Hip Hop Culture of Consumption and the Advertising Vehicle

It isn't hard to notice that hip hop culture involves a lot of consumption. Musicians are dripping with bling in most music videos, flaunting their 'grills' and 'tims'. It is an infectious culture which spreads through consumption and commodities.

Many would say that different styles are normally created to defy the dominant culture, such as what was with punk. But as I have noted earlier with my response on the commodification of punk, it all turns into a big fad ultimately. I find this to be the case especially with hip hop. Fab Five Freddy has himself been quoted on the topic of hip hop style and identity in Tricia Rose's Microphone Friends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, "You make a new style. That's what life on the street is all about. What's at stake is honor and position on the street." This may have true back in the day when hip hop was a minority culture, however, today, it seems to me that it has become mainly about having the most jewelry, most girls and the most money. Now, it seems to be less about the 'style' but more about the 'position'. With illustrative examples of recent music videos, we can see that mainstream hip hop artists have moved on their state of "economic and social restructuring" from the days of the projects, speaking in reagrds to the lyrics, and now centre around commodity fetishism. Nelly's music video for Air Force One's, shows his posse in a Nike store, buying out the entire store pretty much. The song pretty much serves as an advertising vehicle for Nike. Likewise we see Fergie sporting a new Samsung YP-K5 mp3 player in her video for Fergalicious. It is likely that these stars are being paid to promote the product in their music. On the note of mp3 players, it used to be the iPod that everyone had to have on their person in their music videos. This may have been an advertising attempt to move towards a newer commodity and what better way to do it than through indirect celebrity endorsement. With hip hop being a culture of consumption, it is an easy vehicle to use to push through promotions of products and new gizmos. I don't hesitate in saying that as newer hip hop music videos are released, we will see more of this and we will want to buy more, more and more!