“Talkin bout how much money they got, all y’all records sound the same.I’m sick of that fake thug, r & b, rap scenario all day on the radio.Same scenes in the video, monotonous material” – Hip-Hop by Dead Prez
From the days of Run DMC and Public Enemy, hip-hop was a new breed of music mixing the minds of lyrical genius, beat and rhyme into a genre that remains today. Gangster rap, a sub-genre of hip hop developed during the late 1980s with the popularity of artists such as Dr. Dre and his album The Chronic. However, the representation of hip hop, particularly gangster rap, has changed.
In the naissance of gangster rap where one was divided by the East or West, Crip or Blood, no collaboration between the two existed. Nowadays, the magnitude of image can be shown with someone like The Game, member of the Piru Bloods, collaborating with Snoop Dogg, a declared Crip. The way in which rap was seen as a socio-political platform does not resemble that of today’s music. Gangster rap of the past described the rapper as being a casualty of urban squalor. However with the way gangster rappers portray themselves in music video today is definitely hedonistic with them showing off expensive jewellery, cars, clothes, and women.
Self-proclamation of the image has taken the genre downhill in the ways of mimicking the past and materialising the future. The genre of gangster rap has always been accused of homophobia, misogyny, racism, materialism and promiscuity. However, those were not the only factors that contributed to the field. Gangster rap voiced opinion as well as fast vocal, clever lyrics and black American history.
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2 comments:
I agree with your points and would just like to add something of my own, not an original idea, but an important point.
The issue of 'bling' and material wealth that is being shown in rap videos has a lot to do with marketing to the taditionally 'black' phsyc of attainment in a country were the blacks are treated as the lowest common demoninator. By showing what they have, of course it looks terrible, but it gives some people hope that they to might get there some day.
I'm not condoning rap videos, I hate them (actually, hate), but it's just a point I've heard before and I thought related.
So far great points Dan and Ben but just on another note I think hip-hop has also encouraged the emergence for black female artists to promote and declare their own voice against the misogynist lyrics and sexual connotations. As I think that the black male artists have utilised their music video clips to promote black male masculinity as well as critique their own experiences of violence, drugs and racism often using misogynist lyrics, while the black female artists have used hip hop to critique sexual exploitation and gain agency against the black male artists, by becoming hardcore rappers themselves creating a voice for the black female community. In which hip-hop seems to represent a voice for the black community within the mainstream media as well as generating internal gender differences.
The emergence of black female rap artists in the hip hop culture in representing their own strong feminine image against the black male artist dominance; reinforces the internal gender conflicts within the black community. With the escalating numbers of female rappers like M.C Lyte and Queen Latifa proving to challenge the male artists themes by becoming hard-core rappers themselves as if using rap to battle against sexism. In which I feel that the emergence of the black female artists now having many collaborations with the black male artists seems to reiterate that they have succeeded in establishing their voice within the black community.
With collaborations of Eve and The Bratt shows some positive influences of hip-hop in uniting the black artists as if they are utilising “rap music” as a tool of consolidating and succeeding in the mainstream. In which the hip-hop genre may be heading downhill like you argue Dan only because every rap music video seems to display the same features of “expensive jewellery, cars, clothes and women” but Ben makes a good point that “some people hope that they to might get there some day”, that there is “hope” for the black community (through hip hop) to succeed in a white mans world, as rap music seems to be reproducing consistently with the rise of many young rap artists joining the music industry.
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