All this talk about and focus on the commercial aspects of hip-hop culture drove me into writing an essay on the topic of how hip-hop culture can be used as a tool for (positive) change both on an individual and group level. The thing is that there today exists quite a lot of academic literature on hip-hop culture (mainly with an American focus but still) that focuses on almost all kinds of aspects of the cultural movement (after the realization last week that hip-hop no longer is a youth culture mainly because the people who grew up with it are now middle-aged people I refuse to call it a youth culture anymore) and the more and more I take part of it I realize how most of them tend to claim the same thing – how it is an almost expected result of the racial tensions within the American society. This keeps making me wonder in what terms future hip-hop scholars, with a different geographical outset, will view and discuss hip-hop. That is where I see the future of hip-hop academia.
As for the actual commercial hip-hop, I don’t really know what to say. I know enough to not totally dis for example, 50 Cent since he, first and foremost, is a business man. I realize that and respect him for that. The fact that the kind of music he produces causes various negative reactions around the world is a reason why he is one of the most popular rappers. Any publicity is good publicity. Anyway, I guess I view commercial hip-hop music and culture as a natural ingredient in our capitalist society. I don’t think that the lyrics should be taken very seriously any longer, except for the token content of love/sex/death/reference to our consumer-oriented society… Just look at Soulja Boy. Kids LOVE him and everybody under the age of fifteen seems to know the Soulja Boy dance (even some U of T profs, I’ve heard…). I don’t understand what’s so special about this seventeen-year-old kid who honestly doesn’t even say anything I can comprehend in his songs (and that just might be the reason to his acclaimed fame among kids – no one else but they understand what he’s trying to say), except for the fact that I through him found out about the term ‘superman’, which is NOT something for twelve-year-olds to listen to. And there I recognize the nostalgia and “it-was-better-back-in-the-days” in my own statements. I mean, I went through a period of gangsta rap-listening myself when I was fifteen-sixteen, later got sick of it and returned back to the ‘other’ kinds of hip-hop (but I still crave my dose of Mobb Deep every now and then). What I’m trying to say is that just as Snoop’s earlier music containing all the sexism, violence and misogyny imaginable in gangsta rap did not have any negative side effects on me and who I am, I can’t judge those who listen to Soulja Boy, or even 50.
I personally find all the product placement (in both lyrics and videos) and videos that are difficult to differentiate from commercials much more urgent issues to discuss and deal with concerning commercial hip-hop culture since especially kids need our help to realize that the same artist they’re adoring (and Kanye’s guilty to this as well) has become a salesman/saleswoman without them even noticing it.
At the end of the day, I guess this hyperreality makes things very complicated since we are at the same time claiming to be affected by the media only to later claim to be savvy capitalists… I just wonder how today’s kids will handle all this psychological challenge. Then again, people survive wars and turn out to be okay so I’m sure they also will.
(I don’t mean my blog contributions to be so long… Sorry ppl)
# posted by Andrea Dankic @ 11:03 PM
