Its bigger than hip-hop

from a recent point-counterpoint article published in The Rearguard:


“I’m just trying to innovate and stimulate minds.” -Common

There is nothing wrong with hip-hop that are solely products of its culture. All aspects considered “wrong” with hip-hop are products of a society that existed well before an M.C. started making up rhymes over the beats of an old record. So why is it so often singled out?

The media often isolates the sometimes misogynistic or violent imagery contained in hip-hop lyrics as a source of the problems that plague America. These stereotypical portrayals of hip-hop are often given by commentators who aren’t experts on the culture A recent example is sportscaster Jason Whitcock who linked hip-hop as a possible source for Michael Vick’s participation in dog-fighting, calling it a culture that is “destructive to young people.” Such critics are often misleading and full of generalizations who largely ignore positive aspects of hip-hop and fail to take into account the entirety of what hip-hop embodies or its positive aspects.

Essence magazine in 2005 started a project called “Take Back the Music,” aimed at cleaning up the negativity towards gender in rap lyrics. Media outlets often fail to take notice of the socio-political consciousness of acts such as Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Common and many others. When superstar Kanye West declared that George Bush “hated black people” in the post-Katrina aftermath, his statement was largely disregarded.

The reality is that socially conscious, progressive mediums of art and entertainment don’t sell. The type of hip-hop that gets the most coverage is often that which also sells the most. Hip-hop artists are producing what we are buying and it would be economic suicide to stop creating a product that earns millions of dollars. We are a culture attracted to violent and sexist images. Accusing hip hop of being the single originator of these images is unfair and naively fails to take into consider the violence and sexism in American pop culture.

Music journalist Orlando Lima recently wrote that; “blaming hip-hop for our societal addiction to drugs and violence is like hypothesizing its Lindsey Lohan's fault every time an athlete gets pulled over for drunk driving.”

Or was it hip-hop that made Lohan drive drunk?

By contextualizing the situation within a framework of popular culture in this country to prove that the finger pointing is biased and unjust. Violence and sexism still does exist within its genre but it’s cause goes beyond the music. It’s bigger than hip-hop.

To better understand the problematic aspects of lyrics in hip-hop, they must also be examined within the framework of black American (youth) culture. And as the good Dr. Michael Eric Dyson points out in his book Know What I Mean?, the metaphysical roots of hip-hop culture lie within the ghetto.

“The ghettos functions as an intellectual organizing principle of expression and the logic of the ghetto – or at least the logic of legitimating the ghetto in rap discourse-depends on understanding the complex and contradictory interests of the people who live there.”

Rappers are storytellers that seek to express a true portrayal of urban life from the point of view of an oppressed and marginalized minority, complete with all the emotionality and controversial iconography that is connected to that experience. The stories of ghetto life in America contain guns, drugs, money and violence. It is disturbing and offensive, but it is all a part of the necessary elements to the “mythopoetics” of a realism that hip-hop lyrics find foundation within.

Hip-hop often recounts tales of success; a theme most Americans obsess over. In these stories, an individual’s hustle, desire, and talent often lead beyond the ghetto to a new life filled with “bling” and an endless supply of materialistic wants. This new life embodies the triumph of the individual who was able to succeed, to ascend up the economic ladder. It is the fulfillment of the American dream without any help from America.

Of course these “success story” and this mythology does not represent the entirety of hip-hop or American black culture. However, these aspects are vital and must be understood before undertaking a critical analysis of hip-hop culture and some of its more offensive lyrics.

here is nothing within these lyrics that is anything new to American culture or other genres of music. Hip-hop is only more explicit about it. As Dyson explains,

“…it ain’t hip-hop that’s teaching the broader culture how to dog a woman; it’s the broader culture’s ways and rules that are keyed in by hop-hop lyricists.”

In an attempt to eradicate sexism and violence from our society, hip-hop isn’t the place to start. Guns and violence are expressions of urban life where hip-hop finds its roots. Music videos of “Cristal” champagne and Porsches are images of success by an individual with all the odds against them. Some may take offense and others might be inspired, but before you start pointing the finger, start looking elsewhere first. The source of all it stems from something larger: What you are buying.