"Keep in mind when brothas start flexing the verbal skillz,
it always reflects what's going on politically, socially,
and economical/y." --Musician Davey D
In recent years, controversy surrounding rap
music has been in the forefront of the American media. From the hype of
the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that shadowed the murders of rappers
Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. to the demonization of modem music in
the wake of school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, it seems that
political and media groups have been quick to place blame on rap for a
seeming trend in youth violence. however, though critics are quick to
point out the violent lyrics of some rappers, they are missing the point
of rap's message. Rap, like other forms of music, cannot be understood
unless it is studied without the frame of its historical and social
context. Today's rap music reflects its origin in the hip-hop culture of
young, urban, working-class African-Americans, its roots in the African
oral tradition, its function as the voice of an otherwise
underrepresented group, and, as its popularity has grown, its
commercialization and appropriation by the music industry.
Hip-hop music is generally considered to have been
pioneered in New York's South Bronx in 1973 by Jamaican-born Kool DJ
Herc. At a Halloween dance party thrown by his younger sister, Herc used
an innovative turntable technique to stretch a song's drum break by
playing the break portion of two identical records consecutively. The
popularity of the extended break lent its name to "breakdancing"--a
style specific to hip-hop culture, which was facilitated by extended
drumbreaks played by DJs at New York dance parties. By the mid-1970s,
New York's hip-hop scene was dominated by seminal turntablists DJ
Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Herc. The rappers of Sugarhill
Gang produced hip-hop's first commercially successful hit, "Rapper's
Delight," in 1979'.
Rap itself--the rhymes spoken over hip-hop
music--began as a commentary on the ability--or "skillz"--of a
particular DJ while that DJ was playing records at a hip-hop event. MCs,
the forerunners of today's rap artists, introduced DJs and their songs
and often recognized the presence of friends in the audience at hip-hop
performances. Their role was carved out by popular African-American
radio disc jockeys in New York during the latel96Os, who introduced
songs and artists with spontaneous rhymes. The innovation of MCs caught
the attention of hip-hop fans. Their rhymes lapped over from the
transition period between the end of one song and the introduction of
the next to the songs themselves. Their commentaries moved solely from a
DJ's skillz to their own personal experiences and stories. The role of
MCs in performances rose steadily, and they began to be recognized as
artists in their own right2.
The local popularity of the rhythmic music served by
DJs at dance parties and clubs, combined with an increase in
"b-boys"--breakdancers--and graffiti artists and the growing importance
of MCs, created a distinctive culture known as hip-hop. For the most
part, hip-hop culture was defined and embraced by young, urban,
working-class African-Americans. Hip-hop music originated from a
combination of traditionally African-American forms of music--including
jazz, soul, gospel, and reggae. It was created by working-class
African-Americans, who, like Herc, took advantage of available
tools--vinyl records and turntables--to invent a new form of music that
both expressed and shaped the culture of black New York City youth in
the 1970s.
While rap's history appears brief its relation to the
African oral tradition, which provides rap with much of its current
social significance, also roots rap in a long-standing history of oral
historians, lyrical fetishism, and political advocacy. At the heart of
the African oral tradition is the West African3 idea of nommo. In
Malian Dogon cosmology, Nommo is the first human, a creation of the
supreme deity, Amma, whose creative power lies in the generative
property of the spoken word4. As a philosophical concept, nommo is the animative ability of words and the delivery of words to act upon objects, giving life. The significance of nommo in the African oral tradition has given power to rappers and rap music within many African-American communities.
Rap's common designation as "CNN for black people" may result from the descendence of rappers from griots, respected African oral historians and praise-singers. Griots were
the keepers and purveyors of knowledge, including tribal history,
family lineage, and news of births, deaths, and wars5. Travelling griots spread
knowledge in an accessible form--the spoken word--to members of tribal
villages. Similarly, in the United States, many rappers create songs
that, through performances and records, spread news of their daily
lives, dreams, and discontents outside of their immediate neighborhoods.
Rappers are viewed as the voice of poor, urban African-American youth,
whose lives are generally dismissed or misrepresented by the mainstream
media. They are the keepers of contemporary African-American
working-class history and concerns.
Additionally, rap's potential for political advocacy
stems from the function of its predecessors, African-American rhyming
games, as forms of resistance to systems of subjugation and slavery.
Rhyming games6 encoded race relations between African-American slaves
and their white masters in a way that allowed them to pass the scrutiny
of suspicious overseers. Additionally, rhyming games allowed slaves to
use their creative intellect to provide inspiration and entertainment.
For example, by characterizing the slave as a rabbit and the master as a
fox, "Bre'r Rabbit tales" disguised stories of slaves outwitting their
masters and escaping plantations behind the facade of a comical
adventure. Hip-hop journalist Davey D connects the African oral
tradition to modern rap: "You see, the slaves were smart and they talked
in metaphors. They would be killed if the slave masters heard them
speaking in unfamiliar tongues. So they did what modern-day rappers
do--they flexed their lyrical skillz."7 Rap has developed as a form of
resistance to the subjugation of working-class African-Americans in
urban centers. Though it may be seen primarily as a form of
entertainment, rap has the powerful potential to address social,
economic, and political issues and act as a unifying voice for its
audience.8
Rap shares its roots with other forms of
traditionally African-American music, such as jazz, blues, and soul. Rap
may also be closely linked to reggae music, a genre that also developed
from the combination of traditional African drumming9 and the music of
the Buropean ruling class by youth of limited economic means within a
system of African economic subjugation. In an ironic circle of
influence, Jamaican reggae was played on African-American radio stations
in New York in the 1960s. DJs used rhymes to introduce reggae songs.
These AM stations could be received in Jamaica, where listeners picked
up on the DJs' rhyming styles, extending them over reggae songs to
create "dub"--another forerunner of rap10. Kool DJ Herc, before
introducing his innovative turntable style, brought his dub style to New
York, but it failed to gain popularity. He concentrated on developing
his DJing skills, which later allowed for the acceptance of MCing and,
eventually, rap.
Corporate America's infatuation with
rap has increased as the genre's political content has withered. Ice
Cube's early songs attacked white racism; Ice-T sang a song about a cop
killer; Public Enemy challenged listeners to "fight the power". But many
newer acts are focused almost entirely on pathologies within the black
community. They rap about shooting other blacks, but almost never about
challenging govemmental authority or encouraging social activism. 14
Though not new themes, many of the aspects of rap
that have been pointed out by politicians as "objectionable"--violence,
misogyny, and homophobia in the lyrics and lifestyles of some
rappers--may be seen as a function of rap's commodification. While
rappers struggle to "keep it real"--a term which reminds those inside
hip-hop to be true to their roots--some admit that many rappers do as
their record labels wish--simply, they write lyrics that se1115. In an
audience which has become increasingly ethnically and economically
diverse' 6, business-minded rappers have been pressured to take on the
limited roles that have proven profitable for young, African-American
male artists--that of the "pimp", the "gansta", and the "playa."
According to African-American musician Michael Franti, "In order to be
real, we don9t all have to be the same. Through the commercialization of
today's music, there is a lot of pressure for young black men to
conform to very specific roles." 17
The commodification of rap has allowed large
paychecks and platinum records to erase the historical, social, and
economic contexts, out of which rap has emerged, from public
consciousness. According to Davey D, "The business of music has
bastardized rap."18 From its roots as resistance against slavery to its
connection to the reggae movement in Jamaica to the appearance of
rappers as modern-day griots, rap has traditionally been the
music of the subjugated African-American working class. While it is
important to celebrate hip-hop culture today as inclusive of vastly
diverse ethnic and economic groups, it is equally important to recognize
and preserve the function that rap has served for its original
community. In order to understand the themes and forms of rap music, it
is important to follow the history of African-Americans from their
beginnings in West Africa, to their enslavement throughout the early
history of the United States, to their struggles against racial
prejudice and segregation after Emancipation, to the continuing battles
against de facto economic segregation and reclamation of cultural identity of many African-Americans today.
If rap music appears to be excessively violent when
compared to country-western or popular rock, it is because rap stems
from a culture that has been seeped in the fight against political,
social, and economic oppression. Despite the theatrics sometimes put on
for major-label albums or MTV videos'9, for many artists, rapping about
guns20 and gang life is a reflection of daily life in racially- and
economically-stratified inner-city ghettos and housing projects.
Violence in rap is not an affective agent that threatens to harm
America's youth; rather, it is the outcry of an already-existing problem
from youth whose woridviews have been shaped by experiencing deep
economic inequalities divided largely along racial lines.
The nihilistic approach to violence and criminal
activity for which rap is often criticized is defended by some artists
as the understandable result of the disparities that face
African-American communities, from which rap originated and remains
rooted. America's most recent census reported that African-American
youth are the most likely group in the nation to live in poor households
and neighborhoods, to be unemployed, to be the victims of homicide or
AIDS, or to spend time in prison at some point in their lifetimes .
According to Cornel West, a professor of Religions and Afro-American
studies at Harvard University, "It's no accident that one would see
various [rap] songs and various lyrics that revolve around death. ,,22
Perhaps some of the popularity of the "thug life" celebrated in the
"gangsta rap" sub-genre23 is the opportunity it may provide for economic
and social power in neighborhoods where hope has been lost. For many
poor, inner-city youth, the gun, which has had a central role in the
lyrics of many gangsta rappers, represents a way to empower oneself 24
and gain respect within continuing cycles of racial and economic
prejudice.
Additionally, some rappers defend the presence of
violence in their lyrics as the manifestation of Anierican history and
culture. Journalist Michael Saunders writes: "[T] he violence and
misogyny and lustful materialism that characterize some rap songs are as
deeply American as the hokey music that rappers appropriate. The fact
is, this country was in love with outlaws and crime and violence long
before hip-hop."25 Specifically, the African-American experience has
been shaped by the legacies of slavery, segregation, and economic and
political subjugation, and has been marked by institutions and incidents
of violence. Rapper Chuck D thinks that much of the violence and
nihilism in rap music is the legacy of the hate that minorities have
faced in the United States: "We [African-Americans] were a product of
what hate produced. We were taught to hate ourselves, so a lot of
[intraracial conflict] is breemed off of ignorance." 26
Further, these rappers claim that it is not only
African-Americans who are gangsters, but rather that American history,
also, has been characterized by conquest, rebellion, and bloodshed.
Rapper Ice Cube points to the hypocrisy of politicians, who use bombing
campaigns to kill on a worldwide level, to blame gangsters for violence
in American culture: "We do things on a small level, but America does it
on a big level. It ain't just us. White people do everything we do."27
Politicians 28 and groups searching for easy
solutions to America's struggle with youth violence have tried to blame
rap music for desensitizing teenagers to the effects of guns, drugs, and
gangs and inciting violent incidents, such as the recent shootings in
Littleton, Colorado. They have attempted to present the "objectionable"
aspects of some songs as a universal aspect of the rap genre. Groups
have attempted to set up musical rating systems, parental advisory
warnings, and outright censorship of albums that contain lyrics or
images that could be harmful for young people 29.
In conclusion, despite the blame placed on rap for
the prominence of violence in American society, hip-hop music is a
symptom of cultural violence, not the cause. In order to understand
hip-hop, it is necessary to look at it as the product of a set of
historical, political, and economic circumstances and to study the role
it has served as voice for those subjugated by systematic political and
economic oppression. If the issue of violence in rap music is to be
effectively addressed, the root of the problem--disparity in resources
and opportunities for urban minorities--must be aggressively dealt with.
Rap music is a form of resistance to the systems of subjugation that
have created class discrepancies in the United States. In order to put
an end to violence, we must focus on alleviating the burden of the
inner-city working class. In order to put an end to the cycle of
nihilism present in the contemporary culture of inner-city minority
youth, we must provide them with the resources and opportunities to view
the future with hope.
Culled from https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/mediarace/socialsignificance.htm
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