Black Community Of Rap Music example essay topic

Rap Music The following is an excerpt from Black Noise, a book written by Tricia Rose, that describes the importance and background of rap music in society. 'Rap music brings together a tangle of some of the most complex social, cultural, and political issues in contemporary American society. Rap's contradictory articulations are not signs of absent intellectual clarity; they are a common feature of community and popular cultural dialogues that always offer more than one cultural, social, or political viewpoint. These unusually abundant poly vocal conversations seem irrational when they are severed from the social contexts where everyday struggles over resources, pleasures, and meanings take place.

'Rap music is a black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America. Rap music is a form of rhymed storytelling accompanied by highly rhythmic, electronically based music. It began in the mid-1970's in the South Bronx in New York City as a part of hip hop, and African-American and Afro-Caribbean youth culture composed of graffiti, break dancing, and rap music. From the outset, rap music has articulated the pleasures and problems of black urban life in contemporary America. Rappers speak with the voice of personal experience, taking on the identity of the observer or narrator. Male rappers often speak from the perspective of a young man who wants social status in a locally meaningful way.

They rap about how to avoid gang pressures and still earn local respect, how to deal with the loss of several friends to gun fights and drug overdoses, and they tell grandiose and sometimes violent tales that are powered by male sexual power over women. Female rappers sometimes tell stories from the perspective of a young woman who is skeptical of male protestations of love or a girl who has been involved with a drug dealer and cannot sever herself from his dangerous life-style. Some raps speak to failure of black men to provide security and attack men where their manhood seems most vulnerable: the pocket. Some tales are one sister telling another to rid herself from the abuse of a lover. 'Like all contemporary voices, the rapper's voice is imbedded in powerful and dominant technological, industrial, and ideological institutions. Rappers tell long, involved, and sometimes abstract stories with catchy and memorable phrases and beats that lend themselves to black sound bite packaging, storing critical fragments in fast-paced electrified rhythms.

Rap tales are told in elaborate and ever-changing black slang and refer to black cultural figures and rituals, mainstream film, video and television characters, and little-known black heroes. For rap's language wizards, all images, sounds, ideas, and icons are ripe for re contextualization, pun, mockery, and celebration. Kool Moe Dee boasts that each of his rhymes is like a dissertation, Kid-N-Play have quoted Jerry Lee Lewis' famous phrase 'great balls of fire,' Big Daddy Kane brags that he's like raw sushi (and that his object of love has his nose open like a jar of Vicks), Ice Cube refers to his ghetto stories as 'tales from the dark side,' clearly referencing the television horror show with the same name. Das Efx's raps include Elmer Fud's characteristic ' H I'm steam in'!' in full character voice along with a sting of almost surreal collage like references to Bugs Bunny and other television characters. At the same time, the stories, ideas, and thoughts articulated in rap lyrics invoke and revise stylistic and thematic elements that are deeply wedded to a number of black cultural storytelling forms, most prominently toasting and the blues. Ice-T and Big Daddy Kane pay explicit homage to Rudy Ray Moore as 'Dolomite,' Roxanne Shant e toasts Mile Jackson, and black folk wisdom and folktales are given new lives and meanings in contemporary culture.

'Rap's stories continue to articulate the shouting terms of black marginality in contemporary American culture. Even as rappers achieve what appears to be central status in commercial culture, they are far more vulnerable to censorship efforts than highly visible white rock artists, and they continue to experience the brunt of the plantation like system faced by most artists in the music and sports industries. Even as they struggle with the tension between fame and rap's gravitational pull toward local urban narratives, for the most part, rappers continue to craft stories that represent the creative fantasies, perspectives, and experiences of racial marginality in America' (Rose 2-3). The biggest social dilemma created by rap in today's culture is whether it has a negative or positive impact on the youth, its primary audience, and whether or not it can even be considered music. Many praise rap as an educational tool saying women rappers are examples of aggressive pro-women lyricists and defend rap's ghetto stories as real-life reflections that draw attention to the burning problems of racism and economic oppression.

Others criticize rap's apparent focus on violence at concerts, citing gangsta rap's lyrics of cop killing and female dismemberment and also back nationalist rappers's uggestions that 'white people are the devil's disciples' (Rose 1). While the negative seems to often cover the more positive aspects in the media, there are several reasons as to why rap is a legitimate, good form of music. Rap offers alternative interpretations of key social events such as the Gulf War, the Los Angeles uprising, police brutality, censorship efforts, and community based education. It is also a central vehicle for open social refection on poverty, the fear of adulthood, the desires for an absent father, frustrations about black male sexism, female sexual desires, daily rituals of life as an unemployed teen hustler, safe sex, raw anger, violence, and childhood memories. Rose says in her book Black Noise, 'it is black America's most dynamic contemporary popular cultural, intellectual, and spiritual vessel,' and 'rappers offer symbolic prowess, sense of black energy, and creativity in the face of omnipresent oppressive forces' (19). Hank Shockley, a producer, defends rap producers by saying the following: 'We don't like musicians.

We don't respect musicians. The reason why is because they look at people who do rap as people who don't have any knowledge. As a matter of fact, it's quite the opposite. We have a better sense of music, a better concept of music, of where it's going, of what it can do. In dealing with rap, you have to be innocent and ignorant of music. Trained musicians are not ignorant to music and they cannot be innocent to it...

For example, certain keys have to go together because you have this training and it makes musical sense to you. We might use a black key and a white key together because it works for a particular part. A musician will go, 'No those are the wrong keys. The tones are clashing. ' We don't look at it that way' (Rose 81). On the other hand, rap music raises the questions 'can violent images set the stage for political mobilization, do sexually explicit lyrics contribute to the moral 'breakdown' of society, and finally, is this really music anyway?' (Rose 1).

Can society really blame music for the problems it faces? Some believe that it can and that rap has caused violence including the Los Angeles riots and various incidents of cop killing. Rapper Ice-T released a song several weeks before the Los Angeles riots entitled 'Cop Killer. ' This song provoked sixty congressmen to sign a letter of protest claiming the song as vile and despicable. In another example, KRS-One challenges the authority of police. The lyrics are: FIRE!

Come down fast! You were put here to protect us, but who protects us from you? Everytime you say, 'that's illegal,' does it mean that it's true? [Chorus: ] Un hun. Your authority's never been questioned, no one questions you If I hit you, I'd be killed, if you hit me, I can sue [Chorus: ] Order, Order! Looking through my history book, I've watched you as you grew Killing blacks, and calling it the law, and worshipping Jesus, too [Chorus: ] Bo Bo Bo!

There was a time when a black man couldn't be down in your crew [Chorus: ] Can I have a job please? Now you want all the help you can get. Scared? Well ain't that true [Chorus: ] Goddamn right. It seems that when you walk the ghetto You walk with your own point of view [Chorus: ] Look at that gold chain. You judge a man by the car he drives or if his hat matches his shoe [Chorus: ] You " re looking kinda fresh.

But back in the days of Sherlock Holmes, a man was judged by a clue Now he's judged by if he's Spanish, Black, Italian, or Jew So do not my door down and tie me up While my wife cooks the stew. [Chorus: ] You " re under arrest! Cause you were put here to protect us, But who protects us from you? (Rose 107) One of the more controversial songs was written by N.W.A. entitled 'F -- - the Police. ' A verse from that song is: 'F -- - the Police' coming straight out the underground A young nigger got it bad 'cause I'm brown And not the other color.

Some police think They have the authority to kill the minority... A young nigger on the warpath And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath Of cops, dying in L.A. Yo, Dre I've got something to say: F -- - the Police. (Samuels 28) The debate continues over the value of rap. For example do the above examples provide an accurate criticism of police brutality or are they biased because they were written by 'angry blacks'? Some representatives of the music industry feel that rap music detracts from the quality of the rest of the industry. An article in Billboard magazine says 'Due to the popularity of rap, the requirement for being an entertainer has diminished.

One does not have to be able to sing or play an instrument. If you can talk in rhythm to a beat, that is all that is necessary to begin a career in 'show business' (Stokes 9). However not all rap groups such as Arrested Development feature violence as their subject matter. This group has won two Grammys and Soul Train Music, MTV, and NAACP Image awards, plus has a million-selling 'Unplugged' album. Arrested Development prides itself in glorifying Southern rural life and respect for black women and family-oriented values. The group opposes offensive rap lyrics and sexist videos.

The lead singer, Speech, says 'my history as an African American dates back farther than my history as a hip-hop artist. I'm not going to allow my brothers or sisters to mentally or economically or spiritually enslave my other brothers and sisters' (Weaver 112). The group also participates in several workshops for youth and community leaders and events coordinated by grassroots organizations in urban areas. Vocalist A erle Taree says 'everybody tries to say that the [Civil Rights] Movement is dead or focused on our dead heroes. It is very important to know that there are many community leaders and organizations that still exist today' (Weaver 115). The group has also established the Life Music Foundation which is a vehicle to address music concerns such as the demises of the vinyl record and political, social, and environmental issues.

The following is an epilogue from the book Black Noise by Tricia Rose and examines the changes of rap music since its origin and its impact on society. Epilogue " In 1994, fifteen years after its commercial debut and seventeen years or so after its emergence in the South Bronx, rap remains at the forefront of cultural and political skirmishes and retains its close ties to the poorest and least represented members of the black community. After the Los Angeles riots erupted in response to the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who savagely beat Rodney King, Ice Cube was immediate called to comment but declined, because he was frantically trying to contact relatives whom he had not heard from since the riots began. Other rappers issued well-publicized statements and, Nightline's May 5 coverage of the riots concluded with South Central rappers' comments. It was as if the rage that had exploded in South Central had finally validated rappers' nagging, seemingly exaggerated stories of race and class frustration. Overnight, such rappers as Chuck D and Ice Cube, who were once considered social menaces, became prophets and seeing eye dogs for a nation that had just realized it had gone blind.

A few days later, black nationalist activist and rapper Sister Soul jah was publicly criticized by Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton for her ambiguous, aggressive comments regarding the 'logic' behind attacks on whites in Los Angeles; black leaders, save Jesse Jackson, said nothing. Finally, in the wake of South Central's rubble, Ice T's fantasy heavy metal song 'Cop Killer' (which had been released several weeks before the riots) provoked sixty congressmen to sign a letter of protest pronouncing the song 'vile and despicable. ' George Bush chimed in, calling Ice-T's work 'sick. ' Since then, Warner Brothers has recalled the original album, the song has been totally removed from the new pressings of the album, and Ice-T has been released from his recording contract.

Calvin Butts, black minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, has gone on a mission to rid the black community of rap music because of its harmful effects on today's youths. His was not a call for open social criticism of some of rap's lyrics; it was a call for censorship. His book-burning-style cassette-crushing publicity stunt was a disgraceful display of just how misguided black moral or political leadership is, and it certainly did more toward severing the fragile links between today's black working-class youths and black middle-class religious and political leadership and less toward discouraging consumption of 'morally degraded' music. 'Via commercial industries, new technologies and mass media outlets, rappers attempt to rewrite, re articulate and revise popular, national, and local narratives. Rappers negotiate these narratives from a peculiarly contradictory position of social vulnerability and political clout.

By this, I mean that, although rappers are some of the most prominent social critics in contemporary pop culture, they remain some of the most institutionally policed and stigmatized. Long after their emergence as social critics, several male rappers continued to be stopped, searched, and questioned as if they were still just 'regular young black urban men. ' Well-known female rappers continue to find themselves sexually degraded and not so powerful members of the music industry. 'Rap music is a social form that voices many of the class-, gender-, and race-related forms of cultural and political alienation, and it voices this alienation in the commercial spotlight. Each year rappers sell more records, develop new sonic and narrative hybrids, draw the attention of more listeners, and each years rappers are subjected to new forms of containment, ranging from sampling laws and limited insurance coverage to police tar getting and direct congressional sanctions. 'Black music has always been a primary means of cultural expression for African Americans, particularly during especially difficult social periods and transitions.

In this way, rap is no exception; it articulates many of the facets of life in urban America for African Americans situated at the bottom of a highly technological capitalist society. Rap often takes on a deeply political character because of rappers's social, racial, and gender locations. Because, as Cornel West said, they 'face a reality that the black underclass cannot not know: the brutal side of sexism against black women. ' As more and more of the disenfranchised and alienated find themselves facing conditions of accelerating deterioration, rap's urgent, edgy, and yet life-affirming resonances will become a more important and more contested social force in the world. 'Rap is also a contemporary amalgam of key stylistic elements in several earlier black music that were situated at other major points of social transition. It combines the improvisational elements of jazz with the narrative sense of place in the blues; it has the oratory power of the black preacher and the emotional vulnerability of Southern soul music.

And yet, rap also speaks to the future of black culture in the postindustrial city and American culture in general. Its musical voice is achieved via the constant manipulation of high-tech equipment that will continue to have a profound effect on speech, writing, music, communication, and social relations as we approach the twenty-first century. 'As Greg Tate warned, 'hip hop might be bought and sold like gold, but the miners of its rich ore still represent a sleeping-giant constituency. ' Rappers and their young black constituency are the miners, they are the cultivators of communal artifacts, refining and developing the frameworks of alternative identities that draw on Afrodiasporic approaches to sound organization, rhythm, pleasures, style, and community. These cultivation processes are formally wedded to digital reproduction and life in an increasingly information-management-drive society. Rap is a technologically sophisticated project in African-American recuperation and revision.

African-American music and culture, inextricably tied to concrete historical and technological developments, have found yet another way to unnerve and simultaneously revitalize American culture' (183-185)..