There are no Politicos Here
In the first chapter, “We Keep Showin’ You: Is Hip-hop Really About Politics?” McWhorter begins his sprint past his far left-wing holdouts (Keyes and Dyson to name two) who posture with books in hand proclaiming, “[R]ap music serves as a political forum.”
Huh? Dyson, a persuasive voice and electrifying orator, is the megaphone surrogate for the anthropologically challenged black kid turned hip-hop artist. They not only need Dyson’s advocacy, but they also need to be “saved” by a change of heart from the white man. Dyson identifies its political possibilities (he’s no fool) in their words and overtures to the black community. All the while, his beloved rappers call women "bitch" and "ho"!
McWhorter argues convincingly - just how long should we wait for whitey’s change of heart, á la revolution? Ten, twenty, thirty years, another generation? He says the revolution will never come; not that one, not any one. What’s more, merely saying something is political just doesn’t make it so. Politics is not the black man waving a big stick (or in this case a big dick) nor is it black man on the street corner as threat. McWhorter asks logically: Where’s the fruit of the rapper’s labor, i.e., real political impact? The evidence is super-slim.
Attitude is altitude when trying to parse the political verbiage and academics that artist themselves foist on the listeners and observers of their craft. “Look at us,” they cry. “We are the shit!” McWhorter breaks down that, well, stupid argument, easily. Hip-hop artists rhyme; therefore they are profound; therefore they are political. With the wave of a wand, or weave, they are making political waves somehow. Can’t you see them? No, says McWhorter.
I laughed when he pointed out the hip-equals-just-hop attitude that brooks no vertical boundaries when it comes to touting its impact upon the political map, laws, and processes of the past 10 to 15 years. McWhorter uses example after example (one, Russell Simmons 'street cred' gets shred) to make his case that its so-called political impact is purely delusional. He argues that hip-hop is metaphysical at best, mystical at the least, but a political tour de force? Not yet, and maybe never.
McWhorter’s second chapter, “The Words I Manifest: Is Conscious Rap Different?” answers the somewhat rhetorical question with, “Yes, but what is ‘conscious rap?’” McWhorter names well-known and obscure artists. He listens to and buys beaucoup rap CDs just as he admits that “no one has heard all—the rap out that’s out there—It’s impossible.”
When buying CDs in large quantities, even young, black cashiers chide him for coming late to the game remarking, “You should already have this one!” This academic and rap connoisseur is no shrinking violet, though, and in his criticism of a voice (read politics) that is just absent, he argues that the conscious rapper (whatever that is) should be commended for not “rapping about shooting people.”
Article comments
1 - Curry Kid
Peace and Blessings.
In the segment of Hip Hop that moves me, that is how some greet one another. I have yet to read Mr. McWorter's tome. Frankly he was completely off my radar until today. So i can only speak to what i have read in the above piece and one or two other critiques of the book. Also, if i could clarify, little aggravates Hip Hop purists more than when one substitutes the word 'Rap' for the phrase 'Hip Hop' like they are interchangeable. Hip Hop is a culture (some of us prefer 'kulture'), rap is a component of said culture. In terms of music, Rap is a subgenre of Hip Hop. As well, all a Rapper requires is a microphone and an audience. MCs are wordsmiths who can motivate whole groups of people to move their butts or, dare i say it... think.
Does Hip Hop employ a certain amount of bravado and posturing..? Sure. Are some short-sighted seeking only financial growth..? To my dismay, guilty again. However to paint this as the very fiber of Hip Hop is to pants Hip Hop in order to decry the folly of allowing ones' boxers to show.
It seems the prevailing logic here in is, with regard to Hip Hop, it is not worthy of note unless it is promoted via corporate America... Since when is Pete Rock a Rapper, let alone a conscious one? Saying something: political, reactionary or revolutionary on one rap song does not make one a Conscious MC. If it did: Flava Flav, Goapelle and Justin Timberlake would be among the genre's greats. 'Why?' and 'Jesus Walks' were good songs, but i somehow suspect the former didn't get Paris salivating to sign Jadakiss to Guerilla Funk nor the latter garner Kanye a shelf full of Stellar Awards. If you gage all of Hip Hop based on the image portrayed by the likes of Vivendi, Clear Channels and Viacom: not only do i understand your concern, but i wouldn't be surprised if you thought scratching was invented when someone spilled a beer on a turntable.
The truth is, just as throwing a LOT of money at one school district will not level a playing field still off kilter from the events of several millennia ago... Hip Hop too, is much deeper than what meets the eye. Next time you choose to demonize Hip Hop for how it is portrayed in pop culture, i beg of you... Take a fraction of the time you employed digging for Mr. Worter's books and apply it to investigating lesser-known Hip Hop projects. There are whole catalogs of albums with little or no expletives. There are whole sub-genres of music that refer to women as 'Sista' and 'Queen' not 'b****' or 'h*.'
I confess we as a Hip Hop Kulture did (in numbers larger than i wish to admit) buy into the notion that money trumps expression. However that does not mean to perform spoken word poetry to a Hip Hop beat is to perform music that is inherently synthetic, misogynistic or or self-destructive.
As for the social issues we as a kulture are not getting the credit for speaking to or working through...
To overlook the contributions of Hip Hop in the success of Barrack Obama is to all but admit that you still think rap is nothing more than a fad that children listen to to piss off their parents.
Just as the success of black students will not change exclusively by the rapid influx of greater sums of money, neither will the numbers of people of color in prison. Frankly both of those arguments sound to me like little more than conservative talking points. Hip Hop is so quick to speak ill of the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex because next to rap and professional sports they seem to be held over the heads of youth as the ONLY options for success. There are several deeper socio-economic causes for this disparity and belittling Hip Hop for being a mouth-piece for the voices of people conscious enough to be concerned is not the most effective approach i can think of for resolving those issues.
Incidentally, people of color working in the prison system strikes me as less something to be heralded and more a modern day case of the house negro. Not saying that they get into the field for that reason, quite the contrary. I would imagine that many people of color who sign on to be members of law enforcement, military, educators or doctors do it for much the same reason anyone else does.... At root, they seek to help others. However, to declining degrees (when read respectively) it is a struggle not to give into the frustration of seeing people like yourself in that condition. Or worse to respond the way others may have millennia ago. Resolve some of those issues before shooting the messenger.
In conclusion, Hip Hop was never exclusively about shaking one's hind quarters. Yes, dancing has always been a part of Hip Hop. But so too has bragging rites (as won through battling) and politics. Because the reason that those youth in the South Bronx were scrambling to challenge each other to competitions of skill involving: dance, oratory, paint/markers and vinyl in the early 70s was that they just lost funding for after school programs. It took about three and a half decades for the system to persuade their offspring that Hip Hop is not a better route. Would you like to take the blame for that one?
One Love,
Curry Kid
OFFtheTOPradio.com
Ps. Its 'The Roots,' not 'The Root.'