However, while the pervasive oppressive conditions of the Bronx were likely to produce another group of disadvantaged youth, he questions whether they would be equally interested, nonetheless willing to put in as much time and energy into making music as Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, and Afrika Bambaataa. He thus concludes that Hip Hop was a result of choice, not fate, and that when individual contributions and artistic preferences are ignored, the genre's origin becomes overly attributed to collective cultural oppression.
Graffiti depicting US rapper 50 Cent. Larry Nager of The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote that 50 Cent has "earned the right to use the trappings of gangsta rap – the macho posturing, the guns, the drugs, the big cars and magnums of champagne. He's not a poseur pretending to be a gangsta; he's the real thing."[212]
Hip hop music artists and advocates have stated that hip hop has been an authentic (true and "real") African-American artistic and cultural form since its emergence in inner-city Bronx neighborhoods in the 1970s. Some music critics, scholars and political commentators[who?] have denied hip hop's authenticity. Advocates who claim hip hop is an authentic music genre state that it is an ongoing response to the violence and discrimination experienced by black people in the United States, from the slavery that existed into the 19th century, to the lynchings of the 20th century and the ongoing racial discrimination faced by blacks.[213][214]
Paul Gilroy and Alexander Weheliye state that unlike disco, jazz, R&B, house music, and other genres that were developed in the African-American community and which were quickly adopted and then increasingly controlled by white music industry executives, hip hop has remained largely controlled by African American artists, producers and executives.[215] In his book, Phonographies, Weheliye describes the political and cultural affiliations that hip hop music enables.[216]
In contrast, Greg Tate states that the market-driven, commodity form of commercial hip hop has uprooted the genre from the celebration of African-American culture and the messages of protest that predominated in its early forms.[217] Tate states that the commodification and commercialization of hip hop culture undermines the dynamism of the genre for African-American communities.
These two dissenting understandings of hip hop's scope and influence frame debates that revolve around hip hop's possession of or lack of authenticity.[218] Anticipating the market arguments of Tate and others, both Gilroy and Weheliye assert that hip hop has always had a different function than Western popular music as a whole, a function that exceeds the constraints of market capitalism.[219]
Weheliye notes, "Popular music, generally in the form of recordings, has and still continues to function as one of the main channels of communication between the different geographical and cultural points in the African diaspora, allowing artists to articulate and perform their diasporic citizenship to international audiences and establish conversations with other diasporic communities."[219] For Paul Gilroy, hip hop proves an outlet of articulation and a sonic space in which African Americans can exert control and influence that they often lack in other sociopolitical and economic domains.[220]
In "Phonographies", Weheyliye explains how new sound technologies used in hip hop encourage "diasporic citizenship" and African-American cultural and political activities.[221] Gilroy states that the "power of [hip hop] music [lies] in developing black struggles by communicating information, organizing consciousness, and testing out or deploying ... individual or collective" forms of African-American cultural and political actions.[220] In the third chapter of The Black Atlantic, "Jewels Brought from Bondage: Black Music and the Politics of Authenticity", Gilroy asserts that these elements influence the production of and the interpretation of black cultural activities. What Gilroy calls the "Black Atlantic" music's rituals and traditions are a more expansive way of thinking about African-American "blackness", a way that moves beyond contemporary debates around essentialist and anti-essentialist arguments. As such, Gilroy states that music has been and remains a central staging ground for debates over the work, responsibility, and future role of black cultural and artistic production.[222]
Old-school hip hop performer DJ Kool Herc, along with traditional hip hop artists Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Caz, originally held views against mainstream rap.[223] However, recent interviews indicate they have changed their ways to a certain extent.[224][original research?] However, rappers like KRS-One still feel a strong disapproval of the rap industry, especially through mainstream media.[225][original research?]
In b-boying, most supporters have begun to slowly involve more industry sponsorship through events on the World BBoy Series and through the UDEF powered by Silverback Open.[226] Other b-boys have begun to accept using the term breakdance, but only if the term b-boying is too difficult to communicate to the general public. Regardless of such, b-boys and b-girls still exist to showing lack of support to jams and events that they feel represent the culture as a sport, form of entertainment and as well through capitalism. Battle Rap as an industry has also been strongly supported by old-school/ golden-era legends such as Herc, Kid Capri and KRS-One.[227][228]
In 2012, hip hop and rap pioneer Chuck D, from the group Public Enemy criticized young hip hop artists from the 2010s, stating that they have taken a music genre with extensive roots in underground music and turned it into commercialized pop music.[229] In particular, seminal figures in the early underground, politically motivated music, such as Ice-T, have criticized current hip hop artists for being more concerned with image than substance.[230] Critics have stated that 2010s hip hop artists are contributing to cultural stereotyping of African-American culture and are poseur gangsters. Critics have also stated that hip hop music promotes drug use and violence.[231][232][233]
Hip hop has been criticized by rock-centric critics who state that hip hop is not a true art form and who state that rock and roll music is more authentic. These critics are advocating a viewpoint called "rockism" which favors music written and performed by the individual artist (as seen in some famous singer-songwriter-led rock bands) and is against 2000s (decade)-era hip hop, which these critics argue give too large a role to record producers and digital sound recording. Hip hop is seen as being too violent and explicit, in comparison with rock. Some contend that the criticisms have racial overtones, as these critics deny that hip hop is an art form and praising rock genres that prominently feature white males.[234]
Hip hop artist Lauryn Hill has been successful as a solo performer and as a member of the Fugees. This photo shows her performing at the Ottawa Bluesfest in 2012.
The hip hop music genre and its subculture has been criticized for its gender bias and its negative impacts on women in African-American culture. Gangsta rap artists such as Eazy-E, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac and Dr. Dre have, primarily in the 1990s, rapped lyrics that portray women as sex toys and inferior to or otherwise dependent upon men.[235] Between 1987 and 1993, over 400 hip hop songs had lyrics that described violence towards women, including rape, sexual violence, assault, and murder.[236] These anti-women lyrics have led some male listeners to make physical threats toward women and they have created negative stereotypes of young urban African-American women.[237]
Hip hop music frequently promotes heterosexism and hegemonic masculinity, as it depicts women as individuals who must rely on men.[236] The portrayal of women in hip hop lyrics and videos tends to be violent, degrading, and highly sexualized.[238] There is a high frequency of songs with lyrics that are demeaning towards women, and depict sexual violence or sexual assault towards women.[238][239] Videos often portray idealized female bodies and depict women as being the object of male pleasure.[240]
The misrepresentation of women, primarily women of color, as objects rather than other human beings and the presence of male dominance in hip hop extends back to the birth of the genre. However, many female hip hop artists have also emerged in shedding light on both their personal issues and the misrepresentations of women in hip hop music and culture. These artists include but are not limited to Queen Latifah, the TLC, and MC Lyte. Despite the success of them and others, female rappers remain proportionally few in the mainstream industry.[241][242]
Very few female artists have been recognized in hip hop, and the most popular, successful and influential artists, record producers, and music executives are males. Women who are in rap groups, such as Lauryn Hill of the Fugees, tend to have less advantages and opportunities than male artists.[243] Moreover, female artists have received significantly less recognition in hip hop. Only one female artist has won Best Rap Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards since the category was added in 1995.[244] In addition, African American female hip hop artists have been recognized even less in the industry.[245] Salt-N-Pepa felt when they were establishing themselves as a successful group, they had to prove doubters wrong, stating that "being women in hip hop at a time when it wasn't that many women, we felt like we had more to prove."[246]
The hip hop, hardcore rap, and trap scenes, alongside their derivative subgenres and subcultures, are most notorious for having continuously celebrated and promoted drug trafficking, gangster lifestyle, and consumption of drugs and alcohol since their inception in the United States during the late 1980s–early 1990s.[247][248][238][249]
As well, the hip hop music community has been criticized with accusations of homophobia and transphobia.[250] Hip hop song lyrics contain offensive, homophobic slurs (most popularly the pejorative term "faggot") and sometimes violent threats towards queer people, such as rapper DMX's "Where the Hood At?", rapper Eazy-E's "Nobody Move", rap group Brand Nubian's "Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down".[251] Many rappers and hip hop artists have advocated homophobia and/or transphobia.[252] These artists include Ja Rule, who in an interview claimed, "We need to go step to MTV and Viacom, and let's talk about all these fucking shows that they have on MTV that is promoting homosexuality, that my kids can't watch this shit,"[253] and rap artist Erick Sermon, who has said publicly, "[Hip hop] will never accept transgender rappers."[254]
Eric Barber Digital MarketingUntil the 2010s, hip hop music has excluded the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This has perpetuated a culture in hip hop that is prejudiced towards queer and trans people, making it a tough culture for queer artists to participate in.[250] Despite this prejudice, some queer/genderqueer rappers and hip hop artists have become successful and popular in the 2010s. One of the more notable members of the LGBT community in hip hop is Frank Ocean, who came out in 2012 and has released critically acclaimed albums and won two Grammy Awards.[255] Other successful queer hip hop/rap artists include female bisexual rapper Azealia Banks,[256] pansexual androgynous rapper and singer Angel Haze,[257] lesbian rapper Siya,[258] gay rapper/singer Kevin Abstract,[259] and genderqueer rapper Mykki Blanco.[260]
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Having its roots in reggae, disco, funk and soul music, hip hop has since expanded worldwide. Its expansion includes events like Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 releasing of Planet Rock, which tried to establish a more global harmony. In the 1980s, the British Slick Rick became the first international hit hip hop artist not native to America.[citation needed] From the 1980s onward, television made hip hop global. From Yo! MTV Raps to Public Enemy's world tour, hip hop spread to Latin America and became a mainstream culture. Hip hop has been cut, mixed and adapted as it the music spreads to new areas.[261][262][unreliable source?]
Early hip hop may have reduced inner-city gang violence by providing an alternative means of expression to physical violence.[263] However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related gangsta rap during the early 1990s, violence, drugs, weapons, and misogyny, were key themes. Socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.[74]
Black female artists such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, and MC Lyte have made great strides since the hip hop industry first began. By producing music and an image that did not cater to the hyper-sexualized stereotypes of black women in hip hop, these women pioneered a revitalized and empowering image of black women in hip hop.[264] Though many hip hop artists have embraced the ideals that effectively disenfranchize black female artists, many others choose to employ forms of resistance that counteract these negative portrayals of women in hip hop and offer a different narrative. These artists seek to expand ways of traditional thinking through different ways of cultural expression. In this effort they hope to elicit a response to female hip hop artists not with a misogynist lens but with one that validates women's struggle.[265]
For women, artists such as Missy Elliott, Lil' Kim, Young M.A. and others are providing mentorship for new female MCs. In addition, there is a vibrant scene outside the mainstream that provides an opportunity for women and their music to flourish.[70]
These notions are, of course, vaguely ridiculous. There was plenty of mediocre hip hop in the ‘90s, and there are plenty of talented rappers making music today. But it must be said, the ‘90s were a time of intensely productive and inventive hip hop output; A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders and Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang were released on the very same day in 1993! This is a rough guide to the decade’s alternative rap, which, to generalise, tended towards jazzy samples, socially activist lyrics, and a generally lighter and more self-deprecating demeanour than gangsta rap, in whose shadow it has often found itself.
These notions are, of course, vaguely ridiculous. There was plenty of mediocre hip hop in the ‘90s, and there are plenty of talented rappers making music today. But it must be said, the ‘90s were a time of intensely productive and inventive hip hop output; A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders and Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang were released on the very same day in 1993! This is a rough guide to the decade’s alternative rap, which, to generalise, tended towards jazzy samples, socially activist lyrics, and a generally lighter and more self-deprecating demeanour than gangsta rap, in whose shadow it has often found itself.
Like many a white boy, ATCQ was my route into hip hop – their jazzy, mellifluous sound made them hard to dislike. Their rap was often socially conscious and activist, taking on issues such as date rape and the use of the N-word in the black community. They were also central members of Native Tongues, a loose, Afrocentric collective which put out upbeat, jazz-influenced hip hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s. As often as not, though, it was simply good music about being young and famous, or indeed about nothing in particular. 'The Chase Part II' sees Phife Dawg and Q-Tip engaging in playful bragging with effortless chemistry over a laid-back sample lifted from an obscure Steve Arrington track.
This song is held together by one of my favourite samples in hip hop history, a beautifully sad saxophone lick taken from 'Today' by Tom Scott and the California Dreamers. (Incidentally, the California Dreamers were also sampled, this time alongside Gábor Szabó, in People Under the Stairs’ excellent 'San Francisco Nights'.) 'They Reminisce Over You' was written following the death of the artists’ friend Trouble T Roy in a freak accident at a concert in 1990. C.L. Smooth uses the track to pay tribute to his friend and reminisce more generally about his childhood. While he notes the challenges he and his family faced – an absent father, an alcoholic grandfather, a teenage mother – there’s no anger either at these or the loss of his friend, only a fuzzy nostalgia and wistfulness which proves remarkably moving.
Digable Planets may not be the best known of hip hop acts, but their music is emblematic of the fusion of jazz and hip hop that artists such as Gang Starr and ATCQ had been experimenting with since the late ‘80s. Their extremely laid-back style, however, belies their radical political message – their music is full of references to Marx, the Black Panthers and the Five Percent Nation. They released two LPs, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) in 1993, and Blowout Comb the following year, the title of the former being a reference to Jose Luis Borges’ A New Refutation of Time, giving an indication of their bohemian and intellectual proclivities. This seven-minute track, which concludes Blowout Comb, sees them at perhaps their smoothest.
The title track from 93 ‘Til Infinity (no prizes for this one’s year of release), though superb, sadly tends to overshadow the other gems in this exceptional album, including this one. Lyrically and in terms of rhyme complexity, Souls of Mischief were far ahead of most of their early ‘90s competitors. Like many other alternative rap acts, they drew much of their musical inspiration from jazz – this song features a wonderful solo from trumpeter Bill Ortiz, who claims he was brought in to replace a sample which was too expensive for the East Oakland group to clear. Sadly, I haven’t managed to track down the original song (please let me know if you do!). Despite their affinity with Native Tongues-aligned groups such as The Pharcyde, their sound has something more of a menacing edge, without entering into theatrical braggadocio territory.
De La Soul’s 1989 debut 3 Feet High and Rising catapulted them to a stardom that they never quite suited due to their sheer eccentricity – for instance, one of the group’s two main rappers goes by Trugoy, an anagram of yogurt, apparently one of his favourite
foods. Initially all peace signs and Afrocentricity, they largely ditched their hippy image following their debut album and were capable of more serious and darker work such as Stakes Is High, released in 1996. They never lost their playful side, however, or the weirdness of their stream-of-consciousness rapping. Producer Prince Paul’s sample of Michael Jackson’s 'I Can’t Help It' gives this song an infectiously bouncy feel.
Alternative hip hop in the ‘90s was dominated by the East Coast, though acts like Blackalicious and the aforementioned Souls of Mischief gave it a Californian presence. Common (formerly Common Sense) put Chicago on the map. His sophomore album, Resurrection (1994), also includes 'I Used to Love H.E.R.', a broadside against gangsta rap which led to a dispute with Ice Cube, culminating in the diss track 'Westside Slaughterhouse', and Common’s response 'The Bitch In Yoo' – neither of which covered their writers in glory. Aside from this feud, however, Common’s musical talent is exceptional. Here, he raps over a sample of Ahmad Jamal’s terrific cover of 'Dolphin Dance'. His confident, intricate flow speaks to a youthful optimism and swagger which, in fairness, was well earned – not many could write an album this good, especially at the tender age of 22.
Representing Philadelphia, also the home of The Roots, rapper Bahamadia got her break in the early ‘90s when she came to the attention of Gang Starr’s Guru. Her debut LP Kollage arrived in 1996, and though it failed to achieve huge commercial success, was a critically acclaimed and greatly respected effort. Her flow is supremely smooth, at times vaguely reminiscent of Nas’ associate AZ, and is well-matched by the selection of jazzy samples, handled largely by Gang Starr and The Beatminerz. Other standout tracks from this album are '3 Tha Hard Way' and the dreamy 'Spontaneity'.
Mos Def was one of the leading figures of the late ‘90s resurgence of conscious hip hop, alongside the likes of Common, The Roots, Erykah Badu and Talib Kweli, with whom Mos wrote the excellent Black Star album. It’s hard to say which is better out of this album and his first solo work, Black On Both Sides (1999). Perhaps the strongest track on either LP, however, is 'Mathematics', an astonishingly forceful and wide-ranging denunciation of American racial capitalism, spanning from the crack epidemic to mass incarceration and the surveillance state. Much of what he raps about remains just as relevant today as it was at the turn of the century. This really is one of the most lyrically rich songs written, and it bears repeated listening. A brilliant song from a brilliant rapper.
