There are four main elements that make up what hip-hop culture really
is: Break dancing, DJ’ing, MC’ing and Graffiti art. Each element plays a major
role in hip-hop. This beautiful culture originated in the Bronx, NY from the
oppressed proletarians. The music from this culture was diligently expressed
through MC’ing about oppression and the conditions the oppressed people were
going through in this capitalist decadent society. It was not about money,
cars, jewelry and negativity but as the years went by and white capitalist
businessmen saw a fortune in this culture that they could exploit the voices
that created hip-hop were greatly silenced.
The objectification and commodification of
culture often signifies the end of its existence as a culture. However, in the
height of imperialism, where the capitalists have learned to fashion their
products to niche markets, all cultures will be commodified, and yet the
oppressed still need a culture to call their own.
Today hip-hop is pretty much considered
synonymous with oppressed nation youth culture even as that culture continues
to evolve in many different ways. This is true in the United States, but also true
to an extent in many parts of the world today.
We put our hope in the oppressed nations
because of their objective interests in progressive change. That interest comes
through in hip-hop culture, as much as the white corporate media and its white
consumer audience do to discourage that.
Hip-hop
developed as a living, dynamic life of a people; oppressed people in North
American ghettos. As we'll touch on below it is still a living evolving culture
that has been both adopted and adapted by people around the world. But before
going global, hip-hop culture was commodified by white record owners for white
consumers. They sold this exotic culture to white youth looking for rebellion
and excitement. With hip hop, corporate America could sell a much more sanitized
and safer version of Black rebellion to whites and while there were benefits in
terms of the building of public opinion around the struggles of the oppressed,
this was soon drowned out in what became a new form of reinforcing racist
ideologies.
Commodification of Hip Hop
Hip-hop culture began in the late 1970s, but it
wasn't until the middle to late 1980s that the cultural life and expression of
hip hop grew to influence youth throughout America and the world. During the
late 1980s and early 90s, the culture continued to thrive. In this era, Black
and Latino youth further developed their voices through hip hop to express
their anger, fears, ideas, art and frustrations within the dominant
white-oppressor culture, with its police brutality and poverty.
Hip hop culture isn't just about the music,
it's about a lifestyle - from the clothes we wear, style of hair, taggin' rail
cars and walls with radical art and graffiti, unity and more. It's a culture of
resistance.
As Immortal Technique wrote in his article,
"Gangsta Rap is Hip Hop" a few years back, what was called Reality
Rap in the early years of hip hop was a reflection of the conditions that the
MC's saw around them. These images were influenced by machismo and other
viewpoints that were part of the survival techniques of those coming up in that
environment. As survival also required recognizing that the system does not
work for us, this Reality Rap was a reflection of the mass revolutionary spirit
that had fueled the Black and Brown power movements of the previous generation,
but this only came with criticisms from the state and interest from higher
white consumer powers.
White-owned corporations saw a profit to be
made and stepped in to co-opt the movement. They became owners of record labels
and put up money so these impoverished and oppressed people could sell their
soul and music for crumbs while these CEO's got millions upon millions of
dollars.
With the
help of the rappers, the record labels promoted a one-sided image of oppressed
youth, an image that has been pushed on the oppressed for hundreds of years -
one of uncontrollable libidos, violence, substance abuse and general barbarism.
They did this through lyrics about smoking crack, robbing and shooting other
Blacks and Latinos in oppressed communities, misogynist raps and raps with no
substance. We started to stray away from the four elements and this type of hip-hop
started to negatively influence the youth and poison their minds. While culture
reflects life, it also influences it. And arguably, the corporatized thug image
contributed to the thousands of deaths that plagued south central Los Angeles
and other American ghettos in the 1990s.
Hip Hop is Dead Until It Takes Up Revolutionary
Politics
So with this contradiction in the culture of
the oppressed came total destruction of the originality and with this concrete
analysis there must be change. We must regain the true culture of hip hop,
which is based in the real struggles of the people and helps to teach, empower
and unite the masses. This culture can be used to ignite the proletariat to
support the revolutionary cause. Culture is an essential element of the history
of a people, and it's social development. Culture in general, and hip hop
culture in particular, plunges its roots into the base of the material reality
of the environment in which we live in the hoods and barrios and it reflects
the organic nature of society, which is more or less influenced by the dominant
white society and culture of our oppressed communities. Currently the revolutionary
side of hip-hop is not the dominant aspect of the contradiction with the
corporate/oppressor side. If hip hop is to transform into a true vehicle
for social change, we must demand that our artists keep it a hundred and give
us more analysis in their music. Stop promoting the use of addictive narcotics,
that they become more active in our communities, and give our youth the
encouragement to study, unify, and resist oppression. Hip-hop needs to reflect
the struggle, and push it forward. If they fail to do this, hip-hop remains
sterile and dead but with this Hip-hop could change the world.
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