unmasking hip hop landscaping the shifts and impacts of a musical movement , shani smothers
TRANSCRIPT
UNMASKING HIP HOP: LANDSCAPING THE SHIFTS AND IMPACTS OF A MUSICAL
MOVEMENT
A Thesissubmitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciencesof Georgetown University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for thedegree of
Master of Artsin Communication, Culture and Technology
By
Shani Ali Smothers, B.A.
Washington, DCApril 29, 2004
iv
Copyright 2004 by S.A. SmothersAll Rights Reserved
v
UNMASKING HIP HOP: LANDSCAPING THE SHIFTS AND IMPACTS OF A MUSICAL
MOVEMENT
Shani Ali Smothers, B.A.
Thesis Advisor: Matthew Tinkcom, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
The hip hop movement originally grew out of the ranks of urban oppression in
and around the New York City boroughs in the 1970s. The movement at that time used
music, dance, and graffiti art to challenge status quo values, institutions, and the
dominant order over society. In this study, I propose that the movement of hip hop has
changed due to an ideological split manifesting within the culture. I hypothesize that
the rap facet of the hip hop movement has divided and is traveling two extreme paths,
one which maintains and reinforces the dominant order of society and one, which
critiques this order. This divisiveness of hip hop is a result of the culture industries, but
moreover the hip hop community has allowed the movement’s original purpose, as an
outlet to critique society and politics, to be redirected. This study attempts to make
sense of what has caused this division and the impact this now divisive movement has
on listeners’ mentality, ideological preferences, and social and political engagement.
Hip hop is an undeniable social force for youth, particularly urban youth. This musical
form exercises its force by shaping the identities, and furthermore the social character
of its listeners. It grooms individuals, particularly youth to accept or reject their
economic, political, and social conditions. The future path of the hip hop movement is
vi
uncharted. Ultimately it is up to the hip hop community to accept or reject the current
construction and appropriation of this musical form, which potentially can work as an
agent of social and political change.
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PREFACE
Over time, hip hop music has had its share of academic supporters as well as
critics. One particular academic article motivated me to work on this topic. “Music and
Music Videos” by Christine H. Hansen and Ronald D. Hansen (Oakland University) in
Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer’s Media Entertainment: The Psychology of Its
Appeal (2000), enraged me and filled me with a need to respond intellectually. Hansen
and Hansen (Zillman and Vorderer, 2000) make questionable statements such as,
“…BET (Black Entertainment Network) offers music videos for a (mostly) Black
audience.” First of all BET stands for Black Entertainment Television NOT Black
Entertainment Network. Secondly, it is a questionable fact that BET’s audience is
mostly Black. Assumptions such as this example absolutely need data to support them.
In the authors’ discussion of popular music and its appeal, they mention rap and
“gangster rap” as having negative effects, but they fail to mention any rap that is
positive or socially/politically conscious. They also fail to qualify any historical
contexts from which rap arose. The section on rap music has a blatantly negative tone
filled with negative generalizations about rap, rap fans, and the effects of rap music.
Not only did this article contain statements, which were questionably false or had no
evidence to support them, but also the authors admitted that their sample of 100
participants was predominantly female and 96 percent of White descent. It is this type
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of intellectualism, which is often fed to the public through articles and segments about
hip hop.
Realizing that every academic writer has his or her biases, I am not offering a
critique of Hansen and Hansen’s opinions, but their method. Acceptable academic
work typically covers various perspectives on the chosen topic and then offers a unique
perspective. Additionally, intellectualism typically uses sourced information and
thoroughly structured samples, surveys and results. These authors should have written
on the White female perspective on hip hop, rather than making generalizations about a
hip hop culture based on this non-representative sample. Hansen and Hansen have
much to learn about hip hop and maybe a better approach in the future would be to
gather findings from individuals who listen to and are affected by hip hop.
With this in mind, I have derived this study of hip hop by drawing from a wealth of
academic subjects such as, African American studies, African studies, anthropology,
communications, cultural studies, education, history, liberation theology, media
studies, musicology, political science, poverty studies, sociology, sociolinguistics, as
well as academia on hip hop. Although Chapter 5 of this study uses a convenience
online sample to describe how hip hop can be connected to several ideological and
behavioral patterns, the methods used are statistically accurate and the results are of
sound use in the pilot study. For every bad apple, there are several good ones. This is
to say that for every anti-intellectual piece written on hip hop, there are ten times as
many thorough and intellectually stimulating pieces on this cultural art form.
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Hip hop is a dynamic musical movement, which impacts the lives of individuals,
communities, and cultures, especially American culture. Hip hop, over time, has
proven its viability and its power of influence—its potential to change the world in
which we live.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special Thanks goes to:
Dr. Matthew Tinkcom, my thesis advisor, for all of your support, understanding, and advice. Thank youfor your Georgetown presence, your enlightening perspectives and for encouraging me and otherstudents to think ‘outside of the box’.
Dr. Diana Owen, my second reader, for your tireless dedication to the students, your amazing statisticalexpertise and for your interdisciplinary and unbiased perspectives.
Dr. Richard Wright, my third reader, for your dedication to social change, your enlightening cross-generational perspective and for challenging me and other students to take the extra step in criticalanalysis.
My fellow Thesis Colloquium students for your comments and criticism, which helped me to improvemy content.
Dr. Pensri Ho and Professor Jessica Davis for your dialogue which particularly helped to shape thisresearch.
CCT alum, Autumn Lewis (’03), for being my CCT saving grace and opening my eyes to the power ofselection.
Robert Pham for all of the technological support and genuine care and support of CCT students.
Heather Kerst, Davina Sashkin, Kendra Fowle, and Tonya Puffet for all of the administrative support.
Dr. Mikell, Bernadetta Killian, Veronique Dozier, and Denis Williams for all of your support and forhelping me to have such a remarkable experience in Tanzania.
To all of the students, professors, and others whose conversations and dialogue helped to shape myproject.
My editors and proofreaders: Letita Aaron, Elaine Ayensu, Dr. Pensri Ho, Allissa Hosten, Kisha Ross,Dejuan Stroman and Grant Tregre.
Father Phillip Linden, Jr., S.T.D, Ph.D for helping me to change my perspective, my goals and my lifefor the better and to fulfill my purpose.
To my mother, Gladys Cole, for her unconditional support, her endless sacrafice for her children, and forenvisioning my infinite potential.
To my fathers, James Smothers III and Lionel Cole, for all of your love and support over the years.
To my siblings, Malaika, Kiesha, Dale Janette, Jimmy, Courtney, and Gabriel, for all of your love andsupport.
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To my friend, confidant, and soul-mate, Grant, for all of your love, support and encouragement. Thankyou for believing in me.
Special Thanks goes to the Johnson, Cole, Smothers, Hicks, Doyle, Reels, Reese, Ward, Caldwell,Cochran, Lewis, Rhodes, Tregre, Rovaris and Hebert families for all of their love and support.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover Sheet………………………………………………...……………………………i
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………....…ii
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………..v
Chapter I: The Changing Face of Hip Hop—The Movement of this MusicalContinuum……………………………………………………………………………....1Defining and Reinventing Hip Hop………………………………………………...…..3Contextualizing the Evolution of Hip Hop……………………………….………….....6Project Summary………………………………………………………….…………….9
Chapter II: Exploring the Functionality of Hip Hop: Moments and Evolution……....12The Communication and Communal Functions of Music……………………………13Hip Hop’s Communication and Communal Functionality………………………..….18Staccato Moments in Hip Hop History………………………………..….…………..22The Sub-Genres of Hip Hop………………………………..…………….………..…24Summary: Beyond Moments and Functions……………………………...………..…26
Chapter III: Power, Culture Industry, and Hip Hop as an Undermined Movement….28The Power of the Repressive State and Ideological State Apparatuses………………30Mechanisms of Power and Social Movements…………………………...…………..32The Power of the Culture Industry…………………………………………………....36The Undermining of the hip hop Movement………………………………………....44Summary……………………………………………………………………..……….52.Chapter IV: Words Are Weapons: The Hip Hop Language Dialectic………………..53The Power of Music Language…………………………………...…………………..56Lyrical Analysis……………………………………………………….…………..….59Summary…………………………………………………………………………...…93
Chapter V: Hip Hop’s Impact on Mentality, Ideological Preference and Political andSocial Activity…………………………………………………..…………………....96Methodology……………………………………………………………………..….100Sample Characteristics…………………………………………………………..…..100Variable Description………………………………………………………………...102Results: Ordinary Least Square Regression Analysis……………………………….102Results: Logistic Regression Analysis………………………………………………107
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Results: Correlation Analysis……………………………….………………………..108Discussion of Results……………………………………………………………...…111Summary……………………………………………………………...……………...123
Chapter VI: Conclusions: Understanding Hip Hop’s Potential and Moving Toward aCollective Movement……………………………………………………………...…132Future Research………………………………………………………………………134What is in Hip Hop’s Future…………………………………………….…………...136
Notes……………………………………………………………………………...….139
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….149
Statistical Appendix A……………………………………………………………….156
Statistical Appendix B……………………………………………………………….161
Statistical Appendix C……………………………………………………………….170
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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 5.1: Race and Ethnicity Demographics
Table 5.1: Dependent Variables
Table 5.2: Independent Variables
Table 5.3: Regression Analysis
Table 5.4: Logistic Regression Analysis
Table 5.5: Correlation Analysis I
Table 5.6: Correlation Analysis II
It is past time for all poor people to release themselves from the deceptivestrangulation of society, realize that society has failed you; for an attempt to ignore
this system of deception now is to deny you, the need to protest this failure later. Thesystem has failed you yesterday, failed you today, and has created the conditions for
failure tomorrow_John Africa 1
The black revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon once asserted that each generation, outof relative obscurity, must discover its own destiny. Then it has a choice: it mayfulfill that destiny or betray it. How can today’s rising generation of African-
American young people come to terms with their own destiny? What is the meaningof the challenges and opportunities that history has planned for them? What kind of
ethics or moral anchor is required for group empowerment and collectiveadvancement?
—Manning Marable2
1
Chapter I
The Changing Face of Hip Hop—The Movement of this Musical Continuum
Hip hop is not a political movement in the usual sense. Its advocates don’t elect public officials. Itdoesn’t present a systematic (or even original) critique of white world supremacy. Nor has it produced
a manifesto for collective political agitation. It has generated no Malcolm X or Dr. King. It hasspawned no grassroots activist organization in the order of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, the Black Panther Party, NAACP, or even the Country Music Association. Hip hop hasactually had surprisingly little concrete long-term impact on African-American politics. It has madeits mark by turning listeners onto real political icons (Malcolm X), radical organizations of the past
(The Black Panther Party), and self-sufficient operations of the present (the Nation of Islam). Itspread the word about the evils of apartheid. It articulated and predicted the explosive rage that
rocked Los Angeles in 1992. It has given two generations of young people a way into theentertainment business and
an uncensored vehicle for expression.
—Nelson George3
Rap music is, in many ways, a hidden transcript. Among other things it uses cloaked speech anddistinguished cultural codes to comment on and challenge aspects of current power inequalities. Not
all rap transcripts directly critique all forms of domination; nonetheless, a large and significantelement in rap’s discursive territory is engaged in symbolic and ideological warfare with institutionsand groups that symbolically, ideologically, and materially oppress African Americans. In this way,
rap music is a contemporary stage for the theater of the powerless. On this stage rappers act outinversions of status hierarchies, tell alternative stories of contact with police and the educational
process, and draw portraits of contact with dominant groups in which the hidden transcriptinverts/subverts the public, dominant transcript. Often rendering a nagging critique of variousmanifestations of power via jokes, stories, gestures, and song, rap’s social commentary enacts
ideological insubordination.
—Tricia Rose4
Both Nelson George and Tricia Rose portray accurate depictions of the current
state of hip hop, especially the culture’s facet of rap music. While George discusses hip
hop’s social and political shortcomings, he also articulates this movement’s greatest
social and political triumphs and furthermore its potential to impact individual
2
consciousness. Rose, in particular, illustrates one path of the present divergent
directions of this underestimated and furthermore underplayed musical movement.
Since its origins, rap music has possessed an element, which critiques dominant
institutions and values; but in the last two decades, it has also moved towards the
maintenance of dominant ideologies and institutions. Just as rap music challenges
domination, powerlessness, and oppression of the American poor, it also has moved to
maintain dominance, increase and reinforce powerlessness, and contribute to the
material, economic, and political manipulation of the urban oppressed. Rap is a hidden
transcript, but as George and Rose suggest, it has moved along a different political and
social plane than traditional activism or leadership. Rap has made its mark by
spreading ideological, political, and social messages, which undeniably have an impact
on individuals as well as society at large.
How is it possible that this musical form engages in a critique of the American
political economy, while still confined to economic, political, and social subservience?
This question brings to bear the reality of all American-based social movements, which
either achieve success based on skillful and effective critique within the bounds of the
economic, political, and social order, or succumb to failure as a result of infiltration
and divisiveness. George (1998) says that it is essential to understand that values,
which underpin hip hop, are by products of the function and dysfunction of the
American cultural context.5
3
In this study, I intend to connect hip hop to the American context by showing
how it maintains and reinforces American repressive and ideological apparatuses,
while simultaneously critiquing these institutions and power structures. By situating
this musical art form within the social context of American life, it can then be
positioned as a social and political force, which exercises influence over individuals.
Defining and Reinventing Hip Hop
Trying to devise a clear-cut definition of hip hop is a challenging task. Artists,
record executives, academics, and critics define hip hop in several different ways. As
with any term in need of definition, it is advisable to reflect on various perspectives
and then try to potentially formulate a comprehensive definition of the term. In the
early 1980’s, published definitions of the term hip hop were scarce, but currently hip
hop is defined and seriously discussed in several academic discourses. Its definition is
multi-faceted and it has changed to fit sporadic inner-city urban cultural shifts.
Todd Boyd in The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of
Hip Hop (2003) states,
Hip Hop 101; rap is the act of rapping, spittin’ rhymes over beats produced by aDJ…The word ‘rap’ also came to denote the more popular aspects of the genreby the mainstream, and this label was also used by true heads to call out anyonewho was thought to be abandoning the culture’s roots. As the age-oldassumption goes, as one becomes more popular or mainstream, the lesspolitically engaged and substantive the music would become. Hip hop changedthe game on this though (Boyd, Todd, 2003, p. 45).
4
As Boyd (2003) notes, the transformation of hip hop over time has left us with this
distinction, which has had complex effects. “Rap is what you do; Hip Hop is what you
are. Rap is the act; Hip Hop is the culture (Boyd, 2003, p. 48).” Hip hop is a testament
to the strength of the oppressed, which have and continue to overcome the obstacles
that American life often imposes on inner-city urban communities, especially the youth
(Boyd, 2003, p. 152). Boyd suggests an age-old assumption that says, as rap artists
become more popular, the less politically or socially engaged the music becomes.
Boyd is correct in his conclusion because hip hop often uses its popular status to
channel social and political messages. Hip hop is a movement that evolved over a long
time span and is not just a historical moment in the urban cultural experience.
Alonzo Westbrook in Hip Hoptionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop
Terminology (2002), defines hip hop as,
The artistic response to oppression. A way of expression in dance, music,word/song. A culture that thrives on creativity and nostalgia. As a musical artform it is stories of inner-city life, often with a message, spoken over beats ofmusic. The culture includes rap and any other venture spawned from the hiphop style and culture (pg 64).
Westbrook makes an important point, hip hop has always creatively drawn on nostalgia
in order to connect to its audience. This nostalgia could be musical, social, or even
political, but in almost every instance it reflects collective experiences of the urban
poor. George says that hip hop at its most fundamental level is a product of the post-
civil rights era—a multifaceted culture born of African American, Caribbean American
5
and Latin American youth in and around New York in the 1970s (George, 1998, p.
viii).
Rose (1994) reiterates these points,
Hip hop is a cultural form that attempts to negotiate the experiences ofmarginalization, brutally truncated opportunity, and oppression within thecultural imperatives of African American and Caribbean history, identity, andcommunity. It is the tension between the cultural fractures produced by post-industrial oppression and the binding ties of black cultural expressivity that setsthe critical frame for the development of hip hop (p. 21).
Rose emphasizes that hip hop culture grew from attempts to negotiate the oppressive
experiences of youth living in the multicultural environment of the New York
boroughs. New York youth in this transition, were relegated to the margins as a result
of post-industrial economic backlash, rapidly changing political landscapes, and shifts
from segregation to multicultural integration and back to cultural polarization. These
divisive circumstances of cultural communities in New York fueled the fusion of a
unified hip hop cultural community.
This study will show that academics, critics, and rappers appropriate these and
other definitions of hip hop as needed. It should be noted that hip hop in the 1970s
could be thought of as a single culture with distinctive elements, whereas over the last
decade hip hop has become more like a melding of several local and regional cultures
and sub-cultures. In a broader sense, I realize that hip hop is regarded as the culture
and rap as one facet of that culture. For the purposes of this study, I use hip hop and
rap interchangeably. These definitions of hip hop and rap will be useful in further
6
discussions of the evolution of this culture and particularly the changing landscapes of
rap music.
Contextualizing the Evolution of Hip Hop
Hip hop is a form of communication and an agent of community building. In
the past, various genres of music have served particular functions. Music often
supplied responses to societal or community needs. American hip hop emerged at a
time when the inner city youth of New York needed an outlet to express emotion about
the social ills they faced and the environmental, political, and economic conditions of
their marginalization. Hip hop, in these early stages, operated as a force, which
challenged the social, political, and economic order of American society. It used its
communicative power and its ability to reach the masses to engage the urban
oppressed.
The hip hop movement did not emerge spontaneously, but followed the
historical and social pattern of movements born out of inequality and subsequent
communal uprising. The hip hop movement is the musical successor to movements,
which attacked social inequalities of the 1950s and 1960s. Maultsby (1985) says, “new
styles, rather than evolving independently, arise out of existing traditions (Berry and
Manning-Miller (eds.), 1996, p. 266).” She explains this in terms of the evolution of
conscious music into the formation of rap. She says that rap music discloses shifts in
values, attitudes, and social needs.6 These social needs, which Maultsby mentions, now
7
have become part of a market-embraced display of popular culture.
Pratt (1990) discusses what he terms ‘emancipatory uses’ of popular culture.
He says popular culture is emancipatory when it challenges dominant institutions (p.
14). He notes a parallel in Douglas Kellner’s (1987) work, “TV, Ideology, and
Emancipatory Popular Culture”.
“Emancipatory” signifies emancipation from something that is restrictive orrepressive, and for something that is conducive to an increase of freedom andwell-being. Such a conception, as Kellner describes it, ‘subverts ideologicalcodes and stereotypes…It rejects idealizations and rationalization thatapologize for the suffering in the present social system, and, at its best, suggeststhat another way of life is possible’ (Pratt, 1990, p.14).
These emancipatory functions of music still exist in hip hop music. Some forms of hip
hop continue to challenge dominant institutions and situations of inhumane cultural
practices that contribute to the marginalization of the poor. Hip hop also functions as a
communal backbone to support an identification in collective values. Pratt (1990) says
music like any other form of art is an ‘impulse of opposition to existing conventions’.7
Pratt (1990) elaborates on this reinforcement of support and morale. He says music
serves as “substitute imagery,” which mediates experience (p. 5). Music mediates
individual experiences, though perhaps not to the same degree as television.
Nevertheless, it creates a commonality of cultural experience that remains part of each
individual’s cultural heredity (Pratt, 1990). Though Pratt speaks of this phenomenon in
terms of elites that control culture industries, which then use rap to manipulate the
public, this script is flipped by socially conscious music that uses critique to attack
8
dominant ideologies and institutions. Music often embodies cultural and social
commonality. Furthermore, he asserts that music has the capacity to create and reflect
community forms—it is the product of social relationships within a community (Pratt,
1990). As E.P. Thompson (1963) notes, that class as a social relationship must always
be situated in a pragmatic context (Pratt, 1990). Pratt (1990) explains the functional use
of music, which can be seen in all forms of music produced from the experiences of the
African and African in America. Hip hop reinvents their historical experiences to shed
light on the present situation of communal oppression facing the multicultural
American lower working class, and furthermore, it helps to build on the global
community of those oppressed everywhere. “Serving cultural and social purposes, rap
music provides a vehicle for group interaction, an outlet for creative expression, and a
forum for competitive play (Berry and Manning-Miller (eds.), 1996, p. 256).” The
appropriation of rap music as a force, which maintains the current social and political
order, is to combat its effectiveness as a threat to this order8.
Societal constructions of Blackness9, and furthermore the construction assigned
to all urban youth, particularly males, historically have operated as forces which
combat the potential threat of these social actors.10 Rose (1990) says in “Never Trust a
Big Butt With A Smile,”
The history of African –American music and culture has been defined in largeby a history of the art of signifying, recontextualization, collective memory andresistance. ‘Fashioning icons of opposition’ that speak to diverse communitiesis part of a rich Black American musical tradition to which rappers make asignificant contribution (Bobo, 2001).
9
Rose is one of the first critical theorists to recognize the positive contributions rap has
made to the establishment of community and collective consciousness. It is important,
however, to recognize the negative impacts of rap music that emphasizes and
encourages acceptance of status quo values, solutions, and maintains ruling elite’s
political and ideological power over the masses. The connection between
consciousness and cultural expression has the potential to evidence hip hop’s success
and failure as a social movement.
Project Summary
The purpose of this study is to explore the duality of the hip hop movement and
how it has shaped the divergent paths in which rap music has and continues to travel.
This study proposes to answer the following research question: How has the division of
the hip hop movement given way to two extreme-driven paths of rap music; on one
hand, hip hop provides political and social criticism, on the other hand, it has some
adverse characteristics and consequences. Rap music while critiquing Althusserian
Repressive State Apparatuses (prison system, courts, governing bodies, etc…) and
Ideological State Apparatuses (education system, churches, media, etc…), it also
maintains and reinforces those values and institutions. Chapter III will theoretically
situate this project by providing a foundation of how power mechanisms, the music
industry, and furthermore the culture industry have ushered this divisional path of rap
10
music and its influence. Chapter IV will explicitly focus on the language of hip hop
and how rap lyrics evidence this divisional shift of hip hop. Finally, Chapter V presents
a pilot study on how this division and the resulting paths of rap music have affected
individuals situated within the hip hop community in terms of mentality, ideological
preference, and social and political engagement.
This study primarily focuses on the language and lyrics of hip hop which
inevitably shape individual perception by influencing attitudes, ideological
preferences, and furthermore social and political engagement. Just as William Eric
Perkins11 gives a fresh perspective on rap music’s ongoing and bewildering love/hate
relationship with American society and its role in the continuing evolution of popular
culture, this study intends to give a fresh perspective on rap music’s role in shaping
individual attitudes, ideological foundations, and social and political action. Recent
research on hip hop and politics studies how hip hop actors have stepped into the realm
of social and political activism. This study is more concerned with how the music,
itself, plays a role in the formation of character—how it grooms individuals towards
complacency, disengagement, or activism with American society. This study will show
that the hip hop movement is more than celebrities raising money or publicly
supporting causes—it is a movement because its music and language affect individual
mentality, ideological preferences, and social and political participation. Thus, this
study will unmask hip hop by landscaping the shifts in this musical movement as well
as by showing how this musical phenomenon acts as a socializing agent.
11
Chapter II
Exploring the Functionality of Hip Hop: Moments and Evolution
“I met this girl, when I was ten years oldAnd what I loved most she had so much soulShe was old school, when I was just a shorty
Never knew throughout my life she would be there for meon the regular, not a church girl she was secular
Not about the money, no studs was mic checkin herBut I respected her, she hit me in the heart
A few New York niggaz, had did her in the parkBut she was there for me, and I was there for her
Pull out a chair for her, turn on the air for herand just cool out, cool out and listen to herSittin on a bone, wishin that I could do her
Eventually if it was meant to be, then it would bebecause we related, physically and mentally
And she was fun then, I'd be geeked when she'd come aroundSlim was fresh yo, when she was underground
Original, pure untampered and down sisterBoy I tell ya, I miss her.”
Common Sense12
In this verse, the artist Common Sense, now known as just Common,
personifies his relationship with hip hop music. This relationship with the opposite sex
that he describes is undoubtedly his relationship with his other half—hip hop. By
reviewing academic and non-academic intellectualism, this chapter intends to explore
hip hop’s total being; her definitions, her history, her function and her evolution.
Common’s nostalgia for the old hip hop he knew evidences the ‘evolutionary’ or
12
‘counter-evolutionary’ path this culture has taken and the joy ride it has endured. The
original flow of resistance, which mainstreamed into a commercially viable industry
has taken society on a full throttled ride leaving a distinct mark on American urban
culture.
The Communication and Communal Functions of Music
In order to indulge in a discussion of hip hop as a musical movement, it is
necessary to situate this movement historically. Black music, including hip hop, has
served both communication and communal functions. These functions of music have
paved the way for hip hop to engage and disengage individuals. Something to note is
that the Black musical continuum serves as only one of the three cultural contexts
within which hip hop can be historicized.13 Music has been used to help preserve
communication and thus community, especially by the use of language within musical
texts.14 Musical language, and particularly hip hip language, functions as a force,
which communicates to urban communities. It can build and preserve these
communities or divide them.
For Africans and Black-Americans, music as communication dates back to the
indigenous tribal experiences. The Scottish surgeon, Mungo Park, is noted as the first
European to explore the region of the middle and upper reaches of the Niger River,
which is the land of the Mandingos and Malinkes. Park describes the connection
between music and language through the form of poetry.15 Angela Davis in “Black
13
Women and Music: A Historical Legacy of Struggle” says that West African music
functioned as more than an external tool—more than music, which facilitates human
activity. Music was inextricably embedded in the activity itself (Bobo, 2001).
Thus music was not employed as an aesthetic instrumentality, external to workbut facilitating its execution; rather, work songs were inseparable from the veryactivity of work itself. Janheinz Jahn has referred to the West Africanphilosophical concept of Nommo—‘the magic power of the word’—as beingthe very basis of music. According to the world-view of West Africanculture—if such a generalization is permitted—the life force is actualized bythe power of the word (Bobo, 2001).
This power of the word is a clear retention, which reappears, in conscious
music across history and cultures. This instrumentality of Nommo also shows up
within the plantation community in new form—work songs, which though grounded in
the foundation of West Africa, evolved to serve new functions as well. Music has
always resided in the realm of freedom—has always had a role in concrete historical
and social transformations (Pratt, 1990). Davis says that Harriet Tubman’s spirituals
were functional in relaying concrete information and collective consciousness about
the struggle for liberation (Bobo, 2001). She infers that collective consciousness of
freedom is not a result of oppression, but rather communal resistance must be taught.
Tubman contributed to these teachings by the music and content of her spirituals. Karl
Mannheim (1936) says the spirituals established by the plantation community suggest
that music may function in a profoundly utopian way. Spirituals were the plea of slaves
to transcend the existing order of slavery and oppression.
During Reconstruction, a cruel and sorrowful time for newly freed slaves, the
14
musical art form of Blues developed and was used as a communicative channel to
voice the conditions of oppression faced by the communities of freed slaves. This new
form of music drew on personal trials, which arose as a result of a collective
experience. Pratt says the Blues were understood in terms of meaning established by a
community.16 The Blues, as M. Dyson (1993, 1997, 2001) notes thrived on its ability to
spew forth reality to its audiences. Dyson also says this realism within blues appears in
more modern forms of conscious music.
African American culture places high value on ‘telling it like it is.’ Again, thisrealism is reflected in the lyrics of the blues and gospel music (White andParham, 1990) as well as rap and hip-hop music, all of which portray thedifficulty of life and advise a cool steady, and persistent toughness needed toovercome this difficulty (Hecht, Jackson, and Ribeau, 2003).
This type of realism-based communication has always been instrumental in the
preservation of identification in a collective experience of struggle. Black musical
forms have been noted to “tell it like it is.” From tribal songs within West African
culture to spiritual; blues to jazz; soul to hip-hop; the reality of collective Black
experiences has always been communicated through music.
In addition to serving as a channel of communication, music has served as a
catalyst for the establishment and reestablishment of community. In African tribes
music was essential to communal life. Davis says West African music was always
functional—inextricably linked to communal economics, interrelationships, and
spiritual pursuits.17 Park also describes the West African function of music as a means
of preserving community. His description of the function of West African music
15
resembles music’s function within the plantation community.
They lightened their labor by songs, one of which was composed extempore,for I was myself the subject of it. It was sung by one of the women, the restjoining in a sort of chorus…Among the free men [in the slave-coffleprocession] were six Jillikea (singing men) whose musical talents werefrequently exerted, either to divert fatigue or obtain us a welcome fromstrangers (Southern (ed.), 1983).
The plantation community utilized the creative expression of music to voice
their consciousness of personal struggle and alleviation from suffering. Comparatively,
the free Black community during Reconstruction and Segregation used music to voice
their personal struggles, which pertained to a collective experience. Ernest Borneman
describes a scenario in his account of songs sung by Africans in America. He says one
type of song was, “used by workers to make their task easier: work songs to stress the
rhythm of labor, group songs to synchronize collectively executed work, team songs
sung by one team to challenge and satirize the other (Bobo, 2001).” Pratt (1990)
further elaborates on the oppositional character of work songs as being a critical form
of collective consciousness.
Collective forms of oppositional consciousness grew under the very eyes of theoverseer. As Alan Lomax put it concerning work songs, “Here, right under theshotguns of the guards, the black collective coalesced and defiantly expressedits unity and belief in life, often in ironically humorous terms (Lomax, 1977)!”(Pratt, 1990).
Music in this way contributed to the physical and spiritual survival of slaves on the
plantation. It was used as a spiritual escape from the daily physical brutality suffered
by Black people under the institution of slavery. James Cone, noted in his insightful
16
theological research, says Black music has been essential to the unity and the
realization of collective struggle and liberation.
Davis dutifully notes Ma Rainey as an example of music, which strengthened
community based in identification of struggle related to race, gender, and class
collective experiences. Davis says,
Ma Rainey, on the other hand, performed in circuses, tent shows, minstrel andmedicine shows, singing all the same about the Black predicament andestablishing the basis in song for the sharing of experiences and forging of acommunity capable of preserving through private tribulations and evenarticulating new hopes and aspirations. Ma Rainey’s most essential socialaccomplishment was to keep poor Black people grounded in the Southerntradition of unity and struggle, even when they had migrated to the North andMidwest in search of economic security (Bobo, 2001).
Davis further expands on Ma Rainey’s music as emanating from problems in
personal relationships. “She [Ma Rainey] used creative expression to speak of sexual
love, but metaphorically revealing economic, social, and psychological difficulties,
which Black people faced during the post-Civil War era (Bobo, 2001).” The men and
women of the Blues era used music to relate the personal experiences of, for example,
losing a man or a job, which in turn voiced an experience, which others within the
community could relate to their own similar experience. The Blues spoke of collective
experience, but it manifests in terms of the individual. Cone (2001) says Black music
“unites the joy and the sorrow; the love and the hate and the despair of Black people
and it moves the people toward the direction of total liberation.” He also says that
Black music shapes and provides a definition of Black being which creates cultural ties
17
and forms the structure for Black creative expression. “Black music is unifying
because it confronts the individual with the truth of Black existence and affirms that
Black being is possible only in a communal context (Bodo (ed.), 2001).”
Black music, which often arises from marginal and oppressed communities,
functions to awaken a collective sense of struggle and furthermore a motivation to rise
up against that source of struggle. Music was an important tool of empowerment—a
strengthening arm of the Black community, providing hope and the possibility of
improvement. Pratt (1990) states,
Music functions in important ways as political behavior…However it has beenused, throughout its history it has proven to be highly effective politically interms of its instrumental utility (Billington, 1980). This function arises out ofthe unique ability of music seemingly to create a kind of spontaneous collectiveidentity or facilitate the investment of people’s psychological energies.
Pratt’s example gives music a direct connection to collective identity and the political
behavior of communities. This foundation sets the stage for an exploration of the
present forms of hip hop music which act as political agents spawning collectivity and
social change. The present forms manifest in terms of hip hop and modern Soul music.
Hip Hop’s Communication and Communal Functionality
Hip hop’s form and function has given breath to its communicative capacity.
Maultsby (1985) says new styles, rather than evolving independently, arise out of
existing traditions.
New forms of black musical expression are, in essence, new impulses drawn
18
from the environment, blended with the old forms and given a new shape, anew style, and a new meaning…Black music is a manifestation of black cultureand it serves a communication function within tradition. Because rap musicexists as a functional entity within black America, the creation of this new stylediscloses shifts in values, attitudes and social needs (Berry and Manning-Miller(eds.), 1996).
These social needs now have become part of a market-embraced display of popular
culture that serves as an outlet to voice concerns to structural oppression.
Hip hop has been and continues to be the voice of the voiceless. Boyd (2003)
says,
What I find so compelling is the way in which this relatively simple form ofcommunication, rhymes over beats, however you slice it, is truly quitecomplex. Because Black people have always had to make do with so little, therelative abundance of one’s own words is at times all we have to use in fightingagainst a corrupt and vicious society (pg 143).
Even in its most irate and eclectic forms, hip hop continuously engages in some sort of
fight against the dominant order of society.
This is not to say that hip hop does not engage in contradiction as well. For
every revolutionary or radical message, there is a corresponding mainstream, quieting
and conformist message, and often this message, which conforms to the society at-
large, prevails because of reinforcement from societal institutions and trends. Hip hop
since its mainstreaming in 1979, has displayed the double-character of a fragmented
community. It has been a viable communication method, which has expressed both
distress and pride in the reality of oppression and its aftermath.
Hip hop serves a second function as an agent of community and collective
19
consciousness. In Marx and Engel’s on Literature and Art18, “It is not the
consciousness of men [and women!-AYD] that determines their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness (Bobo, 2001).” Davis
expands on the Marx and Engel’s point that social consciousness does not occur
spontaneously, but arises based on human life and concrete conditions within society
(Bobo, 2001). Davis says,
If it is true that music in general reflects social consciousness and that AfricanAmerican music is an especially formative element of Black people’sconsciousness in America, the roots of the music in our concrete historicalconditions must be acknowledged…And indeed, precisely because Black musicresides on a cultural continuum which has remained closest to the ethnic andsocio-historical heritage of African-Americans, it has been our central aestheticexpression, influencing all the remaining arts (Bobo, 2001).
It is this particular connection between consciousness and cultural expression, which
gives enlightenment to the rise of hip hop. The rhythmic retentions from African and
Black American music as well as the language of the lyrics has enabled Black youth to
reconstruct a community in which collective consciousness enabled the potential for
social change. Over time, the strength of community has been recognized and targeted
by governmental and nongovernmental institutions in order to maintain control over
dissidence. Pratt (1990) notes in The Hidden Dimension by Edward Hall, he speaks of
music as an element of communal cohesion.
Human perceptions of the world are ‘programmed’ by the language spoken(Hall, 1969). Can music, itself a language and composed of language, programor ‘reprogram’ human existence? Because people live in communities, theirpopular music may become a significant constituent of community—however it
20
is defined, whether spatially, denoting a particular location or milieu (Buttimer,1973), or through psychological identification (Pratt, 1990).
Pratt establishes music as part of a social relationship. “Music both creates and reflects
forms of community…The music of a people is a social relationship (Pratt, 1990).” As
E.P. Thompson (1963) notes with respect to social class, “The relationship must
always be embodied in real people and in a real context (Pratt, 1990).” Pratt (1990)
says that every form of modern popular music can be traced back to real people and
real contexts. Pratt (1990) also notes an extremely important use of music, which can
be seen in all forms of music produced from the experiences of the African and
Africans in America.
Music is used to construct some sense of collectivity memory, but what kind ofmemory is it? How is it used? What are the functions? What images does itmaintain? Perhaps Orwell’s antiutopian projection of a brainwashed future hascome about in ways more elegant and subtle and yet more total than he everdreamed possible as a synthesized past is processed and bought (Mander,1978). Yet, as the use of musical examples might suggest, it can also be a‘usable’ past—a means of resistance and a way to revision the future throughinvoking past and presently used cultural materials (Hebdige, 1987).
This dynamic is especially invoked as part of the backbone of hip hop. Rose (1990)
says in “Never Trust a Big Butt With A Smile,”
The history of African –American music and culture has been defined in largeby a history of the art of signifying, recontextualization, collective memory andresistance. “Fashioning icons of opposition” that speak to diverse communitiesis part of a rich Black American musical tradition to which rappers make asignificant contribution (Bobo, 2001).
This form of music looks to the historical experiences of Africans and Africans in
21
America to shed light on the present situation of communal oppression facing the
American lower working class. Furthermore, hip hop has gained popularity with urban
oppressed youth globally, making it a reference point for building a community of
those oppressed everywhere.
Staccato Moments in Hip Hop History
In a Los Angeles hospital lobby in 1979, my mother, suffering from extensive
labor pains, gave birth to me, her third child, standing up. The same year, conscious
music was also being birthed again in America as a response to the third generation of
labor, pains, and suffering. Whipped through the plantation slave community, reduced
to mediocrity in the segregated community, and underdeveloped in the post segregated
community, in the new generation of the oppressed, a new form of conscious music
developed. Standing up and in pain, the impoverished and marginalized youth of the
South Bronx borough of New York gave birth to a new voice in the eyes of
mainstream America—hip hop. Hip hop may have been born to mainstream America,
but it was its second or maybe even a third birth for this dynamic art form.
This new form of conscious music lived and grew on the underground scene for
some time before traveling its path to mainstream acceptance. Hip hop culture evolved
from speeches, spoken words and poetry of resistance in the marginalized
communities. Tricia Rose, one of the early 90’s hip hop scholars, said in Black Noise:
Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994),
22
Musical and oral predecessors to rap music encompass a variety of vernacularartists including the Last Poets, a group of the late 1960s to early 1970s blackmilitant storytellers whose poetry was accompanied by conga drum rhythms,poet, and singer Gil Scott Heron, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, the 1950sradio jocks, particularly Douglas ‘Jocko’ Henderson, soul rapper MillieJackson, the classic Blues women, and countless other performers.
Even before the 1960s, Nathan Davis (1996) notes,
Although rap gained its popularity during the 1970s, its roots date back to the1940s and 1950s when African American youth gathered on urban streetcorners to sing acapella and participate in ‘rap’ sessions. These sessions, inwhich young African Americans talked ‘jive’ to each other, told a story aboutan event or crisis that had affected the storyteller. The stories were revealed in arhythmic and poetic manner, and always in a provocative and suggestive way.
Rap evolved from a communicative form of arranging language in rhythmic patterns,
which can even be said to date back to African tribes, and the words recited over
rhythmic beats of the drum.19
In 1979, Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records created the Sugar Hill Gang
and released the first known mainstream hip hop song, “Rappers Delight” (Rose,
1994). After “Rappers Delight” was released, the music industry, print media, and the
fashion industry ‘discovered’ rap as a viable profit-making trend, which they needed to
cash in on quickly before the fad of hip hop passed (Rose, 1994). Media quickly
realized that hip hop culture was much more than a passing fad. This developing
culture was attracting the lucrative youth market and soon became part of popular
culture.
23
The Sub-Genres of Hip Hop
Davis (1996) hits the mark when he says, “Rap mirrors the rap artist’s society.”
Just as society has been fragmented, rap has evolved in fragmented ways to reflect
virtually all aspects of American social schizophrenia. Like the youth of New York in
the 1970s, who found an alternative identity (Rose, 1994. p.34) and social status in hip
hop culture, hip hop itself in various environments has undergone identity formation.
Rose (1994) says,
Identity in hip hop is deeply rooted in the specific and local experience, andone’s attachment to and status in the local experience, and one’s attachment toand status in a local group or alternative family. These crews are new kinds offamilies forged with intercultural bonds that, like the social formation of gangs,provide insulation and support in a complex and unyielding environment andmay serve as the basis for new social movements (Rose, 1994, p.34).
Hip hop’s specificity to the local experience of oppression resulted in the formation of
alternative hip hop characters or identities. The generalization of these local
experiences has added to the categorization of hip hop into sub-genres including, but
not limited to, Gangster Rap, Message Rap, Popular Rap, Underground Rap, and Local
Rap.
Gangster Rap: According to All Music Guide to hip hop: A definitive Guide to Rap
and Hip Hop (2003), gangster rap is described as having an edgy sound with abrasive
lyrics that either accurately reflect reality, or exaggerate ‘comic book
24
stories’(Bogdanov, etal., 2003).
Message Rap: Definitions of political rap seem consistent with what I term ‘message
rap.’ Political rap is hip hop, which merges rhymes with political philosophy to create
a new style of rap. I add that message rap expresses frustration with power structures
and economic, political, and social oppression.
Popular Rap: The guide describes pop-rap as, “…a marriage of hip hop beats and raps
with strong melodic hooks, which are usually featured as part of the chorus section in a
standard pop-song structure. Pop-rap tends to be less aggressive and lyrically complex
than most street-level hip hop, although during the mid-to late ‘90s, some artists
infused the style with a more hardcore attitude in an attempt to defuse backlash over
their accessibility (Bogdanov, etal. (eds.), 2003).” I would also add that popular forms
of hip hop or rap have music industry backing because they can produce crossover
sales with the American white hip hop audience as well as some global hip hop
audiences.
Underground Rap: I simply define underground rap as rap that is not mainstreamed,
but passed along, heard, or sold, through an underground network of hip hop or rap
fans. Underground rap is not mainstreamed to radio, television, or any other industry-
controlled outlets. It does not seek commercial appeal, but it rather thrives on the
25
support of live audiences. Sarah Thornton, in “Moral Panic, the Media and British
Rave Culture,” says, “Undergrounds denote exclusive worlds whose main point is not
elitism, but whose parameters often relate to particular crowds (Ross and Rose, 1994,
p. 177).”
Local Rap: Local rap is a unique style of rap that rises out of a particular local culture
and experience and remains true to that particular local style of flow, local style of
beats, and local vernacular of English.
The Hip Hop Guide (2003) also defines other categorical distinctions of hip
hop including: Alternative Rap, Bass Music, Christian Rap, Comedy Rap,
Contemporary Rap, Dirty Rap, and Freestyle Rap, just to name a few.
Summary: Beyond Moments and Functions
This chapter discusses how music functions in society as a social force, and
furthermore how hip hop as a communicative form socially functions to strengthen
communities. The many births of hip hop convey this art’s communicative and social
functions. Boyd (2003) sums up hip hop’s past, present, and future. He says,
Hip hop is a lifestyle. It is an ideology. It is a mode of being. It is an all-encompassing life force that far supercedes any dismissive tactic from thosewhom Flava Flav once chided as ‘nonbelievers.’ No matter how much youwant to dismiss it, it is still here, having passed many tests, and poised totriumph even more in the future (pg 152).
26
It is these triumphs as well as failures of hip hop that I wish to further explore in
subsequent chapters. Hip hop, as a movement, has triumphed as well as failed inner-
city urban oppressed communities. These next chapters will grapple with how the split
of the hip hop movement has occurred over the past two and half decades. This split is
inevitably a result of historically situated economic, political, and social moments,
which will be hermeneutically approached, focusing not just on individual moments.
27
Chapter III
Power, Culture Industry, and Hip Hop as an Undermined Movement
Poet laureate of power, herald of freedom—the musician is at the same time within society, whichprotects, purchases, and finances him, and outside it, when he threatens it with his visions. Courtier
and revolutionary: for those who care to hear the irony beneath the praise, his stage presenceconceals a break. When he is reassuring, he alienates; when he is disturbing, he destroys; when he
speaks too loudly, power silences him. Unless in doing so he is announcing the new clamor and gloryof powers in the making…Ramblings of revolution. Sounds of competing powers. Clashing noises, ofwhich the musician is the mysterious, strange, and ambiguous forerunner—after having been long
imprisoned, a captive of power (Attali, 1985, p.11).
Six short years after the mainstream birth of hip hop, Jacques Attali, through
his analysis of music in Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), prophesized
the great expansion and destruction of the movement known as hip hop. Attali’s
description of the double character of musicians can be directly paralleled to the
present lifestyle and career choices faced by contemporary hip hop artists. Hip hop
artists can be likened to the musicians Attali describes; while noble, reassuring,
disturbing, and loud, the creativity of hip hop artists can be simultaneously
revolutionary, alienating, destructive and silenced. Over time, competing forces within
hip hop have determined the path and pattern, whether chosen or contrived, of the
movement’s evolution.
Attali (1985) discusses music in terms of its economic and political attributes.
He says the political economy of music is,
More than colors and forms, its sounds and their arrangements that fashion
28
societies. With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music isborn power and its opposite: subversion. In noise can be read the codes of lifethe relations among men. Clamor, Melody, Dissonance, Harmony; when it isfashioned by man with specific tools, when it invades man’s time, when itbecomes sound, noise is the source of purpose and power, of the dream—Music(pg 6).
Music is an uncontestable source and subject of economic and social power, but I will
argue that music is also a source of unseen political power. In noise can be read the
codes of life which define relations, analyze, mark, restrain, train, repress, and channel
the sounds of language, of the body, of tools, of objects, and of relationships between
self and others (Attali, 1985, p.6). Attali recognizes the double character of music and
musicians especially those who operate within the confines of the industry. In an
attempt to understand the power dynamics used to control, maintain, and creatively
direct the hip hop industry, this framework will explore these dynamics and how they
apply to the hip hop movement
This chapter will first define Louis Althusser’s concepts of the Repressive State
and Ideological State Apparatuses. It will then delve into a theoretical framework of
power and cooptation as it applies to the evolution of movements, especially hip hop. It
will discuss the power mechanisms and exploitative channels by which hip hop has
expanded, and been thus concurrently created and destroyed. Finally, this chapter
intends to make sense of the relationship between the culture industry and the
simultaneous success and failure of this musical movement. Overall, this chapter
discusses the uses of power within industry to exploit and undermine musical
29
movements, especially the hip hop movement.
The Power of the Repressive State and Ideological State Apparatuses
It is necessary to discuss power mechanisms and more specifically the specific
power of the Althusserian concepts of State Repressive and Ideological State
Apparatuses (Althusser, 2001). In order to understand what forms these constructs take
in society, we must first comparatively define these terms. Althusser discusses the
State in the context of power and power relationships. In this particular instance he
positions the bourgeois class as the ruling class, which uses the State to ensure their
domination over the working class, thus subjecting, by repression, the working class to
the extraction of surplus value; capitalistic exploitation. Althusser’s concept of the
State resembles the Marxist concept of the base. Marx discusses this same dynamic of
the State, but in terms of the hierarchal levels it manifests.
Marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by ‘levels’ or‘instances’ articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, oreconomic base (the ‘unity’ of the productive forces and the relations ofproduction) and the superstructure, which itself contains two ‘levels’ or‘instances’: the politico-legal (law and the State) and ideology (the differentideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.) (Althusser, 2001, p.90).
The State is the economic, political foundation of any given society. It could also be
referred to as what is thought of as the political economy. If we think about the State as
this machine of repression, this complete and hierarchical control, then understanding
its apparatuses becomes much clearer. Althusser (2001) says the State is the
30
government, administration, army, police, courts and prisons—these institutions make
up what he calls the repressive state apparatus (p. 92).
With this theoretical base, Althusser’s concept of the Ideological State
Apparatus can be discusses in relation to this Repressive State Apparatus. Althusser
argues that when you think about power and certain classes or cultures that rise to
power, they inevitably take their values, social norms; language and other aspects with
them into power and these things become dominant (Althusser, 2001,p.98). For
example, when Europeans colonized Africa and in turn rose to power within African
countries, their European value systems, social norms and languages became the
dominant ideological tools upon which the restructuring of society was based.
Althusser further maintains that, “No class can hold State power over a long period
without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological
Apparatuses.” Through institutions established early on as trustworthy, ideologies
enforced by these institutions maintain subjugation to the State, or political economy
and its state apparatuses, both repressive and ideological.
It might be helpful to break down Althusser’s concept of the Ideological State
Apparatus. Althusser describes this phenomenon as, “a certain number of realities,
which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and
specialized institutions (p. 96).” The examples present are institutions in the form of
religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade union, communications, and
cultural. Whereas the Repressive State Apparatus functions by “violence,” the
31
Ideological State Apparatus functions by ‘ideology’ (p. 97). This is what makes it
powerful because it has the capacity to affect the unconscious, further enacting
messages that by subliminal injection maintain subjection.
Political class struggles revolve around the state and its execution of power via
ideologically driven apparatuses. This is where Althusser gives the means to explore
the Ideological State Apparatus, in terms of real world examples. He says that
institutions like education, church, and communications, helped to repress the
resistance of the marginalized by expressing contradictions, which inevitably divide. It
is these types of institutions which are the most pertinent when discussing the hip hop
movement. This is not to say that studies, which cite the blatant policing of rap, are not
important.20 These studies are inextricably linked to this discourse. Blatant examples of
how repressive state institutions (police, the courts, and the prison system) clearly
define how policing and overt force is exercised to contain hip hop, but these are not
the only mechanisms of power used to control rap. For the purposes of this study, I will
focus on the subliminal forms of control, those mechanisms that use ideological
manipulation to contain the hip hop movement.
Mechanisms of Power and Social Movements
In order to discuss the hip hop movement as a force caught in the dialectic of
social subservience to Repressive State and State Ideological Apparatuses, the concept
of power must be defined and then discussed in terms of its mechanisms. David A.
32
Baldwin in Paradoxes of Power (1989), says, “[Power], in Max Weber’s classic
definition, ‘is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a
position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which
this probability rests’ (Weber, 1947, p.152). Power can be exercised in two ways: 1)
through the use of overt force; 2) or through the use of influence, persuasion and
sometimes manipulation. Althusser’s Repressive State Apparatus is characterized by
the use of power by overt force, while the Ideological State Apparatuses exercise
power by force which influences, persuades and often manipulates. Neither does
conflict or fear necessarily accompany power and how it is exercised (Jackman, 1993,
p. 29).21
This study will focus on the use of power in the more implicit forms—those
used by the Ideological State Apparatuses to maintain societal order and control. A
close examination of power and how it has been most successful in history will provide
an enlightened view of the role of fear in exercising power. Power is most successfully
imposed when exercised without using fear. Fear only induces resistance and thus the
possibility of social revolution. Jackman (1993) suggests that fear is not the actor,
which induces a relationship between influence and compliance, but moreover
conditioning and socialization play key roles. Jackman describes force in a similar
way.
Like power, force involves a conflict of values, and therefore, of interests,Unlike power, force does not induce compliance: the exercise of force isinstead an admission that compliance cannot be induced by other non-coercive
33
means. Those who use force are indeed attempting to achieve their goals in theface of noncompliance (Jackman, 1993, p. 30).
It is important to note that power necessarily involves a relationship, which is often
negotiated, between actors. Crozier and Friedberg (1980) suggest,
‘[Power] can develop only through exchange among the actors involved in agiven relation. To the extent that every relation between two partiespresupposes exchange and reciprocal adaptation between them, power isindissolubly linked to negotiation: it is the relation of exchange, therefore ofnegotiation, in which at least two persons are involved (Jackman, 1993,p. 30)’
Not only can power only be exercised in the presence of at least two actors, it
necessarily thrives on the unbalanced relationship between the actors. Shifts in power
and resulting relationships born of these shifts inevitably foster social movements.
Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison in Music and Social Movements (1998) say
that social movements are central moments in the reconstitution of culture. Eyerman
and Jamison’s cognitive approach to the study of social movements involves an in-
depth analysis of the relationships between culture and politics; and music and
movements, as collective learning processes (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998).
These collective learning processes are constantly testing the universalibility of
the normative order of civil society (Stewart, 2001, p. 261). Stewart (2001) also notes,
‘Their mechanism is the resolution of contradictions by argumentation or“critique”.’ Collective learning processes have therefore become the foundationfor the model of modern society; the greater the extent to which social relationscan be organized and integrated through the medium of such processes, thegreater the possibility of the democratic organization of the well-being ofsociety (Eder, 1993, p.24)’ (Stewart, 2001,p. 216).
Because social movements enable this possibility for a truly democratic organization of
34
society, they are dangerous because of their capacity to break down existing social
orders that benefit ruling elites. Stewart (2001) says that social movements coexist with
institutionalized order of economic policy and cannot be regarded as completely
divorced as an emancipated critique because they draw on structural and institutional
necessity, on social networks excluded from the dominant order (Stewart, 2001,
p.225). He says social movements flourish on the necessity of constructed new
political identities (pg 225) (Stewart, 2001). They cannot completely denounce ties to
the dominant order of society because in part the movement in one way or another
thrives on some of those dominant structures. Furthermore, the only accounts of
successful movements in history were inevitably connected in many ways to dominant
ideology, political and economic structuring, as well as social dynamics, which favored
ruling elites more so than the oppressed. Stewart (2001) explains how the break down
of conflicts based on the collective consciousness of class struggle were deemed as one
of the most dangerous types of mobilization and thus demobilization of collective class
conflicts occurred (Stewart, 2001,p.225). This is by far not the only means nor the
most effective means of controlling social uprising. Over time, the strength of
collective social movements has been recognized and targeted by governmental,
nongovernmental, and private institutions in order to maintain control over social
dissidence. History has proven that effective infiltration uses the power of implicit
force in order to break down the organization, momentum, and support of the social
movement. These implicit methods of force cause social movements to implode from
35
within, thus disabling the movement’s capacity to communicate with its supporters and
maintain a collective plan of action.
One of the most important power dynamics used to control social movements is
cooptation. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of American English (2003)22,
cooptation is “creating alliances/arrangements with a group that allows you to redirect
the groups priorities so they fall in line with the interest of the status quo.” Cooptation
of movements uses collaboration and the arrangement of alliances in order to redirect
the priorities and foundational goals of the movement. The cooptation of the hip hop
movement began in 1979 with its birth, which was really a rebirth, of hip hop as a
mainstream American phenomenon. The hip hop movement, which was quoted as a
“passing fad” quickly gained mainstream success and spiraled into a corporate entity
capable of creating, building, and redirecting profit, but always subject to industry
control. One of the most instrumental mechanisms of power used to co-opt the
blossoming movement of hip hop is ideology. Whether it was imparted through the
lyrics, through videos, or used to shape artists, ideology has played a key role in the
split of the hip hop movement.
The Power of the Culture Industry
I might've failed to mention that this chick was creativeBut once the man got you well he altered her native
Told her if she got an image and a gimmickthat she could make money, and she did it like a dummy
Now I see her in commercials, she's universal
36
She used to only swing it with the inner-city circleNow she be in the burbs lickin rock and dressin hipAnd on some dumb shit, when she comes to the city
Talkin about poppin glocks servin rocks and hittin switchesNow she's a gangsta rollin with gangsta bitches
Always smokin blunts and gettin drunkTellin me sad stories, now she only fucks with the funk
Stressin how hardcore and real she isShe was really the realest, before she got into showbiz
I did her, not just to say that I did itBut I'm committed, but so many niggaz hit it
That she's just not the same lettin all these groupies do herI see niggaz slammin her, and takin her to the sewer
But I'ma take her back hopin that the shit stopCause who I'm talkin bout y'all is hip-hop
–Common Sense23
In “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” Common Sense, personifies hip hop and describes
the evolutionary journey “she” undergoes. I argue that this path of hip hop he
describes is characteristic of the developing divisiveness of the movement once it
became mainstreamed and exploited by the industry. Hip hop became a true pop
culture commodity and in the process it left behind some its resistive origins. Common
acknowledges that once hip hop gained its popular culture status it was susceptible to
the engineering, marketing, and rearrangement of the music industry, which is
reinforced by past productions of a deep-rooted culture industry. Culture in American
society is a controlled concept. The evolution and split of the hip hop movement is
inevitably a result of the power of the culture industry.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1997) describe the culture industry as a universal stamp, a systematic uniformity of
forms of art, especially those arts, which thrive on mass production. "Culture now
37
impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a
system which is uniform as a whole and in every part (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1997,
p. 120)." Adorno (1991) clarifies that ‘industry’ is not to be taken literally. He says it
refers to standardization and the rationalization of distribution techniques, but not
strictly to production processes (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 100).
Horkheimer and Adorno (1997) argue that the culture industry is produced by a
combination of mass production and monopoly. They say,
Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificialframework begin to show through. The people at the top are no longer sointerested in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so itspower grows. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truththat they are just business is made into and ideology in order to justify therubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and whentheir directors' incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of thefinished products is removed (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1997, p. 121).
As the discursive practices of those in control become more openly apparent, the
power of culture as an industry grows and its effects are more apparently felt. Because
millions of participating consumers fuel these industries, certain reproduction
processes become necessary and as classical economic models reassure, the required
supply must matches the demand for the product. Horkheimer and Adorno (1997)
claim that standards are based on consumer needs, therefore standards are usually
accepted with little resistance. Although Debord and others argue that these needs are
manufactured. Horkheimer and Adorno (1997) say the result is a circle of manipulation
in which the unified system steadily gains strength.
38
Whereas Horkheimer and Adorno argue that the manipulation of individual
consciousness represses the need for resistance, Arthur Asa Berger (1995) argues that
not only does the manipulation of consciousness result in repression of the culture
industry itself, but also in the repression of resistance against existing social and
ideological orders of control.
Berger in Cultural Criticism: A Primer to Key Concepts, (1995) says the
purpose of the culture industry is to manipulate the consciousness of the masses in
order to maintain state repressive and ideological state apparatuses (p.45). “Capitalists
societies utilize the arts and the culture industries to maintain themselves and to
prevent revolution or radical social change (Berger, 1995, p.45).” Music as a “culture”
industry manipulates the audiences’ consciousness to complacently accept the
dominant social order. Berger (1995) describes a similar process, where culture
industries act more forcefully than manipulatively. He says interpellation is the
process by which cultural representations coerce individuals into accepting ideologies
carried by these representations (Berger, 1995, p. 57).24 Berger also notes that
reproduction and reinforcement work hand in hand to maintain this ideological control.
Industry controlled cultural commodities are governed by the realization of their
market value not by the variation of their content. In “Culture Industry Reconsidered”,
Adorno notes that Brecht and Suhrkamp, nearly thirty years prior to his work,
expressed,
The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto
39
cultural forms. Ever since these cultural forms first began to earn a living fortheir creators as commodities in the market-place they had already possessedsomething of this quality. But then they sought after profit only indirectly, overand above their autonomous essence (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 99).
Adorno connects a profit motive to the production of cultural forms. However, he
cautions that at a particular point profit became the only motive and autonomy no
longer a concern. Adorno implies that cultural reproduction is a characteristic of texts
produced by culture industry. In terms of the effect of reproductions of culture on the
masses, Adorno argues that there is a blind acceptance of routines and behavioral
patterns by the masses that has a detrimental effect on not only the differential lines
between art and reality, but also the reality of what is changeable and unchangeable
within society (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 105). This blind acceptance also manifests as
a complacency of the masses.
Attali (1985) notes that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz describe the ideal political
organization as a ‘Palace of Marvels,’ which is a harmonious machine within which all
of the sciences of time and every tool of power are deployed.
‘These buildings will be constructed in such a way that the master of the housewill be able to hear and see everything that is said and done without himselfbeing perceived, by means of mirrors and pipes, which will be a most importantthing for the State, and a kind of political confessional’(pg 7).
A ‘Palace of Marvel’ is exactly how the culture industry is governed as an Ideological
State Apparatus. Attali (1985) argues that eavesdropping, censorship, recording, and
surveillance are weapons of power. These weapons are exercised well by the culture
40
industry, especially the power to censor and record noise. Attali (1985) adds,
The technology of listening in on, transmitting, and recording noise is at theheart of this apparatus. The symbolism of the Frozen Words, of the Tables ofLaw, of recorded noise and eavesdropping—these are the dreams of politicalscientists and the fantasies of men in power: to listen, to memorize—this is theability to interpret and control history, to manipulate the culture of a people, tochannel its violence and hopes. Who among us is free of the feeling that thisprocess, taken to an extreme, is turning the modern State into a gigantic,monopolizing noise emitter, and at the same time, a generalized eavesdroppingdevice. Eavesdropping on what? In order to silence Whom (p. 7)?
The Culture Industry operates as the State’s gigantic noise emitter. It emits the noise of
reproduced and reinforced cultural value. It reproduces stereotypes and ideologies
which ruling elites maintain in order to ensure the existence of a permanent underclass,
and thus their financial stamina as top beneficiaries of the western capitalistic
economic order. It is the culture industry’s ability to disguise its manipulation of
consciousness, which enables it to control this machine. Adorno adds that the culture
industry uses its facade of concern for the masses in order to “duplicate, reinforce and
strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchangeable (Bernstein
(ed.), 1991, p. 99).” Attali (1985) also says that the banning of subversive noise is
necessary to curb the demands for cultural autonomy. He says totalitarian theorists
argue that bans on revolutionary art are used as controlled tonalism. Attali (1985) says,
Support for differences or marginality: a concern for maintaining tonalism, theprimacy of melody, a distrust of new languages, codes, instruments, a refusal ofthe abnormal—theses characteristics are common to all regimes of that nature.They are direct translation of the political importance of cultural repression andnoise control (pg 7) (Attali, 1985).
Modern musical distribution strategy contributes to social censorship of art and
41
cultural reproduction. Attali notes that economic and political dynamics lead to the
investment in art, which then becomes controlled and industry-shaped art. Artists are
left with few options because they have less and less control over content artistically
speaking and it seems whatever is produced serves an ulterior function as commodity,
as reproduction, or as meaningless popularly accepted “noise”. Attali (1985) further
explains this phenomenon of control.
The economic and political dynamics of the industrialized societies livingunder parliamentary democracy also lead power to invest art, and to invest inart, without necessarily theorizing its control, as is done under dictatorship.Everywhere we look, the monopolization of the broadcast messages, the controlof noise, and the institutionalization of the silence of others assures thedurability of power. Here, this channelization takes on a new, less violent, and amore subtle form: laws of political economy take the place of censorship laws.Music and Musicians essentially become either objects of consumption likeeverything else, recupertors of subversion, or meaningless noise (p. 8).
It is this type of cooptation of music, which helps to repress its capacity to be an agent
of social change and to motivate and encourage social and critical consciousness
amongst listeners.
Various types of media reinforce different viewpoints, perspectives, and
ideologies. Music is not an exception. Berger (1995) says, media are most effective
when stimulating people and activating already stored material, which generates
desired responses. In addition he says, “people respond to works not on an individual
basis, but collectively, generally as part of an unrecognized massification or
mobilization of acceptance.” It is this individual choice, manifested in terms of
collective decision-making, which has enabled the success and thus maintenance of the
42
culture industry of music, and furthermore the cultural production of popular hip hop.
Attali (1985) says,
Music is prophecy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest ofsociety because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entirerange of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that willgradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order ofthings; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday,the herald of the future. For this reason, musicians, even when officiallyrecognized, are dangerous, disturbing, and subversive; for this reason it isimpossible to separate their history from that of repression and surveillance (p.11).
Attali recognizes that artists are inevitably linked to the processes and goals of the
industry, which in turn reports to the demands of the State to operate within the
confines of subservience to the political economy. Horkenheimer and Adorno say the
effect of the culture industry in total is one of “anti-enlightenment” in which
enlightenment is described as the:
The progressive technical domination of nature, becomes mass deception and isturned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development ofautonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously forthemselves. These, however, would be the precondition for a democraticsociety, which needs adults who have come of age in order to sustain itself anddevelop (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 106).
Horkenheimer and Adorno suggest that because culture industry acts as anti-
enlightenment, that it prevents the formation of necessary preconditions for
democracy. The “fettering of consciousness” they describe works against fully
developed adults’ ability to sustain and continue to develop a functional democratic
system. Attali further connects this construct of musical texts as part of the total
43
construction of society. He says in the reality of everyday life, few are given a voice
(Attali, 1985, p. 8).
The culture industry phenomenon and its manifestation in the music industry
have inevitably shaped the cultural shift of musical movements, especially the split of
hip hop into either the noise of a mass produced culturally-deafening industry or a
repressed, lost, and forgotten self supported underground whisper of empowerment.
The Undermining of the Hip Hop Movement
The undermining of the hip hop movement has occurred primarily as a result of
power exercised by ideological state apparatuses such as the culture industry and mass
media. Indirectly, other ideological apparatuses such as education, the church, and
family also reinforce the power and control of the culture industry and mass media.
Studies on venue resistance25 and radio airplay trends26 exemplify the explicit policing
of hip hop, but few studies categorically look at ideological institutions and how these
“trusted entities” falsify, construct, and embed values, ideals, and stereotypes that
benefit the status quo. Even though this study separates the repressive state
apparatuses, such as the police, from the ideological state apparatuses, such as
education, it is important to think of these apparatuses as a system or machine that uses
specific parts to achieve particular goals. These apparatuses function in everyday life
and from remarkably early ages, individuals are socialized—ideologically-trained as a
result. Hip hop is a movement of no exception. From its mainstream birth, the
44
traditional apparatuses (culture industry, mass media, education, church, family) as
well as some created apparatuses such as The Parents Music Resource Center27, have
worked to undermine the movement. This undermining, which has resulted in
divisiveness, manifests in both explicit and implicit ways. The culture industry and
mass media continue to have the most damaging impact on the hip hop movement.
The culture industries and mass media work to construct hip hop for the
masses, this undermines its potential as an effective social movement. Hip hop artists
are caught between two worlds; one, which provides the riches, fame, and glory of
mainstream industry success, and another which leaves the artists to fend for
themselves as outsiders of the economic order, which ensures their survival, but
necessarily contradicts their politics. As a result, hip hop has undergone a divide. One
path of hip hop evolution is rich, famous, and glorified by mainstream industry and
maintains and reinforces governmental ideological controls by maintenance of
Repressive State and Ideological State Apparatuses. The other path of hip hop’s
evolution critiques governmental and industry power structures and control
mechanisms, but is often forced to operate outside mainstream recognition and success.
The latter path of hip hop gathers success on an underground, usually local small venue
circuit. Keith Negus in Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (1999), notes that Kevin
Powell, a hip hop historian, said in a magazine profile of Death Row Records
published prior to Tupac Shakur’s death:
‘There is no way to truly comprehend the incredible success of Death Row
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Records—its estimated worth now tops $100 million—without firstunderstanding the conditions that created the rap game in the first place: fewlegal economic paths in America’s inner cities, stunted educationalopportunities, a pervasive sense of alienation among young black males, blackfolk’s age-old need to create music, and a typically American hunger for moneyand power. The hip hop Nation is no different than any other segment of thissociety in its desire to live the American dream’ (Negus, 1999, p.84)
Powell acknowledges that the hip hop industry is no different then any other American
capitalist industry, which seeks to profit and make the rich richer, while keeping the
poor poorer. The “American Dream” here is discussed as the pursuit of money and
power and Powell makes the connection between the current direction of hip hop and
what life goals are ideologically embedded in the minds of youth—the goal of
achieving money and power. Negus (1999) adds,
The approach to the relationship between rap music and the recordedentertainment industry that I am proposing here is more complex than the oftennarrated tales of co-optation, exploitation and forced compromise to acommercial agenda, although these pressures are certainly not absent. At thesame time, it is an attempt to avoid the celebration of black entrepreneurialismor the endorsement of rap as a type of material success-oriented ‘funcapitalism’ (pg 85).
Here Negus points to the internal pathology of the movement as part of the complex
relationship between rap music and industry. I argue that the cooptation and
exploitation of rap is socially situated and ideologically grown as part of larger
political, economic, and social contexts. Negus says in his chapter titled, ‘Between the
street and the executive suite’, rappers simultaneously are identified with “the street”
but also take on the role as executives (Negus, 1999, p.85).
This level of analysis points the finger at the “Othering”28 of the hip hop
46
industry, when it is not an “Other” at all, but an industry that thrives on the same
economic principles and order as all other western capitalistically-driven industries of
commodity exchange and profitability. This leads to an interesting point of how it is
possible for hip hop to be one of the most profitable industries, but one of the most
vilified forms of music in history29. Todd Boyd (2003) says in The New H.N.I.C: The
Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop, “Hip hop transcends the boundaries
of culture, race, and history, while being uniquely informed by all three (p.18).” Boyd
says hip hop’s move to mainstream success presents the opportunity to investigate
these boundaries and their impact on hip hop as a social movement.
Media Coverage of Hip Hop
Trends in media coverage of hip hop is inevitably interconnected with trends in
coverage of minorities and particularly the portrayal of Black Americans in media
coverage30. The few studies that have been done on media coverage of hip hop have
concluded that media make associations between hip hop and criminality as well as
violence in behavior. Other forms of rap such as gangster rap maintain these
stereotypes, but they by far are not the foundation of hip hop culture. Coverage
suggests that the culture is inherently ignorant, violent, abrasive and sexist. Manuel
Castells (1997) states,
“End-of-millennium ghettos develop a new culture, made out of affliction, rage,and individual reaction against collective exclusion, where blackness mattersless than the situations of exclusion that create new sources of bonding, forinstance, territorial gangs, started in the streets, and consolidated in and from
47
prisons. Rap, not jazz, emerges from this culture. This new culture expressesidentity, as well, and it is also rooted in black history, and in the venerableAmerican tradition of racism and racial oppression, but it incorporates newelements: the police and penal system as central institutions, the criminaleconomy as a shop floor, the schools as contested terrain, churches as islands ofconciliation, mother-centered families, rundown environments, gang-basedsocial organization, violence as a way of life. These are the themes of newblack art and literature emerging from the new Ghetto experience.”
While Castells may be correct in his portrayal of society’s oppression and the
separation between the oppressed and middle class of the Black community. He makes
an essentialist claim, which is flawed. His assertion that black art and literature
emerging from the “ghetto experience” reflects these themes and no other is seriously
problematic. It is necessary to differentiate between how this experience produces two
types of black art and literature—those that advance existing stereotypes and political,
economic, and social subservience and those that try to present critiques to this
manufactured powerlessness.
The negative portrayal of hip hop also contributes to what Lance Bennett calls
news dramatization. He says, “Superficial but dramatic news can drive more
substantial but complex issues to the margins of public attentions (Bennett, 2003).” It
seems that because in order for capitalism to work, there must be a permanent
underclass, media and other key actors can continue using these misrepresentations and
stereotypes to generate profit and at the same time keep these groups on the margins of
society and ‘under control’. Berger reminds us that, “mass media outlets in the United
States are businesses that make money by selling print advertising and radio and
48
television commercials. This means that the basic commercial function of the media is
to deliver audiences to advertisers (Berger, 1995).” Berger further explains,
The media function most effectively when they stimulate people and activatematerial already stored in the minds of the audiences and generate desiredresponses. Much of that stored material, it should be pointed out, was put in theheads of the audience by media in the first place (Berger, 1995).
By reinforcing stereotypes, media can also work hand in hand with advertisers who
need these type of identity ambiguities in order to convince the working class that
buying products or contributing to consumerism will counteract some of the societal
alienation they experience. Inevitably this process is subliminal, in which neither
individual actors in media or the victims will blatantly understand the impacts and
consequences of maintaining these types of stereotypes. The construction of hip hop by
mainstream media as inherently ignorant, violent, abrasive and sexist reinforces key
stereotypes that continue to work against hip hop’s primary audience, urban youth.
Hip Hop Verses Industry
As mentioned earlier, power develops through an exchange between actors and
thrives on the unbalanced relationship between those actors and it is these unbalanced
dynamics, which fosters social movements (Jackman, 1993,p. 30). If the culture
industries and hip hop are actors, then their relationship is one of negotiation. The hip
hop movement has been in a state of negotiation since its commodification. Rose
(1994) says that after the release of “Rappers Delight” in 1979, rap and hip hop was
49
“discovered” by industries, which rushed to cash in own what was thought to be a
passing fad (p.3).
In The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip Hop,
Murray Forman (2002) says Rose is only partially right. He argues that the expansive
growth of hip hop is not a pure result of its massification from external forces, such as
industry, because hip hop expansions were frequently internally initiated (Forman,
2002, p. 106). Forman’s basic point is that the dynamic between industry and hip hop
is not completely one of cooptation because hip hop has also propelled industry
exploitation. This argument, although it recognizes that fans and hip hop savvy
entrepreneurs have contributed to the cooptation of the movement, it neglects to situate
their drive and motivations within the context of social life. Small-scale hip hop
entrepreneurship rose as a result of industry monopolization by corporate moguls. Just
as in traditional economic theory, small-scale entrepreneurships act as the underdogs of
business, fighting for every inch of the market that the larger monopolizing business
entities neglect. Hip hop savvy entrepreneurs, by developing their own marketable
commodities, learn by example to profit from this exploitation. Rose (1994) adds that
because hip hop was initially rejected by the mainstream record industry, independent
entrepreneurs and labels pioneered hip hop’s early marketing. But as soon as hip hop
viability was established, major labels begun dominating production and distribution
channels (Rose, 1994, p.6).31
Even in the midst of hip hop entrepreneurs’ attempts to profit from the industry
50
of hip hop, small-scale entrepreneurs were either overlooked, or overstepped in gaining
control of the most profitable part of the record industry—distribution. Rose (1994)
says three factors complicate music industry consolidation and control over
distribution: the expansion of local cable access; the sophistication and improved
accessibility of mixing, production, and copying equipment; and new relationships
between major and independent record labels (p. 6).
Boyd (2003) asks essential questions regarding hip hop and its double
existence, which I refer to as the division of the hip hop movement.
How do we define progress in a genre where progress is often looked uponsuspiciously? This is the question faced by hip hop now that it has become alucrative cultural entity permanently etched into the ledger of Americana. Howdoes a culture that started off on the margins deal with its own now-mainstreamsuccess? How does hip hop continue to exist in light of all the changes? Has hiphop at times been guilty of hatin’ on itself (p. 100)?
The first baby step towards answering these questions is to first acknowledge that what
was once known as a monolithic movement defined by colors of unique characteristics
and authenticity is now a kaleidoscope of movements shifting in different directions,
and taking on different shades, that can never again be equated with the original
movement’s brilliance.
Hip hop has become the ultimate capitalists tool.32 More than ever before, we
must understand the directions in which hip hop continues to move because of its
definite and powerful impacts on global youth.
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Summary
The undermining of the hip hop movement has been a result of societal shifts,
the uses of power and force, and the inevitable social responses to these dynamics.33
Since hip hop achieved mainstream success, it also suffered critical changes, which
have divided the movement of hip hop. On one hand, hip hop artists and text reinforce
state control and ideological state imposed values. On the other hand, it critiques these
controls and tries to stay afloat on underground circuits with an almost no profit
status.34
Hip hop embodies a world of contradictions and impacts listeners in various
ways. The following two chapters will examine the language of hip hop and how lyrics
reinforce the division within the movement and the potential impact of hip hop
listening patterns on individual mentality, ideological preferences, and political and
social participation.
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Chapter IV
Words Are Weapons: The Hip Hop Language Dialectic
Clap for you freedom dog, that's what's happeningMy spit take critical political action
The hustle is a puzzle each piece is a fractionAnd every word that's understood is a transaction
—The Roots featuring Nelly Furtado35
“Ultimately, hip hop’s concern with cultural identity has been about affirming authenticity, in whatwould otherwise be considered a postmodern, technologically driven, media-dominated, artificial
world. To ‘keep it real’ means to remain true to what is assumed to be the dictates of one’s culturalidentity. Although there are very strict rules in regard to what counts as being real, this quest forauthenticity often translates to one person’s perception in the marketplace. It also has to do with
one’s relationship to capital. Can hip hop serve two masters? Is it possible for hip hop to remain trueto its roots, and at the same time still be popular?
—Todd Boyd36
The last line of the above verse, from the song, “Sacrifice” by The Roots, relays
the function of musical language and especially that of rap. Every word that is heard
and understood is a piece of a puzzle—an understood transaction. When listeners of
rap music engage with a rap text, what messages are relayed? Furthermore, what is
understood and internalized? These are important questions that some previous studies
have attempted to answer. This chapter will show that transactions of rap are powerful
and can be used as weaponry. Todd Boyd’s insight in the above quote describes the
present moment of hip hop. Rappers are trying to explore the double character of hip
hop, in which a dialectic exists between hip hop as popular culture and what Boyd
terms “authentic”, which remains true to its original roots of resistance. Authenticity,
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no matter what the cost, has always been a mandatory prerequisite for acceptance into
rap culture and its audience base. Overall, rappers have embraced the double character
and displayed its accompanying contradictions within texts. Hip hop language can be
viewed as what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (1997) would call a ‘Dialectic
of Enlightenment’.
Horkheimer and Adorno assert that knowledge has this dialectical capacity.
Their analysis of knowledge can be extended to the knowledge of hip hop channeled
through language. They say, “Knowledge, which is power, knows no obstacles: neither
in the enslavement of men nor in compliance with the world’s rulers (Horkheimer and
Adorno, 1997).” Art, conveying knowledge, inevitably acts in the same way, knowing
no obstacles: neither in the enslavement of subjects or the compliance with the status
quo. Art, especially music has the power to “enlighten,” but moreover this transfer of
knowledge manifests in terms of a Horkheimer and Adorno dialectic. This dialectical
character of music is important especially when discussing power differentials and the
cultural transformation hip hop.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, hip hop evolution has been the result of societal
shifts, power dynamics, and the social responses to these occurrences. The culture
industries, particularly the music industry, often shape content in order to appease
popular culture. This market-centered approach often imposes restrictions on the type
of language used or content written and rapped about. Because the language of hip hop
is extremely important to the direction of this cultural movement, these industry and
54
marketplace influences over content are dangerous unseen hands.
In “Cultural Survivalisms and Marketplace subversions: Black Popular Culture
and Politics into the Twenty-First Century,” Tricia Rose says,
While rap music and our most troubled young people remain in the spotlight asthe cultural carriers of sexism and moral decline, global and local cultures ofgender, class and racial oppression (the family, corporations, schools, religiousinstitutions, the workplace) are shadowy figures in the national landscape(Adjaye and Andrews, 1997).
Rose makes a necessary connection between hip hop and youth, but she also connects
hip hop to some of Louis Althusser’s Ideological apparatuses including the family,
corporations, schools, religious institutions, and the workplace. Rose implicates these
apparatuses in the creation and maintenance of hip hop’s various messages. This
chapter will analyze the language of hip hop, which focuses on themes such as politics,
social inequality, education and religion as apparatuses, and materialism and
consumerism. This chapter will also address how popular hip hop can be contradictory.
This chapter takes a deeper look at the language of hip hop and the power of the
messages it conveys. It will discuss hip hop language as a force that either maintains
and reinforces or critiques the State Repressive and Ideological Apparatuses. I will
argue that hip hop lyrics maintain and thus reinforce status quo values and social
control mechanisms, while simultaneously critiquing these values and control
mechanisms.
55
The Power of Music Language
Before advancing to the lyrical analysis, it will be helpful to understand the
power of music and especially the power of hip hop. In The Language of Music
(1959), Deryck Cooke asked the critical question of why composers feel the impulse to
write works founded on certain texts, programs, ideas, or musical genres? Cooke, says,
Something more than a passing whim, surely: it must be that he (or she) hassomething to say, whether he (or she) knows it or not. In other words, a certaincomplex of emotions must have been seeking an outlet, a means of expression,of communication to others, a state of affairs of which composer may havebeen quite aware, or only half aware, or completely unaware.
Even though Cooke is speaking strictly about the musical language of classical music,
his insight can apply to an analysis of music in general terms that reveal the artist’s
motivation and how language, especially in hip hop, is used as an “outlet, a means of
expression, of communication to others.” Cooke purposefully mentions that the
‘composer’ may be aware or unaware of the type of connection his or her creation can
have to its listeners. Nevertheless, he stresses that the language of music is powerful in
its communicative capacity. He compares the musical language of classical music to
the language of poetry.
‘Music is no more incapable of being emotionally intelligible because it isbound by the laws of musical construction than poetry is because it is bound bythe laws of verbal grammatical construction’. The artist who has something tocommunicate through the medium of his chosen language—be it speech ormusic—must be the master of that language, not its servant (Cooke, 1959).
Cooke points out that whether it is music or poetry, the composer must be a master of
language, and particularly the language of the potential audience of the text. Like
56
poetry, Hip hop, which is its cultural successor, requires a mastery of the language and
the horizontal stylistic variances that exist in order to effectively communicate with its
audience. The intended expression or emotion must connect with language mastery in
order to convey the intended message. Cooke says that often expression and form are
viewed as estranged from one another, but that separation is not always valid.
However complex and allusive the form of an expressive musical work may be,it is still simply the means whereby the composer has expressed an emotionalattitude towards existence by imposing a meaningful order on expressive terms;and it is the continual failure to recognize this fact that is responsible for ourgenerally ambiguous fruitless approach to music—which can be summed up as‘form is form and expression is expression, and never the twain shall meet’(Cooke, 1959).
It is this expression and form, which makes the language of music powerful. It is this
connection between expression and form, which is actualized through language, which
makes Hip hop one of the foremost methods of effective communication with global
youth of the 20th and 21st Century. One thing to note is that effective communication is
not necessarily synonymous with positive communication. Hip hop is capable of
transmitting messages both positive (showing social cohesion and empowerment of the
masses) and negative (divisive and those messages which relegate the audience to a
state of powerlessness). Sherley Anne Williams (Wallace and Dent (ed.), 1992)
presents a critique of the statement: Rap is a statement in the tradition of black
expressive culture.
I haven’t ‘condemned’ rap; I’ve questioned the content of some rap songs. Toquestion my motivation in those terms implies that rap is above criticism,particularly by black people, and is just another way of avoiding open, and
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serious, discussion about the meaning and implication of rap’s themes…Thiscritique is a response to that statement, a necessary comment upon it. And, as inclassic blues verse, the meaning of both statement and response must be takeninto account if the song is to move toward any successful resolution.
It is time for black academics, critics and intellectuals who have, by and large, refused
to call rap content, where appropriate, “pathological, anti-social and anti-community,”
to reevaluate their one-sided critiques of rap says Williams. “By our silence, we have
allowed what used to be permissible only in the locker room or at stag parties, among
consenting adults, to become the norm of our children (Wallace and Dent (ed.), 1992).”
As mentioned earlier, hip hop has definite roots in prior historical moments of
Black culture. In the “Singers, Toasters, and Rappers” chapter of John Russell
Rickford and Russell John Rickford’s Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English
(2000), some of these prior moments in particular Black music history are linked.
Rickford and Rickford make the connection between the “spoken soul” of jazz, the
toast, which is a narrative poem, recited in a theatrical manner, and rap.
The badmen of toasts thus represent irreverent heroes of redemptiveproportions. They’re immortal, and they’re worth mentioning in a chapter onsingers because they help us understand first, the continuum of oral dexteritythat blurs the distinction between black speech and song, and second, thewicked self-aggrandizement found in the newest chapter in the AfricanAmerican book of folklore, hip hop…The precise origin of hip hop is a matterof dispute, but the originators appear to have been New York City youths who,in the middle of the 1970s, with nothing more than turntables and imagination,began mixing old-school jams by funk prophets such as James Brown andGeorge Clinton (Rickford and Rickford, 2000).
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Sherley Anne Williams echoes these connections in “Two Words on Music: Black
Community.” Williams says,
Originally, rappers rapped about the Djs and the words were almost incidentalto the groove or beat. Aggressive, self-aggrandizing boasts about the rapper’sown prowess were added, in the tradition of the badman street toasts, togetherwith new sayings going the rounds in the streets. These tributes, boasts, andslogans were unified by internal rhymes—the virtuoso single-sound free-rhyming that Stephan Henderson first identified as a hallmark of blackvernacular style (Wallace and Dent (ed.), 1992).
Williams (Wallace and Dent (ed.), 1992) also talks about how hip hop, early on, took
an oppositional stance to popular cultural messages of the 1970s, which romanticized
upward mobility amongst other ideologies.
These improvised street boasts and rhymes, freed of melody because, they likethe toasts that fathered theme, were chanted rather than sung, communicated inmore detail, and with greater directness, than conventional song forms anddisplaced the romantic idealism and upwardly mobile ethic of such anthems ofthe disco era as ‘Staying Alive’ and ‘Good Times’ (Wallace and Dent (ed.),1992).
Rickford and Rickford say that hip hop is a tribute to the resilient history of an
annihilated people that expressed themselves by music and the form of swing, bebop,
and now hip hop. With each new generation, these expressionists reinvent themselves
artfully using the same indispensable weapon (Rickford and Rickford, 2000).
Lyrical Analysis
As mention before, historically music has been used as a channel of
enlightenment, in the sense that it has illuminated various inequitable social conditions
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faced by oppressed people. From the blues of Billy Holiday37, the jazz of Nina
Simone38, to the revolutionary soul music of The Last Poets39 and Gil Scott Heron40,
music has served a function of giving a voice to those underrepresented in societal
dialogues. Hip hop, since its origins, has also taken on this character of being a voice.
Countless artists within various sub-genres of hip hop, use their personal experiences
to create texts that resonate with urban youth, who often face similar situations.
Various sub-genres of hip hop display implicit as well as explicitly obvious
messages that maintain or critique State Repressive and Ideological Apparatuses. The
following lyrical analysis will first explore both the explicit and implicit messages in
what is termed “political” or “message” rap. It will then engage in an analysis of lyrics
that either reinforce or critique materialism and consumerism. And it will also analyze
hip hop artists and language that are political and popular, and still exhibit the double-
character of hip hop through contradictions. It will respond to the question is this
double-consciousness by design and what purposes does it serve? Finally, this analysis
will explore the creativity of hip hop and its approaching new cultural moment.
Hip hop and the Apparatus of Education
Why Haven’t you learned anything? Man that school shit is a jokeThe same people who control the school system control
The prison system, and the whole social system—Dead Prez
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Dead Prez takes a radical and militant approach to developing content, but that
does not counteract the powerful language they use and their explicit critique of state
repressive and ideological apparatuses such as the education system and the prison
system. Dead Prez also critiques things that they feel are of individual control such as
health, relationships, and personal discipline. Because Dead Prez is at one extreme of
the spectrum of political rap music, it is important to give a rigorous analysis. I will
begin the analysis with the language they use, because it is the most explicit; their
lyrics name the apparatuses and attack the way in which these apparatuses operate.
Louis Althusser (2001) says that in general all ideological state apparatuses
contribute to the same result: the reproduction of the relations of production, for
example contribute to the capitalistic relations of exploitation. He says the educational
ideological state apparatus is the dominant ideological state apparatus in western
capitalistic formations. Using the musical score as a point of metaphor, he goes on to
further explain the role of ideological apparatuses, especially education, in the
maintenance of State power.
The score of the Ideology of the current ruling class which integrates into itsmusic the great themes of the Humanism of the Great Forefathers, whoproduced the Greek Miracle even before Christianity, and afterwards the Gloryof Rome, the Eternal City, and the themes of Interest, particular and general,etc. nationalism, moralism and economism. Nevertheless in this concert, oneideological state apparatus certainly has the dominant role, although hardlyanyone lends an ear to its music: it is so silent! This is the School (Althusser,2001).
Children, at an early age, become the keys on which this score is played. Because
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young children are vulnerable, family and educators present large amounts of either
similar or conflicting ideologies that in turn squeezes those vulnerabilities. In the
instances of education and communication, exploring contradictions or conflicting
ideals can make things more confusing, but it also helps one understand that everything
can be approached from more than one angle. This is exactly what the Educational
Ideological State Apparatus does—it presents one angle as the truth and purports that
no other perspective exist or is important. One example of this is in the teaching of
history.
Dead Prez, says in “They Schools” from the Lets Get Free album,
I tried to pay attention but they classes wasn’t interestinThey seemed to only glorify the EuropeansClaimin Africans were only three-fifths a human being
Most urban youths’ early educational experiences are similar to the lyrics above. It is a
given fact that most history books are presented from the viewpoint of the innovative
European explorer and conqueror, and teachers often skim over the miniscule
information provided about slavery, the slave trade, the exploitation—annihilation of
the Native Americans and the Black and Native American roles in the political,
economic, and social functioning and strengthening of America. Some parents are
aware of what is missing in education, but not everyone has parents who take the time
to give comparative perspectives and inform, a task that is technically along the lines
of what educators are supposed to do in educating. If educators did take this approach,
they would be in direct conflict with the ideological state apparatus of education.
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Althusser (2001) says that the “know how” given in education is where the
working class learns its place and people in other social hierarchical levels learn their
place as well. Within the repressive and ideological state apparatuses, the ultimate
condition of production is the reproduction of the conditions of production (Althusser,
2001). This is what the majority of K-12 educators do; they reproduce the conditions of
subjection in order to groom more individuals to be put socially in their place and serve
their societal function for the benefit of the those in power.
The reproduction of labor power thus reveals as its sine qua non not only thereproduction of its ‘skills’ but also the reproduction of its subjection to theruling ideology or of the ‘practice’ of that ideology, with proviso that it is notenough to say ‘not only but also,’ for it is clear that it is in the forms and underthe forms of ideological subjection that provision is made for the reproductionof the skills of labor power (Althusser, 2001).
Education plays a key role in the maintenance of a permanent underclass, where
generation after generation is physically, but more importantly ideologically
reproduced in the same way to maintain the existing social order, where the masses
produce wealth for the upper echelon of society. It is interesting that when one is
growing up, ideology and its suppliers are given unconditional trust. Parents, teachers,
and immediate peer groups help individuals understand the world and their particular
position within the political, economic, and social order.
The social dynamic of authority is key to establishing this early foundation of
an understanding of the State and its power. Children are not only subjected by the
State, but by parents and teachers. Children are taught to ask questions that are relevant
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to subject matter and then it is ultimately up to the teacher to answer or claim that the
question irrelevant. This dynamic is problematic because not only do the teachers pick
and choose which questions they feel are relevant, but the questions actually answered
are purported as truth; this is problematic because in reality they are their opinions and
perspectives. The same could be said of the school curriculum and particular texts used
to teach that particular curriculum. I am not attempting to say that teachers and
administrators are solely responsible, because in today’s society, curriculum mandates
and mounted pressure for educators to conform ensures that the ruling ideologies
prevail in the classroom. So much of hip hop speaks implicitly about education and the
school system’s failure to balance important ideological foundations, which are taught
in early education. In “I Can,” Nas purposely directs his lyrics toward young children
because he realizes this balance is missing in the way history is taught. Nas gives a
mini historical perspective on the conditions, which existed prior to exploration and
slavery.
Be, be, 'fore we came to this countryWe were kings and queens, never porch monkeysIt was empires in Africa called KushTimbuktu, where every race came to get booksTo learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and RomansAsian Arabs and gave them gold whenGold was converted to money it all changedMoney then became empowerment for EuropeansThe Persian military invadedThey learned about the gold, the teachings and everything sacredAfrica was almost robbed nakedSlavery was money, so they began making slave ships
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Nas, with this perspective on history, presents some of the elements that are
intentionally or unintentionally left out of American history books, especially those
typically used in elementary and high schools. I am not claiming that this is the
“correct” historical perspective, because no single tale of history is completely factual.
Nas simply conveys that everything is constructed from one angle or another,
especially history and other subjects that are rigidly presented as fact. This song
addresses the presence of stereotyping and the absence of encouragement and positive
affirmation within education. Nas uses lyrics to encourage and positively affirm urban
youth in the chorus, where he sings with children, “I know I can be what I wanna be; If
I work hard at it, I’ll be where I wanna be.” He further goes on to say,
If the truth is told, the youth can growThey learn to survive until they gain controlNobody says you have to be gangstas, hoesRead more learn more, change the globeGhetto children, do your thing
Nas acknowledges that typically urban youth, particularly Blacks and Latinos, are
stereotyped as criminals, ignorant, or promiscuous. He encourages this new generation
of youth to value literacy, to raise more questions, and to use what they learned to help
change the world. Throughout primary school, I had no idea that the books that my
teacher passed as ultimate truth were from only one narrow perspective. This structure
of curriculum ushers societies’ subjects into the mode of what I call “non-thinking”
learning. Althusser says,
In other words, the school (but also other State institutions like the Church, or
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other State apparatuses like the Army) teaches ‘know-how’, but in forms whichensure subjection to the ruling ideology or mastery of its ‘practice’ (Althusser,2001, p.89).
What is interesting about this school process is that the curriculum structure is
becoming more and more rigid due to state standards and guidelines. Not only do K-12
teachers have daily regimens for teaching, they also have to minimize creativity and
personal attention because there is not enough time in the day to get all of the
mandated curricula done. And educational technology advocates wonder why teachers
do not incorporate technology in lesson plans and educational activities. It is because
state mandates make it virtually impossible (pun intended).
Hip hop and the Police and Prison System Apparatuses
As mentioned earlier in Chapter 2, the All Music Guide to hip hop: A Definitive
Guide to Rap and Hip hop (2003) describes “Political Rap” also known as Message
Rap as ‘hip hop, which merges rhymes with political philosophy to create a new style
of rap.’ I add that message rap expresses frustration with power structures and
economic, political, and social oppression. There are artists from every sub-genre of
hip hop that at some point or another deliver social and political messages. The
following artists and lyrics presented in the next two sections deliver the “message” of
message rap.
This section will focus on lyrics, which reveal the reality of the police and their
interaction with urban youth, especially black and Latino males. It will also reveal the
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use of rap lyrics to critique the prison system, which thrives politically and
economically from a copious stock of criminal labor41. Additionally, this analysis will
also briefly discuss political imprisonment and how some rap artists use their lyrics to
spread the unheard stories of political prisoners.
Just as Louis Althusser discusses and defines the State (Chapter 3), rap artists
also discuss this entity called the state. As a lead into the song “Police State,” Dead
Prez use an excerpt from a speech given by Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s
Socialist Party to explain what the concept of the state is and how it becomes necessary
because of urban inner-city conditions:
You have the emergence in human societyof this thing that's called the StateWhat is the State? The State is this organized bureaucracyIt is the po-lice department. It is the Army, the NavyIt is the prison system, the courts, and what have youThis is the State -- it is a repressive organizationBut the state -- and gee, well, you know,you've got to have the police, cause..if there were no police, look at what you'd be doing to yourselves!You'd be killing each other if there were no police!But the reality is..the police become necessary in human societyonly at that junction in human societywhere it is split between those who have and those who ain't got
The majority of poor urban males have occupied an oppositional stance toward police,
the legal system, and prison since post-segregation and in the wake of the Black Power
movements. Venise T.Berry and Harold T. Berry Looney Jr. say culturally and
functionally, the relationship between inner-city youth and the police has always been
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one of distrust and disrespect (Berry and Manning-Miller, 1996). Tupac says in
“Trapped” that he is caught between two prison worlds—the streets and jail.
Walk tha city streets like a rat pack of tyrantsToo many brothers daily heading for tha big pennNiggas commin' out worse offthan when they went in…Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycleIf one more cop harasses me I just might go psycho[Uh uh, they can't keep tha black man down]They got me trapped
Countless rap texts discuss police brutality and racial profiling, but what is interesting
is that these accounts, whether in the form of rap or oration, are vivid recollections of
real experiences.42 Dead Prez takes an oppositional stance toward this controlled fate
of urban young males in “Police State.”
We sick of workin for crumbs and fillin up the prisonsDyin over money and relyin on religion for helpWe do for self like ants in a colonyThe average Black maleLive a third of his life in a jail cellCause the world is controlled by the white maleAnd the people don't never get justiceAnd the women don't never get respectedAnd the problems don't never get solvedAnd the jobs don't never pay enoughSo the rent always be late; can you relate?We livin in a police state
Dead Prez offers not only a critique of the prison system, but they bridge connections
between the exploitation of low-income workers, oppressive conditions of inner-city
communities, and the unbalanced numbers of people of color, which fill the prisons.
They also indirectly point to some of the larger social phenomenons, which help to
maintain these conditions, such as what feminist and cultural critic, bell hooks, terms
White Supremacist Capitalistic Patriarchy.43 Dead Prez uses music to explicitly
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examine theoretical concepts and apply them to reality.
The hip hop generation44 has been a product of several historical situations
including Reconstruction45, the aftermath of civil rights46, and war, especially the
Vietnam war47. Dead Prez illustrates in “Behind Enemy Lines,” the impact of the
Vietnam war on not only Vietnam vets, but on their families.
Little Kenny been smokin lucy since he was 12Now he 25 locked up wit a LThey call him triple K, cuz he killed 3 niggasAnother ghetto child got turned into a killaHis pops was a Vietnam veteran on heroinUsed like a pawn by these white North AmericansMama couldn't handle the stress so went crazyGrandmama had to raise the babyJust a young boy, born to a life of povertyHustlin, robbery, whatever brung the paper home
Behind enemy lines, my niggas is cellmatesMost of the youth never escape the jail fate…You aint gotta be locked up to be in prisonLook how we livin 30,000 niggas a day, up in the bing, standin routineThey put is in a box just like our life on the blockBehind enemy lines
Many artists describe the condition of the inner-city urban environment as comparable
to prison. Walking down the neighborhood block often resembles the conditions of
walking the prison block. The suffocating four-block radius of housing projects
psychologically mirrors the four square foot prison cell, which many urban males
occupy at some point or another. Dead Prez situates these social and historical
conditions. These lyrics paint a picture of the returning Vietnam vet, often suffering
from shell shock amongst other types of psychological trauma, who was then thrown
back into a social environment of unemployment, financial responsibilities, and limited
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opportunity. The post-Vietnam era also marked a new moment in drug usage,
especially amongst war vets, who needed to numb the pains of war and realizing they
had limited opportunity. All of these post-war factors took a deadly toll on the structure
of the family, leaving many children parentless. Dead Prez use this example as a
metaphor for the many fatherless, motherless, youth that grow up in the inner city with
no role models other than neighborhood drug dealers or gang bangers. Additionally,
glorification of these images is reinforced by news media myths48.
Talib Kweli in “Get By” on his second solo album Quality, outlines the
conditions of life in urban impoverished areas act as a whirlpool in which the currents
of drug selling, drug abuse, and imprisonment, coming from different sources;
eventually pull poor people into a whirlpool of self-destruction.
We keeping it gangster say “fo shizzle,” “fo sheezy,” and “stayin’ crunk”It’s easy to pull a breezy, smoke trees, and we stay drunkYo, I activism—attackin’ the system,the Blacks and Latins in prison, Numbers of prison they victim black in the visionShit and all they got is rappin’ to listen toI let them know we missin’ you, the love is unconditionalEven when the condition is critical, when the livin’ is miserableYour position is pivitol, I ain’t bullshittin’ youNow, why would I lie? Just to get by? Just to get by, we get flyThe TV got us reachin’ for stars-Not the ones between Venus and Mars,the ones that be readin’ for partsSome people get breast enhancements and penis enlargersSaturday sinners Sunday morning at the feet of the FatherThey need somethin’ to rely on, we get high on all types of drugWhen, all you really need is love-To get by…just to get by, Just to get by, just to get by
Kweli speaks first of the vernacular and its connection to the reality of urban life. He
also indulges in what I call “communal nostalgic phrases” such as “fo sheezy” and
“pull a breezy” to engage his audience. He speaks of the unbalanced situation of the
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imprisonment of people of color in large numbers, but he offers these prisoners hope
through hip hop and unconditional love by recognizing that their situation is one of
unique oppression typically overlooked. Kweli then speaks of the social construction
of the material world in which both young and old poor people strive to be high-class
celebrities and hypocrites. He articulates that these social constructions are reinforced
as role models by television and other forms of mass media. The overall message of
this song is to outline problems within poor communities as a part of a larger social
context of implicit oppression imposed by the state channeled through the prison
system, media, and other ideological apparatuses. Kweli names the complacency as a
means of survival—a “just to get by” measure to endure the suffocating conditions of
urban life.
Besides the blatant descriptions of the horrendous conditions of prison and how
it operates as a business, many “political” rappers and even some popular rappers, take
on the issue of political imprisonment in their lyrics. In the past, artists like Sista
Souljah have openly rapped about the evils of South African Apartheid and the
political imprisonment of Nelson Mandela49, but the majority of lyrics that discuss
political imprisonment have been about American political situations. Americans are
taught that political imprisonment is a foreign concept, even human rights
organizations have shied away from American political imprisonment issues until
fairly recently.
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Many of American political prisoners, by design, happen to have been Black
empowerment leaders of the 1960s. Dead Prez discuss the political imprisonment of
Fred Hampton Jr., the son of a Fred Hampton, a Black panther shot and killed back in
the 60s, in “Behind Enemy Lines”.
Yo, little Khadejah pops is locked, he wanna pop the lockBut prison ain't nothin but a private stockAnd she be dreamin 'bout his date of releaseShe hate the policeBut loved by her grandma who hugs and kisses herHer father's a political prisoner, free FredSon of a Panther that the government shot deadBack in 12-4-1969
Not only do these lyrics point blame toward government conspiracy, but Dead Prez
also briefly mentions the private sector’s interest and utilization of the prison system.
Tupac in “Hold Ya Head” mentions many other political prisoners connected to Black
empowerment movements, including his stepfather Mutulu Shakur.
My homeboys in Clinton and Rikers IslandAll the penitentiariesMumia50,, Mutulu51, Geronimo52, Sekon53
All the political prisonersSan Quentin (who can save you).. all the jailhousesI'm with you
All four of these men were extremely active in Black empowerment movements
including promoting Black health, and programs like the Free Breakfast program.
Tupac , through his lyrics, shows solidarity with political prisoners and all who, in his
opinion, have been falsely imprisoned.
One of these political prisoners, Mumia Abu Jamal54, accused of killing a
police officer in 1981, has been the subject of many raps addressing political
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imprisonment and biased trial proceedings. In “Mumia 911/fatlip Remix/Diamond D
Remix 12,” artists like Black Thought of The Roots, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Dead
Prez, and others, united to voice their support for Mumia and the campaign to release
him from prison. Dead Prez’s verse says,
This ain't no free country, niggas get murdered for their ideasFree Mumia means all Africans let goCause just livin in the ghetto puts you on death rowYou don't know? You seen how the tried to do AssataTill some real niggas organized theyselves and went and got'er
Dead Prez in these lyrics indirectly show how the conditions of poverty and inner-city
urban oppression can be linked to what is sometimes called the natural cycle of social
uprising and repression. When a movement threatens the dominant social and political
order, often the leaders of these social uprisings become the object of government and
state containment in order to weaken the movement. Dead Prez also connect Mumia’s
story to that of Assata Shakur55, a Black panther, who was convicted of killing a state
trooper in 1973. Common said he read Assata Shakur’s autobiography56 and “felt this
sister deserved a verse.” He summarizes Assata’s case and story in “A Song for
Assata.”
They moved her room to room-she could tell by the lightHandcuffed tight to the bed, through her skin it bitPut guns to her head, every word she got hit"Who shot the trooper?" they asked herPut mace in her eyes, threatened to blast herHer mind raced till things got stillOpened her eyes, realized she's next to her best friend who got killedShe got chills, they told her: that's where she would be next…Listen to my Love, Assata, yes.Your Power and Pride is beautiful.May God bless your Soul.
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Assata’s story is just one of many narratives of political imprisonment voiced through
the lyrics of rap music. When conducting this particular analysis of rap lyrics, which
focus on the police and the prison system, I found very few cases that spoke positively
about the police interaction or prison. Therefore, I conclude that the majority of rap
texts that include discussions about the police or prison, use lyrics to critique the
repressive tactics used by state apparatuses such as the police, courts and the prison
system.
Hip Hop and the Apparatuses of Politics and Government
Poor people learn from experience when and how explicitly they can express their discontent. Undersocial conditions in which sustained fontal attacks on powerful groups are strategically unwise orsuccessfully contained, oppressed people use language, dance, and music to mock those in power,
express rage, and produce fantasies of subversion (Rose, 1994).
Hip hop developed in the post-Black empowerment era, but most importantly,
hip hop gave a voice to the ideals of suppressed social movements as Rose suggests.57
Tupac Shakur, in “Panther Power,” makes an attack on politics and government by
expressing that he feels the American dream doesn’t apply to black people, and
furthermore it doesn’t apply to any, who struggle as the lower working class trapped by
their social existence.
The American Dream wasn't meant for meCause lady liberty is a hypocrite she lied to mePromised me freedom, education, equalityNever gave me nothing but slavery…The rich get richer and the poor can't lastThe American Dream was an American nightmare
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Tupac mocks the representations of America as a country of freedom and liberty. He
discusses the lack of freedom and equality especially in terms of wealth distribution in
a capitalistic system. He asserts that what is often called the “American Dream,” often
turns out to be an “American Nightmare,” for the poor. Nas, in “Ghetto Prisoners,”
also describes this American Nightmare and gives special credit to poor people living
under the oppression of poverty as God’s children. He compares them to references in
Christianity, which call the poor and persecuted, God’s children.
Yo we gotta be God's children, habitats in tall buildingsRats crawl in filthy hallways, incineratorsSinners who faithless, still there's hope, pray it's answeredDreams turned real - what's a wicked nation?One with blind men - not takin charge of the situationEmpty arguments and real conversations neededThe world'll need it, to hear itGhetto prisoners.. ghetto prisoners..Ghetto prisoners.. get up, wake up, rise
These lyrics descriptively illustrate the conditions of urban oppression and for most
listeners these verses bring recollection of personal experiences of urban inner-city
living of filth, rats, and incinerators. Nas tends to attack government, state, and other
state apparatuses directly. He insinuates that the United States is a wicked country
because seemingly blind men in power ignore oppression. The chorus uses the same
reoccurring metaphor of ghetto life’s similarity to a prison sentence.
This use of hip hop has continued through the present. Nas makes a clear attack
on the political and government apparatuses of political leadership, agencies and
Congress in “ I Want to Talk to You.”
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I'm just a black man why y'all made it so hard damnNiggaz gotta go create their own jobMr. Mayor imagine if this was your backyardMr. Governor imagine if it was your kids that starvedImagine your kids gotta sling crack to surviveSwing a mack to be live cart ack to get highIt's the ghetto life yea I celebrate it I live itAnd all I got is what you left me with I'ma get itNow y'all combinin all the countries we goin do the sameCombine all the cliques to make one gangIt ain't all about a black and white thingIt's to make the change, citizens of a higher plane
Nas discusses several political pitfalls that have been either ignored or undertaken at
any and all cost for the benefit of those in power. He suggests that conditions of urban
city living would not be that way if it was the mayor’s neighborhood or if it was the
mayor’s family or closest friends, who endured those living conditions. He then details
what he believes is a master plan of global capitalistic hegemony and control. It is
important that Nas takes the next step in political critique to say that it is not a black or
white thing, meaning that these pursuits pertain less to race, than to class, power, and
global political control. He goes on to say,
People reverse the system politics verse religionHoly war muslim verse christiansNiggaz in high places they don't have the balls for thisPeople in power sit back and watch them slaughter usMr. President I assume it was negligenceThe streets upside down, I'm here to represent this
Nas says the power to reverse systemic politics is in the hands of the people. Just as he
positions people opposite power to structures and politics, he mentions the ongoing
battles between politics and religion and between Christianity and Islam. To reiterate
that these problems are not about racial solidarity, he acknowledges that Black people
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in high places transcend race and operate as agents of class, particularly their own class
or higher classes, by watching poor people get slighted by policy and other oppressive
controls. He holds all state, political and government apparatuses accountable for urban
conditions.
In Meshell Ndegecello’s “Hot Night” featuring Talib Kweli with excerpts from
speeches given by Angela Davis, Ndegeocello also questions the nature of the Black
Diaspora. She says an in-depth understanding of the relationship of Black people to
each other is needed before embracing Black Nationalism, Afrocentrism, or even Black
Bourgeoisie Middle Classism. She further expounds on her own state of confusion and
personal transformation.
Seems I got caught up in this romanticized idea of revolutionwith saviors, prophets, and heroes-but in the silence of my prayersI had a vision of my hatreddissolving into grains of sandrealized that to my universe -that’s all I really am-just a grain of sand-I know I get caught upin all that spiritual shit, but there ain’t much to hold ontowe all living in a world built upon rape, starvation, greed,need, fascist regimes-white man, rich man democracysuffer in the world trade paradise hear me now
Ndegeocello first focuses on the confusion, which is offered by global politics and the
world’s understanding of democracy as a construction of reality. She voices what she
feels is an unheard perspective that calls into question the validity of capitalism and the
western concepts of democracy. In Mos Def’s “New World Water,” he warns listeners
to cherish natural resources, particularly water58. He uses verses to discusses, and
furthermore connect drought, corporate pollution, the business of water production and
distribution, and American wastefulness of natural resources.
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The rich and poor, black and white got need for it (That's right)And everybody in the world can agree with this (Let em know)Consumption promotes health and easiness (That's right)Go too long without it on this earth and you leavin it (Shout it out)Americans wastin it on some leisure shit (Say word?)And other nations be desperately seekin it (Let em know)Bacteria washing up on they beaches (Say word?)Don't drink the water, son they can't wash they feet with it (Let em know)Young babies in perpetual neediness (Say word?)Epidemics hopppin up off the petri dish (Let em know)Control centers try to play it all secretive (Say word?)To avoid public panic and freakiness (Let em know)
This song is just one example of other political issues, such as preserving natural
resources, which rap lyrics critique. Often, political raps or raps with messages are
seen as only focusing on a issues that relate to Black people or urban oppression. This
is not the case, more than often rap verses take up subjects such as healthy eating,
healthy sexual behavior, and spiritual and mental health, just to name a few.
Hip Hop and the Apparatus of Religion
The apparatus of religion and church is not surprisingly often the subject of rap
texts. Ever since slavery, religion and church, has served as an important and
empowering entity for Black Americans. Even the exploitative measures of religion in
the past, have impacted Black communities in empowering ways. Religion and church
within rap texts usually appears in one of three ways: the artist(s) either uses scriptures
from religious books; talks directly to God or god (s), the church, or a higher being; or
critiques the organization of church and religion. Over the span of Tupac’s career, he
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composed several texts which use or address God or religion in the ways mentioned
above. In “So Many Tears,” he says,
I shall not fear no man but GodThough I walk through the valley of deathI shed so many tears (if I should die before I wake)Please God walk with me (grab a nigga and take me to Heaven)…Ahh, I suffered through the years, and shed so many tearsLord, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears
Tupac uses his own version of well-known psalm 23:4, to openly talk with and to God
about dying and the large amounts of young black males, who are killed or face death
everyday living in urban impoverished environments. Many rap artists have inherited
the ingrained belief that you deal with life on earth, and receive your reward in heaven
after death because this is a foundational principle of most Christian religions. It is
important to note that this is a principle in “religions,” and that this view of accepting
life as is with rewards in an afterlife, is a constructed concept that was even used to
pacify slaves in the plantation era.59 Nas and the Bravehearts say in “Pray,”
I only pray when shit is fucked up!I only pray when my life is lookin' bad luck!I only pray when I'm in mothafuckin' handcuffs!Callin' out for someone, somewhere!Is there anybody out there?I look up at the sky, why do young niggas die?
Nas acknowledges that often people pray when life situations are overburdening, but
he also notes that people often use prayer as a measure to let them cope with their
woes. They pray to a pie in the sky god60 that will help them to cope, not to take action
to change their overburdening situations. Arrested Development explains this reach
and belief in the pie in the sky god better in “Fishin’ 4 Religion.”
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Sitting in church hearing legitimate woesPastor tells the lady it'll be alrightJust pray so you can see the pearly gates so whiteThe lady prays and prays and prays and praysand prays and prays and prays and prays...it's everlasting"There's nothing wrong with praying ?" It's what she's askingShe's asking the Lord to let her copeso one day she can see the golden ropesWhat you pray for God will giveto be able to cope in this world we liveThe word "cope" and the word "change"is directly opposite, not the sameShe should have been praying to change her woesbut pastor said "Pray to cope with those"The government is happy with most baptist churchescoz they don't do a damn thing to try to nurturebrothers and sisters on a revolutionBaptist teaches dying is the only solutionPassiveness causes others to pass us byI throw my line till I've made my decisionuntil then, I'm still fishin' 4 religion
Arrested Development particularly attacks this problematic approach of Baptist
religion, but I assert that most Christian churches, even those that are not Baptist, also
place a high relevance on “coping” verses changing the conditions which ensue the
need to cope.
Many artists assert that there is a balance between evil and good rather than a
supreme being that controls everything. This rationale is often a product of feelings
that question, “If there is a God, why do so many bad things happen.” In “Jesus
Walks,” Kanye West says,
To the hustlas, killers, murderers, drug dealers even the strippersTo the victims of Welfare for we living in hell here hell yeahNow hear ye hear ye want to see Thee more clearlyI know he hear me when my feet get wearyCuz we're the almost nearly extinct
West asks Jesus to watch more closely over those plagued by social ills, especially
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those that cause or help to maintain these social problems. He reaffirms his belief that
a higher being does watch over him when he gets weary, and therefore he must also be
watching over these individuals. West takes a middle ground on this issue of religion.
Nas takes the approach that humans are pawns to a spiritual war between two opposing
forces, which he names god and the devil. In “Life is What You Make It,” he says,
Deals made by God and the Devil, and we in itPawns in the game, can't complain or say shitJust strap up and hold on, hope for the bestprepare for the worse, no fears no nothing on earthNo tears if I'm dumped in a hearse, I won't be the firstNor the last nigga, let's get this cash nigga
Nas takes an approach to life similar to Tupac’s determinist outlook of what is going to
happen is going to happen, so while on earth you have to live and survive by any
means necessary. Jay Z uses some religious counterproductive and ritualistic beliefs to
take this approach as well to not only life, but also violence. In “Lucifer,” he says,
"Lucifer, don of de morning! I'm gonna, chase you out of – earth”[Jigga] I'm from the murder capital, where we murder for capital
Lord forgive him, he got them dark forces in himBut he also got a righteous cause for sinninThem-a-murder me, so I gotta murder-demFirst emergency, doctors performin proceduresJesus, I ain't tryin to be facetious, but"Vengeance is mine" said the LordYou said it better than allLeave niggaz on death's door, breathin onres-por-rators for killin my best, poor haters
In Los Angeles, like an evangelistI can introduce you to your makerBring you closer to natureAshes after they cremate you bastardsHope you been readin your Psalms and chaptersPayin your tithe, bein good Catholics, I'm comin
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Jay Z basically uses the “eye for an eye” philosophy to justify his retaliatory actions
and to mock religious ideas and critics that staunchly believe that paying tithes and
reading the bible will save them from evil. The use of religion in this way is unique
because it mocks, but also send a message reinforcing that death is a means of
connecting with heaven or hell, depending on if your “ maker” is a higher or lower
being.
In this analysis of religion and church discussion within rap texts, I conclude
that the majority of these types of texts reinforce dominant religious affiliations and
practices, and in turn even in the midst of critique, still help to reinforce and maintain
religious occupation as individual power and a mechanism for coping. This is not a
revelation, considering that most Black and Latin American families have a history of
either forced or voluntary Christian conversion.
Hip Hop, Materialism and Consumerism
As mentioned in Chapter 3, interpellation is the process by which media
representations coerce individuals into accepting the ideologies carried by these forms
and representations (Berger, 1995). This part of the analysis will take an in depth look
at rap texts that maintain and reinforce materialism and consumerism. These two
concepts are inevitable elements of American capitalistic society. Consuming
maintains the economy and trendy materialism is a way to ensure capital circulation
within industries driven by this ethic. Rap, in particular has been, a viable advertising
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agent. As early as the reign of Run DMC61 up until now with Nelly’s “Air Force
Ones,”62 companies have been benefiting from artists that use particular commodities
as well as blatant free advertisement displayed in the song lyrics. Rap continues to
boost sales in several industries especially clothing, jewelry, footwear, accessories, and
even some car industries. Rap artists support these commodities by wearing or using
them in videos or by advertising these products in lyrics. This section will look at some
of these lyrics that encourage consumerism by reinforcing materialism. It will also look
at some lyrics that try to combat this push toward the excessive consumption of
material objects.
Most youth, especially youth of the hip hop generation, have a fascination with
luxury cars, rims, and sound systems. It is almost expected that if you have money, you
should look like you have money, this means that you ‘floss the most expensive car
with the best rims’, and of course have a ‘monster’ sound system. The Big Tymers in
“Big Ballin” say,
New carsPretty broadsNeighborhood superstarsGoing farCar shinnaRim blinda20 inch rida
Rhyming about new cars and blinding rims is typical of groups on the New Orleans-
based Cash Money record label. Juvenile, also from Cash Money, talks about he
wanted as a product of the ghetto. In “Ghetto Children” he says,
All I want is the Gs
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With a trunk full of keysA benz on 20sCuz I don't like dreamin' bout makin' no cheeseWanna see my muthafuckin' bank account O.D.ed [(over dosed)]
Lyrics discussing material possessions are abundant, but what is important to
understand is that many of these rappers are products of poverty-stricken environments
and now that they have money they feel everyone needs to know, especially people
who still live in their neighborhoods. This excitement over cars and money get passed
on to youth who are inspired by the fact that someone from their hood ‘made it out’
and became successful. Just as youth admire drug dealers, they look up to rappers, who
have money and fame.
Another prevalent material object spoken about in rap are diamonds. Diamond
marketing strategies have been dangerously successful. Diamonds have successfully
been passed in the market as rare, expensive, and as a symbol of love. The Cash
Money click popularized the phrase, “bling bling” and in almost every song someone
is rapping about the ice (diamonds) they possess. In Juvenile’s “Rich Niggaz” he says,
I'll damned if these diamonds and golds ain't shininMy Rollie ain't mine and my bank ain't climbinYou lookin at a multi-millionaire in the flesh…Won't count the diamonds just around my neckX amount-a dollars on a bankroll check
Similarly, the notorious Lil Kim titled a song, “Diamonds” where she, a materialism
“expert” outlines her favorite material objects including various types of diamonds and
luxury cars.
If I could make it rain,I’d make it rain diamonds
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So all the girls in the worldCould keep shriningFrom princess cuts to emeralds to H-classesYeah, I failed math, but bet I passed the E-class
Interestingly, Lil Kim, says her type of “education” is to educate herself in the finer
things in life. She basically points out that urban youth invest more time into staying
abreast of the latest and most popular material objects like E-class Mercedes Benzes,
than they invest in school.
Popular rapper, Jay Z, says he is addicted to the “floss”, but he knows it’s a
“foolish fetish.” In “Money Ain’t A Thang,” featuring Jermaine Dupri, Jay Z says,
Tryin to stay alive, hundred thou' for the braceletFoolish, ain't I? The chain'll strain ya eyeTwin platinum gun son, aim for the skyIce on my bullet, you die soon as I pull it
Jay Z at least acknowledges that his consumption of high-priced material objects is
foolish. Most rappers that have taken on this trend of being “iced up” or “flossin',”
either do not realize the idiocy of spending exorbitant amounts of money to project an
image, or don’t care and want that image no matter what the cost. Black feminist and
cultural critic, bell hooks (1995), says hedonistic materialism is central to imperialist
colonialism, which maintains white supremacist capitalistic patriarchy. Therefore, a
true societal transformation will only occur with a complete rejection of corporate
driven materialism (hooks, 1995).
Despite the overwhelming portrayal of hip hop as a genre of music only
focused on possessing the most expensive gear, jewelry, and cars; some artists take a
critical approach to media supported materialistic imaging. No one said it better than
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Notorious Big, “the more money we come across, the more problems we see.” In Ms.
Dynamite’s “It Takes More,” she elaborates on this concept of rampant materialism in
Black communities and what impact it has on Black communities abroad as a result of
rap videos and materialistic representations in media.
Now, who gives a damn about the ice on ur handIf it’s not 2 complextell me how many Africans died 4 the buggettes on your rolexSo what you pushin’ a nice carDon’t u know there there’s no such thing as superstarsWe leave this world aloneSo who gives a fuck about the things u own
Ms. Dynamite’s discussion of global Black consciousness and the Black Diaspora in
this verse points out that just because we are ascribed as Black does not mean that we
are aware or identify with the issues, conflicts, and concerns of all Black people around
the world. She specifically speaks of the lack of consciousness about the diamond
industry and conflict diamonds63. Black Americans, especially those of the hip hop
generation, have gotten caught up in the material world and support of industries such
as diamonds. Whether consciously or unconsciously, rappers that glorify diamonds
contribute to the African blood shed over conflict diamonds just as other Americans
contribute by their support of such industries. Why should they be exempt of
criticism—because they are Black or because they grew up in a lifestyle of poverty?
This point is important because it is high time that rap and hip hop take responsibility
for the images it generates and the industries it directly or indirectly supports.
In Kweli’s verse in Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Hot Night, ” he verbalizes his
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frustration with the construction of capitalism, overabundance, and consumption
patterns of those poverty-stricken in America.
niggas be fighting for jordon’s they can’t affordbought in a store costing more than a hundred,yeah, capitalism got em trapped in a vision,that ya love to watch way more than a sunsetAh, I feed my babies with music-I tell the truthbut now I’m a target in they market, ain’t that a summummabitch?it’s an urgent emergency, courtesy of the counterinsurgency,trying to murder me-yeah-and now it’s on, and ahIt’s cuz I verbally hurdle all their absurditiesaccurate rhyme poem and I, survive the storm andAh, certainly words can be weapons, if people heard me they thinking they god,that they decide what’s right and wrongthey live in a bubble, I live for the struggle
Kweli first delves into the rampant materialism, which plagues the poor, especially
those living in Black and Latino communities. He makes reference to how people
camp over night or get up and go wait in front of stores at four in the morning to be the
first to get the new Jordon’s that they can’t even afford. Kweli acknowledges that he is
a threat to institutions, which benefit from oppression because he uses his knowledge
to create music that reaches urban communities. He makes a point to say that words
can be used as weapons, but it is also the rhythmic appeal, which makes the music
even more powerful.
The Popular, Political and Contradictory Contours of Hip Hop
George (1998) says that hip hop’s major problem as a political movement is
that rappers are not social activist by training or by inclination—they are products of
the entertainment industry and subject to the marketplace. Hip hop’s double character
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displays the divisiveness of the movement. Furthermore, artists feel caught between
marketability and unique content based on their personal experiences. Rose (1994)
says,
In the case of rap music, which takes place under intense public surveillance,similar contradiction regarding class, gender, and race are highlighted,decontextualized, and manipulated so as to destabilize rap’s resistive elements.Rap’s resistive, yet contradictory, positions are waged in the face of powerfulmedia-supported construction of black urban America as the source of urbansocial ills that threaten social order. Rappers’ speech acts are so heavily shapedby music industry demands, sanctions, and prerogatives.
George reiterates this point of Hip hop manipulability, especially when it comes to
societal influences, especially those of the music industry. “While hip hop’s values are
by and large fixed—its spirit of rebellion, identification with street culture,
materialism, and aggression—it is also an incredibly flexible tool of communication,
quite adaptable to any number of messages (George, 1998).” J.I. Simmon’s and Barry
Winograd say musicians are often the poets and troubadours—they impact listeners
with innovation and propaganda64. This section will deal with the “double-character”
of popular hip hop, which is most powerful because it reaches listeners with implicit
messages. Whether these messages are positive, negative, or often contradictory,
displaying a little of both, popular hip hop undeniably has the largest audience
compared to other rap sub genres. This section will focus on specific artists where this
double character is consistently displayed. Artists such as Master P, Jay Z, Tupac, Nas,
and Kanye West, display various contradictions in the language they use and often
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voice their recognition of these contradictions. This section intends to show how artists
can simultaneously critique and reinforce images, behavior and portrayals.
As previously discussed, since its inception, hip hop culture, and rap in
particular, has been an outlet to relay the realities of urban life. Often this discussion of
urban life is anchored in an underlying narrative of victimization. While, this is the
reality of urban poverty, rappers often take this approach of victim of the “ghetto,” and
in the same breath they glamorize the negative aspects of this lifestyle. Master P, New
Orleans-based rapper and CEO of No Limit Records, exhibits this behavior in his
songs, “Ghetto Life” and “Ghetto D.” In “Ghetto Life,” Master P asserts that “ghetto”
life victimizes individuals and institutions, like media, brainwash urban youth into
believing they’re destiny is to be criminals.
We working with no leverage or incentive g'Cause their nothing you ever give to meOn television or them history booksGot black kids thinking they only out on this earth to be crooks
Whereas in “Ghetto D,” Silk the Shocker’s verse explains, in detail, how to make crack
from cocaine.
But fuck that I'm bout to put my soldiers in the gameAnd tell ya how to make crack from cocaineOne - look for the nigga wit the whitest snowTwo - no buying from no nigga that you don't knowMake yo way to the kitchen where the stove beYou get the baking soda I got yo DGet the triple beam and measure out yo dopeMix one gram of soda every seven grams of cokeAn shake it up until it get harderThen sit the tube in some ready made cold waterTwist the bitch like a knot while it's still hotAnd watch that shit while it can rise to the fuckin topNow ya cocaine powder is crack
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These verses do not display the typical narrative of ‘I used to sell drugs, that was my
lifestyle and now I’m rapping abut it.’ These lyrics indirectly teach the skill of
transforming cocaine into crack, and they also send the message that if you are going
to sell crack, these are the steps to ‘getting in the game’ and then surviving. What is
interesting about these lyrics is that in one instant, rappers feel like they have been the
victim of society and media criminality, and in the next they are the
victimizers—encouraging criminal behavior and likewise reinforcing and maintaining
the criminalization of urban youth.
Many rappers feel they are trapped between the worlds of success and political
resistance. Nas, as political as his approach is, says in “Life is What You Make It,”
Got to eat yo, everyday my daughters feet growYou wack and cheap with the doe, my heat could blowPayin doctors when I'm born, a preacher when I'm buriedThat's why cash is needed for my kids to inheritGotta pay just for living, tax life is a b'ness (business)If you catch a bad deal, watch your life diminish
Popular rappers like Nas have learned to take a middle ground between what popular
cultures wants to hear and what political messages they relay. In the verses above he
talks about hustling and crime because money is needed. Even though he speaks of the
urban male in the impoverished environment, he also uses this as an underlying
message and explanation of his method of simultaneously giving fans the nostalgia of
trends and glamour in his verse, but also slipping in his political commentary on the
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side. In “Money is My Bitch,” he personifies money as a woman where the
relationship just doesn’t work out.
The ho turned me out, green eyes, had a crush on herSince 5 years old, met her, fell in love wit her…I wont sell my soul to youI think I like'd you better when you were illegalBut you had to get professionalMusicalNow when we fuck we use profalactic, hard plasticStick you in ATM's, limited cash quickSaid you'd give me luxuary, when I asked itFucking me, I gave you back shots in ya ASSetsPromised happiness, but really did nothing for meI guess bitches like you just grow on trees
Similarly, Jay Z also has resistance verses success on his brain. He displays the double
identity of existing within the confines and constraints of mainstream success and the
complicated matter of “keeping it real” staying true to hip hop and its roots of
resistance. Jay Z says, in “ Moment of Clarity,”
If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably belyrically, Talib KweliTruthfully I wanna rhyme like Common SenseBut I did five mill' - I ain't been rhymin like Common sinceWhen your cents got that much in commonAnd you been hustlin since, your inceptionFuck perception go with what makes senseSince I know what I'm up againstWe as rappers must decide what's most impor-tantAnd I can't help the poor if I'm one of themSo I got rich and gave back, to me that's the win/winSo next time you see the homey and his rims spinJust know my mind is workin just like them...... rims, that is
Jay Z says that lyrically he would like to rhyme like Talib Kweli and Common Sense,
who take a very political, non-materialistic approach to rap content. He says he took
the political approach at first, but he says that when your rhymes have that much
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political sense to them, they are rejected by popular culture, industry, and promotion.
Jay Z says he cannot help the poor by being one of them, therefore he thinks that the
solution is to make money and then give back, to him this is the ‘win-win’. Although
this explains his move toward popular culture, it does not combat the fact that
materialism in a reoccurring theme in his lyrics. But in “Public Announcement,” he
appears to address this when he says that he likes and supports material things and that
he is complex and doesn’t claim to “have wings.”
Kanye West similarly presents this “trapped,” reasoning as his contradictory
approach to success, money, and materialism. Kanye West in his lyrics presents the
dilemma of American materialistic society and how it is problematic, especially for the
alienated poor, but like other rappers, he cannot fathom a viable solution to this
problem. He says in “Breathe In Breathe Out,” that he always thought he would rap
about something significant, but “now I’m rappin’ bout money, hoes, and rims again.”
Likewise in “All Falls Down,” Kanye West says,
I can't even pronounce nothing, pass that versace!Then I spent 400 bucks on thisJust to be like nigga you ain't up on this!And I can't even go to the grocery storeWithout some ones thats clean and a shirt with a teamIt seems we living the american dreamBut the people highest up got the lowest self esteemThe prettiest people do the ugliest thingsFor the road to riches and diamond ringsWe shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade usWe trying to buy back our 40 acresAnd for that paper, look how low we a'stoopEven if you in a Benz, you still a nigga in a coop/coupe
Kanye West acknowledges that he is self-conscious and that most people are worried
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about what others will say or think if they do not keep abreast of the latest trends. In
other words, it is pop culture and whether critics like it or not, it is supported by youth,
rappers, and the several commodity industries. Todd Boyd (2003) says in The New
H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip hop, “At some overt level,
hip hop has always been about cultural identity of those who perform the music.” High
fashion, jewelry, nice cars, and fancy rims have become the culture of urban youth,
therefore this is why hip hop critiques and maintains this cultural transformation.
Trends and stereotypes glorified by society are reiterated in hip hop culture. This is not
rocket science, hip hop culture has been mainstreamed and has taken on characteristics
of the mainstream. This cultural evolution of the form manifest in a double-character
of the movement. Even though this double character shows some cultural
contradictions, it is the prevailing middle ground of the form. This lyrical analysis
attempts to show how the language of hip hop has moved in opposing directions,
which combat social ills and the direction of maintaining these social ills because it is a
cultural form not exempt from mainstream influence and control.
Summary
In the past, rappers have either gone the popular route or remained neutral,
including at the very least one song that carries political messages. Take Missy Elliot’s
song, “Wake Up” on her latest album that addresses such issues as drug dealing,
stripping, materialism, especially the reinforcement of these behaviors within hip hop.
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Another road taken by rap artists is the extremity of political opposition. Dead Prez
takes this militant anti-establishment stance in their lyrics. Their approach is powerful
because of the shock value, but can also be damaging because it limits their audience
reach, and therefore their ability to deliver these messages. Rose (Adjaye and Andrews,
1997) says,
The role of the market or commodified culture in sustaining subversive orresistant cultural practices—is what most interests me here. I suggest thatcommodified cultural production is a deeply dangerous but crucial terrain fordeveloping politically progressive expression at this historical moment. In otherwords, whatever counter-hegemonic work is done outside the market, work thattakes place inside is also very important. In a way, inside and outside arefictions, since market forces and market logic, to one degree or another,pervade all American culture and politics.
Rose argues that political agendas continue to be directly and indirectly serviced by
cultural forms, expressions, and representations (Adjaye and Andrews, 1997). These
agendas will continue to be serviced by rap as well as other musical forms, but hip hop
is in a new moment, where rap artists are finding a middle ground—a median between
popular art and political resistance. This new moment, little by little, is becoming a
more viable tool to relay messages to a more massive popular rap audience. Like
Lauryn Hill says in “Everything is Everything,”
MCs ain’t ready to take it to the SerengetiMy rhymes is heavy like the mind of Sister Betty…Now hear this mixtureWhere hip hop meets scriptureDevelop a negative into a positive picture
Lauryn, ahead of her time, prophesizes the current moment of hip hop—the Kanye
West Moment. I have named this new moment the Kanye West Moment in hip hop
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because it is characterized by popular beats, popular producers, good promotion, and
unexpected political critiques. Kanye West combines popular style, trendy beats and
content, as well as political language and messages. He connects the various hip hop
worlds—the world of the political, the popular. He connects the bling bling money
thing to the government and political conspiracies. Dangerous in the best and worst of
sense, this Kanye West moment is a powerful building and joining of a hip hop
community, which could potentially cross the lines from passive listening into creative
change and action. I assert that this new kid from the Chicago hundreds might have
initiated a rap style, which will have state apparatuses and its controllers and promoters
of ideological agendas, thinking ahead as to how to undermine this new middle-ground
movement in hip hop. This new style, if it catches on as a trend, might turn out to be
more powerful than any of the extremes taken in the past. As Tricia Rose and Lauryn
Hill have prophesized, hip hop is evolving into a more effective and politically
engaging form. In this Kanye West Moment, MCs may not be ready to take it to the
Serengeti, but hip hop may be ready to meet scripture and turn the negatives, slowly
but surely, into positives.
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Chapter V
Hip Hop’s Impact on Mentality, Ideological Preference and Political and SocialActivity
Today’s establishment reviews of rap-as-genre seem distinguished for the corporate white axioms theyassume and impose on the very music they’re remanding to marginal status. The indictment of rap’s
‘vague threat,’ its connection to the urban crisis stats that make us grimace over our morningcroissants, depend especially on a never named, undebated assumption: a pop art form once tightly
bound up and hugely popular with a certain social group (or class, or subclass, or subculture)apparently has Mesmeresque power over it, can not only express or even encourage but actuallydictate attitudes and behavior; can literally move its devotees. (Costello and Wallace, 1990, p.44)
In Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present, Mark Costello and
David Foster Wallace (1990) assert that the critique of rap as marginal or threatening,
also reaffirms its power to mesmerize, encourage, and dictate attitudes and behaviors.
Music is a powerful force in the lives of individual, particularly because of its capacity
to store information in the unconscious as well as the conscious.
Media produce effects that impact the audience in various ways. David C.
Barker (2002) in Rushed to Judgment: Talk Radio, Persuasion and American Political
Behavior, notes how radio is used to persuade. “The ‘peripheral or heuristic route to
persuasion requires relatively little mental effort on the part of the audience member.
Audience members shrink cognitive shortcuts (a.k.a ‘heuristic’) to make up their
minds. Some of the heuristics upon which people most often rely include emotions,
party identification, social desirability, or core values.” This physical phenomenon of
arousing emotion, identification, social desirability, or core values is not directly
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related to the technology as much as it is related to the content or music played on
radio. It is the rhythms and lyrics that contribute to this engagement of audience with
radio. It is a fact that in a democratic society, individuals choose to identify with a
particular political culture. It is debatable what influences help to shape political
cultures and what forces influence individuals to ascribe to one political culture over
another. Berger (1995) says political culture is shaped by historical, societal and
political experiences, and furthermore it is shaped by an individual’s private, and
personal experiences as members of society and the polity. Implicit knowledge
received through personal experiences makes up the majority of internalized messages,
which leads to the development of individual consciousness.
Music and listening patterns have an impact on individuals and their
perceptions of self and their place in society and politics. Given the historical
significance of language especially vernacular language in connection with urban
youth in particular, the language of hip hop is more than just lyrics over a beat. It
influences their daily lives, their societal outlook, their hunger for or abandonment of
education, as well as the values that shape their lives. Hip hop music reaches the youth
of today’s society and carries the capacity to transform their lives.
Hip hop’s modes, rhythms, and lyrics have the potential to “tune” urban youth into
social and political engagement or to relegate them to disengagement. For many
indigenous and underrepresented groups, music has been an important terrain of
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culture and politics. Both music and language serve functions such as a foundation for
culture, an educator, and as a political and social outlet, just to name a few.
Kathleen Marie Higgins (1991) makes a valuable connection between music
and individual ethical make-up and outlook. She says that the “universality of
‘humanly organized sounds’ used to heighten and inspire the signal features and events
of human and cultural life is a prima facie reason for taking music seriously as an
ethical medium (Higgins, 1991).” She says music can be a rallying point for members
of society to cooperate and coordinate activity as a group. Music has the capacity to
bring collectivity to a group of individuals. Higgins (1991) says that music provides a
rallying point for individuals in society to engage in cooperation and coordination of
activities.65
In the present moment, hip hop is especially operative in servicing ideological
agendas, which then often result in political activity or inactivity. In America the
political agendas are implicitly expressed through ideological reoccurring themes in
language and images. In African countries like Tanzania, hip hop is explicitly used to
push the political agendas of politicians who rally youth by propaganda campaigns
broadcasts in the form of hip hop songs. The manifestation of ideological and political
agendas may not be as obvious in American popular art, but nevertheless hip hop has
an undeniable connection to individual formulation of attitudes, their political
preferences, and in what social and politic activities they engage. This chapter will
argue that hip hop language is powerful and has the capacity to transform character,
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social individual and communal beings, as well as community dynamics. Very few
empirical studies have been conducted to date, which examine how listening patterns
impact individual attitudes, ideological preferences, and social and political
participation.
In this chapter, I examine a sample of the hip hop community to gain a better
understanding of whether listening to hip hop influences their political decisions, how
they understand politics and policy, how they perceive their role in the political
process, and how they take action to participate or not participate in social
organizations, politics and political and social decisions affecting them.
This analysis proposes to answer the following questions: How do hip hop
messages influence the political and social mentality and action of listeners? Do
relationships exist between hip hop listening patterns and individual attitudes,
ideological preferences, or various trends in political and social activity or inactivity? I
hypothesize that hip hop listening or activity patterns have a strong influence on
individual’s attitudes, ideological preferences, and/or engagement with social
programming or politics. Furthermore, this study analyzes hip hop’s capacity to
facilitate individual critical consciousness or repression. The concepts that I deal with
are musical preference, hip hop-related activities, such as reading poetry over a beat, or
consumer behavior. I also explore whether hip hop mediates political preferences and
social and political activity.
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Methodology
The methodology for this research began with composing a thirty-question online
Zoomerang survey (Statistical Appendix A), which was circulated via email. The
survey was also posted on several Black Planet Discussion Boards66 as well as the
panel of RapAttackLives.com67; BrainRaps.com68; the Georgetown University
Communications, Culture, and Technology list serve; the Black Young Professionals
Public Health Network69; as well as some Greek organizational list serves. A snowball
sampling technique was used. The survey was posted for 83 days and received 532
complete responses, 597 visits and 65 partial responses. There is no reason to expect
history effects because no significant event occurred in the hip hop community during
this period.
This statistical analysis process began with converting the Zoomerang data file into
a Microsoft Excel sheet. While in Excel I made several manual recodes of variables
from alpha into a numeric form. The Excel sheet of data was then opened in SPSS and
converted to an SPSS file system. The analysis began with running frequencies on all
of the variables. Reliability tests and dummy variable information for all scales used in
the analysis appear in Statistical Appendix A and B.
Sample Characteristics
The following describes the characteristics of the survey sample. The survey
found that 95.5 percent of the participants listen to hip hop. The majority of
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participants agreed that hip hop influenced their lives (67.1%). It also found that
participants primarily used radio (40.1%) and CDs (42.7%) to listen to hip hop. The
majority of participants lived in urban areas. Figure 5.1 gives a race and ethnic break
down of the participants.70
(Figure 5.1 About here)
This race and ethnic breakdown shows that the majority of participants (67.1%)
were Black American. The demographic information also showed that 98.7 percent of
participants currently lived in the United States and that almost every state was
represented in the sample. Fourteen percent of participants lived in New York; 12
percent in California; 11 percent in Maryland; 10 percent in Washington, DC; and 10
percent in Virginia. The other states were represented in less significant percentages
(Statistical Appendix C). The majority of participants were female (70.8%) as
compared to male (29.2%). In terms of annual income, the majority of participants
(57.9%) made under $ 39,000 per year and 78.9 percent made under 59,000 per year.
Nearly half (49.2%)of the participants were 18-25 years old and 43.5 were between the
ages of 26 and 35. In terms of religious ideology, the majority of participants identified
themselves as Baptist (27.1%), nondenominational (24.4%), and Catholic (22.2%). The
other religions were represented in less significant percentages (Statistical Appendix
C). Although the sample is not strictly representative, it contains an over sample of
groups most likely to listen to hip hop.
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Variable Description
A description of the indicators employed in this analysis appear in Table 5.1
and Table 5.2
Results: Ordinary Least Square Regression Analysis
A series of ordinary least square regression (OLS) analyses was performed in
an effort to predict whether hip hop listening and activity patterns have a strong
influence on individual mentality, ideological preferences, or engagement with social
programming or politics. Regression analysis looks at mathematical relationships
between independent and dependent variables. The variance in these regressions is
explained by the R square values. The Durbin Watson statistics reveal that there was
no problem with heteroskedasticity for any equation. Table 5.3 shows eight models
that support this hypothesis.
(Table 5.3 About here)
The voterace model illustrates the relationships between various independent
variables and agreement/disagreement with the statement: voting and voting results
only affect certain races. The R Square for the model was .002, indicating a weak fit.
The results showed that those participants who listened to popular forms of rap music
were less likely to strongly agree that voting and voting results only affected certain
races. It also illustrates that those that danced or appeared in hip hop videos or those
who had performed poetry were more likely to strongly agree that voting and voting
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results only affected certain races. The results also showed that those participants who
identified themselves as White American (White Anglo Saxon) were less likely to
strongly agree that voting and voting results only affect certain races. The voterace
model also shows no significant relationships between the dependent variables and
those that listen to gangster, message, underground, or local rap. No significant
relationship exist between the dependent variables and those participants that rapped,
wanted to be a rap or hip hop artist, or those that had written original rap lyrics. None
of the other independent variables or demographics produced a significant relationship.
The voteover model illustrates the relationship between the independent
variables and whether the participant votes on a local and national level. The R Square
for the model was .092, indicating a moderate fit. The results showed that participants
who listened to gangster and underground rap were less likely to vote on local and
national levels. The results also showed that participants who listened to popular rap
were more likely to vote on local and national levels. It also showed that those who
want to rap or danced in hip hop videos were more likely to vote on both levels. It also
showed that the older the participant, the more likely they were to vote on both local
and national levels. None of the other independent variables or demographics showed a
significant relationship.
The racesoc model illustrates the relationship between the independent
variables and whether the participants thinks that hip hop influences their attitudes
toward race, class, society, and their status in society. The R Square for the model was
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.012, indicating a weak fit. The results showed that participants who listened to
message rap were more likely to agree that hip hop influenced their attitudes to ward
race, class, society, or social status. The results also showed that participants who want
to rap or have performed poetry were more likely to agree that hip hop influences their
attitudes toward race, class, society, or social status. It also showed the White
Americans and Asian Pacific Islanders were more likely to agree that hip hop
influences these attitudes. It further showed that the younger the participants, the more
likely they were to agree that hip hop influences their attitudes toward race, class,
society, and social status. None of the other independent variables or demographics
produced a significant relationship.
The gvpolvt model shows the relationship between the independent variables
and an index on participants’ responses to the following items: agrees that the
government cares about the poor and poverty; politicians care about the poor and
poverty; government cares about low-income workers; and politicians care about low-
income workers. The R square for the model was .211, indicating a strong fit. The
results show that participants who listened to message and underground rap were more
likely to disagree with the above statements. The participants that listened to popular
rap were more likely to agree that the government and politicians care about the poor,
poverty, and low-income workers. The results also showed that participants who want
to rap or have danced or wanted to dance in hip hop videos were more likely to
disagree with the statements. Africans were more likely to disagree that the
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government and politicians care about the poor, poverty, and low-income workers.
None of the other variables showed a significant relationship to the index.
The spenfin model shows the relationship between the independent variables
and whether the participants agrees that hip hop influences their attitudes about their
personal financial situation and their attitudes toward money and spending on clothes,
shoes, and jewelry. The R square for the model was .101, indicating a strong fit. The
results showed that participants who listened to popular and local rap, were more likely
to agree that hip hop influences their attitudes toward personal finances and spending.
The results also showed that those that want to rap or have danced in a hip hop video
were more likely to agree that hip hop influences their attitudes toward personal
finances and spending. None of the other independent variables or demographics
showed a significant relationship.
The hipcd model shows the relationship between the independent variables and
the amount of money the participant spends monthly on hip hop compact discs. The R
square for the model was .008, indicating a weak fit. The results showed that
participants who listened to gangster and underground rap were more likely to spend
more money monthly on hip hop CDs. The results also showed that Asians were more
likely to spend more money monthly on hip hop CDs. None of the other variables or
demographics showed a significant relationship.
The hipconc model illustrates the relationship between the independent
variables and the amount of money spent on hip hop concerts, performances and night
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clubs. The R square for the model was .004, indicating a weak fit. The results showed
that participants that listened to popular, message, underground, and local rap were
more likely to spend more monthly on hip hop concerts, performances, and night clubs.
It also showed that White Americans and Asians were more likely to spend more
monthly on hip hop concerts, performances, and night clubs. The results also showed
that Europeans were more likely to spend small amounts or no money on hip hop
concerts, performances, and night clubs. None of the other independent variables or
demographics showed a significant relationship.
The hipcloth model shows the relationship between the independent variables
and the amount of money spent on hip hop-style clothing, shoes including hip hop
name brands. The R square for the model was .013, indicating a weak fit. The model’s
Durbin Watson score of 1.869, which is close to 2.000, indicates that there is a high
degree of homogeneity of variance. The results showed that participants who listened
to gangster, popular, and underground rap were more likely to spend larger amounts of
money on hip hop style clothing and shoes. The results also showed that those that
listened to message rap were more likely to spend lower amounts or no money on hip
hop-style clothing and shoes. The results also showed that those who want to rap were
more likely to spend large amounts of money on hip hop-style clothing and shoes.
These results also showed that Asians were more likely to spend large amounts
monthly on hip hop clothing and shoes. Finally these results showed that the younger
the participants, the more likely they were to spend less on hip hop clothing and shoes
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per month. None of the other independent variables or demographics showed a
significant relationship.
Results: Logistic Regression Analysis
Logistic regressions allow you to do regression analysis on variables that are
not dichotomies. In this study, we employed logistic regression on participants in
volunteer organizations. Although, several logistic regressions were performed, only
one showed significant relationships to the independent variables.
(Table 5.4 About here)
Table 5.4 illustrates the predicted relationships between the independent
variables and whether the survey participant is involved in volunteer organizations.
The Cox & Snell pseudo R square for the model was .108, indicating a strong fit. The
Nagelkerke pseudo R Square for the model was .146, also indicating a strong fit. The
classification table indicated that the model resulted in 66.3 percent of cases being
correctly classified in terms of values of the dependent variables. The results showed
that participants, who listened to message rap, who have danced in hip hop videos, or
performed poetry, were more likely to participate in volunteer organizations. The
results also showed that Asians and those that want to rap, were less likely to
participate in volunteer organizations. None of the other independent variable or
demographics produced a significant relationship.
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Results: Correlation Analysis
In order to explore some other relationships that were not strong enough to use
in regression, correlations were performed on independent and dependent variables.
(Table 5.5 About here)
Table 5.5 illustrates both positive and correlations between variables. The first
set of correlations explain a number of relationships between those, who listen to
certain sub-genres of rap and why they listen to those types of rap. The results showed
that those that listened to gangster, message, underground, and local rap, agreed that
they listened to these forms because they liked the rhythm and music, they liked the
images and videos produced, they like the lyrics and messages, and they like the artists
lyrical ability—their style of rapping. These results also showed that those that listened
to popular rap, listen to it because they liked the rhythm and music, the artist images
and videos, and their lyrical ability. It also showed that participants who listen to
popular rap did not listen to this form because they liked the lyrics and messages the
artist produces.
The correlations also showed the relationship between listening patterns and
political party identifications. The correlations showed that participants, who listened
to popular rap, strongly identified with the Democratic party, but did not identify with
the Socialist party. The results showed that those, who listened to message rap did not
identify with the Republican party, but strongly identified with communist and
socialists parties. The results showed that those who listened to underground rap
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identified with the Republican, Communist, and Socialist parties, but did not identify
with the Democratic party.
This analysis also gave some insight to the relationship between listening
patterns and identification with political ideologies. The correlations showed that those
that listened to popular rap were less likely to identify with the political ideology of
socialism. The results also showed that those that listened to message rap, were less
likely to identify with conservative political ideologies. The results showed that
listeners of underground rap were more likely to identify with socialism and were less
likely to identify with conservative political ideologies.
The correlations also showed some relationships between listening patterns and
political and social participation. The results showed that listeners of gangster rap were
less likely to participate in volunteer organizations. The result also showed that
listeners of popular rap were more likely to participate in Greek organizations, but less
likely to participate in community-based organizations. Listeners of message rap were
more likely to participate in community-based, professional, and volunteer
organizations. The results also showed that listeners of underground rap were more
likely to participate in community-based organizations.
(Table 5.6 About Here)
The correlations also showed connections some relationships between spending
on hip hop objects and activities and several other demographic variables as well as
independent variables. The results showed that the older the participants, the less likely
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they were to spend monthly on hip hop clothing, shoes, and accessories. The results
showed that White Anglo Saxon Americans were less likely to spend monthly on hip
hop CDs, tapes, records, videos and hip hop books. The results showed that Black
Americans were more likely to spend more monthly on hip hop accessories like bags
and jewelry. The results showed that Africans, Latinos, and Asians would most likely
spend more monthly on hip hop concerts, performances, and night clubs.
In terms of listening habits and spending, which, in addition to running OLS
regressions, I ran correlations that showed significant relationships as well.
Participants, who listened to gangster and local forms of rap were more likely to spend
more monthly on hip hop CDs, tapes, records, videos, concerts, performances, night
clubs, clothes, shoes, accessories and books. The results also showed that participants,
who listened to popular rap were more likely to spend on all the above listed items
except for hip hop books. Those that listened to message and underground forms of rap
were more likely to spend more monthly on all of the above listed items except hip hop
accessories.
Overall, the correlations showed that some sub-genre listening patterns had a
relationship to spending on hip hop, political party identification, political ideological
preferences, and if participation occurred in social and political activities. It also
showed how some race and ethnic categories were more or less likely to identify with
political parties, political ideologies, to spend on hip hop objects or activities, or to be
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active in social or political organizations.
Discussion of Results
Patterns for Listening and Why
The results from the correlations between listening patterns and the reasons for
listening give insight as to what forms are listened to for what reasons. The results
showed that participants who listened to gangster, message, underground, and local rap
agreed that they listened because they liked the rhythm and music of the text, they
liked the images and videos produced, they liked the lyrics and messages, and they like
the artists lyrical ability—style of rapping. These results showed that participants, who
listened to popular rap agreed that they listened because they liked the rhythm and
music, the artist’s images and videos, and lyrical ability. This shows that popular forms
of music are not listened to because the individual likes or dislikes the messages. In all
forms, participants listened because they liked the rhythm, which acknowledges that
rap beats and music have just as much impact on listening as do lyrics or artist appeal.
The results also showed that in all forms participants listened because they liked the
artist’s images, videos, and lyrical ability—style of rapping. This shows that an artist’s
image and the videos they produce are connected to their reach, and furthermore the
reach of their messages. These dynamics that make up rap texts and artist’s style are
important to the music’s capacity to reach particular audiences.
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Hip Hop Influences Attitudes
As mentioned before, 67.1 percent of the participants agreed that hip hop
influences their lives. Specifically, I assert that hip hop plays a key role in shaping
individual attitudes about themselves and their economic, political and social
environment. The racesoc model shows that participants who listen to message rap
were more likely to agree that hip hop influences their attitudes about race, class,
society, and the participant’s status in society. These results mean that message rap has
an impact on individual attitudes about race construction, racial interaction, and racial
dynamics and conflicts. It also means that message rap influences individual’s attitudes
about class dynamic, and most likely the separation and relative power of middle and
upper classes, when compared to the powerless lower classes. It also shows that
message rap influences societal attitudes, including who is considered inside and
outside of society. Message rap is also shown to have an impact on how individuals
perceive social engagement and civility. Message rap also has influence over
individuals’ attitudes toward their own status in society, meaning that message rap
contributes to individuals’ attitudes about their societal status and their motivation to
shift this status in society.
Additionally, the gvpolvt model shows that participants, who listened to
message and underground rap, were more likely to disagree that the government and
politicians care about the poor, poverty, and low-income workers. This shows that
message and underground rap influences individual attitudes about governmental and
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political agendas and whether they have the poor and low-income worker’s interest at
heart in making political decisions and policy. It showed that those who want to rap or
have danced in a hip hop video were more likely to disagree that the government and
politicians care about the poor, poverty, and low-income workers. This is interesting
because usually those that want to rap or have danced or appeared in hip hop videos
are usually trying to attain mainstream success. Africans were more likely to disagree
that the government and politicians care about the poor, poverty, and low-income
workers. Participants that listened to popular forms of rap were more likely to agree
that the government and politicians care about the poor, poverty, and low-income
workers. The majority of messages presented in popular rap do not challenge
government or politicians, therefore it is to be expected that those who listened would
agree that the government and politicians care about the poor, poverty, and low-income
workers. This outcome was also expected because often, popular rap because of its use
and promotion of societal trends often tends to pacify or distract individuals into
accepting status quo values of consumerism and materialism.
This last point connecting popular forms of rap to material and consumer
distractions is also illustrated in the spenfin model. The results showed that participants
who listened to popular rap, want to rap, or have danced in a hip hop video were more
likely to agree that hip hop influenced their attitudes about money, spending, and their
personal finances. This shows that hip hop and particularly the messages of
materialism and consumerism have an impact on individuals attitudes about money,
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how they spend money, and how they view their personal financial situations. This
could also be an indication of the motivation of some to acquire money by any means
in order to keep up with hip hop trends, especially those images maintained and
reinforced by rap music.
Hip Hop and Its Connection To Spending
The hipcd model showed that participants who listened to gangster and underground
rap were more likely to spend more monthly on hip hop CDs, tapes, records, or videos.
This is not an unusual result, considering that listeners are going to spend money on
their chosen texts. The results showed that Asians were more likely to spend more on
hip hop CDs, tapes, records, or videos.
Similarly, the hipconc model shows that participants who listened to popular,
message, underground, and local rap were more likely to spend more monthly on hip
hop concerts, performances, and night clubs. What is interesting about these results is
that rap forms like popular, message, underground, and local are more likely to drive
individuals to engaging with these forms publicly or in communal environments;
furthermore in order to engage with the form in this way participants are often required
to spend money. For popular, message, and local rap, individuals may be more driven
in their behavior by the possibility of personal interaction with the artist. Whereas with
underground rap, participants are probably more engaged by the communal
environment rather than the artist. Rap artists that perform on underground circuits are
viewed more as a part of that particular underground hip hop community, rather than as
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celebrities or superstars. This could also be true of message rap engagement, but at
present, message rap has been popularized and often functions in industry as also a
popular form. The results of this model also showed that White Americans and Asians
were more likely to spend more monthly on hip hop concerts, performances, and night
clubs. In contrast to Europeans, who were less likely to spend monthly on these types
of activities.
The hipcloth model likewise showed that participants, who listened to gangster,
popular, and underground forms of rap were more likely to spend more monthly on hip
hop-style clothing and shoes including signature hip hop name brands such as Russell
Simmon’s Phat Farm, P. Diddy’s Sean John, Damon dash and Jay Z’s Roc-a-wear or
even new brands such as Nelly’s Applebottoms. This result was expected because as
previously mentioned popular rap sends messages that encourage materialism and
consumerism. It is also important to note, that popular artists, who have started their
own hip hop clothing companies or made deals with shoe companies71 have been more
successful than other lower profile artists, such as Wutang Clan’s Wu-Wear venture.
The results from this model show that participants who want to rap or have danced or
appeared in a hip hop video were more likely to spend more monthly on hip hop-style
clothing and shoes. This is an expected result because those that aspire to get
mainstream recognition follow and abide by popular fashion trends. Asians were more
likely to spend more monthly on hip hop-style clothing and shoes. Asian hip hop
spending habits could be a result of the recent surge of Asian participation and support
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of hip hop.72 In contrast, the results showed that participants who listened to message
rap, were less likely to spend monthly on hip hop-style clothing and shoes. This is also
an expected result, considering that message rap often critiques materialism,
consumerism, and the societal need to follow popular trends. The results found that the
younger the participant, the less likely they were to spend monthly on hip hop-style
clothing and shoes. This result was unexpected, but could be the result of the number
of students (41.5%) in the sample. Something to note is that the correlations which
were run between the listening patterns and spending produced more significant
relationships than the OLS regressions, but the regressions are better predictors of
significant relationships controlling for a myriad of factors simultaneously.
Hip Hop and Societal and Political Ideology and Participation
As previously discussed, the results showed interesting connections between
listening patterns and attitudes toward politics and government. In addition, the results
also make connections between ideological preferences and participation in political
and social organizations. These results show hip hop’s capacity to encourage or
discourage civic participation as well as support certain ideological preferences.
In terms of party identification, the correlations show that participants, who
listened to popular rap strongly identified with the Democratic party. These results
were expected because popular rap listeners are more likely to accept societal values
and strive toward mainstream success, they would more likely participate in the
Democratic party, which caters to the middle class and upwardly bound people of
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color. The results also showed that participants who listened to message rap, strongly
did not identify with the Republican party, but strongly identified with the Communist
and Socialist parties. The results also showed that participants, who listened to
underground rap were more likely to be active in the republican, communist, and
socialist parties. This is also an expected result, because message and underground rap
often critiques popular political parties and their agendas. These forms of rap also often
presents critiques of capitalism and conservatism, by giving support for or offering a
different perspective on communism and socialism. An interesting result is that
listeners of underground rap were more likely to be active in the Republican party.
This is an unexpected outcome, but could be explained by mounting disapproval of the
democratic party’s political agendas and the impact of democratic supported policy on
urban communities. Other incidents, where democratic leaders have publicly denied
rap’s value as an art form could also be related to this outcome.73
In terms of political ideological preferences, the results showed that
individuals, who listened to popular rap, were less likely to agree with the socialism
ideology. This is an expected result because listeners of popular rap tend to either
support the capitalist ideology, as long as they have the option to participate. Socialism
infers that the wealth is equally distributed, meaning no one person would be able to
have exorbitant amounts of wealth to spend on jewelry, car and clothes. The results
also showed that individuals, who listened to message rap, were less likely to agree
with conservative ideologies. The results also showed that individuals, who listened to
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underground rap were also less likely to agree with conservative ideologies, but more
likely to agree with socialist ideologies. These results were expected because of the
political critiques these two forms give in lyrics.
In terms of voting and voting attitudes the results showed connections between
listening and voting on local and national levels and furthermore, the motivation or
non-motivation to vote. The voteover model showed that participants, who listened to
gangster and underground forms of rap, were less likely to vote on local and national
levels. It also showed that participants, who listened to popular rap, want to rap, or
have danced in a hip hop video, were more likely to vote on both local and national
levels. As expected, it also showed that the older the participant, the more likely he or
she were to vote on both levels.
The statement, “Voting and voting results only affect certain races,” seems like
a strong statement, but this is often one of the reason why low-income poor people do
not vote and are uninterested in politics. For example the voterace model shows that
participants who listened to popular forms of rap were less likely to agree that voting
and voting results only affect certain races. It showed that those participants who had
danced in a hip hop video or performed poetry were less likely to agree with that
statement. It also showed that the only race or ethnicity that was less likely to agree
that voting and voting results only affect certain races were those that identified
themselves as White Anglo Saxon Americans.
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This study shows that besides voting, other ideological preferences and
participation habits are affected by various sub-genres of rap and their capability to
reach audiences. The volun20 model shows that participants, who listened to message
rap, who have danced or appeared in a hip hop video, or performed poetry, were more
likely to be active in volunteer organizations. The results also showed that certain
correlations existed between listening and participating. Participants who listened to
gangster rap were less likely to participate in volunteer organizations. This makes a
connection between gangster rap listening and civil society engagement. The results
also showed that participants, who listen to popular rap were more likely to be active in
Greek organizations, but less likely to participate in community-based organizations.
This makes some connection between popular rap and the type of civil engagement
with which participants are drawn. These participants were drawn more to
organizations, where recognition is a recognized benefit, rather than those
organizations, which hardly received recognition. This also relates to the results, which
showed that participants, who listened to message rap were more likely to be involved
in community-based organizations and volunteer organizations, as previously
mentioned. As well as the results, which showed that participants, who listened to
underground rap were more likely to participate in community-based organizations.
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Open-Ended Questions and Responses
In addition to the statistically useful questions and responses from above, I
asked some open ended questions which generated interesting responses. For example,
I asked, “Why do you listen to hip hop?” One participant responded,
It’s mostly the beats that attract me….I think that in my growing up. I’mnoticing that in listening to the actual words of hip hop songs a lot of themSUCK!!! But I listen to hip hop because in general it’s cool. I just wish thatthere were more Commons and Erykah Badu’s and the Roots and less Jay Zs,Ja-Rules.
There were so many responses that said they like hip hop primarily because of the
beats and music. There were also responses to this question that said, “Hip hop is a
powerful medium of expression of life and politics.” Similarly, one participant said, “I
think it conveys the messages of my generation, and it speaks to a lot of issues in the
lives of black youth. I love hip hop, it is everything!”
Another open-ended question I asked was What annoys you or needs to be
changed about hip hop? This question, in particular, generated some interesting and
varying responses. One participant said that political hip hop needed better promotion
in order to achieve better mainstream success. Many respondents said they were
annoyed by the misogyny and the way women are portrayed. One participant also said
that in addition to misogynistic lyrics, homophobic lyrics that promote violence toward
gays or women needed to stop. Participants also said they were annoyed by
representations that glorified money, power, and materialism. One participant
responded in all caps,
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Everything in mainstream hip hop needs to be changed it is bullshit fake hiphop, not delivering any real message. I couldn’t list all the things wrong withconventional hip hop these days. It is just rap—retards attempting poetry.
Many participants also commented on the need to change the repetitive negative
messages presented in hip hop. One response truly disturbed me. The participant said,
Rappers need to recognize that they are living the American dream andtherefore need to stop complaining about how US oppresses them, Hip Hopneeds to realize that their shitty lives aren’t the fault of the Americangovernment but of their own community and culture. The only way to rise upout of the dirt is to change the hearts and minds of their community and not byattacking the government and then asking for handouts.
While, I agree that the victimization role does not create change and acknowledge that
this is often a faulty approach used by those who have historically been oppressed.
This does not excuse the conditions urban youth face on day to day basis, nor does it
excuse the fact that the upper echelons of American society benefit from our political
system and these urban youth’s “shitty lives.” It is a proven fact that in a capitalistic
system, there must exist a permanent under class and it is no false reality that people of
color primarily make up this underclass. Government and politics are responsible for
every community’s conditions, not just suburban environments, which are primarily
middle and upper class. Politicians have been charged to improve the conditions of all
communities not just their own backyards. This participant insinuates above that hip
hop artists, or those that listen to hip hop have miserable lives and that it is their own
fault. In my opinion this participant’s attempt to lay blame on the culture of hip hop is
just a cop out—which denies the role of the social context in exacerbating the
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problems of poverty and the oppression of poor low-income workers. It also denies the
involvement of state repressive apparatuses (such as the police, the courts, and the
prison system) and state ideological apparatuses (such as the media, education system,
the church, and even some non governmental and volunteer organizations) in maintain
these conditions.
Responses like this example demonstrate why more studies need to be done on
art forms like hip hop. It is necessary for people to understand that the evolution of this
form has been guided and shaped by economic alienation, political agendas and
manipulation, as well as social oppression over a long time span. The problems often
found in urban communities did not spontaneously arise as a result of culture. These
conditions were created—constructed to support the current political economic order.
An old African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” If society is the
village, then urban youth have been left out in the cold to be raised by the wild. They
are homeless and hungry, yet taunted by the lifestyles and opportunity of their societal
counterparts. I am not advocating that individuals take on the victimization role nor do
I assert that handouts need to be given. I am simply challenging government and
politicians to live up to their responsibility to serve the people—all people, not just the
middle and upper classes. Overall participants wanted to change the sexual explicitness
of hip hop, the promotion of materialism and consumerism, the portrayals of women
and endorsements of sexual promiscuity, and the monotony of popular forms of rap.
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Summary
Overall, the results of this study proved the validity of the hypothesis: hip hop
listening or activity patterns have a strong influence on individuals’ attitudes,
ideological preferences, and/or engagement with social programming or politics.
Additional data, which I collected in the survey, but did not analyze, could also be
done. For example, a study could connect hip hop listening patterns and engagement
with other mediums like television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet to each
medium’s impact on individuals’ mentality, ideological preference, and civic
participation. This study can only be considered a pilot study because of its use of
convenient, rather than random sampling techniques. Nevertheless, this research
provides preliminary indications of hip hop messages and their impact on individual
mentality, ideological preferences particularly political ideology, as well as some civic
participation behavior. The result presented in this chapter support this research’s
overall hypothesis that the hip hop movement has a distinct divisiveness—that some
forms of hip hop maintain and reinforce state repressive and ideological apparatuses
and in contrast, some forms critique these apparatuses. Even though this study
primarily deals with traditional concepts of social and political activities, Ray Pratt in
Rhythm and Resistance says, “To appreciate the complex political impulses in popular
music one must go beyond traditional Anglo American institutionally based
conceptions of participation in politics such as voting, influencing the behavior of
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officials, proposing legislation, and running for office (Pratt, 1990).” Social
organization and politics involve much more than state constituted social political
engagement. The creation or recreation of community and collectivity based in
communication, very much affects politics and is political in its own right. Hip hop is a
modern musical form, which inspires collective knowledge and understanding about
individual experiences within communal political, economic, and social environments,
which structurally and implicitly oppress. Future studies should examine the
connection between listening patterns and non-traditional concepts of social and
political engagement.
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Figure 5.1
Race and Ethnicity Demographics
5.1%
67.1%
11.8%9.8%
3.4% 4.1%1.9%
5.8%2.6%
19.7%
7.1%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
80.0%
Whi
te
Europ
ean
Black
Am
erica
n
Carib
bean
/V.I.
Africa
n
Latin
Am
erica
nLat
ino
Asian
Sout
h Asia
n/S.
A.A.
A.P.I.
Nativ
e Am
erica
n
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Table 5.1
Dependent Variables
DependentVariables
Description
voterace Participant thinks voting and voting results only affect certain races.racesoc Hip hop influences participant’s attitudes about race, class, society and
participant’s status in society.gvpolvt Hip hop influences participant’s attitudes about government, politics and voting.spenfin Hip hop influences participant’s attitudes about money and spending and about
their personal finances.voteover Participant votes on local and national levels.hipcd Participant spends varying amounts of money monthly on hip hop CDs, tapes,
records or videos.hipconc Participant spends varying amounts of money monthly on hip hop concerts,
performances, or night clubs.hipcloth Participant spends varying amounts of money monthly on hip hop-style clothing
or shoes including hip hop name brands.rhythm Participant listens to hip hop because they like the rhythm and music
accompanying the artist.artists Participant listens to hip hop because they like the artist’s images and or videos.lyrics Participant listens to hip hop because they like the lyrics and messages the artist
produces.style Participant listens to hip hop because they like the artist’s lyrical ability—their
style of rapping.repub18 Participant identifies with the republican party.democ18 Participant identifies with the democratic party.indep18 Participant identifies with independent parties.comm18 Participant identifies with the communist party.social18 Participant identifies with the socialist party.none18 Participant does not identify with any of these parties.conser19 Participant identifies with conservative ideologies.liber19 Participant identifies with liberal ideologies.green19 Participant identifies with green peace ideologies.capit19 Participant identifies with capitalistic ideologies.social19 Participant identifies with socialist ideologies.none19 Participant does not identify with any of these ideologies.polpar20 Participant is active in a political party.cbo20 Participant is active in community-based organizations.ngo20 Participant is active in non-governmental organizations.lobby20 Participant is active in lobbyist or policy groups.greek20 Participant is active in Greek organizations.prof20 Participant is active in a professional organization.volun20 Participant is active in volunteer groups.
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Table 5.2
Independent Variables
IndependentVariables
Description
Block 1gangster Participant listens to gangster rap in varying degrees.popular Participant listens to popular rap in varying degrees.message Participant listens to message rap in varying degrees.undergrd Participant listens to underground rap in varying degrees.local Participant listens to local rap in varying degrees.
Block 2rapped Participant has rapped.wantrap Participant wants to rap or be a rap artist.danced Participant has danced or appeared in a hip hop video.original Participant has written an original rap or hip hop lyrics.poetry Participant has performed poetry.
Block 3
white Participant identifies themselves as White American/ White Anglo Saxoneuro Participant identifies themselves as Europeanblack Participant identifies themselves as Black Americanafrican Participant identifies themselves as Africanlatino Participant identifies themselves as Latinoasian Participant identifies themselves as Asianapi Participant identifies themselves as Asian/ Pacific Islander
Block 4sex Describes the participant’s biological sex.income Describes the participant’s yearly income range.age Describes the participant’s age range.
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Table 5.3
Regressions Analysis of Hip Hop Listening PatternsReported are the Standardized (Beta) Coefficients
*Coefficients significant at the .05 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)**Coefficients significant at the .001 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)
I.V. —Independent VariablesD.V. —Dependent Variables
D.V. →I.V. ↓
vote-race
vote-over
race-soc
gvp-olvt
Spen-fin
hip-cdhip-conc
hip-cloth
gangster -.064 -.132* -.029 .020 -.066 .171* .045 .105*popular .193** .119* -.004 -.151* .132* .013 .172** .164*message -.070 .088 .184** .124* -.055 .068 .136* -.171*
undergrd .038 -.105 .034 .195* .095 .185* .133* .187*local -.087 .005 .070 .031 .116* .042 .116* .066
rapped -.071 .018 -.023 -.020 -.027 -.089 -.012 -.023wantrap -.030 -.016 .106* .121* .103* .032 .045 .146*danced -.110* -.030 .085 .104* .114* -.014 .037 .013original .063 .030 .005 .020 -.021 .091 .023 -.018poetry .112* .099* .111* .067 .044 -.039 .047 .024
white .141* .108* .105* -.023 -.057 -.055 .102* -.071euro -.096 -.075 .090 -.045 .066 -.068 -.118* -.020black .091 .188** .021 -.050 -.011 -.032 -.070 -.032
african -.053 -.161** -.046 .089* -.005 -.043 .043 .018latino .059 .069 .012 .066 .071 .071 .110* .025asian -.085 -.052 -.083 -.011 .004 .128* .083 .114*api .090 .044 .133* .049 -.025 -.036 .006 -.042
sex -.016 .019 -.063 .018 -.055 -.069 .063 -.086income .013 .049 .060 .040 -.012 .064 -.028 .013
age .039 .119* -.090* -.003 -.088 -.044 .021 -.097*
R2 .002 .092 .012 .211 .101 .008 .004 .013DurbinWatson 2.003 1.984 1.998 2.020 1.930 2.168 2.027 1.869
n 488 493 500 500 500 498 497 489
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Table 5.4
Logistic Regression Analysis for Dependent Variable: volun20
*Coefficients significant at the .05 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)**Coefficients significant at the .001 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)
Independent Variables↓
Beta S.E.
gangster -.183 .120popular -.038 .114message .310* .124
underground
-.065 .116
local .032 .099
rapped .333 .355want to rap -.972* .339
danced .994* .378original .356 .224poetry .499* .303
white -.013 .303euro .316 .525black .211 .252
african .017 .350latino .539 .398asian -.270 .579api -1.303* .540
sex .334 .253income -.059 .050
age -.262 .151
Cox & Snell R Square .108Nagelkerke R Square .146
Hosmer and Lemeshow Test (Significance) .083Classification Table (Predicted Correct) 66.3%
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Table 5.5
Correlation Analysis I (Spearman’s Rho)
gangster popular message undergrd local
rhythm -.239** -.393** -.163** -.082 -.171**
artists -.260** -.218** -.130** -.119** -.190**
lyrics -.095* .072 -.443** -.406** -.242**
style -.253** -.104** -.352** -.358** -.233**
repub18 .010 -.013 -.126** .096* -.059
democ18 -.037 .156** -.043 -.134** .004
indep18 -.011 -.014 .042 .051 -.044
comm18 .012 -.049 .137** .123** .040
social18 .031 -.105* .154** .146** .013
none18 .005 -.083 .020- .086 .060
conser19 -.003 .012 -.131** -.148** -.022
liber19 -.034 .063 .010 -.074 -.033
green19 -.048 -.073 -.011 -.005 -.036
capit19 .077 .077 -.079 -.045 .005
social19 .003 -.118** .056 .093* -.066
none19 .025 .003 .004 .007 .005
polpar20 .019 -.015 .078 .085 .009
cbo20 -.079 -.091* .094* .104* .043
ngo20 -.022 -.036 .080 .065 -.034
lobby20 -.011 -.046 .039 .040 -.009
greek20 .035 .169** .047 -.025 -.012
prof20 -.011 .075 .102* .000 .034
volun20 -.095* -.013 .124** .032 .055
*Coefficients significant at the .05 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)**Coefficients significant at the .001 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)
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Table 5.6
Correlation Analysis II (Spearman’s Rho)
hipcd hipconc hipcloth hipaccess hipbook
income .043 -.048 -.073 -.064 .067age -.061 -.064 -.152** -.121** .000
white -.097* -.027 -.079 -.082 -.112*
euro -.010 -.040 -.015 -.076 -.003
black .046 -.022 .041 .090* .052
african .046 .087* .056 -.017 .057
latino .067 .142** .040 .023 .060
asian .110* .110* .139** -.008 -.045
aip .045 .068 .026 -.043 .007
nativam -.031 -.062 -.055 .038 -.249
gangster .245** .209** .263** .140** .095*
popular .125** .238** .206** .218** -.010
message .243** .263** .098* .074 .197**
undergrd .303** .261** .237** .046 .255**
local .168** .246** .227** .165** .197**
*Coefficients significant at the .05 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)**Coefficients significant at the .001 level of statistical significance (2-tailed)
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CHAPTER VI
Conclusions: Understanding Hip Hop’s Potential and Moving TowardA Collective Movement
Nowadays rap artists, comin’ half heartedCommercial like pop, or underground like black markets
Where were you the day hip hop diedIs it early to mourn is it too late to ride
—Talib Kweli74
Hip hop is like an interdisciplinary academic community, combining the fields of sociology,psychology, political science, English, ethnomusicology, economics, American studies, and AfricanAmerican studies, and offering a choice of electives to its subscribers. The weight of all this is what
makes hip hop something far beyond music, and far greater than the fashion, language, and ideologythat expresses it. Hip hop is an unrivaled social force; it is a way of being. It is a new way of seeing
the world and it is a collective movement that has dethroned civil rights and now commands ourundivided attention.
—Todd Boyd75
Where were you the day hip hop died? Is it too early too mourn or too late to
ride this new wave of popular cultural production. Is the Kanye West moment the
viable option for hip hop to continue to build an informed community of listeners?
Talib Kweli prophesizes the functional and dysfunctional reality of the current state of
hip hop. More than commercializing or being relegated to the underground market, hip
hop is on the one hand producing the ideal citizen to support American capitalistic
markets and on the other hand, building a community of followers, who are in
opposition to this social order. However, those in opposition to the social order often
feel trapped between social action and economic survival. Hip hop is undeniably a
social force as Boyd illustrates in the quote above, but moreover hip hop socializes,
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drawing from both the negative and positive aspects of American society76. George
says, musical movements, at their peak, are certainly indestructible, and then in the
next moment, reduce to nostalgic unnoticed texts played on AM radio (George, 1998,
p. x). Is this what is to become of a once collective musical movement? Or will
divisiveness cause a surge in hip hop collectivity? This study has clearly defined the
division of hip hop and how this divisive character will have future impacts on hip hop
as a movement. What is important to note here is that hip hop has the potential to keep
dividing or to merge several communities of listeners into a collective entity, sharing
similar mentalities, ideological preferences, and possibly the common goal of social
change. “At some overt level, hip hop has always been about the cultural identity of
those who perform the music, and those who constitute its core audience (Boyd, 2003,
p. 18).” Furthermore, hip hop’s power to inform this audience can have both positive
and negative effects. The narratives of hip hop do more than tell stories of urban
impoverished life, these narratives shape identities—form characters that reinforce or
contradict values which underpin these narratives. Hip hop has the power to groom
“perfect” citizens, who live within the boundaries of the American dominant order, or
it can groom individuals to make up a collective to change and reconstitute beneficial
and non-exploitative economic, political, and social landscapes. Boyd (2003) says,
Unlike previous eras when politics and ideology produced culture, hip hopstands at the forefront of contemporary culture for it seems to both reflect andproduce the politics and ideology of its time. The salient issues that inform hiphop are rooted in the function of identity, emphasizing race, class, and genderdistinctions, in contrast to the mainstream (p. 18).
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It is this threatening potential of hip hop, which has caused its appropriation and thus,
its division. A divided movement traveling in opposing directions is weaker than a
collective one, which travels and operates as a unified entity. Hip hop will either
continue to travel two divergent paths, or it will merge this fork in its path to build a
mobilized community of listeners and socially aware activists. Hip hop culture without
a doubt stands at the forefront of contemporary American culture, but more than
producing the politics and ideology of our time, it serves to reinforce or critique
existing politics and ideological controls. By critical analysis, this study connects hip
hop language to the division of the movement. Furthermore, a connection has been
made between hip hop listening and individual political and social engagement. Hip
hop continues to function through the identity and character of its artists and their
influence over their audiences. I hypothesize that individuals’ character will ultimately
determine the fate of the hip hop movement. Individual mentality, ideological
preference, and civic engagement inevitably will constitute or undermine the
movement’s effectiveness.
Future Research
The possibilities for future research following this study are endless. Since this
study has particularly focused on rap music, studies could continue on the cultural
shifts in other elements of hip hop like break dancing or street art (graffiti). These
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studies could question if these elements of hip hop culture have also divisively evolved
or constituted a middle ground between evolving as American popular culture or
reverberating with their origins of social and political critique? Other studies could
build upon hip hop as it relates to culture industry, particularly hip hop as a product of
cultural reproduction or its potential to revolutionize reproduction by its nostalgic
creativity. Chapter 5 serves as grounding for continued research, which examines the
deep-rooted relationship between hip hop listening and individual mentality,
ideological preference, and social and political engagement. Furthermore, the findings
allude to whether hip hop has an influence on collective mentality and action and
moreover whether it has the potential to build or diminish collective awareness, action,
and social change.
Another interesting study, which this research has spawned, is the Eminem
phenomenon and his potential to build a multicultural community of social activists.
Eminem, who operates in both popular and political realms, has the potential to
collectivize various ethnic and cultural communities. Eminem’s combination of
popular beats, lyrics critiquing American society, politics and economics, and his large
following, could be particularly dangerous to the existing economic, political, and
social order. Imagine the potential of combining the followings of Eminem, with the
popular and subjective appeal of Kanye West, and the socially and political awareness
of Talib Kweli. Eminem is definitely a hip hop actor to be reckoned with, if possible,
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given his extreme critiques of White America and his class-centered (verses the typical
race-centered) approach to the divisions of American society.
Other research could investigate the mixing and melding of hip hop with other
musical genres such as rock or reggae and the impact these collaborations have on
audience reach. Furthermore, studies could explore how collaborations help to build a
large scale hip hop movement, which draws support from other musical genres.
What is in Hip Hop’s Future
Hip hop is in the midst of uncertain times and an uncharted future. The current
paths of rap music have resulted from power mechanisms, culture industry
appropriations, as well as a mimicking of dysfunctional American societal structure.
Hip hop’s love/hate relationship with American society continues constantly
reinforcing and critiquing America’s repressive and ideological domination over its
citizenry. This relationship between hip hop and the American social order necessarily
fashions individual identities and furthermore hip hop’s double-character. It is
uncertain whether changing hip hop and its messages will impact society, or whether a
societal restructuring is necessarily in order to change the character of hip hop. A
median between these two is essential, hip hop must conquer its contradictions and
divisiveness and society must reexamine its commitment to challenge complacency
and its current “give back”77 mentality of helping the poor, especially urban
impoverished communities. The root causes of urban problems must be attacked.
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Finding middle ground seems to be a viable solution. Hip hop artists, who operate at
ideological extremes, must find this middle ground, with which to unite an effective
movement working toward social change. The potential of hip hop as a movement
must make differentiations between its emission of nonproductive noise and the noise,
which is necessary to change American society for the better.
This research opens with two quotes: one from John Africa and the other from
Manning Marable. These two quotes embody the choices the hip hop community faces.
John Africa states,
It is past time for all poor people to release themselves from the deceptivestrangulation of society, realize that society has failed you; for an attempt toignore this system of deception now is to deny you, the need to protest thisfailure later. The system has failed you yesterday, failed you today, and hascreated the conditions for failure tomorrow (Abu Jamal, 1997).
The hip hop community must release themselves from the deceptive strangulation of
society. They must realize that powerlessness is never about the powerful; rather it is a
manifestation of accepting this construction of being powerless.78 Political and social
movements of the past have been destabilized because the status quo finds a way to
redirect any movement, which threatens its power. Hip hop has been undermined and
its goals redirected in this way because it originally challenged status quo values and
institutions. The hip hop community must recognize its susceptibility to manipulation
and its cooperation and complicity in the arrangements to reproduce the status quo.
Manning Marable (1997) notes that Frantz Fanon once asserted that each
generation must discover its own destiny and choose to either fulfill that destiny or
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betray it. Only the hip hop generation can determine this movement’s fate. Will hip
hop activism and its lyrics of social and political critique ever counteract its messages
and images which maintain the power of ruling elites and their constructed economic,
political and social order? The hip hop community is at an economic, political, and
social crossroads, where it can choose to fulfill or betray its destiny as an art, which
socially and politically impacts society. The hip hop movement must be unmasked, it
must realize its failures, overcome its obstacles, and landscape a future guided by
communal engagement and political and social change.
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Notes 1 Abu Jamal, Mumia (1997) Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner ofConscience. Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing House.
2 Marable, Manning. (1997). Black Liberation in Conservative America. CambridgeMA: South End Press.
3 George, Nelson. (1998) Hip Hop America. New York, NY: Viking Penguin. p. 154.
4 Rose, Tricia (1994) Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in ContemporaryAmerica. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. p. 100.
5 George (1998) says, “It is also essential to understand that the values that underpin somuch of hip hop—materialism, brand consciousness, gun iconography,antiintellectualism—are very much by-products of a larger American culture. Despitethe ‘dangerous’ edge of so much hip hop culture, all of its most disturbing themes arerooted in this country’s dysfunctional values. Anti-Semitism, racism, violence, andsexism are hardly unique to rap stars but are the most sinister aspects of the nationalcharacter (pg xiii).”
6 “New forms of black musical expression are, in essence, new impulses drawn fromthe environment, blended with the old forms and given a new shape, a new style, and anew meaning…Black music is a manifestation of black culture and it serves acommunication function within tradition. Because rap music exists as a functionalentity within black America, the creation of this new style discloses shifts in values,attitudes and social needs (Berry and Manning-Miller (eds.), 1996, p.266).”
7 Pratt (1990) says, “Music, like any form of art, in its function as an ‘impulse ofopposition’ to existing conventions, generates a rich and complex variety of enclavesof autonomy in the world through creation and maintenance of an alternativepsychological reality which becomes a different kind of public space, a new littleworld within the old (Hein, 1976). If such enclaves of are largely psychological—afeeling—are they any the less real? They are inevitably connected to real socialsituations and organizational forms, serving to engender and reinforce support andmorale. In the end this may be the most important function of music…”
8 “Rap music is fundamentally linked to larger social constructions of black culture asan internal threat to dominant American culture and social order. Rap’s capacity as aform of testimony, as an articulation of young black urban voice of social protest, has aprofound potential as a basis for a language of liberation. Contestation over the
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meaning and significance of rap music and its ability to occupy public space and retainexpressive freedom constitutes a central aspect of contemporary black cultural politics(Perkins, 1996, p. 253),”
9 Kisha Ross (2003) in her Georgetown University Communications, Culture, andTechnology thesis, “Race as a Social Technology: (Re) Constructing Conceptions ofBlackness,” discusses ‘Blackness’ and its various constructions. She also provides adetailed analysis of possible reconstructions of ‘Blackness’, and moreover sociallabels, and social labeling in general.
10 In “Hidden Politics: Discursive and Institutional Policing of Rap Music” Rose says,“The public school system, the police, and the popular media perceive and constructyoung African Americans as a dangerous internal element in urban America; anelement that, if allowed to roam freely, will threaten the social order; an element thatmust be policed. Since rap music is understood as the predominant symbolic voice ofblack urban males, it heightens this sense of threat and reinforces dominant whitemiddle-class objections to urban black youths who do not aspire to (but are hauntedby) white middle-class standards (Perkins, 1996,p. 237).” Rose also asserts that hercentral concern is the institutional and ideological power exercised over rap music, aswell as how rap fans and artists respond to these ideological and institutionalconstraints. “More specifically, I try to untangle the complex relationships between thepolitical economy of rap and the sociologically based crime discourse that frames it(Perkins, 1996,p. 237).”
11 Perkins (1996) says, “Rap music and hip hop culture’s ongoing and bewilderinglove/hate relationship with American society requires a fresh evaluation of the rolestreet culture plays in the continuing evolution of American popular culture ( p.1).”
12 “I Used to Love H.E.R.” on the album Resurrection (1994) by Common Sense.
13 In New York City during the early 70s, the birth of hip hop culture directly resultedfrom a mixing and exchanging of three unique regional cultures: Black American;Afro-Caribbean, and several overlapping Latin-based cultures.
14 In African American Communication: Exploring Identity and Culture, Michael L.Hecht, Ronald L. Jackson III, and Sidney Ribeau note “Instead of conforming, someindividuals and groups would rather sustain their commitment to their own mode ofspeaking or devise new words that morph the language as it is known. McRae (2001)argued that this “hip” style of speaking is highly characteristic of jazz and othermusical forms. It is a way to respond to a linguistically constraining set of rules, which
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at times are counter to the linguistic traditions of African Americans. Both Major(1994) and McRae asserted that musical artists have always introduced new words toaffirm the innovative tendencies of African American cultural interactants and theunique conventions discovered in instrumental sounds, sounds that emulate spokenlanguage. Likewise Dyson (2001) critically assessed the means by which hip-hop andrap music forms reinvent language to express an oppressive socioeconomic conditionin the United States.”
The evolving Black vernaculars were continuously reinvented to invokecreative and innovative ways to express the social situation. These vernaculars werethe dominant form of language used in Black music from slave spirituals, to blues andjazz, to the formation of lyrics in bee bop and rock and roll, and up through modernsoul and hip hop.
15 Lovers of music have a natural connection to the taste for poetry. “Fortunately forthe poets of Africa, they are in a great measure exempted from that neglect andindigence, which in more polished countries commonly attend the votaries of Muses(Southern (ed.), 1983).”
16 “The simultaneity of joy and sorrow may be found there, as heard in a classic bluessuch as Bessie Smith’s version of ‘Empty Bed Blues’ and as expressed theoreticallywith such literary beauty as Albert Murray in Stomping the Blues (Murray, 1982).Bringing it to consciousness requires significant sensitization for the uninitiated who,nonetheless, have felt those elements originally encoded with meaning for as long asblues-influenced American popular music has been heard (Pratt, 1990).”
17 “Traditional West African music was never merely amusement or entertainment; itwas always functional and was a central ingredient of every facet of community life.Always inextricably linked to economic activity, communal interrelationships, andspiritual pursuits, all of which were themselves interrelated, music as an aestheticabstraction from the activities of daily life was unknown to the African ancestors ofslaves in the United States (Bobo, 2001).”
18 Baxandal, Lee and Stefan Morawski (eds.). (1973). Marx & Engels on literature &art. A selection of writings; St. Louis, MO: Telos Press.
19 Elaine Ayensu (2003) brings these connections between rap and drum rhythms ofAfrican tribes to bear in her Georgetown University Communications, Culture, andTechnology thesis, “Communication and Culture in Ghana: Technology’s Influenceand Progress in a New Digital Age.”
141
20 Tricia Rose (1994), in “Hidden Politics: Discursive and Institutional Policing of RapMusic” of Black Noise, cites examples of the policing of rap with specific observationsregarding venue resistance to host rap concerts based on media coverage and otherdiscursive stereotyping of rap concert and rap fans.
21 In Power Without Force: The Political Capacity of Nation-States, Robert W.Jackman (1993) says, “The general point is that the exercise of power does not requirethe overt presence of conflict…My distinction between interests and values should notbe taken as a ringing endorsement of the general idea of false consciousness, as thelatter term is generally used. Instead, I am simply suggesting that values are alwayssituationally defined by conditioning and socializing mechanisms that involve arbitraryboundaries (p. 29).”
22 Cambridge University Online Dictionary (2003). Cambridge Online Dictionary.Retrieved February 20, 2004 from(http//dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=coopt*1+0&dict=A).
23“I Used to Love H.E.R.” on the album Resurrection (1994) by Common Sense.
24 “The process by which the representations found in a culture (in media such astelevision, film, and magazines and in art forms such as advertisements andcommercials) coerce, so to speak, individuals into accepting the ideologies carried bythese forms of representations (Berger, 1995, p. 57).”
25 Tricia Rose (1994), in “Hidden Politics: Discursive and Institutional Policing of RapMusic” of Black Noise, cites examples of the policing of rap with specific observationsregarding venue resistance to host rap concerts based on media coverage and otherdiscursive stereotyping of rap concert and rap fans.
26 Sarah Handel (2003), in her Georgetown University Communications, Culture andTechnology thesis titled, “Sound Salvation: Radio Consolidation and theMarginalization of Political Voices,” discusses how control over the radio industry andconsolidation marginalize political voices, and furthermore political art. MurrayForman (2002) also notes “With major labels servicing the priority requirements of thenation’s mainstream radio outlets, independent labels had a greater difficulty reachingthem and introducing their product for consideration, which further reduced theirmaterial’s exposure to wider markets (p. 131).”
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27 The Parents Music Resource Center was Tipper Gore’s ideological project shefounded in 1984 in order to mount pressure and force the record industry to stickerproducts with ratings for obscenity (George, 1998, p.174).
28 Both Manuel Castells (1997) in The Power of Identity. The Information Age:Economy, Society and Culture - Volume II and Stephen Cornell and DouglassHartman (1998) in Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World, discussrace, identity, and how these construction create “othering”.
29 Autumn Lewis (2003) in her Georgetown University Communications, Culture andTechnology thesis titled, “Media Representations of Rap Music: The Vilification ofHip Hop Culture,” explores the vilification of hip hop in print media, namely the NewYork Times.
30 In Race, Myth, and the News, Christopher Campbell (1995) outlines the problem ofbiased and stereotypical news coverage of Black Americans as well as the underrepresentation of people of color in news rooms.
31 Rose (1994) says, “In a number of ways, rap has followed the patterns of other blackpopular musics, in that at the outset it was heavily rejected by black and white middle-class listeners; the assumption was that it would be a short-lived fad; the mainstreamrecord industry and radio stations rejected it; its marketing was pioneered byindependent entrepreneurs and independent labels; and once a smidgen of commercialviability was established the major labels attempted to dominate production anddistribution. These rap-related patterns were augmented by more general musicindustry consolidation in the late 1970s that provided the music corporations withgreater control over the market. By 1990, virtually all major record chain storedistribution is controlled by six major record companies: CBS, Polygram, Warner,BMG, Capitol-EMI, and MCA (p. 6).”
32 George (1998) says, “There are scores of stories that illustrate hip hop’s essentialmutability. They are literary, cinematic, fashionable, and political in ways that havenothing to do with Black nationalism, for hip hop is the ultimate capitalists tool (p.156).”
33 One impact not discussed in this study is how White youth consumption hasimpacted hip hop culture. In “Blackophilia and Blackophobia: White Youth, theConsumption of Rap Music, and White Supremacy,” Bill Yousman (2003) outlinesome of these important impacts of the increase in white consumption of rap music(International Communications Association).
143
34 “Across the spectrum of hip hop artists, managers and producers a number ofindividuals have achieved considerable financial success, an ascendancy whichautomatically makes them once removed from the world of the streets. Others havedeliberately turned away from violent, antisocial, “thug” image cultivated by some ofthe genre’s most visible icons (Thall, 2002, p.262).”
35 In “Sacrifice” on the album, Phrenology (2002) by The Roots.
36 Boyd, Todd (2003) The New H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign ofHip hop. New York, NY: New York University Press.
37 Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit,” resonated with black communities in the1930s and 1940s because it metaphorically compared black lynchings to the presenceof a strange-type of fruit on trees.
38 In Nina Simone’s “Baltimore,” (1978) she describes the oppressive economic,political, and social conditions of inner-city Baltimore. She sings in the chorus, “OhBaltimore, Ain’t it hard just to live.”
39 The Last Poets were a controversial soul group that used poetry over beats to presentpolitical messages, such as in “Niggaz are Scared of Revolution,” which criticizedpseudo revolutionaries and the assimilation phenomenon of Black Americans.
40 Gil Scott Heron was a revolutionary soul poet of the 1960’s that used the famousword of Huey P. Newton to compose the song, “The Revolution Will Not BeTelevised.”
41Davis, Angela. (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.The Prison Industrial Complex (2000) (CD-ROM) AK PRESS; 1st edition
42In “Rap Music, Black Men, and the Police” by Venise T. Berry and Harold T. BerryLooney Jr. (Berry and Manning-Miller, 1996) excerpts from Looney’s real experienceof an encounter with police is given, but is presented in lyrical form to show how thestyle of rap is similar to exact accounts of experiences with police.
43The term, “White Supremacist Capitalists Patriarchy,” is discussed in great depth inbell hook’s (1995) Killing Rage: Ending Racism.
144
44 Kitwana, Bakari (2002) The Hip hop Generation: The Crisis in African AmericanCulture New York, NY: Basic Civitas Books.
45 Dubois, W.E.B. (1976). Black Reconstruction. Millwood, NY: Kraus InternationalPublications.
46Marable, Manning. (1983). How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Frazier, E. Franklin (1962) Black Bourgeoisie. New York, NY: Collier Books.
47 Davis, Angela. (1981). Women, Race and Class New York, NY: Random House.
48 Race, Myth, and the News (1995) by Christopher Campbell examines the mediaportrayals of Black Americans.
49 Both Nelson George (1998) and Michael Eric Dyson (2002) discuss Sista Souljahand her activism role in hip hop culture.
50 Abu Jamal, Mumia. (1996) Live From Death Row.New York, NY: Avon.(2001) All Things Censored. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
51 Mutulu Shakur Website (2004) Retrieved on April 1, 2004 from(http://www.mutulushakur.com/index.html).
52 Olsen, Jack. (2000). Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of GeronimoPratt. New York, NY: Doubleday.
53 Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander. (2002) Agents of Repression: The FBI's SecretWars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (South EndPress Classics Series, Volume, 7) South End Press; 2nd edition
54 Abu Jamal, Mumia.(1996). Live From Death Row. New York, NY: Avon.
55 Shakur, Assata.(1988) Assata: An Autobiography Assata Shakur. Chicago, IL:Lawrence Hill & Co.
56 Ibid
145
57 Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander. (2002) Agents of Repression: The FbI's SecretWars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (South EndPress Classics Series, Volume, 7) South End Press; 2nd edition
58 Amnesty International (2004) Amnesty International’s World Water ForumRetrieved on February 21, 2004 from (http://web.amnesty.org/pages/ec-water-eng).
59 Raboteau, Albert J. (1980) Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in theAntebellum South. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
60 Gutierrez, Gustavo (1998) A Theology of Liberation. (10th ed.) Maryknoll, NY:Orbis Books.
61 Run DMC released “My Adidas” in 1986, which resonated strongly with urbanyouth. The group never received any acknowledgement or any royalties from theadidas company for starting the hip hop fashion trend of wearing adidas products. RunDMC in this song demonstrate the ultimate corporate profitability of free advertising.
62 Nelly released a song called, “Air Force Ones,” which discusses how he loves hisAir Force One Nike tennis shoes including the ones he had custom-made. This is justanother example of how hip hop artists constantly engage in free advertising.
63 Amnesty International (2004) Amnesty International’s Campaign against ConflictDiamonds. Retrieved on February 21, 2004 from(http://web.amnesty.org/diamonds/index.html) and (http://web.amnesty.org/pages/ec-diamonds-eng).
64 J.I. Simmons and Barry Winograd in their book It’s Happening informed theircolleagues, “The new musicians are the poets are acting also as innovators andpropagandists. As propagandists they still cloak their thoughts behind frequentlymurky lyrics; words that are vague to censors or parents, but ‘in’ with thelisteners…The music has become a chronicle of events and messages, with the latterapproaching the esprit of past eras’ revolutionary ballads. The words are different, andeven though it’s difficult to define antagonists, the force of feeling and craving are alltoo clear (Denisoff, 1985, p. 451).”
65 Higgins (1991) says, “Historically, the world’s philosophical traditions haveadvanced a number of arguments in support of idea that music is linked to ethicalexperience. These arguments tend to fall into one of three categories: (1) music hasphysiological or psychological effects that have benign ethical influence on outlook
146
and behavior; (2) music develops capacities that assist our ethical outlook or our abilityto behave ethically; or (3) music makes revelations that are ethically valuable to us(Higgins, 1991).
66 Black Planet (2003) Black Planet website. Retrieved on October 22, 2003 from(http://www.blackplanet.com).
67 Rap Attack Lives (2003) Rap Attack Lives website. Retrieved on October 22, 2003from (http://www.rapattacklives.com).
68 Brain Raps (2003) Brain Raps website. Retrieved on October 22, 2003 from(http://www.brainraps.com/mb.cqi?bid=brains).
69 Black Young Professionals Public Health Network (2003) Black YoungProfessionals Public Health Network Yahoo Group. Retrieved from([email protected]).
70 One note to make is that Native American was accidentally omitted from the raceand ethnicity question of the survey. The responses from Native Americansparticipants were determined from the “Other” category and recoded to reflect acategory for Native American participants.
71 Jay Z became the first rap artist to ever get a tennis shoe endorsement in 2003, whenhe sign a deal with Reebok to have Jay Z branded tennis shoes.
72 Tharp, Marye C. (2001). Marketing and Consumer Identity in MulticulturalAmerica. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; 1st edition.
73 Tipper Gore, wife of former democratic vice president Al Gore, formed the group,The Parents Music Resource Center in 1984 in order to mount pressure and force therecord industry to sticker products, particularly rap with ratings for obscenity (George,1998, p.174).
74 In “Too Late” on the album Train of Thought by Talib Kweli and DJ High Tech.
75 Boyd, Todd (2003) The New H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign ofHip Hop. New York, NY: New York University Press.
76 George (1998) says, “It is also essential to understand that the values that underpinso much of hip hop—materialism, brand consciousness, gun iconography,
147
antiintellectualism—are very much by-products of the larger American culture.Despite the “dangerous” edge of so much of hip hop culture, all of its most disturbingthemes are rooted in this country’s dysfunctional values. Anti-Semitism, racism,violence, and sexism are hardly unique to rap stars but are the most sinister aspects ofthe national character (p. xiii).”
77 Gutierrez, Gustavo (1998) A Theology of Liberation. (10th ed.) Maryknoll, NY:Orbis Books.
78 Fanon, Frantz. (1986). The Wretched of the Earth. New York, NY: Grove Press.
149
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Statistical Appendix A
Hip Hop and Politics Survey
This is a voluntary survey conducted by a Masters degree candidate in the Communications, Culture,and Technology program at Georgetown University. All survey participants and survey information iscompletely anonymous.
Thank you for participating in the survey. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will advance futureresearch conducted on Hip Hop.
If you are interested in the results of this survey, please send an email to [email protected].
1. Do you listen to Hip Hop?
Yes/No 2. What City, State, and Country did you live in when you first started listening to Hip Hop? 3. Who introduced you to Hip Hop?
4. How often do you listen to each of these types of Hip Hop?(Very Often/Often/Occassionally/Hardly Ever/Never)
Gangster Rap (Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, etc..) Popular Rap (Jay Z, Nelly, Eve, Jadakiss, Ja Rule, etc…) Message/Political Rap (The Roots, Common, Talib Kweli, Nas, Mos Def, Lauryn Hill) Underground Rap (Not played by radio, or other media outlets)Local Rap (Specific to a particular city or area)
5. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements. I like listening to Hip Hop because...(Strongly Agree/Agree/Don't Know/Don't Care/Disagree/Strongly Disagree)
I like the rhythm and music accompanying the artist I like the artist (s) images and/or videosI like the lyrics and messages the artist produces I like the artists lyrical ability—their style of rapping
6. Why do you listen to Hip Hop? 7. How often do you use the following mediums to listen to Hip Hop?
(Very Often/Often/Occassionally/Hardly Ever/Never)
Radio TV (Videos, movies, etc..) Live Performance (Concerts) Compact Disc (CD) Tape Internet
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8. How often do you use the following sources to get information about Hip Hop? (VeryOften/Often/Occassionally/Hardly Ever/Never)
MTV BET VH1 Entertainment News TV Vibe Magazine The Source Internet Sites
9. Other sources you use to get information about Hip Hop, Please Specify.
10. Do you or Have you ever? Mark All that apply.
RappedWanted to be a Rap or Hip Hop artist Wanted to sing on a song with a Hip Hop artist Danced/Appeared in a Hip Hop video Wrote original rap or Hip Hop lyrics Performed Poetry
11. Do you think Hip Hop influences your life?
(Yes/No) 12. Mark the following statements you agree with. Leave those you disagree with or are unsureabout blank. Hip Hop influences my...
Attitudes about governmentAttitudes about politics Attitudes about society Attitudes about your status in society Attitudes about your personal financial situation Attitudes about money and spending (clothes, shoes, jewlrey, etc.) Attitudes about voting Attitudes about race Attitudes about class or social status Attitudes about the opposite sex Attitudes about dating and relationships Other, Please Specify
13. How much money do you spend monthly on...($0-10/$10-20/$20-40/$40-70/70-100/$100-500/ Over $500
Hip Hop CDs, tapes, records, or videos Hip Hop Concerts, Performances, and Night Clubs Hip Hop style Clothing, Shoes (including Hip Hop name brands) Hip Hop accessories (bags, jewelry, etc.) Hip Hop books
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14. What annoys you or needs to be changed about Hip Hop? 15. Do you vote on a local level (mayor, governor, local issues, etc.)
(Yes/No)
16. Do you vote on a national level (president, senate, etc.)?(Yes/No)
17. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?(Strongly Agree/Agree/Don't Know/Don't Care/Disagree/Strongly Disagree)
I vote or will vote because my vote makes a difference. I do not vote or will not vote because my vote does not make a difference. Voting and voting results only affect certain races. Voting and voting results only affect wealthy people. Politics and political activity only affect wealthy people. Government cares about the poor and poverty. Politicians care about the poor and poverty. Government cares about low-income workers. Politicians care about low-income workers.
18. What party do you identify with? Mark all that apply.
RepublicanDemocrat Independent Communist Socialist None Other, Please Specify
19. What political ideology do you identify with? Mark all that apply.
Conservative (Right Wing)Liberal(Left Wing)Green PeaceCapitalism Socialism None Other ideologies or peer groups, Please Specify
20. Mark the type of political or social organizations you are active in?
Political PartyCommunity-Based Organization Non-governmental Organization Lobbyist or Policy Group Greek Organization Professional Organizations Volunteer Groups Activists or Advocacy Groups, Please Specify
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21. What Country, State, and City do you currently live in?
22. What type of area do you live in? Mark all that apply.
UrbanRural Inner CitySuburbOther, Please Specify
23. What is Your Ocupation?
Professional and relatedAcademic Researcher Sales AdministrativeService Industry (Resturaunts, Hotels, Resorts, Hospitality)Self Employed Student (Please Specify Major in Comment box below) Other, Please Specify
24. How old are you?
12 and under13-1718-2526-35 36-4546-60Over 60
25. What is your biological sex?
MaleFemale
26. What is your preferred gender type?
FeminineMasculine
27. Which of the following races or ethnicities do you identify with? Mark all that apply.
White American (White Anglo Saxon)European Black American Caribbean/Virgin Islands AfricanLatin American
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Latino Asian South Asian/South Asian American Asian American/Pacific Islander Other, Please Specify
28. What religious ideology do you identify with? Mark all that apply.
CatholicismBaptist Methodist Evangelism Jehovah WitnessIslamJudaism Hinduism Buddhism Indigenous Religions (Traditional African, Traditional Native American, Traditional Latin,etc…) Non-denominationalAtheist Other, Please Specify
29. What is your relationship status?
Single (looking)Single (not looking)Dating Committed relationshipMarriedMarried with Children, Please specify ages
30. What is your average yearly income?
Under 10,00010,000-19,000 20,000-39,000 40,000-59,000 60,000-79,000 80,000-100,000 Over 100,000 Do not Want to Answer
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Statistical Appendix B
Codebook and Data PreparationSurvey Question Question Type Recoded
VariableVariable
Q1: Do you listen to hip hop? 1-Yes0-No
que
Q4: How Often Do you Listen toeach of these types of hip hop?
1-very often2-often3-occassionally4-hardly5-never
Gangster Rap (Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg,Dr. Dre, etc…)
gangster v10
Popular Rap (Jay Z, Nelly, Eve,Jadakiss, Ja Rule, etc…)
popular v11
Message/Political Rap (The Roots,Common, Talib Kweli, Nas, Mos Def,Lauryn Hill)
message v12
Underground Rap (Not played byradio, or other media outlets)
undergrd v13
Local Rap (Specific to a particular cityor area)
local v14
Q5: Do you agree or disagree withthe following statements? I likelistening to hip hop because…
1-strongly agree2-agree3-don’t care/ don’t know4-disagree5-strongly disagree
I like the rhythm and musicaccompanying the artist.
rhythm v16
I like the artist’s images and/or videos. artists v17I like the lyrics and messages the artistproduces
lyrics v18
I like the artist’s lyrical ability—theirstyle of rapping.
style v19
Q10: Do you or Have you ever?Mark All that Apply
1-have participated0-have not participated
Rapped rapped v38Wanted to be a rap or hip hop artist wantrap v39Wanted to sing on a song with a hiphop artist
wantsing v40
Danced/Appeared in a hip hop video danced v41Wrote original rap or hip hop lyrics original v42Performed Poetry poetry v43Q11: Do you think hip hop influencesyour life?
1-Yes0-No
hhinflue v44
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Q12: Mark the following statementsyou agree with. Leave those youdisagree with or are unsure aboutblank. Hip Hop influences my…
1-hip hop influences2-hip hop does not influence
Attitudes about government gov v47Attitudes about politics politics v48Attitudes about society society v49Attitudes about your status in society status v50Attitudes about your personal financialsituation
finances v51
Attitudes about money and spending(clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc…)
spending v52
Attitudes about voting voting v53Attitudes about race race v54Attitudes about class or social status class v55Attitudes about the opposite sex oppsex v56Attitudes about dating andrelationships
dating v57
Q13: How much money do you spendmonthly on…
1-$ 0-102-$10-203-$20-404-$40-70
5-$70-1006-$100-5007-Over $500
Hip hop CDs, tapes, record, or videos hipcds v60Hip hop concerts, performances andnight clubs
hipconc v61
Hip hop-style clothing, shoes(including hip hop name brands)
hipcloth v62
Hip hop accessories (bags, jewelry,etc…)
hipaccess v63
Hip hop books hipbook v64Q15: Do you vote on a local level(mayor, govenor, local issues,etc…)?
1-Yes0-No
votlocal v66
Q16: Do you vote on national level(president, senate, etc.)?
1-Yes0-No
votnatio v68
Q17: Do you agree or disagree withthe following statements?
1-Strongly Agree2- Agree3-Don’t Know/Don’t Care4-Disagree5-Strongly Disagree
I vote or will vote because my votemakes a difference.
ivote v71
I do not or will not vote because myvote does not make a difference.
novote v72
Voting and voting results only affectcertain races.
voterace v73
Voting and voting results only affectwealthy people.
vwealth v74
Politics and political activity onlyaffects wealthy people.
pwealth v75
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affects wealthy people.Government cares about the poor andpoverty.
govpov v76
Politicians care about the poor andpoverty.
polpov v77
Government cares about low-incomeworkers.
gcarelow v78
Politicians care about low-incomeworkers.
pcarelow v79
Q18: What party do you identifywith? Mark all that apply.
1-Respondent identifies withparty.
Republican repub18 v81Democrat democ18 v82Independent indep18 v83Communist comm18 v84Socialist social18 v85None none18 v86Q19: What political ideology do youidentify with? Mark all that apply.
1-Respondent identifies withideology.
Conservative (Right Wing) conser19 v89Liberal (Left Wing) liber19 v90Green Peace green19 v91Capitalism capit19 v92Socialism social19 v93None none19 v94Q20: Mark the type of political orsocial organizations you are activein?
1-Respondent Participates.
Political Party polpar20 v97Community-Based Organization cbo20 v98Non-governmental Organization ngo20 v99Lobbyist or Policy Group lobby20 v100Greek Organization greek20 v101Professional Organization prof20 v102Volunteer Groups volun20 v103Activists or Advocacy Groups v104Q21: What country and state do youcurrently live in?Country 1-U.S.
0-Outside U.S.country v105
States Abbreviation v106
164
AlabamaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasLouisianaMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMissouriNebraskaNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasUtahVirginiaWashingtonWisconsinWashington, DC
ALAZARCACOCTFLGAILINIAKSLAMDMAMIMNMONENJNYNCOHOKPASCTNTXUTVAWAWIDC
13456791013141516182021222325273032333536384042434446474951
Q23: What is your occupation?
Professional or related professi v115Academic academic v116Researcher research v117Sales sales v118Administrative admin v119Service Industry (Restaurant, Hotels,Resorts, Hospitality)
service v120
Self-Employed selfempl v121Student student v122Q24: How old are you? 0-12 and under
1-13-172-18-25
3-26-354-36-455-46-606-Over 60
age v124
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Q25: What is your biological sex? 1-Male2-Female
sex v125
Q27: Which of the following races orethnicities do you identify with?
1-Identifies with race orethnicity
White American (White Anglo Saxon) white v128European euro v129Black American black v130Caribbean/Virgin Islands carr v131African african v132Latin American latinA v133Latino v134Asian v135South Asian/South Asian American sasian v136Asian American/Pacific Islander api v137Native American nativam v138Q28: What religious ideology do youidentify with? Mark all that apply.
1-Identifies with religiousideology
Catholicism catholic v140Baptist baptist v141Methodist method v142Evangelism evang v143Jehovah Witness jehovah v144Islam islamic v145Judaism judaism v146Hinduism hindu v147Buddhism buddhist v148Indigenous Religions (TraditionalAfrican, Traditional Native, TraditionLatin, etc…)
indigeno v149
Non-denominational Nondenom v150Atheist atheist v151Q30: What is your average yearlyincome?
1-Under 10,0002-10,000-19,0003-20,000-39,0004-40,000-59,0005-60,000-79,0006-80,000-100,0007-Over 100,000
income v155
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Questions DummyVariables
Dummy Variables Contain
Q20 particip polpar20+cbo20+ngo20+lobby20+greek20+prof20+volun20Q15+ Q16 voteover votlocal+votnatioQ12 attitude gov+politics+society+status+finances+spending+voting+race+class+oppsex+datingQ17 gvplcar govpov+polpov+gcarelow+pcarelowQ17 vpwealth vwealth+pwealthQ12 racesoc race+class+society+statusQ12 gvpolvt gov+politics+votingQ12 spenfin spending+financesQ12 dateopsx dating+oppsexQ19 cnsvcap conserv19+capit19
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Data Preparation
This statistical process began with converting the Zoomerang data file into a Microsoft Excel
sheet. While in Excel I made several manual recodes of variables from words into a numeric form. The
Excel sheet of data was then opened in SPSS and converted to a SPSS file. The analysis began with
running frequencies on all of the variables.
Several reliability tests were run on variables from question 12. First, I ran a reliability test on
all of the variables including: gov, politics, society, status, finances, spending, voting, race, class,
oppsex, dating. The Cronbach Alpha value of .8675 showed that the correlations were strong enough to
combine these variables into a scale. The new combined variables were then recoded into the dummy
variable attitude.
A reliability test was also run on the variables votlocal and votnatio from questions 15 and 16.
The Cronbach Alpha value of .7304 showed that a correlation between the two was strong enough to
combine these variables into a scale. The new combined variables were then recoded into the dummy
variable voteover.
Several reliability tests were run on variables from question 17. A reliability test was run on all
the variables including ivote, novote, voterace, vwealth, pwealth, govpov, polpov, gcarelow, and
pcarelow. The Cronbach Alpha value of .5649 showed that these variables could not be combined into a
scale. I then ran additional reliability tests on groups of variables from this question. These four
additional tests included one for ivote, novote, and voterace, which yielded a –1.3235 Cronbach Alpha
value (not high enough to combine variables into a scale); one for ivote and novote, which yielded a
–4.2822 Cronbach Alpha value (not high enough to combine variables into a scale); one for novote and
votrace, which yielded a .5048 Cronbach Alpha value (not high enough to combine variables into a
scale); and one for gcarelow and pcarelow which yielded a .8671 Cronbach Alpha value (high enough to
combine variables into a scale). As a result of running the gcarelow/pcarelow test, a second reliability
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test was run, which in addition to using the gcarelow and pcarelow variables also included the variables
govpov and polpov. The Cronbach Alpha value of .9223 showed that the correlations between the four
variables were strong enough to combine these variables into one scale. These combined variables were
subsequently recoded into the dummy variable, gvpolvt.
A reliability test was run on vwealth and pwealth yielding a .8957 Cronbach Alpha value,
which showed that the correlations were strong enough to combine these variables. These two variables
were recoded as vpwealth. A reliability test was also run on the variables from question 18 including:
repub18, democ18, indep18, comm18, social18 and none18. The Cronbach Alpha value of -.1757
showed that none of these variables had strong enough correlations to combine them into a single scale.
A reliability test was run on the variables from question 19 including: conser19, liber19, green19,
capit19, social19 and none19. The Cronbach Alpha value of -.2049 showed no correlations high enough
to combine these variables into a scale. The last reliability test run was for the variables from question
20 including: polpar20, cbo20, ngo20, lobby20, greek20, prof20 and volun20. The Cronbach Alpha
value of .5430 showed that these variables could not be combined into a scale. A reliability test was also
run on just the variables: cbo20, ngo20, lobby20 and volun20. The Cronbach Alpha value of .5160
showed that these variables also could not be combined into a scale.
Several ordinary least square regression analyses were performed to test what independent and
dependent variables had the strongest and most significant relationships. Originally, I used only one
block of independent variables, which included the listening pattern variables (gangster, popular,
message, undergrd, and local. A regression was run with this block and the dependent variables from
question 10, which include the variables rapped, wantrap, original, poetry, and danced. I also ran
correlations on the first independent variable block and these variables. I determined the variables from
question 10 could be used as a second block of independent variables. I ran a regression with the original
block of independent variables from question 4 and the following variables as the second block: rapped,
wantrap, danced, original, and poetry. Using these two blocks I ran regressions with several dependent
variables including: gvpolvt, spenfin, dateopsx, gvplcar, vpwealth, and voterace. I then added
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demographic information into separate blocks of independent variables. The first block included race
and ethnic identifications and the second block included sex, age, and income. I determined that these
four blocks of independent variables would give the most significant models.
Using the four blocks of independent variables I ran regressions on dependent variables,
including: voterace, ivote, novote, vpwealth, racesoc, gvpolvt, spenfin, dateopsx, and gvplcar. From
these regression analyses, I determined that to create better models I could eliminate some of the race
and ethnic independent variables including: Caribbean/Virgin Islands, Latin American, and South
Asian/South Asian American. I ran the regressions using all of the previously mention variables
excluding these race variables. From these regressions, I determined that the strongest models were run
with the dependent variables: voterace, racesoc, gvpolvt, spenfin, and voteover. Later I realized that it
might be interesting to explore the relationships between the independent variable block and the
dependent variables from question 13, which shows how much is spent on hip CDs (hipcd), concerts
(hipconc), clothing (hipcloth), accessories (hipaccess), and books (hipbook). I ran regressions with these
variables and determined that only hipcd, hipconc, and hipcloth produced usable models.
Logistic regressions were run on some of the party identification, political ideological
preferences, and participation variables from questions 18, 19, and 20. I also ran these linear regressions
for the dependent variables repub18, democ18, indep18, comm18, social18, none18, conser19, liber19,
green19, capit19, social19, none19, polpar20, cbo20, ngo20, lobby20, greek20, prof20, and volun20.
The logistic regression for volun20 was the only dependent variable to give a high enough predicted
percentage correct (62.3 %) to use.
Correlations were run on a number of independent and dependent variables to determine
relationships that existed, but were not strong enough to include as regressions. Correlations were run on
the variables from questions 4 and 5; questions 4 and 18; questions 4 and 19; questions 4 and 20;
question 13 and income; question 13 and age; question 13 and the block of race and ethnicity
independent variables; and questions 4 and 13. Several of these correlations were significant and were
used in predicting results.
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Statistical Appendix C:
Participants’ Location By State
States Abrreviation Code PercentAlabama AL 1 .8Arizona AZ 3 .8
Arkansas AR 4 .2California CA 5 12.0Colorado CO 6 .2
Connecticut CT 7 .2Florida FL 9 2.5Georgia GA 10 7.1Illinois IL 13 3.3Indiana IN 14 1.2
Iowa IA 15 .2Kansas KS 16 .4
Louisiana LA 18 4.3Maryland MD 20 10.8
Massachusetts MA 21 2.2Michigan MI 22 1.8Minnesota MN 23 .6Missouri MO 25 3.1Nebraska NE 27 .8
New Jersey NJ 30 .8New York NY 32 14.1
North Carolina NC 33 2.0Ohio OH 35 .6
Oklahoma OK 36 .4Pennsylvania PA 38 1.6
South Carolina SC 40 .2Tennessee TN 42 2.0
Texas TX 43 2.9Utah UT 44 .2
Virginia VA 46 9.6Washington WA 47 1.6Wisconsin WI 49 .8
Washington,DC
DC 51 10.6
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Participants’ Religious Affiliation
Religious Affiliation PercentCatholicism 22.2Baptist 27.1Methodists 9.4Evangelical 1.3Jehovah Witness 1.3Muslim 3.6Judaic 2.4Hindu .8Buddhist 3.8Traditional Religion(African, Latin, or Native American)
2.1
Nondenominational 24.4Atheist 4