Is Rap Music Dying?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

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N.W.A's first album, N.W.A. and the Posse, was a party-oriented jam record that largely went ignored upon its 1987 release. . . . Late in 1988, N.W.A delivered Straight Outta Compton, a vicious hardcore record that became an underground hit with virtually no support from radio, the press, or MTV. N.W.A became notorious for their hardcore lyrics . . .

. . . Efil4zaggin was teeming with dense, funky soundscapes and ridiculously violent and misogynist lyrics. Naturally, the lyrics provoked outrage from many critics and conservative watchdogs, but that only increased the group's predominately male, white suburban audience.

(From "N.W.A." by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com)

According to Neil Strauss (The Vibe History of Hip Hop, p. 258), Dr. Dre of N.W.A. made a brilliant marketing move early in the history of the group. Dre decided that N.W.A. could not compete with the political rap of Public Enemy and other groups. Rather than attempt to be a lesser version of Public Enemy, N.W.A. decided to become the anti-Public Enemy. This strategic move to gangsta rap brought tremendous success to N.W.A. and its individual members.

Gangsta rap appeals to America’s appetite for sex and violence. It is probably also effective because it plays on longstanding stereotypes of blacks as hyper-sexual, violent and criminal. From a business perspective, gangsta-ism is a masterful marketing strategy.

Sexism can be profitable too. As Russell Simmons stated in Essence ("What They're Saying"), “We live in a very sexist society. Popular culture exaggerates everything, including this kind of sexism, for profit. That’s the nature of capitalist society and entertainment.”

Whether gangsta-ism and other characteristics of rap are good for black people generally or for American society as a whole is another question. Americans are increasingly saying that rap is not a good thing. Whether this will change the character of rap or affect the amount of rap Americans purchase is yet another question.

As early as 1993, in the National Black Politics Study, a majority of blacks agreed that “rap music is a destructive force in the black community.” More recently, the Black Youth Project Survey found that a majority of black, white and Hispanic youth think that there is too much sex and violence in rap.

Another recent survey on black attitudes by the Pew Research Center, also shows strong disapproval of rap. A majority of whites and blacks agree that “rap is having a bad influence” on society. These findings will likely provide encouragement to the prominent critics of rap.

The fact that so many blacks are critical of rap shows that we cannot jump to the conclusion that rap represents black values. The relationship of the music to the values of the people making is also more complicated than some critics will admit. For example, one record executive states (in "What They're Saying"), “I have a 7-year-old daughter, and she can’t listen to my music. She can’t listen to it in the car, not in the room, and she can’t watch videos.”

Last year, rap sales declined sharply. Will this trend continue? Will rap change? Only time will tell.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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Whites & Rap Remix

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
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[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
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Black Directions v2n6 reviews the social-scientific literature on the effect of rap music on white racial attitudes. Additionally, the Thora Institute conducts its own statistical analysis of white rap fans. Below are some quotable quotes I came across doing some of the background reading for the issue.

SAMPLES REMIX
WHITES/RAP/WHITES’ RAP/WHITES & RAP

“today’s acceptance of hip-hop as mainstream popular culture has radically altered the racial landscape. And in that nebulous space where hip-hop and popular culture meet, we see specific shifts in the ways Americans are processing race. These shifts help explain the dawning of a new reality of race in America.”1

Chris, 21, white rap fan in Denver: “I think everyone should just be equal, but the blacks are trying to be better than everyone else. They don’t have it bad in this country. They just say gimme gimme gimme.”
William Upski Wimsatt: “Chris isn’t unusual. Many white rap fans feel this way.”2

“But the white audience doesn’t just consume rap, it shapes rap also. Rappers and record labels aren’t stupid. They know who’s listening and the music gets tailored to the audience.”3

“The white rap audience is as diverse as the music itself. . . . They want to experience blackness, dramatic and direct . . . but not too direct, thank you very much.”4

“it’s often indistinguishable where hip-hop ends and prison and/or street culture begins. Parents, regardless of race, should be concerned about the various messages transmitted to youth under the rubric of hip-hop.
“However, white youth are not simply consuming pop culture messages wholesale, anymore than Black kids are.”5

“most White hip-hop activists see a radical analysis of race at the forefront of their engagement with other social and political issues. Such an analysis is paramount in what distinguishes them as white hip-hop activists, as opposed to liberal, conservatives and to a lesser extent progressives.”6

“The real test of white kids and hip-hop is what happens with police brutality when the white officers policing Black and Latino communities are those same young whites who grew up on hip hop.”7

“Hip-hop lifestyling offered, to use an advertising term, a complicated kind of aspirational quality. . . .
“. . . selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth.”8

“The business of hip-hop isn’t vastly different from any other corporate American industry. While the artistic and creative sides of hip-hop remain largely dominated by Blacks, the business side of the industry is firmly in the hands of white American men.”9


Credits
1. Bakari Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005), xvi.
2. William Upski Wimsatt, Bomb the Suburbs (NY: Soft Skull Press, 2001), 25.
3. Ibid., 23.
4. Ibid.
5. Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop, 3.
6. Ibid., 172.
7. Quoted in Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop, 3-4.
8. Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 425.
9. Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop, 46.

Black Directions v2n6: Will White Rap Fans Help or Hurt Black America?

To order this issue send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “White Rap Fans,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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[The Thora Institute needs you.]

Will White Rap Fans Help or Hurt Black America?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
________________________________________________________________________

From Black Directions v2n6

Eighty percent of hip-hop consumers are white according to the Simmons Lathan Media Group. In the various debates about rap, too little attention has been paid to this majority-white consumer base. Are white rap fans a force for “achieving Martin Luther King’s dream” as Bakari Kitwana argues? Or are they merely fans of stereotypical images of blacks as Bill Yousman declares?

Rap has been a vehicle for serious commentary about racial inequality and American society. But the heyday of political rap was more than a decade ago. Further, researchers have found that references to alcohol, drugs and violence in rap have increased along with the growing popularity of rap music. Today, even Kitwana admits, one can find a parade of negative stereotypes of blacks on display in rap music. Much of the music, the critics charge, has become a modern-day minstrel show. Thus, one can ask, will white rap fans help or hurt black America? Do whites who love rap love black people or merely negative stereotypes of black people?

In addition to helping or hurting black America, there is, of course, a third alternative. Rap music may be just pop music and may not make much of a difference one way or another.

This issue of Black Directions reviews the social-scientific literature on the effect of rap music on white racial attitudes. Additionally, the Thora Institute conducts its own statistical analysis of white rap fans.

To order this issue send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “White Rap Fans,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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[The Thora Institute needs you.]

The Number One Black Civil Rights Issue

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
________________________________________________________________________

Black Directions v2n5: Criminal Justice Reform

As important as it is to address racial disparities in sentencing, this issue is just the tip of the iceberg for criminal justice reform. We need a complete overall of the criminal justice system to undo the damage and waste caused by more than 30 years of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs legislation. The harm of these failed policies has been born most heavily by blacks.

In 1970, the incarceration rate in the United States was about average for a developed, Western country. Today, it is about seven times the average. Are we seven times safer than we were in 1970? Not even close.

America has the toughest criminal justice policies and the highest incarceration rate in the West. Are we the safest country? Not at all.

Tough-on-crime policies are extremely expensive; weaken black communities economically, politically and socially; and do precious little to reduce crime. It is time for civil rights activists to insist that we engage in constructive crime prevention instead of continuing the destructive crime prevention of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies.

High-quality pre-kindergarten education has been proven to reduce crime. It is more effective at crime prevention than incarceration, and it has none of incarceration’s negative effects. Providing jobs for poor black youth will reduce crime, and it too has none of the negative effects of incarceration. We need to invest in and develop more constructive crime prevention policies. Three decades of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies have proven them to be harmful, inefficient and extremely expensive. The current issue of Black Directions begins the necessary discussion on fundamental criminal justice reform.

What’s in the current Black Directions

• Comparing Constructive and Destructive Crime Prevention


• The Three Biggest Myths about Blacks and Drugs


• Clifford Thornton’s Plan to Stop 90% of Drug-Related Violence


• The Flaws of Relying on Incarceration for Crime Prevention

To order this issue send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “Criminal Justice Reform,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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[The Thora Institute needs you.]