RAP MUSIC AND ITS CULTURAL CONTEXTS

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RAP MUSIC AND ITS CULTURAL CONTEXTS Today we will
consider the transition from the 1980s to the
1990s, focusing on a range of cultural elements,
particularly rap music and hip hop culture. We
will examine racial tensions in 1990s America
that inform rap lyrics and hip hop culture, as
well as the implications of rap's popularity with
white consumers in the early 1990s. If time
permits, we will also consider how changes in
mass media were reshaping the popular perception
of national politics in the last decades of the
20th century.
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Review

• Demographic changes
• changes in family and gender roles
• suburban nation (more than ½ US population lives
  in suburbs in 1990s)
• increasingly visible divide between haves and
  have nots
• Racial dimensions of that divide

Footage of Los Angeles riots following acquittal
of police officers for Rodney King beating,
4/29/1992 53 people killed 2300 injured
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Waning of conservatism

• Scandals involving televangelists like Jimmy
  Swaggert and Jim Bakker contributed to
  televangelisms decline
• Shows like Dallas and Falcon Crest cancelled in
  late 80s
• Gave way to sitcoms featuring hard-pressed
  working families
• Married . . . With Children
• Roseanne
• The Simpsons

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• Popular music also changed dramatically
• Rock n roll still accounts for major market
  share
• Rap music becomes increasingly popular
• Begins in African American community in New York
  City
• What do we learn from this weeks readings about
  the origins of hip hop?

Second studio album of Public Enemy, Def Jam
Records, 1988
Hip Hop Block Party, Bronx, NY
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• Spreads to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and
  rest of country
• Undergoes several transformations over the course
  of 80s and early 90s
• Spreads to other groups, especially Chicanos who
  introduce bilingual lyrics
• Also appeals to white suburban youth

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Contexts for Considering Hip Hop Culture Race
and Class in Late-Twentieth-Century America

• Poor living conditions for people of color in the
  inner city
• slum housing
• dilapidated schools
• poor health care access
• limited educational and occupational mobility
  relative to that of white Americans

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Immigration, Affirmative Action, and the Culture
Wars

• Reagan-era appointments to U.S. Civil Rights
  Commission unenthusiastic enforcers of civil
  rights legislation
• U.S. Population growth spurred by legal and
  illegal immigration from Latin America and Asia
• Challenges to affirmative action

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California's Proposition 187 (1994) and other
efforts to restrict immigration

• effort to drive out undocumented aliens and to
  deter their entry by cutting them off from
  medical and other public services and depriving
  their children of an education
• Prop. 187 described in official ballot argument
  as the first giant stride in ultimately ending
  the ILLEGAL ALIEN invasion.''

Photo by Andy Scott, Los Angeles Times.
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War on Drugs and the Bush Administration
(1989-1992)

• Fear of drugs and drug-related violence high in
  late 1980s
• racial accents of that fear drugs perceived as
  an inner-city problem
• relation to gang violence
• Bush makes "war on drugs" a domestic and
  international priority
• most money goes to law enforcement and increased
  incarceration for drug offences
• African-American men have highest incarceration
  rates

Guardian newspaper headline 1989
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The Two Worlds of Black America in the Late
Twentieth Century

• Upward mobility for many African Americans
• Dramatic increase in numbers of African Americans
  enrolled in higher education
• Dramatic increase in white-collar employment
• The Cosby Show as a reflection of professional
  black family
• The African-American urban underclass
• Racism and broader economic changes disadvantage
  inner-city African Americans

The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984-1992)
1977
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• Problems of the Inner City in the late 20th
  century
• Unemployment
• Drug abuse and the drug economy
• Gang-related violence
• Welfare dependency
• These problems affect Americans of all
  backgrounds, but are most stark among inner city
  black and Hispanic populations in the 1980s and
  90s

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Young black males in Americas inner cities are
an endangered species. . . . They are the
rejects of our affluent society. Jewelle
Taylor Gibbs, School of Social Welfare at
UC-Berkeley, 1988 We have a major black child
crisis, the worst since slavery. --Mariam
Wright Edelman, Childrens Defense Fund, 1994
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• In the 90s, African-Americans express mistrust
  for the criminal justice system
• "driving while black
• acquittal of four officers in Rodney King case,
  1992
• opinions divide along racial lines in the O.J.
  Simpson trial, 1995 (see online trial record)
  youtube clip
• Popularity of shows like Cops (FOX network) -
  theme song

Douglas Burrows / Liaison / Getty Rodney King
pleads to the rioters to make peace May 1, 1992
in Los Angeles, CA. The riots left more than 50
dead, over 4,000 were injured and cost 1 billion
in property damage. http//www.time.com/time/speci
als/2007/la_riot/article/0,28804,1614117_1614084_1
614831,00.html
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John Fiske, The Juice Is Loose!
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Figuring O.J.
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Media Events
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• An event becomes a media event not at the whim of
  the media alone, but also to the extent that the
  media give discursive visibility to cultural
  currents that long precede the event and will
  long outlast it. (Fiske, 263)
• Although the media may not be solely responsible
  for turning events into media events. All events
  that matter in a postmodern society must be
  multimediated and the way we know them will
  always depend on media technology. (Fiske, 264)

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Science, Truth, and Evidence

• In many of my interviews with African Americans
  about the Simpson trial, I heard the belief that
  scientific evidence always seemed to end up
  proving the guilt of Black defendants and never
  their innocence. In this sense, the arguments of
  Simpsons defense team against the DNA evidence
  were more than just scientific arguments about
  its accuracy, they were also arguments about
  racially different knowledges. (Fiske, 265)

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Dislocated Racism

• The media consistently dislocated racial issues
  by locating them exclusively on the Black side
  of the case. They thus implied that only African
  Americans have a racial identityu, that racial
  interests are shared only among African
  Americansm and that the whites involved are
  raceless. (Fiske, 273)

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Hip Hop culture
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Early films that engage with the militancy of hip
hop culture Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing
(1989) John Singleton, Boyz n the Hood (1991)
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Rap and Hip Hop

• Commonly recognized as an expression of black
  anger
• Community-building function (Rose)
• Hip hop emerges in the seventies
• repudiation of disco
• alternative to gang membership (competitive,
  performers share a group identity -- "crews" and
  "posses")

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• As Hebdiges study on punk illustrates, style can
  be used as a gesture of refusal, or as a form of
  oblique challenge to structures of domination.
  Hip hop artists use style as a form of identity
  formation which plays on class distinctions and
  hierarchies by using commodities to claim the
  cultural terrain. Clothing and consumption
  rituals testify to the power of consumption as a
  means of cultural expression. Hip hop fashion is
  an espceialy rich example of this sort of
  appropriation/critique via style. (Rose, 80)

Salt n Pepa
Run DMC
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• outdoor block parties feature MCs and DJs
• usurpation of public space
• inventive use of technology -- turntables,
  "ghetto blasters"
• rap is one component of hip hop (rap, graffiti,
  breakdancing)

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• another dimension is "scratching" or
  "turntablism
• Formal characteristics of hip hop culture flow,
  layering, and ruptures in line (Rose, 81)

DJ Kentaro
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• What is the significance of flow, layering, and
  rupture as demonstrated on the body and in hip
  hops lyrical, musical and visual works?
  Interpreting these concepts theoretically, it can
  be argued that they create and sustain rhythmic
  motion, continuity, and circularity via flow
  accumulate, reinforce, and embellish this
  continuity through layering, and manage threats
  to these narratives by building in ruptures which
  highlight the continuity as it momentarily
  challenges it. These effects at the level of
  style and aesthetics suggest affirmative ways in
  which profound social disolocation and rupture
  can be managed and perhaps contested in the
  cultural arena. . . (Rose, 82)

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• . . . Let us imagine these hip hop principles as
  a blueprint for social resistance and
  affirmation create sustaining narratives,
  accumulate them, layer, embellish, and transform
  them. But also be prepared for rupture, find
  pleasure in it, in fact, plan on social rupture.
  When these ruptures occur, use them in creative
  ways which will prepare you for a future in which
  survival will demand a sudden shift in ground
  tactics. (Rose, 82)

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• political militancy of early '90s lyrics Public
  Enemy
• gangsta rap -- Ice T (lyrics to "Cop Killer")
• example N.W.A., "Fuck tha Police," "I Ain't tha
  1," "Dopeman (Remix)" from Straight Outta Compton
  (Ruthless Records, 1988)
• female rappers Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, TLC
• How do your readings for today affect your
  understanding of the gender and sexual accents of
  rap and hip hop?

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• Rap's mainstream appeal in the early '90s -- by
  1992, young whites are 70 of the rap music
  market
• Effects of commercial success on rap music and
  hip hop culture?
• Do you see any parallels between the evolution of
  rock music and that of rap?

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Lets discuss hip hops relationship to the
following course concepts 1. Culture is plural
rather than monolithic. 2. Texts and images are
multivocal. 3. Meaning is constituted through
cultural practices representation encodes
ideology. 4. Popular culture can be a site of
resistance to hegemonic discourses. 5. Binaries,
borders, and boundaries are socially
constructed. 6. Discursive categories and
institutions can constitute sites of oppression.