Track 03. "Hip Hop America"
When looking at popular music today, it is quite logical to expect hip-hop (or hip-hop influenced R&B) to get massive airplay on the radio, MTV, and in cd players around the country (and world). In fact, a recent look at Billboard’s Top 50 shows that 33 of the top 50 (and nine of the top 10) songs in the United States are of the hip-hop variety. This is a long way from the beginning of the musical movement, which is chronicled in Nelson George’s Hip Hop America. Hip-Hop, George depicts, is, “the story of a society-altering collision between black youth culture and mass media, a story that touches on the themes of drugs, fashion, incarceration, basketball, entrepreneurship, technology, and language,” (back cover). Hip-hop as an art form rose to prominence in the 70s, and, as is apparent in Hip Hop America, has changed, grown, and revolutionized over the past three decades.
George depicts the birth of hip-hop from the ashes of soul and disco—and the ashes of the civil rights movement. He claims, “Hip hop is, as we’ll see, the spawn of many things. But, most profoundly, it is a product of schizophrenic, post-civil rights movement America,” (xiv). To believe that the civil rights movement was a monolithic, short-term event is to undermine the very efforts that George often praises throughout his work. Of course, it must be noted that his main purpose in Hip Hop America, is not to describe hip-hop as a force of civil rights (though he does discuss this, without overemphasizing the point) but instead its emergence as a cultural force. This did not seem likely in the 70s, where hip-hop was thought to be a fad, much as the shrinking disco market was. But hip-hoppers were not finding a replacement for disco, but they were expressing themselves in new ways. After all, “[t]he phase of the civil rights movement led by Dr. King, with its philosophy of nonviolence, its marchers in starched white shirts and narrow ties, was already literally long dead. The succeeding phase of angry, burn-baby-burn rhetoric was itself receding…” (1). In the wake of this shift, hip-hop culture—break dancing, graffiti, and music (both rapping and DJing)—emerged, “as a way of announcing one’s existence to the world,” (14).
The interesting difference between hip-hop and its predecessors is its ability to evolve. Asking the atypical hip-hop fan today (quite possibly of the White, suburban variety) was hip-hop includes, would probably omit break dancing, graffiti, and DJing, by-and-large, from the discussion, but in their place, they may describe fashion or film. Over the past 30 years, hip-hop has evolved from this tagging, break dancing, scratching culture to one that has focused on rapping. Of course, some (perhaps most) would say that this is not an evolution, but perhaps a deterioration—one where focus has been taken off of MC skills, and placed upon the beat or production of the song. This describes the ascension to the top of the charts by acts like Lil Jon—MCs whose prose does not include rhyme, but instead focuses on a danceable beat. This is not to say however that hip-hop has evolved to a state of lyric-less dance tune, but it has not remained static. From 1979’s “Rapper’s Paradise” by the Sugar Hill Gang to 1988’s “Colors” by Ice-T, to Jay-Z’s “Blue Magic” in 2007, hip-hop has consistently evolved over time and landscape (the sectionalizing of America from west-coast to east-coast to southern rap). Perhaps this is why hip-hop has had a continued fan-base for the past thirty years—a time frame much bigger than a passing fad. Though starting in New York City, hip-hop has expanded greatly over the past three decades. Absolutely, the hub of the culture is the same place that birthed it—NYC, but the music has not solely remained there. In the late 80s and early 90s acts like Ice-T and N.W.A. emerged on the hip-hop landscape from the west coast, followed by solo albums by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, not to mention Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg, to prove that hip-hop was not strictly a New York movement.
It is quite obvious that hip-hop has evolved and has become a staple of popular culture, but it may be premature to make any sweeping generalization about the overall impact of and direction of hip-hop today. There is no question, that one can look back to the 80s and 90s and see the impact on the national scene. From the “gansta rap” scene, came an outcry of obscenity from a large number of citizens. They articulated a question that linked hip-hop, and all its shortcomings to the Black Freedom Struggle by asking “Had Dr. King given his life so that young men could grab their privates and call women bitches?” (188). There seems to be a sense of disappointment in the leaders of the musical movement by those outside of the hip-hop community because of the lack of political commentary in the music. Perhaps it is out of this frustration that George acknowledges that, “[h]ip hop has actually had surprisingly little concrete long-term impact on African-American politics,” (154). It is hard to blame all hip-hoppers for this lack of a political voice, however. The fact is, there have been politically minded individuals on the microphone, but perhaps their voices were drowned out by the sheer volume of rappers. Chuck D, for instance, set a goal of spawning thousands of Black leaders. Presently, “conscious rap” stars like Common or Talib Kweli also use their stardom to raise political awareness. However, the large majority of rappers do not focus on political activity, which may be due to the fact that “MCs are not social activists by training or inclination,” (154-155). There is a standard of excellence here that seems not to exist in any other genre. It seems illogical to ask a rapper to influence politics—and then be disappointed when they do not—based solely on their profession. However, that seems to be the case, even after Sean (P. Diddy) Combs spearheads the “Vote or Die” campaign. Regardless, MCs cannot be held to a standard that they do not intend to (or are prepared to) fulfill.
This desire for MCs to plug into the political and historical landscape of America may be too much to ask, but that does not mean that current MCs do not look back. In fact, when looking at hip-hop, a reflection to past hits is a staple of the music. Since the 80s, hip-hop has employed the art of sampling—that is, taking snippets of old hits and using them in current songs. The practice has been both criticized and applauded—leading to one important question that George asks: “Is or isn’t sampling an extension of African-American tradition?” (96). George then goes on to answer it by saying “If creating new notes, new chords, and harmonies is what the African-American musical tradition is about, then sampling is not doing that. However, if that tradition means embracing new sounds, bending found technology to a creator’s will in search of new forms of rhythm made to inspire and please listeners, well then sampling is as black as the blues. Sampling has changed the way a generation hears,” (96). Sampling is also an interesting aspect of hip-hop’s perceived place in the music continuum. Hip-hop, as discussed before, was not birthed in a vacuum with no sense of historical context, but instead was created in an era and by a people with a story to tell. Perhaps this same logic is why many listeners lament at the fact that MCs are not as politically or socially minded—there is a historically contextualized story to tell, and sampling—and hip-hop in general have the potential to tell it.
Not everything in Hip Hop America is without flaws, however. In fact, there are two main flaws with it, which make it difficult to take entirely serious. First, because it was written 10 years ago, the timeliness of George’s work is not very accurate. He makes predictions about the music that, since its publication, never did come true, like this: “Many feel [D’Angelo]… is the future of black music,” (211). Obviously hindsight is 20-20, but errors in judgment like this cause the book as a whole to lose some amount of credibility, which would not be there in the first place if this book had been written later (which, of course, is no fault of George). The second flaw of the book is its first-person narrative that, from a historical aspect, lacks importance. There are books that greatly benefit from a first-person style, like Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, for example. George however, takes the first person structure, and uses it to explain his own place in hip-hop culture, or what he thinks about certain groups. Though this form of storytelling can make the work more personal (and enjoyable), from a historical standpoint, it dilutes the main purpose of Hip Hop America: history. With this in mind however, one can take an unintended parallel with Chuck D’s comment that hip-hop is “black CNN,” (187). One hang-up about CNN—or any news channel for that matter—is the fact that coverage is not comprehensive, but rather it pick-and-chooses bits and pieces of the news landscape. The same can be true for Hip Hop America: it is not an all-inclusive look into hip-hop’s music and culture, but instead it is a slice of many aspects (people, locale, time, etc.) within the movement.
All this being said, however, George’s work is one that shows the impact of hip-hop on an international stage. When looking at a fashion magazine or listening to a popular radio station or turning on a television, it becomes quite obvious of hip-hop’s marketability. Though the long-standing impact of hip-hop still has not been determined, it is quite easy to come to the conclusion that it is not a passing fad. Unlike disco, which sparked the hip-hop revolution, it has adapted to the time and geography that it inhabited. Perhaps George said it best when he said, “The truth is that hip hop—in its many guises—has reflected (and internationalized) our society’s woes so evocatively that it has grown from minority expression to mainstream appreciation. Our nation’s clothes, our language, our standards for entertainment, our sexuality, and our role models are just a few items that have been affected by hip hop’s existence,” (211). Though we do not know how long hip-hop will remain, it is evident that hip-hop has had a unique, tangible impact on the world it surrounds.
Works Cited
George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. New York, NY: The Penguin Group, 1998.
