Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2011 A Historical Analysis: The Evolution of Commercial Rap Music Maurice L. Johnson II Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS: THE EVOLUTION OF COMMERCIAL RAP MUSIC By MAURICE L. JOHNSON II A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Degree Awarded: Summer Semester 2011 The members of the committee approve the thesis of Maurice L. Johnson II, defended on April 7, 2011. _____________________________ Jonathan Adams Thesis Committee Chair _____________________________ Gary Heald Committee Member _____________________________ Stephen McDowell Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii I dedicated this to the collective loving memory of Marlena Curry-Gatewood, Dr. Milton Howard Johnson and Rashad Kendrick Williams. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the individuals, both in the physical and the spiritual realms, whom have assisted and encouraged me in the completion of my thesis. During the process, I faced numerous challenges from the narrowing of content and focus on the subject at hand, to seemingly unjust legal and administrative circumstances. Dr. Jonathan Adams, whose gracious support, interest, and tutelage, and knowledge in the fields of both music and communications studies, are greatly appreciated. Dr. Gary Heald encouraged me to complete my thesis as the foundation for future doctoral studies, and dissertation research. To Gregg Mardirosian, aka DJ Maniac Magee, I reserve special thanks because he truly showed me that Hip Hop culture is universal, and is not limited to race and ethnicity. I would like to thank my mother and father, both of whom are retired veterans of the United States Armed Forces, whose parenting enforced the leadership qualities I currently possess, and along with my maternal grandmother, have supported all my educational pursuits; to the founders of Hip Hop Culture, who created something out of nothing, which is truly divine, and the greatest example of God’s work; to the original practitioners of the African Oral tradition, the Jeli and Jelimuso of West Africa, which are commonly known as griots and griottes, and to some of the modern-day practitioners of rap music that sacrificed their lives for the evolution of this culture that I hold near and dear to my heart and soul, especially Tupac Shakur, and Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G.. I would like to express gratitude and reverence for the divine being (God) that resides within me, and inspires me daily to further the search for truth and knowledge, which are the foundations for wisdom and understanding. Without this divine presence, I never would have made it through the struggle. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract . vi INTRODUCTION . 1 METHODS . 4 LITERATURE REVIEW . 9 LIMITATIONS . 14 THE EARLY ERA . 19 THE GOLDEN ERA . 32 THE RISE OF GANGSTA RAP . 53 TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1996 . 74 POST TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT (1998-PRESENT) . 95 DISCUSSION . 141 FINAL ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION . 146 REFERENCES . 150 DISCOGRAPHY . 155 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . 158 v ABSTRACT Detractors of the current lyrical content of Hip Hop music claim it has devolved to the proliferation of the gangsta image as the defacto voice of contemporary Hip Hop culture. However, the factors that influenced the evolution of rap music have gone unexamined. The current research is a historical analysis that attempts to document the origins of commercial rap music and the factors and events that drastically affected its development as an art form. These factors include but are not limited to the discovery of white suburban males as the primary consumers of gangsta rap, which led to the genre garnering the most mainstream and commercial appeal, and the research examines how the deregulatory statutes of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 created an unnatural progression of the music that has resulted in the stifling of socially conscious artists and the promotion of hardcore rap music into a commercially lucrative global commodity. Results of the analysis show that the early commercial rap lyrical content began as a cultural response to the socioeconomic oppression of inner-city African-Americans, and lyrics were geared towards a party atmosphere in the late 1970s and early 1980s before progressing to the addressing of social issues plaguing the black community. The analysis also suggests that because of the differences in which gang culture developed in New York City and Los Angeles, respectively, two very distinct and separate cradles of Hip Hop civilization were formed. The New York artists were geared towards socially conscious ideals while West Coast artists took a much more confrontational approach and created what is now referred to as gangsta rap. The consequences of white consumption of black popular culture are discussed and are key to vi understanding the development of the Hip Hop music industry; the extreme, still- prevalent effects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 are also examined, as well as the resulting trends in lyrical content. vii INTRODUCTION The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated radio station ownership, lifting a regulation that limited ownership media channels to owning no more than 40 stations. Soon after the lifting of this regulation, companies such as Clear Channel and Cumulus bought the majority of local radio stations. After a period of media consolidation and a series of corporate mergers, radio station playlists were nationalized, a maneuver which has stifled the voice of socially conscious musicians and promoted certain genres of music, specifically gangsta rap. This paper illustrates how commercial rap music became a global commodity, how the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has caused a change in the tapestry of Hip Hop music, and points to specific examples of musical styles that have been marginalized. These changes have ensured that the commercialization of Hip Hop culture, and rap music specifically, has led to the music art forms that present a warped representation of the black community as a global commodity. The current paper’s objective is to analyze the history of commercial rap music in a historical context. The analysis of commercial rap music begins with the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. After their initial success with the first commercial rap single, rap lyrics began to evolve as artists such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five addressed social issues affecting the inner city and Afrika Bambaataa’s experimentation with the electro-funk musical movement took Hip Hop to a global audience. Lyrical content became more geared towards street consciousness with the arrival of the now defunct Profile Records and Rush Management’s Run-DMC. Led by Russell Simmons, Def Jam Records was the first major Hip Hop label and Run-DMC were the first Hip Hop artists to attain a crossover white audience during the mid- 1980s. Hip Hop’s global influence continued to grow with their numerous video appearances on MTV and the production of motion pictures depicting elements of Hip Hop culture. During the 1980s, it was discovered that Hip Hop music was not just limited to black neighborhoods and was being consumed in white suburbia. The music industry then focused its efforts on marketing select music styles to white suburban audiences, thereby shifting music industry practices towards promoting the newly founded gangsta rap genre. This resulted in the superstardom of NWA in the late 1980s, and later, the artists on gangsta rap label Death Row Records beginning in the early 1990s. 1 Another objective of this study is to give an accurate account of how the lyrical content of commercial rap music developed to its current position and an analysis of the several factors that dictated this development. While the current detractors of Hip Hop culture claim that rap lyrics have supported violence, misogyny, the usage and distribution of narcotics, and sexual conduct, this study supports that these images are strategically projected to the mainstream because of a combination of verbal artistry, socioeconomic oppression, racial conflict, globalism, public policy, and technological advancement that has resulted in being deemed profitable by corporate America. The evolution of party-oriented lyrics at the genesis of commercial rap music to socially conscious messaging will be discussed. The era of socially conscious music and the exploitation of the profitable criminalized black male image helped produce the West Coast gangsta rap genre, which initially was a confrontational cultural response to previously the crack- cocaine epidemic, gang culture, and police brutality. My research also shows the importance of the invention of Soundscan in the early 1990s, and how it was used as a tool by white music executives who had discovered that young suburban white males were the primary consumers of an art form that had been dismissed as a fad, later, labeled a menace to society, before finally becoming a billion dollar global industry. This research will be potentially contribute to recent discussions regarding artist responsibility, how legislation and socioeconomic factors drastically affect the content within rap lyrics, and how the white consumption of popular culture is the driving force behind the stereotypical images that are presented to a worldwide audience. Rap music, which began as a voice of the oppressed, and an artistic response to the urban decay that plagued New York City and Los Angeles, has now become a global commodity, and its organic roots become less and less prevalent as socially conscious artists are given no mainstream access due to the consolidation of radio and record labels choosing only to promote prominent gangsta rap artists. The historical analysis concludes with a discussion regarding a rap artist’s street credibility versus entertainment value.