Hip-Hop’s Mid Life Crisis

It may be hard to believe, but Hip-Hop is almost 40 years old. Its origins can be traced back to New York in the early 1970’s where DJs started mixing records together and MCs began developing the lyrical styles that would distinguish them as rappers.

Many of the founding fathers of Hip-Hop are now in their 50’s and show the tell-tell signs of aging. Sagging midriffs protrude from their baggy trousers and greying hairs can be seen underneath their baseball caps. It is perhaps no surprise that Hip-Hop appears to be going through a mid life crisis.

Make no mistake; Hip-Hop has always had conflicts of identity and had to fight to justify its existence. From its earliest days, Rap music and Hip-Hop culture was first ignored and then reviled by the mainstream. The story of Hip-Hop is that of David triumphing over Goliath. It tells the tale of how the most disenfranchised and demonized members of society, African-American youths from the poorest neighbourhoods, conquered popular culture and refashioned it in their image.

Follow The Leader

When Barack Obama was elected as the 44^th President of the United States, it felt as though Hip-Hop had made it from the Crack House to the White House. But this cultural victory was somewhat unexpected. Like a challenger brand that becomes the market leader, Hip-Hop is slowly coming to terms with the fact that it is now the king of the castle and no longer the dirty rascal.

As Rap music’s leading proponents preside over their multi-million dollar empires, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, there’s no denying that Hip-Hop culture is part of the establishment. In many ways, this exemplifies the American dream, but it is something of a problem within a culture that is more comfortable being the outsider shouting: “Burn Hollywood Burn”.

Hip-Hop on Trial

This crisis of identity was played out last month at the ‘Hip-Hop on Trial’ debate held at the Barbican in London. It featured rappers such as KRS-One, ?uestlove, Q-Tip and Estelle, alongside intellectuals including Michael Eric Dyson, Tricia Rose and dream hampton. Even the legendary civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson was present as a slightly surprising advocate of Hip-Hop.

The debate raged around Hip-Hop’s portrayal of women and use of the ‘N’ word. These are two topics that have sparked controversy for decades, but are even more loaded issues given the influence that Hip-Hop culture has worldwide today.

Comparisons were also made between ‘commercial’ Hip-Hop (seen as an extension of corporate America), in contrast to ‘conscious’ Hip-Hop, (as practiced by the likes of Public Enemy). But few were willing to acknowledge that conscious Rap isn’t generally what sells. What sells is what’s cool. Being cool doesn’t always equate to doing the right thing. In fact, it is often quite the opposite.

Cool Rules

In ‘Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude’ authors Dick Pountain and David Robins describe ‘cool’ as “a permanent state of private rebellion”. They trace the roots of this attitude back to ancient Yoruba and other West African cultures, illustrating how it was deployed by Black slaves in America as a means of resistance against oppression by white slave owners.

In today’s society there are many variations of cool that have emerged from different subcultures, such as Hipsters. However, the character of cool that can be found in urban street culture often displays four features:

1. Nihilism: The general rejection of established social conventions and beliefs, especially of morality and religion.
2. Anti-authoritarianism: rebellion against the establishment and authority figures.
3. Materialism: Concern with material wealth and possessions at the expense of spiritual and intellectual values.
4. Hedonism: Devotion, especially a self-indulgent one, to pleasure and happiness as a way of life.

These ‘isms’ are recognizable themes in raps by 50 Cent, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z. However, they stand in stark contrast to the notion of ‘true Hip-Hop’ reflected in The Hip-Hop Declaration of Peace that was presented to the United Nations Organization on May 16th 2001.

This tension between what some see as the different cultures of Rap and Hip-Hop  lay at the heart of the ‘Hip-Hop on Trial’ debate. Although it was an entertaining spectacle, neither side landed a knockout blow.

The Art of Rap

Ice-T, although no stranger to controversy himself, decided to take a different route when making his movie documentary ‘Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap”. Instead of getting bogged down in ideological debates about language, or Hip-Hop vs. Rap culture, he simply asked many of the world’s best rappers to explain how they craft their lyrics. The result is an extraordinary insight into the passions and motivations of these modern day poets.

The film illustrates that the best rappers articulate the contradictory and multi-faceted realities of life with breathtaking intensity and eloquence. Stripped of all music, the a cappella raps delivered by the likes of Kanye West, Eminem – and perhaps most powerfully – Joe Budden, demonstrate the true art of creating something from nothing.

Having seen Ice-T’s evocative film, I am reassured that although it may be experiencing a mid-life crisis, Hip-Hop is not dead, it’s growing up.

Deconstructing Hip-Hop

One of the side effects of getting older is losing touch with popular culture. For me, this has happened slowly over time. I now rarely watch TV, visit the movies, read magazines, or obsess about music in the way I did in the days of my youth. In fact, I’ve developed a growing sense of indifference about mainstream culture. As a result some things pass me by altogether.  I only recently discovered who Alexa Chung is, and – much to the shock of colleagues at work – I don’t care.

In many cases new passions have replaced old ones. I now watch Vimeo and YouTube more than television; movies are streamed via the web to my home; Twitter is my daily news feed, and my children have become the celebrities whose lives I passionately care about.

My relationship with Hip-Hop has also changed over the years too.

From Planet Rock to the death of Hip-Hop

I’ve been a fan of Hip-hop since I was 11 years old when I first heard Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, Planet Patrol and Mann Parrish. I believe Hip-Hop has changed the world and I subscribe to the view that without it, Obama would not have become the first Black President of the United States.

Hip-Hop is now truly global. From Finland to Fiji, South Africa to Slovakia, every country adds a different spin, creating cultural hybrids that are shared, downloaded and remixed on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube.

On the surface, Hip-hop appears to be alive and well. Artists such as Jay-Z and Kanye West maintain their status as global brands and there is no shortage of interest in newer artists, as demonstrated by the hype surrounding Mac Miller and Drake.

But when the rapper Nas declared in 2006 that Hip-hop was dead, he articulated a feeling shared by many that the genre was losing its way.

Pop or Hip?

There have always been two major forces pulling Hip-Hop in opposite directions.

One is the pull towards commercialization and Pop music. Many years ago rappers such as LL Cool J, Will Smith and perhaps most infamously, Vanilla Ice discovered the riches to be gained by providing a ‘Lite’ crossover version of rap music for the masses. This trend has continued unabated ever since.

Inevitably, other artists have pushed in the opposite direction, producing music that deliberately sets out to offend the sensibilities of the mainstream. From NWA to Eminem and more recently Tyler the Creator, these artists have set out to say the unthinkable and break every taboo.

Much to the horror of parents the world over, young people lapped this up with even greater fervor than the crossover rappers, creating global stars out of Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z.

This has caused problems for the Black middle classes too. Civil rights activists and liberal intellectuals abhor the misogynist and defamatory language that permeates rap music. The debate over the use of the word ‘Nigga’ is testament to this. It represents a fault line between those who proclaim it as a term of empowerment, and those who believe it reinforces all the wrong stereotypes.

Hip-Hop as Pop Art

I’ve got to admit that some of the latest iterations of Hip-Hop have left me wondering where I stand in relation to the genre. For example, I recently came across a music video by Lil B entitled ‘Ho Suck My D**k’. This left me feeling that I perhaps have outgrown Hip-Hop.

At first I struggled to believe that this wasn’t a spoof, as the track appeared to have even less musical integrity than Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’. But on reflection, I wonder whether this represents Hip-Hop’s next evolution to the status of Pop Art.

Drinking from the Fountain

In 1917 when Marcel Duchamp’s exhibit of a urinal sent shock waves around the art establishment, he began a movement that would sever the links between Art and artistry. In time this would give birth to Pop Art, which would elevate the banal and kitsch elements of culture, most often through the use of irony.

Artists such as Tracey Emin have been influenced by this tradition, while others such as Damien Hirst have followed in the footsteps of Andy Warhol and adopted a factory approach to artistic production that pumps out large volumes of work, some of which is of questionable quality.

It’s possible that Lil B is taking Hip-Hop in a similar direction. His vulgar and uncoordinated rapping style is apparently deliberate. He claims to be making a virtue of being ‘Based’ or worthless through his use of the term ‘Based God’, a concept he propagates to his growing number of fans through multiple social media channels, including Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and over 155 MySpace pages.

He has also reportedly recorded over 1,500 tracks, a level of output that would impress even Damien Hirst. Controversially for a rapper, he titled his fifth album ‘I’m Gay’, for which he received death threats.

Lil B has been described as one of a growing number of weird-o emcees that are deconstructing Hip-Hop and creating new mutations. I should be pleased about this. After all, mutation and adaption are vital to life and evolution.  But I can’t help wondering if Hip-Hop is eating itself because it is running out of new places to go. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for this…

The UK Riots one week on – The search for simple answers to tough questions

A week ago today a riot began in Tottenham that swept across London and other parts of the UK. That much isn’t in dispute. But as the dust settles and the clean up operation continues, the recriminations as to how and why this happened is causing controversy.

On yesterday’s Newsnight, the Historian David Starkey provoked a storm of protest when he laid the blame squarely at the door of black culture and its impact on white youths.

But as the blame game ensues, attention has also focused on the role that social networks played and what can be done to curtail their use if situations like this reoccur in the future.

For the first time, BlackBerry’s (BBM) Messenger network has been included in this discussion. Yesterday the BBC reported that an18-year-old woman from east London had been charged under the Serious Crime Act for using Blackberry messenger to encourage others to take part in the riots.

The use of BBM as the communication channel used by rioters seemed to take everyone by surprise.  I spent much of the week being asked by journalists how I got the drop on the story before anyone else.

I’ve been thinking about that too, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason other people missed the BBM connection was because it was hidden in plain sight.

BlackBerry and Instant Messaging are nothing new. In fact, in today’s world of iPhone Apps, Google+ and Geo-Location services, they are practically old hat, but that’s the point. As Clay Shirky states: “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.”

The birth of Hip-Hop illustrates this perfectly. According to last night’s Channel 4 programme, Hip-Hop Changed The World. But think back to how it all started, it was DJ Kool Herc who found a new way to use old technology – in this case, two turntables – to launch a new cultural movement. Every subsequent development from graffiti to rapping, scratching to sampling was more about innovation than invention. The kids on the street weren’t creating the technology and they weren’t even using the newest stuff, it was what they did with what they had that was revolutionary.

No simple solutions

A central part of early Hip-Hop mythology involves Afrika Bambaataa, the former gang leader who turned away from a life of crime and used Hip-Hop to turn violent gang rivalry into street dance battles between B-Boys and B-Girls. It was a classic tale of swords being beaten into turntables, which has now become a Hollywood cliché.

It’s tempting to think that if we could only just recreate that moment in time, we could all get along. But as the subsequent East Coast/West Coast rivalry between the rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur proved, sometimes music can breed violence, not quell it.

On the other side of the argument, I’ve heard journalists referring to BlackBerry’s BBM as ‘the weapon of choice’ for the rioters. This seems to suggest that there was a coordinated master plan to use this ‘covert’ network to organize the attacks. I think this gives too much credit to the rioters. The truth is far more worrying.

BBM and other instant communication channels allow people to organise more like Bees. It doesn’t require a ‘command and control’ structure, or a criminal mastermind stroking his white cat to orchestrate attacks. Instead it relies on short bursts of information that can be read and passed on quickly.

This is what Benjamin Ellis refers to as ‘barely planned behaviour’. Simply put, modern technology makes it easier for people to do more and plan less. As we saw during the riots, this created real challenges for the police as they tried to keep up with the disturbances.

So with no single force for good or evil to turn to or blame for the week’s events, we are left searching for simple answers to tough questions. There is perhaps one undeniable conclusion that has been underlined through all the events of the week. Whether we like it or not, more than ever before, we are all connected.