To understand why both men will never have a wide consumer base one has to be honest about both hip hop's fan base and the racial nightmare I just described. The primary audience for their work until now has been the socially conscious, sophisticated hip progressive students of all colors who have made a concentrated effort to understand the history of black culture and Mos and Talib’s interrelation to it. And god bless them for it. But they are a minority in comparison to the white teen suburban consumer, who statistically comprise 75 percent of hip hop's consumer base, who continually buys degrading, destructive, disgusting images of black people and hasn’t really shown interest in buying much else. The brutal untold racial reality in the 21st century is that white conservatives get crushed, reared and rattled for even an inkling of racial impropriety, yet millions of white hip hop "liberals" gobble up images like 50 cent putting black women in chains, the most disgusting of auction block imagery, and get a free pass in the media. Mos and Talib might mean a tremendous amount to the third year student from a liberal arts college, but to average main stream hip hop fan he is invisible, or yet worse, a monster. Because to buy into the image of 50, Lil Jon, Lil Flip, Cash Money, The G Unit and other thug rappers is to buy into the fact that you think black men are beasts. And it's easy to Idolize that beast on MTV and BET, because on television that beast is only an idea, a ruse to stir anger in ones parents and live vicariously through as a 21st century version of Norman Mailer's white Negro. But when you see that monster in person, without that controlled variable of the television, in an environment where you have to interact human_being-to-human_being, he becomes something frightening.
This is not to let African Americans off the hook either, and you can see no greater example than Sean “p-diddy” combs. In Mt Vernon, Combs' childhood was filled with as much drugs, sex and violence as Karl Rove’s. Like Amiri Baraka, my pick for the single most destructive black person in the history of this country, Combs was a failure in life (dropped out of Howard because he liked to party) who saw a way to exploit the pain of the inner city for his own personal profit. Unlike Baraka, whose aim was related to politics and academia, but who's damage was far, far greater, Combs knew that his path, pop culture, was a bigger goldmine and one that would subject him to far less serious criticism.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
what an outstanding essay Robert! You are very thoughtful, knowledgable and articulate. Art is both representative and influential - this dichotomy/conflict has been argued since at least Aristotle
2 - Geek's Girl
Hip hip's influence spreads far and wide, right down to the bottom of Africa. There are a lot of people who need to read this, I am glad I have.
3 - Temple Stark
Indeed I'm a person, maybe about five years older (use to live in Gig Harbor and Kent) and - as a musical trip - my experience of and journey through hip-hop is very similar to yours (though Tupac was my thing and my appreciation for Biggie (who I'd barely heard of) grew after he died.
Both extremely sad as I still think Tupac was gifted far behind music and would have grown to be a very positive influence. And was to a certain extent already as he proved you could comercially portray yourself as a sensitive / smart black man without repercussions and still be successful. The Wu did that as well to a certain extent.
Mos Def is an inspiration and luckily a lot of people are tuned into that - just not "mainstream."
A lot of mainstream from Jay-Z to 50 Cent to Big Boi to the entire "G Unit" is one dimensional. That doesn't mean they can't occasionally pop out the great sounding tracks, but the SOP behind them is sadly the same.
With Jay-Z, I had a special affinity for Annie (don't ask) so I was drawn in there. But the rest of that album was posturing, as if people really wanted to kill him 9or cared one way or the other) and he was setting himself up as a martyr.
Anyway - fantastic write up.
4 - Bennett
Thanks for this Robert. Though not my style of music, your essay was well worth reading, and I learned quite a bit.
Cheers!
5 - Miss Hipstah
Your comments on Hip Hop and the current state it is in are though provoking. I am a great fan of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, but sadly even their music has lost a bit of its edge in recent years.
Being in college and "academia", it made me think of the various classes which I have attended where a discussion of race was always paired with a discussion of Hip Hop. The constant need by mostly White students to talk about 50 Cent as a current figure of Black culture was, to a degree, sickening.
I wish some of the students in those classes could read what you wrote. Maybe then they'd actually learn something.
6 - Connie Phillips
Robert,
This was very thought provoking. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this subject.
7 - Vern Halen
Thank you. You've articulated a lot of things that have always been unstated, and therefore unknown. Unfortunately, the people who need to read this article the most are most likely the people who'll never see it.