Islamic rappers, 2) political cultural rappers and 3) gangsta rappers (Allen 1992: 162). I think that Allen’s classification of gangsta rap as a subgenre of message rap is possible but it can be applied only at Ice Cube's late albums, who was in his beginnings considered gangsta rapper, but later his production was heavily influenced with message rap and the Nation of Islam, which had resulted in creation of his specific style with characteristic dark apocalyptic vision.
Nevertheless, Henderson came with another distinction of message rap, which seems to be more accurate. I think that Allen’s distinction on Islamic rap and cultural political is redundant because these two forms of message rap very often merge together. Henderson, on the other hand,
90 based his distinction on nationalism present in message rap and categorized its particular forms in accordance with the kind of nationalism typical for given form. Thus, he distinguishes:
1, nationalism that emerges from identification rooted in a perceived communality of
oppression,
2, that emerges from the recognition of a convergence of political purpose, objectives and
goals
3, brand of nationalism that rests on the justification of a commonality of culture (Henderson
1996).
This is the reason why Allen’s classification of gangsta rap as a part of message rap is inaccurate – in Part Three was shown that gangsta rappers looked upon the idea of Afrocentrism
(commonality of culture) as hypocritical. Gangsta rappers were focused on internal problems, which included economical and racial oppression, and thus they belong to the first category.
Furthermore, according to Henderson, “their form of nationalism promotes a form of skin nationalism that disregards the diversity within black community, especially around issues of class, gender and cultural identification” (Henderson 1996).
What is also in part common for both groups is their negative approach to American educational system. However, still there is the difference which distinguishes them quite clearly.
The topic, which is often mentioned in both gangsta and message rap, is knowledge but it has different connotations in each genre. While the knowledge of gangsta rappers was something, which some (Dr. Dre) describe as “street knowledge”– the ability to survive on the street – message rappers focused their attention on official educational institutions and criticized them for distorted interpretation of history and origin of African Americans. Of course, those message rappers also took the “street knowledge” into a concern and stressed that education “does not refer solely to attending the system’s schools but to educate also means to prepare and inform people about controlling their community” (Chuck D 32). The “street knowledge” of gangsta rappers has a criminal character determined by their cynical approach toward the harsh reality they were living
91 in, and thus the control of their community was reduced, means for them territorial dominance, very often including an intra or interracial violence. Message rappers, on the contrary, were trying to stress the counterproductive effects of such individualistic tendencies and point out to historical, economical or social factors, responsible for the emergence of ghettos and pauperization of
African Americans which consequently led to an adoption of criminal behavior which was described previously.
This is probably the reason why message rap gained in the middle 1980s such prominence – its most significant function was a substitution of a missing political force, which had more or less existed in the 1960s, and which would address young African Americans culture and political message of the previous generation. Young urban black Americans turned their attention to videos and video games and lost interest in books or the poetry of politically conscious writers like Amiri
Baraka and others, who tried to point out to the problems of African Americans, that were pinching the African American community from both outside and inside. Rap videos and an emergence of first rap stars had attracted many young urban blacks to television screens, which had also multiplied the effect of rap music – “kids were learning more from the videos and rap songs than they were learning from the schools…Hip hop culture was an education in a way”
(Chuck D 28). A classic example of this approach is the group Boogie Down Production and its album Edutainment (1990). The range of problems requiring an immediate solution was almost endless, as it was mentioned in the first chapter. It was also described how gangsta rap responded to the reality of the background they had emerged from – the approach of gangsta rappers was negativistic, individualistic and homophobic. But message rap on the contrary (and in this context it would be more appropriate to use the term visionary) represents its counterpart and, unlike gangsta rap, tends to unity and a positive approach to and solution of problems of African
American community. The message of message rappers was based on a presumption that the world was in a state of chaos, unbalance and inequality – was is hostile and menacing to black men and thus it has to be set in order. In this sense, message rap takes an inspiration from teachings of
92 religious movements that became popular especially during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s.
Reconstruction and restoration of the world order to reach the ideal, harmonic primordial state this was often described in Islamic derived teachings of movements like the Nation of Islam, its renegade offshoot the Five Percenters or the Spiritmovers.
What religious teachings and message rap also have in common is their nationalism, according to some they both seek “a redefinition of reality in Black images and interests, providing a social corrective by building institutional and organization structures that house black aspirations and it provides a collective vocation of nation among Black people as political end” (Henderson 1996).
Therefore, message rap contained much of the rhetoric not only of organizations like the NOI, but others like The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, CORE, the Urban League or even the Black Panthers Party as well. These institutions have had also substituted the role of educational facilities in an education of many African Americans about their history and adverted to subordinate position within the American society and self destructive mechanisms within the black community. The widening generational gap between the Civil rights and the hip hop generation and miserable economic conditions had considerably weakened the message of a black nationalism of the older generation but it was rap music which resurrected this message again.
Several typical attributes of rap music – its all inclusiveness, a close contact with the inner city background and direct references to African cultural and historical traditions – contributed to an adoption of rap music as a new way to present contemporary problems to a young generation and educate it at the same time.
93 Chapter 2 – Allahu Akhbar: An influence of teaching of The Nation of Islam on message rap in the middle 1990s
Parallels between those religious/political movements and message rap are obvious. However, for their better understanding it should be also explained what these movements were and to foreshadow their teaching and program. I will focus especially on the Nation of Islam (NOI) and its radical offshoot – religious movement known as Five Percenters (The Nation of Gods and Earth or Five Percent Nation as they are also known). These movements were for message rappers very inspirational, because they put stress on order and harmony, which presented a cure for a contemporary chaotic state the world was in and a great part of message rap lyrics is soaked with their rhetoric.
The most visible influence on message rappers had the Nation of Islam, which probably also led Allen to label one of its categories as an Islamic rap. However, the term ‘Islamic’ might be a little bit misleading – the movement was also commercially and socially active. Also, the teaching of the Nation of Islam has in fact, despite its name, very little to do with the traditional Islamic teaching of holy book of Koran, except for praying five times a day facing Mecca and not eating pork meat. The Nation of Islam was founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad, who proclaimed himself to be the long expected Messiah, which was in a deep contrast to Islam, which teaches that it is heretical to believe that God would manifest himself in a human form. The NOI came to a national prominence under the leadership of Muhammad’s successor Elijah Poole, who later changed his name to Elijah Muhammad and led the NOI since the 30s till his death in 1975.
The teaching of Elijah Muhammad was based on quite an apocalyptic presumption that world is ruled by the “white devils”, which is a result of evil black scientist Yakub, who had created them from original black people. However, the hope for redemption is not lost because God has granted white oppressors six thousands years of domination; when the time expires a fierce battle will take place in heaven between white and blacks, in which whites will be defeated and order will be
94 restored. The rule of devil was to about end in 1914 but graceful Allah granted NOI additional period, which should be used for converting as many African Americans to their true religion. The supreme Wisdom the Nation of Islam continued to preach builds up on a presumption that the present society is divided into three categories:
85% the uncivilized people, poison animal eaters, slaves from mental death and power...do not know the living god or their origin in this world and they are easily led in the wrong direction, but hard to lead into the right direction
10% are slave makers of the poor, who teach the poor lies to believe that the almighty true and living god is a spook and cannot be seen with a physical eye
5% are the poor righteous teachers, who do not believe in the teaching of the 10% and all are wise...teach that the living god is the Son of Man, the supreme being, the black man of Asia...
(Lost found Moslem Lesson No. 2)
This teaching (which was actually a forty question catechism, quoted part is just a part) also became a doctrine of Five Percenters, who emerged in the late 1960s in Harlem as NOI radical offshoot. Just like the NOI, this movement was “seeking freedom, justice, and equality from economic, political, social, and religious injustices in the United States and the world over”
(Wikipedia). Its founder Clarence 13X doubted the unique divinity of W.F. Muhammad because the NOI taught that all Black men are divine and thus he proclaimed himself holy, which was the reason for his repudiation.
The Five Percenters, although the number of its official members was not as high as of the
NOI, was also accepted by many artist like even by those who emerged in the middle 90s like –
Nas, Busta Rhymes, AZ, Rakim or Wu Tang Clan. Probably the most visible area, where both organizations differ from each other was that the Five Percenters, unlike the NOI, cannot be blamed of racism while the NOI was constantly attacking whites or Jews and thus can be labeled as racist. The Five Percenters, on the other hand, divide the people into two groups anti devilish and pro righteous.
95 The emergence of Five Percenters was also caused by inner tensions of religious character and diverse conception of the NOI at the same time. While its leader Muhammad favored the black nationalism of religious character and the newspaper he was issuing – Muhammad Speaks – became “the most powerful anti colonial and anti imperialistic voice of the North American continent” (Allen 185), its ideological opponent Malcolm X tended to more secular – political and economical – nationalism. This secular tendency of the NOI was growing stronger and the NOI was thus able to put its theoretical teaching into a practice and until the early 1960s the NOI became a more secularly orientated organization owning and operating businesses across the whole country.
However, a face of the NOI was not always positive, as it was also constantly criticized for being homophobic and racist. These critiques were not unreasonable from a variety of reasons.
Muhammad’s statement that thoughtful white people know they are inferior to Black people, or his teaching about the divine retribution of God, who will erase the white race form the Earth prove that the teaching of the NOI was explicitly racist, which can be seen as an answer to explicit racism of whites. The NOI also exhibited a considerable strong Anti Christian attitude; some of black Catholic priests from NAACP viewed the NOI as “a fascist hate mind group” and Jewish organizations (like B’nai B’rith or Anti Defamation League) accused the NOI of being Anti
Semitic. The reason for labeling the NOI as racist was Malcolm X’s criticism of the Jews, because they always were “anxious to advise the black man” and points at their economical success in the
USA (owning Hollywood studios, hotels in Atlantic City and Miami Beach).
No matter what positive or negative image the NOI had built up, the teaching of the NOI was accepted by many rappers like Lakim Shabazz, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, Pete Rock & C.L
Smooth and many others. These message rappers have significantly contributed to a resurrection of the struggle for equal and righteous American society and helped to understand problems of young urban blacks. This awareness of the oppression other than racial is also the other feature which distinguishes the message rap from gangsta rap.
96 Chapter 3 – Message Rappers and the Reconstruction of the Black Community
I think that the point, where both message rappers and the NOI also meet each other at, is their effort to rebuild the negative image of a black man which was formed through the centuries of white oppression. Message rappers were frequently referring to the NOI – its revolutionary rhetoric was often preserved in names of rappers: a name of the group Public Enemy expresses its opposition to the American government, X Clan directly refers to the loss of original African names as it was used by Malcolm X already, some refer to their African origins as Brand Nubian or Lakim Shabazz (Shabazz – according to Elijah Muhammad, this was the tribe from which
African Americans were descended) or as the group Poor Righteous Teachers which not only explicitly refers to Five Percenters doctrine but also shows the role into which message rappers tried to stylize themselves – teachers of the black community as they did in a song Gods, Earth and 85ers (New World Order, 1996):
Can’t move too quick because niggas got to know
The duty of the civilized is to civilize the uncivilized
And make the world recognize
That God is Wise, and Wise is God to the death
And back to life, you Lazarus and I’m the Christ
The fouth coming, like a thief in the night
The wave of light, the key to everlasting life
That shit provide us, to call us straight civilizers
And true suppliers for Gods, Earths, and 85ers y’all
Whatever happened to the Gods and the Earths
They thirst for a pot of gold God worth his birth
Knowledge is worth more than diamonds
When the mind is shining, surprise us
Gods Earths and 85ers
97 This feature was common for a vast majority of message rappers. It was mentioned that the teaching of the NOI and the movement itself had not only a religious character because the NOI was also very active in a social sphere. It is obvious that the NOI served message rappers as a model of a functioning black community – message rappers like Chuck D also stressed the importance of gaining control of the community and which overlapped with the teaching of the
NOI – rebuilding the community will involve gaining control of our own education, economics and law enforcement (Chuck D 32). These three key areas of the black community included many problems and established schemes – following text is an excerpt from Public Enemy's song White
Heaven/Black Hell (Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age, 1994) where these problems are illustrated on juxtaposed pairs:
Black history white lie
Black athletes white agents
Black preacher white Jesus
Black drug dealer white government
Black entertainers white lawyers
Black Monday white Christmas
Black success story white wife
Black police white judge
Black business white accountants
Black record co white distribution
Black comedians white media
Black politicians white president
Black genocide white world order
Probably the most frequent topic of message rappers was black history; according to them,
American educational system was focused on Anglo Saxon history and culture, while African
American history was often misinterpreted or not even taught. However, it is true that Africa has been the most mysterious continent and some of its mysteries remain unknown till today and thus
98 the American educational system cannot be fully blamed of ignoring African history. On the other hand, African history was sometimes misinterpreted in the way which depicted the black man in subordinate position, uneducated, economically impotent and primitive. To restore the original image of the black man, message rappers copied the teaching of the NOI and came up with their interpretation of a ‘real’ history of African Americans. This can be demonstrated on Public
Enemy’s Brothers Are Gonna Work It Out (Fear of a Black Planet, 1988) or Boogie Down
Production’s Blackman in Effect (Edutainment, 1990):
History shouldn't be a mystery
Our stories real history
Not his story
We gonna work it one day
***
You built up a race on the concept of violence
Now in '90 you want silence
Well, I want science, not silence but science
Scientific fact about black
The board of education acts as if it's only reality
Is talking 'bout a Tom, Dick and Harry
The NOI concept of teaching African history was based on Elijah Muhammad’s theory described in his book Message to Blackman in America , where he claimed that God has declared that “blacks (the so called Negroes) are descendants of the Asian Black Nation and the tribe of
Shabazz” (Wikipedia). The word Shabazz might be possibly connected with an Arabic expression for ‘mighty and glorious people’ and this was exactly what message rappers kept stressing in their lyrics. Scarce archeological discoveries, that had proved that the oldest settlement was the settlement of Africa, enabled message rappers to describe ancient and mighty empires, with a high level of culture, economy and science, as it can be also observed in Blackman In Effect :
99
We run to school, tryin' to get straight A's
Let's take a trip way back in the days
To the first civilization on Earth, the Egyptians
Giving birth to science, mathematics and music
Religion, the list goes on, you choose it
Egypt was the land of spiritual blessing
Egypt was the land of facts, not guessing
People from all over the world had come
To learn from Egypt, Egypt number one
So people that believe in Greek philosophy
Know your facts, Egypt was the monopoly
However, these interpretations of African history were hardly objective later in the song
KRS One concludes that Socrates' forced suicide indicates that Greece “had no respect for science or intellect” and asks whether if does it mean humanity is African. Search for this “real identity” of the black man led message rappers, just like the NOI, to the original black man – descendant of black kings and queens, who had lived long before the Adam was born. This tendency is present not only in Blackman In Effect , but in Poor Righteous Teachers’ So many Teachers (Holly
Intellect, 1990) or X Clan’s Earthbound (To the East, Blackwards, 1990):
Because the man, the most original man
Was found thousands of years before Adam began
***
Peace was the flow of the universe
So shut your bible stop tellin' lies that you were first
***
I am, the blood of the pharaohs
100 The spear bearers, the elephant riders
The everlasting conquerors
I am the original power of blackness
The strength exampled, in our people as a whole
I am the voice of unearthly soil
Earth bound, by will of the Creator
Such lyrics should restore the true identity of black men, highlight their qualities and show that black people are equal (in some cases even superior) to whites and their present inferior position with the American society is the result of the manipulation by the white majority. They were also the reasons why message rap and pro/black rappers got under a criticism of being anti Christian.
Again, it should be stressed that this more or less visible anti Christianity was a result of the frustration of blacks over their poor conditions. Christianity, according to many, was also responsible for exploitation of the black folk. This tension was not new; the hatred of Christianity was a favorite subject of Malcolm X in the 1960: “The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors” (Hailey 283). His rhetoric survived several decades only to later reappear in the lyrics of Brand Nubian’s Ain’t No
Mystery (In God We Trust, 1993) or KRS One’s Edutainment (Edutainment):
See me and my people been lost for over 400 years
and done tried this Mystery God
And all we got was hard times
Hunger and nakedness, from the snake that hissed
Beaten and killed by the ones
who say, "Look to the sky for your piece of the pie"
And didn't want to tell you that God's within self
Bloodsuckers of the poor wanna keep your wealth
Keep you a slave, so you don't misbehave
101 You never know the truth til you're dead in your grave
***
But through knowledge, they'll NEVER con me
Cause from Jesus Christ to right now
everytime a black man speaks up, KA POW
See people concentrate on the leader
And not the message comin through the speaker
If the Christians really heard Christ
the black man never would've lived this life
However, in the area of education message rappers were not focused on the past only – examples from African history should prove that the black man is able to become economically and intellectually equal to the white man. Beside this focus on Black history and culture, message rappers also stressed the importance of knowledge of modern technologies, which should be mastered by blacks in order to be able to do well paid jobs, as Chuck D who suggested that “due to the Information Age and the tremendous growth of computers and Internet, computer literacy has become as important as learning how to spell your name” (Chuck D 35), the importance of education is mentioned in Boogie Down Production’s classic You Must Learn (Ghetto Music: The
Blueprint of Hip Hop, 1989):
Let me demonstrate the force of knowledge,
knowledge reigned supreme
The ignorant is ripped to smithereens
This stress on practical utilization of education was quite logic since education should open doors to those areas that were for many blacks closed for several centuries. I have mentioned in the previous chapter that black men were portrayed in three ways: criminals, athletes or entertainers.
While earlier two latter groups (which also include rappers) had been forced, due to their
102 insufficient education, to use services of white lawyers, sport agents, music producers, directors etc., the situation in the 1990s was a little bit different. The access to the higher education, which was a result of the antidiscrimination movements of the 1960s, allowed the emergence of black lawyers, doctors or scientists, for whom, however, it was difficult to find an appropriate position in the environment, which was dominantly white. Message rappers attacked these white devils who were, according to them, again exploiting black artists and thus establishing a new form of modern slavery – this rage can be demonstrated on Boogie Down Production’s How Not to Get Jerked
(Sex and Violence, 1992):
When the audience hears real rap, they boo it
See rap music is a culture
And everyone outside that culture is a vulture
The vulture makes money on the culture
Understand, I ain't tryin to insult ya
But you're either usin rap like the devil
or you're pushin rap to another level
The idea of message rappers was identical with that one of the NOI – a replacement of these white people with members of the black community, which would give them not only an appropriate job but, in addition, they could educate their peers and serve as a positive example for the other blacks. It was clear that changing the established order would be difficult but rap music, because of its specific black character and underground position, helped to undermine this order quite significantly. Together with the rising number of rap artist, also the number of black recording companies and music producers grew. This approach was not strong only in music industry, as the situation in other branches was also slowly changing. Public Enemy’s song Shut’
Em Down (Apocalypse 91, 1991), attacked the approach of large clothing companies like Nike and
Adidas, that were very popular with the black community, they were making vast profits on blacks but did not support them in return.
103 I like Nike but wait a minute
The neighborhood supports so put some
Money in it
Corporations owe
Dey gotta give up the dough
To da town or else
We gotta shut 'em down
A strength of this appeal had not remained unnoticed for long, as many new black fashion companies emerged – a classical example was FUBU company, which tried to support the black community (letters stand for For Us By Us ). Recently the number of new black clothing companies has been increased dramatically as many of them are today owned by rap artists (Snoop
Doggy Dogg’s Snoop Dogg Cloths , Jay Z’s Rocawear , Wu Tang's Wu Wear or Pharell’s Bathing
Ape ).
Artists like Public Enemy, Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane, who have cooperated on the song
Burn, Hollywood, Burn (Fear of A Black Planet, 1990), in which they paid a special attention to mass media. Not only did they criticize the absence of black directors, producers or other more qualified positions, but they also attacked the traditional way of depicting blacks in subordinate positions or as clearly negative characters:
In the movies portrayin’ the roles
Of butlers and maids slaves and hoes
Many intelligent Black men seemed to look uncivilized
When on the screen
Like a guess I figure you to play some jigaboo
On the plantation, what else can a nigger do
And Black women in this profession
As for playin’ a lawyer, out of the question
For what they play Aunt Jemima is the perfect term
104 So let’s make our own movies like Spike Lee
Cause the roles being offered don’t strike me
There’s nothing that the Black man could use to earn
Burn Hollywood burn
A call of message rappers for “own movies like Spike Lee” also highlights another distinction between message and gangsta rappers, who also had refused the derogatory characters, created by white movie studios, but they adopted the cult of a gangster/pimp. This adoption should be seen as a result of the street knowledge as it was described in the previous chapter. Message rappers lacked the roles depicting the black man as an intelligent, wise and worth following. Message rappers appreciated movies of Spike Lee like She's Gotta Have It , Crooklyn or Do the Right Thing (theme song of the latter was Public Enemy’s Fight the Power ), because he tried to go beneath the surface and tried to point out that the tensions between whites and blacks spring up from the ignorance blacks and whites, even though they live together do not know much about the other’s culture.
Even movies that were often criticized from the general public for the brutal depiction of violence
(Boyz’N’ the Hood, Menace II Society or South Central ) were appreciated by message rappers. Not only they realistically described the city centers reality but often they included also educational features; let us name the positive father role model Furious Styles from Boyz'N' the Hood or young
Black power oriented Rasheed and his grandfather from Menace II Society. These role models often educated younger males and served as a kind of positive propaganda among young urban males and, just like message rappers, they harshly criticized all social pathologic phenomenona devastating the black community.
I think that the area where the differences between both message and gangsta rappers are minimal is their distrust in the police. Possibly, the only difference is that gangsta rappers as typical representatives of “lumpenproletariat” more or less directly referred to an armed counteraction, which had been typical for the Black Panthers Party, message rappers proposed more moderate solutions, even though they were describing similar negatives experience with
105 police forces. When both groups speak about their miserable living conditions as the new form of slavery, then the police represents overseer, as it is evident in KRS One's Sound of Da Police
(Return of the Boom Bap, 1993):
Yeah, officer from overseer
You need a little clarity?
Check the similarity!
The overseer rode around the plantation
The officer is off patrolling all the nation
The overseer could stop you what you're doing
The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing
The overseer had the right to get ill
And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
The officer has the right to arrest
And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!
I do not think that message rappers would reject the gangsta rappers’ idea of armed counteraction completely; sometimes, they were also proposing similar solution. I have mentioned that the activities of gangs that were traditional representative counterparts to official law enforcing forces very often included black on black violence, which was also the phenomenon message rappers wanted to eradicate. They also suggested that the control of black community should come from the black community, from law abiding blacks, which would enforce the law righteously and thus there would be no need for an armed action. Nevertheless, I think that not all message rappers share the same point of view, while the idea of black patrols was supported by
Public Enemy for an example, others doubted this idea. Black policemen were sometimes worse than the white ones as KRS One describes in his song Black Cop (Return of the Boom Bap):
Here's what the West and the East have in common
Both have black cops in cars profilin
106 Hardcore kids in the West got stress
In the East we are chased by the same black beast
The black cop is the only real obstacle
Black slave turned black cop is not logical
But very psychological, haven't you heard?
It's the BLACK COP killin black kids in Johannesburg
Whassup black cop, yo, whassup?!
Your authorization says shoot your kation
You wanna uphold the law, what could you do to me?
The same law dissed the whole black community
You can't play both sides of the fence
1993 mad kids are gettin tense
Although KRS One tried to warn a fictive black cop that times would change the opposite was true; law enforcement in problematic, predominantly black central city areas, still causes tensions, that very often turn into riots, as it was in Part One. However, this problem can not be solved within few years and its solution will require competent changes from the U.S. government rather then from rappers. But rappers and, especially, message rappers helped to clearly formulate despairs and problems of black community and offered appropriate solutions. A comparison of message rappers and gangsta rappers shows that their efforts were basically the same, i.e. the economic empowerment of African Americans and to prove that black man is an equal competitor to the white man. While message rappers proposed to reform American educational system, which would teach children about others culture and allowed them to get a decent job and living so they could later form a functional community, gangsta rappers on the other hand praised their “street knowledge”, which was an individual set of skills helping them to earn a lot of money in an underground economy and secure them a luxurious living. While message rappers tried to rebuild the black man’s image of a criminal, gangsta rappers adopted it in order to stress his role of potential threat to white man, who actually had been previously treating him so.
107 Despite these differences, both genres have significantly influenced the American society in many areas. Not only have they pointed to problems that were underestimated for decades but they have also helped to education and economic empowerment of American blacks. This impact will be summarized in a final chapter.
108 PART FIVE
Conclusion
I suggested that the reason, why I have chosen to analyze hip hop culture and rap music since their beginnings till the middle 90s only, was the impossibility to cover the enormous variety of rap genres that have emerged after this period. However, if the influence of rap music on the
American society and culture should be properly shown, then this wave of rappers (also called
“new school”) has to be taken into a consideration.
The division on “gangsta”, message and commercial rap, which was common in the previous decade, was slowly stirred, as a result of a growing popularity of rap music which became significantly commercialized and a number of new styles have emerged. However, this tendency cannot be reduced to rap music only; the position of other hip hop artistic forms graffiti and break dance, that had together with rap music created the phenomenon of hip hop hip hop culture, was diametrically different from the situation from two decades ago – they gained a prominent position not only in American contemporary culture but even in the global as well. I think that the middle
90s can be regarded as a milestone of hip hop culture since then its influence has vastly increased.
A diversity of today's rap genres is so colorful that it would be more appropriate to distinguish rap music into its underground and mainstream currents, even though these terms partially overlap with the previous distinction into gangsta and message rap. Underground/message rap artists like
Jeru Da Damaja, Afu ra or groups Non Phixion Arrested Development and few others are typical representatives of political rap in its purest form, although they do not incline to the message of the
NOI like their predecessors but they tend to be more oriented toward a foreign policy of the USA.
While many older message rappers ended their careers in the late 90s, most of gangsta rappers remained in rap industry either as artists or producers, which was the case of Snoop Doggy Dogg,
Dr. Dre or Ice Cube, who had discovered and produced their younger peers like Eminem or 50cent,
Chingy or Tony Yayo, who are today on top of hip hop industry.
109 However, it would be misleading to claim that hip hop has became a part of mainstream culture
– hip hop presents completely peculiar phenomenon, which also helped significantly to redefine
American cultural values and an established social order, which had been through the centuries defined by the white dominant society.
I think that the changes hip hop culture brought to African Americans can be illustrated on the following scene, which took place in Los Angeles in 2003 on an occasion of L.A. premiere of a movie Charlie’s Angles: Full Throttle . One of the most important guests was a rap musician and producer P. Diddy, who also appeared in the movie. When he appeared on a red carpet, he posed photographs, thus a slogan on the T shirt he was wearing, was visible. It said “I’m the American dream”. While the appearance of the black man not only in a movie and even on its premiere in a role of a very important person would be 30 years practically impossible and the slogan on P.
Diddy's chest would be a bitter irony, the situation at a dawn of a new millennium was quite opposite. I think that the described scene highlighted the progress, rap artist made just within two decades.
The first thing, as it was already mentioned, was the integration of hip hop culture into the mainstream current. The impact of hip hop was stronger than anyone could imagine. Although it has influenced other areas of American society, such as movie or fashion, it was rap music, which remained the most active and the most visible carrier of hip hop message. But while in the previous decades key figures of rap music had been rap musicians, ten years later the central figure became a rap producer. This was the case of rappers like P. Diddy, Jay Z or Pharell, who became probably the most influential figures in American show business. Their influence went, however, far beyond rap music as these producers cooperated with non black pop or hard rock artists or compiled soundtracks for Hollywood blockbuster movies. Hip hop can thus be seen as the only phenomenon which helped the black man to open doors to the areas that were closed for him for several centuries. This was the case of many African American actors; while in the 1991 Public
Enemy wanted to burn Hollywood down for offering the blacks only substandard roles, a few
110 years later actors like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry would appear in more sophisticated roles. Just like mainstream music studios that had signed numbers of rappers to attract the black audience film studios had also realized that black audience presented a considerably large group of potential customers, and gave black actors more space on a “silver screen”. The positive role of hip hop in this process remains undoubted; however, its merging with mainstream has also a reverse side which brings us to the second feature.
This strengthened bonds of rap artists with mainstream was also the reason why these
“mainstream rappers” were sometimes viewed by the African American community as a betrayal of the community they have came from. A luxurious lifestyle of these extraordinary successful black artists, which they can lead an displayed, because of their lucrative business, was sometimes compared to the materialism, which was the typical attribute of the black bourgeoisie , together with the effort to integrate into the dominant white society, by getting rid of their traditional
African identity and adopting their cultural models. However, most of the rappers, despite their enormous success, have not forgotten their origins and in their lyrics they thank their community for a support, as Notorious BIG does in his song Juicy (Ready to Die, 1994):
Now I’m in the limelight ‘cause I rhyme tight
Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade
Born sinner, the opposite of a winner
Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner
Peace to Ron G, Brucey B, Kid Capri
Funkmaster Flex, Lovebug Starsky
I’m blowin’ up like you thought I would
Call the crib, same number same hood
It’s all good
However, the pompous demonstration of wealth has another reason than the demonstration per se . It was suggested that rap music was one of a few ways to economical empowerment of a black
111 man in America and thus in such context this demonstration of wealth should be viewed as the demonstration of rapper’s economic skills, rather than the pure obsession with materialism. In this sense, rappers present a modern symbol of the American dream. A vast majority of rap stars comes from the margins of the American society and their life stories are synonyms to ‘rags to riches’ story; a description of such story can be found also in Juicy :
Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis
When I was dead broke, man I couldn’t picture this
50 inch screen, money green leather sofa
Got two rides, a limousine with a chauffeur
Phone bill about two G’s flat
No need to worry, my accountant handles that
And my whole crew is lounging’
Celebratin’ every day, no more public housin’
Thinkin’ back on my one room shack
Now my mom pimps a Ac’ with minks on her back
And she loves to show me off, of course
Smiles every time my face is up in The Source
We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us
No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us
Birthdays was the worst days
Now we sip champagne when we thirst ay
Uh, damn right I like the life I live
‘Cause I went from negative to positive
And it’s all...
The excessive demonstration of wealth and high social status by rappers has its reason; it must taken into a consideration the initial conditions of those rappers. They, unlike wealthy white people, have not possessed any “old money” inherited after their ascendants and thus, the wealth
112 they so often and gladly demonstrate symbolizes their economical talent. Michal Nandoru in his article End of old white money (Mladá fronta, 2005) suggests that “success is a mean of fight – it is about powder and functionality of business strategy. Ostentatious demonstration of economical success is the way how to charm potential female partner and to gain respect from rivals”
(Nandoru 2005). This is the remnant of the individualism of the “gangsta” rappers in the 1990s, which was described in the Part Three, where was shown that rappers adopted the attributes of gangster/pimp because the figure represented, in the context of the ghetto, “economically and socially” superior individual. When rap music entered areas other than the ghetto, these rap artists have transformed into a role of businessman, which was a symbol of economic and social superiority in a newly accessed world.
Even though contemporary rappers have followed the individualism of “gangsta” rap the heritage of message rap have not remained forgotten. The most urgent appeal of message rap reunion inside the black community, which would lead to its economic, intellectual and cultural improvement, was followed by many rappers who often support various organizations and groups trying to improve the conditions in the neighborhoods they had came from. Thus gangsta rapper
Snoop Dogg supports his project of Snoop Youth Football League, rappers 50cent and The Game donated through their charities more than $250,000 to Boys Choir of Harlem, Jay Z planned to go to Africa to raise awareness about the planet's water crisis, etc. Many rappers have also realized that their contracts with white recording companies are often disadvantageous and thus they have established their own; this was the case of Jay Z's Roc A Fella Records, Snoop Dogg’s No Limit
Records and many others who and thus the profit went back to the black community.
I believe that the criticism, which was attacking hip hop for being materialistic, was based on a misunderstanding. It was shown that the demonstration of wealth, according to which the rate of success is measured, primarily symbolizes the ability of African Americans to be the equal economy adversaries to the white men, the ability, which he could not prove through centuries because of a discriminating social and economic climate. It was also demonstrated that this desire
113 for an economical empowerment and higher and more respected status in a community was a fundamental essence of hip hop culture since its very beginnings and its emergence was in particular raised by the harsh economic and social conditions hip hop culture emerged from. The anti establishment and critical character of hip hop culture was not completely forgotten. Rap music and especially the genre of message rap gains more notoriety and importance in countries like France, Germany, Great Britain and Holland where it was adopted by minorities and has the same function as rap music in the USA in the middle 1980s, i.e. to serve as their voice against racism and call for an integration. However, recent events like the hurricane Katrina uncovered , that the situation in large American cities (in this case New Orleans) remained almost the same as it was 30 years ago and that eradicating these problems will require appropriate solution from US government, which was, however, responsible for their emergence
114 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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120 ABSTRACT
Název: Hip Hop: Rapová hudba jako cesta z ekonomické, kulturní a společenské izolace
Afro Američanů v 70. až 90. letech minulého století
Klíčová slova: hiphop, Afro Američané, rapová hudba, sociologie, hudební věda, americká
historie, americká ghetta
Tato práce zkoumá specificky městský kulturní fenomén nazývaný hip hop, který se vyvinul během 70. let minulého století v předměstských oblastech obývaných převážně
černošskými a hispánskými menšinami, a který se do dnešní doby stačil přetransformovat ve fenomén celosvětový. I když se hip hopová kultura skládá z více uměleckých elementů
(výtvarné umění zvané „graffiti“ a styl tance nazývaný „breakdance“) dosáhla patrně největšího vlivu rapová hudba, která díky své textové složce pomohla jasně a bezprostředně formulovat radosti a problémy mladých černochů, kteří byli jejími hlavními exponenty.
Jelikož podmínky v těchto ghettech byly také zdrojem mnoha společensky patologických jevů, které se pak objevovaly i v rapových písních, stala se rapová hudba terčem kritiky.
Kritika, která vinila rap z oslavy těchto jevů či přílišného materialismu, nechápala že rapová hudba, vznikla jednak proto, aby na tyto společenské nešvary poukazovala, ale také proto, že byla jednou z mála cest jak jim také uniknout. Tato kritika, také mnohdy nebrala v potaz relevantní kulturní, historické a společenské souvislosti, které mnohdy pomáhaly rapovou hudbu velmi výrazně spoluutvářet, což se snaží tato práce uvést na pravou míru.
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