Another essay I wrote, which I am quite proud of. Thought comrades might be interested.

The question of hip-hop and violent lyrics is a complex one. The trap of thinking of hip-hop as some monolithic entity is easy to fall into when discussing race, violence and hip-hop. I believe Ogbar is correct when he states that the mid-90’s cultural critics such as Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett, Robert Bork, etc “concern for the plight of poor, inner-city, Black youth is questionable” and that these culture critics are attacking the American black youth’s “ability to critique, analyze and provide commentary on society” (181). Many of these critics are well-entrenched ideologues of the white power structure, such as William Bennett, the “drug czar” under the first Bush administration, who was responsible for locking up millions of working-class blacks in prison for having poverty-induced drug problems. Rush Limbaugh is a notorious racist, saying comments like “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?” and glorifying slavery as having “built the South”. (Gane-McCalla 2008)

It is interesting to analyse some of these statements made by such “culture critics”, many of which are shocking in their racist overtones. Supreme Court nominee and proud member of the white establishment Robert Bork’s concerns are especially revealing, with his definition of “hip-hop” as being merely savage “sub-pidgin grunts and snarls”, “noise with a beat” and “capable of expressing only the more pointless forms of violence and the more brutal forms of sex” (Ogbar, 166-167). This highly generalized description of hip-hop, black America’s main form of musical expression, sounds like something that would have come straight out of the mouth of a 19th century white colonialist. His classism and racism is exposed with his denigration of rap’s language as being “sub-pidgin”, as if there is something “primitive” about the dialect in rap music, which coincidentally is also the dialect spoken by working-class African Americans in general. His statement saying of what hip-hop is only capable of expressing is rooted in essentialist thinking, the idea that something has inherent characteristics. Bork is extending the idea of blacks having inherent violent and sexist characteristics to hip-hop, black America’s main musical art form, as being inherently violent and sexist, rather than only being the dominant trend within an incredibly diverse and often times contradictory genre of music. It is difficult to see Bork taking a similar stand during the culture wars of the 1980’s, with the PMRC. Despite the establishment’s criticisms of “porn rock”, it was never suggested that was representative of the entire rock genre.

However, another danger is for ivory-tower academics (such as Ogbar) to simplify the debate as well, by completely dismissing anything progressive put forward in gangsta rap as merely a “conspicuously conflictive bundle of messages and imagery” (Ogbar, 179), despite the fact many of the more “middle-class-orientated, kente-cloth wearing” (Baldwin 2001, 165) Afrocentric artists these people uphold can often be just as guilty of promoting reactionary ideas. The examples Ogbar uses in his article of both the degeneration in gangsta rap and the moral superiority of “conscious hip-hop” are exercises in selective sampling, as two of the artists he praises in particular, Brand Nubian and Public Enemy have caused massive amounts of controversy for homophobic, sexist and anti-semitic rhetoric. Such as in Brand Nubian’s hit 1992 single “Punks Jump Up to Get the Beat Down”:
“Though I can freak, fly, flow, fuck up a faggot.
Don’t understand their ways I ain’t down with gays”
Or Public Enemy’s homophobic lyrics in tracks such as “Meet The G That Killed Me”, in which they blame gays for causing the AIDS epidemic:
“Man to man
I don’t know if they can
From what I know
The parts don’t fit
(Ahh shit)”
Ogbar also doesn’t mention their promotion of anti-Semitic black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan in tracks such as “Bring the Noise”, or when member Professor Griff in an interview with Washington Times declares that Jews are responsible for “the majority of wickedness that goes on across the globe” (Pareles 1989). In contrast, the album in which Nas embraced the Mafioso aesthetic which Ogbar uses as an example of the degeneration of hip-hop, “It Was Written” (1996), has been praised by music critics for how it “concentrates on creating vignettes about life in the ghetto that never are apolitical or ambivalent” (Stanley 1996). One song “I Gave You Power”, addresses the subject of black crime in an innovative and incredibly emotional striking way, by rapping the song from the point of view of a gun, here are some particularly relevant excerpts of the song:
“How you like me now? I go blaow
It’s that shit that moves crowds makin’ every ghetto foul
I might have took your first child
Scarred your life, crippled your style
I gave you power
I made you buck wild”
“I see niggaz bleedin’ runnin’ from me in fear, stunningly tears
fall down the eyes of these so-called tough guys, for years
I’ve been used in robberies, givin’ niggaz heart to follow me
Placin peoples in graves, funerals made cause I was sprayed”
“My creation was for blacks to kill blacks”
The ideological impurities of Ogbar’s favored rap artists are overlooked because of their embrace of an “Afrocentric” identity politics aesthetic rather than a “Ghettocentric” working-class gangsta one. Ogbar is guilty of treating hip-hop as a monolith in a different way. He presents, as Professor Davarian L. Baldwin (2001:161-162) describes it, a utopian “decline-and-fall narrative that understands hip-hop to be over-commodified and calls for a return to the roots of street parties and the ‘yes yes y’all’ freestyle rhyme, which exemplifies a pre-commodified, undiluted era”. The problem with such a narrative, as Baldwin continues: ”[It] doesn’t question whether hip-hop was ever purely outside the circuits of commodification or consistently and totally oppositional. Rather, it assumes the location of the South Bronx and the rhyming of KRS-One as correctives to contemporary hip hop”. Like the “cultural critics”, who are mostly powerful members of the white establishment, Ogbar cannot escape his own class prejudices when dealing with gangsta rap. His critiques of Ice Cube are valid, but shouldn’t someone who thinks that the black youth’s “ability to critique, analyze and provide commentary on society”, defend these rap artists from attack for challenging dominant cultural discourses? Ogbar dismisses 2Pac’s rather powerful criticisms of establishment “cultural critics” by claiming, without any further explanation of why that is the case, that “others have given a more compelling political analysis of gangsta rap critics” (1999:179). Well, who is listening to those people? Mainstream rap artists such as 2Pac, Ice Cube, etc., listened to by millions of people, are raising uncomfortable questions about the capitalist status quo. When 2Pac made a press statement criticizing the racist power structure, it would reach the ears of millions of people. When Ras Kass makes a record about “[imbuing] hip-hop with higher levels of consciousness and creative dexterity” (Ogbar, 1999:177), while he is certainly a high-quality rapper, what impact does it make beyond it’s popularity in an increasingly limited niche market?

As leftist historian Kelley states (1994:212, quoted in Baldwin 2001:165) “L.A. gangsta rappers are frequent critics of black nationalists. They contend that the nationalist focus on Africa – Both past and present – obscures the daily battles poor black folk have to wage every day”. A big part of gangsta rap’s attempts at forging an identity was in its opposition to this perceived self-indulgent style of rap, not too dissimilar to the conflict between 90’s grunge and 80’s glam rock. As Dr. Dre states in “Let Me Ride” off his debut album “The Chronic”, one of the most influential albums in the gangsta rap canon:
“No medallions, dreadlocks, or black fists it’s just
that gangsta glare, with gangsta raps
that gangsta shit, that makes the gang of snaps”
Gangsta rap originated as an attempt to inject a more black proletarian aesthetic to hip-hop. Martinez believes that gangsta rap is a means of “oppositional culture” to the white status quo “dominant culture”, “bringing to light long perceived problems in our nation’s inner cities, and effectively heralding the 1992 Los Angeles riots that shocked a nation and a globe” (1997:266-268).

Sociologist David Cross (1993:53, quoted in Martinez 1997:274) asserts that 1988, the year that L.A. gangsta rap first started, was the reawakening of “the sleeping giant of minority resistance in the U.S”. For Martinez, 80’s gangsta rap served as “popular cultural messengers of urban neglect” (1997:274).

Under this more nuanced theoretical framework, rap follows in a tradition of black popular music of existing in a “contradictory and tense space” (Martinez, 1997:273). This is exemplified by the observations of Tricia Rose, where she notes that while she tires of male bravado bragging tales of “sexual domination” and “stock responses” to charges of misogyny by “cowardly rappers”, speculates that “perhaps these stories serve to protect young men from the reality of female rejection; maybe and more likely, tales of sexual domination falsely relieve their lack of self-worth and limited access to economic and social markers for heterosexual masculine power” and finds charges of sexism against hip-hop by “cultural critics” worrying, as their tone assumes rappers have “infected a sexism-free society”. (1994:15)

A great example of this progressive/regressive duality is the early 90’s West Coast gangsta rap group “Above the Law”, a group closely connected with N.W.A. For their entire music careers, Above the Law skirted the edge between misogyny and political consciousness. Their first album was titled “Livin’ Like Hustlers” and has all the usual tales of dominating women, robbing people, etc, but features quite a few political songs, like “Freedom of Speech”, in which they relate their own censorship as gangsta rap artists to a much wider criticism of society:
“But the radio stations, you see, they still gonna fear it
Yo, I thought this country was based upon freedom of speech
Freedom of press, freedom of your own religion
To make your own decision, now that’s baloney
Cause if I gotta play by your rules, I’m bein phoney
Yo, I got to cater to this person or that person
I got to rhyme for the white or the black person?
Why can’t it all be equal?
Music is a universal language for all people”
They could also often fuse their gangsta image with political messages, such as at the beginning of “Menace To Society”:
“Today in South Central violence is an all-time high
Due to the terrorist group ATL
You might label them as being a menace to society…
…
Now it’s a well-known factor why I can’t be caught
Now see the law’s got a problem, and they gotta be taught”
In this, they satirize the blame of gangsta rap on violence in black communities, by stating violence in South Central is increasing, due to “the terrorist group ATL”. The first line then opens with a brag about how “he can’t be caught” for his crimes, but then relates it to how the legal system has a problem and “has got to be taught”. By 1994, the politics and the gangsta had been completely merged for the group, where they named their album “Uncle Sam’s Curse”. Often having introductory samples demonstrating white oppression, such as in cop films about where they want to “clean [the] clocks” of various “Black Muslims, Panthers… average anti-socials” in “Black Superman”, or a Ku Klux Klan folk song about “Communists, niggers and Jews” and wanting “beautiful babies, not ones with brown faces” in the title track “Uncle Sam’s Curse”. In the latter song, they link many of the social problems people in the ghetto face to the US power structure and historical oppression (“Uncle Sam’s Curse”), citing them like a list:
“When you’re ballin’ in the neighborhood
And you have to fade your strap, cause it’s like that
That’s Uncle Sam’s Curse

If you’re workin’ from nine to five on the old plantation
In this U.S. nation, that’s Uncle Sam’s Curse

And if you’re prayin’ on a fool to jack
And you don’t care about the colour
Even if he’s black, that’s Uncle Sam’s Curse

If the mailman’s late with your Government cheque
And they cut it, the motherfuckers, that’s Uncle Sam’s Curse

And if you’re walkin’ in the mall and you’re wearin’ blue
And there’s a nigga wearin’ red starin’ at you
That’s Uncle Sam’s Curse”
That does not mean their misogyny in other parts of the album are at all acceptable, but does should these progressive lyrics be written off purely because of those attitudes? These songs served as powerful messengers to both the ghetto and the rest of the world, injecting both consciousness of what black society was like and in many cases, why that was.

Critics such as Ogbar fail to account for gangsta rap as an oppositional culture against white hegemony, and fall into the trap of generalizing and dismissing that specific subgenre, which inserted the downtrodden black underclass voice into mainstream cultural consciousness, as much as “cultural critics” generalize and dismiss the entire genre. A more nuanced approach needs to be taken, of looking at the socio-economic causes behind regressive attitudes and recognizing the invaluable anti-establishment ethos gangsta rap injects into mainstream consciousness.

Bibliography

Above the Law. Freedom of Speech, Menace to Society. Livin’ Like Hustlers. Ruthless Records. 1990. USA. Compact disc.
Above the Law. Uncle Sam’s Curse. Uncle Sam’s Curse. Ruthless Records. 1994. USA. Compact disc.
Baldwin, Davarian L. “Black Empires, White Desires: The Spatial Politics of Identity in an Age of Hip-Hop.” In That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, by Mark Anthony Neal Murray Forman. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Brand Nubian. Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down. In God We Trust. Elektra Records. 1993. USA. Compact disc.
Dr. Dre. Let Me Ride. The Chronic. Death Row/Interscope. 1992. USA. Compact disc.
Gane-McCalla, Casey. Top 10 Racist Limbaugh Quotes. News One [Website]. October 20, 2008. Accessed October 4, 2009 at: http://newsone.com/obama/top-10-racist-limbaugh-quotes/
Martinez, Theresa A. “Popular Culture as Oppositional Culture: Rap as Resistance.” Sociological Perspectives 40, no. 2 (1997): 265-286.
Nas. I Gave You Power. It Was Written. Columbia Records. 1996. USA. Compact disc.
Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. “Slouching Toward Bork: The Culture Wars and Self-Criticism in Hip-Hop Music.” Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 2 (November 1999): 164-183.
Pareles, Jon. Public Enemy Rap Group Reorganizes After Anti-Semitic Comments. New York Times [Website]. August 11, 1989. Accessed October 20, 2009 at: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/11/ar...-comments.html
Public Enemy. Bring the Noise. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Def Jam/Columbia/CBS Records. 1988. USA. Compact disc.
Public Enemy. Meet the G That Killed Me. Fear of a Black Planet. Def Jam/Columbia Records. 1990. USA. Compact disc.
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
Stanley, Leo. It Was Written > Review. AllMusic [Website]. 1996. Accessed October 20, 2009 at: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3zftxqyhldfe~T1