“Hip hop is in a terrible crisis.” In the first seven words of Tricia Rose’s seminal 2008 book – The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--And Why it Matters – the sociologist and Brown University professor distills the current conflict arising in hip hop discourse: polarization between hip hop’s strongest defenders, and those who critique the culture for the misogynistic and violent themes that recur within.
In interviews with friends, family, and academics in my own life, it became clear the bubble that exists around many in upper middle class, White circles – and the very real space in discourse for critique and celebration of the foundational genre.
Defining Hip Hop (Or Not)
“If someone's listening to hip hop and they're not bouncing, like their foot is not tapping, their body’s not moving… then they're not listening to hip hop,” That sentiment, from Dunni Sodipo, Associate Director at Northeastern University’s Center for Intercultural Engagement, was a simple response to a highly complex question: what is hip hop?
Some might define it as a music genre: stylized, beats often overlaid with rhythmic, poetic speech called rapping. Others might think of the culture: its street-based history in the Bronx or its idyllic presentation of wealth and extravagance. It can be identified by some of its icons from the genre’s inception to today. LL Cool J, Dr. Dre, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, and Meghan Thee Stallion immediately come to my mind.
And hip hop can’t be explained without emphasizing its deep roots in Black culture. From its birth in the block parties of 1970s New York City, it was a fusion of cultural forces and deeply inspired by African and Caribbean beats. Hip hop is broad, but, as explained by The Academy of Sound and Music, “emerged in part as a reaction to the socio-economic conditions in Black and Brown neighborhoods” – or, as psychology student Brooke Shiley postured, “pretty predominantly rooted in Black culture.”
For those who aren’t fans of the genre, it can be easy to fall into stereotypes when thinking about hip hop. Jeb Sharp, audio reporter and journalism professor, felt particularly wary of this and explained her own ignorance on the subject.
“It's maybe a piece of culture that I know that I couldn't define... [I could say] intense beats, Black culture, sneakers, baseball caps. Sure. But I would feel them to be stereotypes. I'm so conscious of the stereotypes and very conscious that I don't know the truth… I'm a white woman brought up by British colonial parents in Boston. The one thing I want to be aware of is the stuff that I don't know about.”
Hip Hop as Sexist
In the first ten pages of The Hip Hop Wars, Rose presented one of the largest quandaries in modern day hip hop discourse, about misogyny. She opined to know, “what do fans, artists, and writers mean when they defend an escalating, highly visible, and extensive form of misogyny against black women by claiming that ‘there are bitches and hoes’?”
David Kemp, retired Captain for the United States Navy, finds the language used about women in hip hop inexcusable.
“It normalizes things that, in my mind, should not be normalized. It shouldn't be okay to call women ‘bitches and hoes.’ It shouldn't be okay to glamorize [that].”
On the other hand, Sodipo had a different take. She encouraged focus on the stories at the center. She explained that, “sometimes, in that honesty and in that brutality, the language isn't necessarily the most affirming or necessarily supportive. But it doesn't mean [the story] is not true.”
It would be beyond unfair to castigate hip hop as this singularly misogynistic force in a pure industry. That simply isn’t reality, and Kemp admitted as much.
“I'm also sensitive to the fact that if you go back to classic rock, there are a lot of drugs, themes there. And even the Beach Boys, glamorizing women and objectifying women. So I know that that's not unique to that generation, but I think the way that they do it is much nastier.”
Hip Hop as Violent
Recent studies examining the average life expectancy of rappers guess that “murder has been the cause of death of over 50% of dead rappers.” This begs a series of tough questions about the culture of hip hop itself. First, is violence really so inherent to it?
To Noah Haggerty, editor of the NU Science Magazine, it doesn't seem so: “It's certainly not calling people to arms, even if it does in a literal sense, Like, I don't think anyone's listening to that and interpreting it that way.”
Does it spur violence in the community? In speaking to sociology researcher Maya Bravo, who grew up listening to heavily Latin-inspired hip hop in her own Mexican family, she criticized this causation linkage. She explained, “as a sociologist, it's hard to pinpoint the causes of violence so broadly, such as what causes violence. But I think that hip hop has really well reflected some of the realities of the artists who have seen violence around them.”
Sodipo agreed, but sees how commercialization of the genre has only encouraged violent lyrics and imagery in contemporary hip hop: “Hip hop originally had very little to do with violence and was a mechanism for storytelling… It was about navigating the nuances of not being in the official systems or conventional systems. And so it tended to be a little bit more dangerous. That ended up paying.”
Hip Hop as… Drag?
Similarly, Haggerty isn’t convinced at all that hip hop causes violence, but rather, exists as an “outlet to find maybe a twisted sense of joy and belonging.” But when talking about this dynamic and some motifs he identified with hip hop – mainly, fashions – he makes an interesting comparison to that of the LGBTQ+ community.
“My brain immediately goes to like comparisons to queer underground culture in a lot of ways. So I think of extravagant dressing as a sign of self-expression,” Haggerty shared.
He later expanded, calling hip hop “a medium for a specific community to express a sense of joy and comfort” and comparing it to the historically queer sensibility of ‘camp’ – “almost in a way, being playful about serious topics sometimes.”
Ironically enough, hip hop has historically had an issue with homophobia. Sodipo noted this dynamic, but refused to accept that this was fundamental to the experience globally. She’s consumed and shared this music with friends around the world: “There is this very weird perception that [hip hop] is very homophobic. But that's also very American. You don't see that in necessarily other branches of hip hop or other variations of it.”
During the interview, Sodipo immediately pulled out her Spotify and started showing me some tracks. Her favorites? A few tracks from Bangladeshi-American music producer, Jai Wolf, and the 2010 eponymous album from South Korean hip-hop/pop duo, GD&Top.
Hip Hop as a Celebration
For all of its flaws, there’s much to attribute to hip hop’s successes in culture, politics, and the condition of the Black community today. It has been an effective tool for illuminating much of the harshness and corruption that has plagued the community, especially when it comes to policing. Kemp credits the genre for “how it has brought forth the police violence that we see in society” and helped him to understand that.
As for misogyny, things are improving. For Bravo and Shiley, there’s no better signal of this than the explosion for female talent in the industry. Shiley explained how she almost exclusively listened to female hip hop artists during the pandemic and calls them “a mood booster for sure.” Bravo lauds the likes of Cardi B, Meghan Thee Stallion, and Lizzo – each a relatively new face on the scene – as “real hip hop artistry.”
It all comes back to music and community for Sodipo, evident in her nostalgia. She tells me how she listened to hip hop growing up, cleaning on Saturdays, and thought it was so cool to hear remixes of classic beats.
“Nowadays, I'm listening to songs and I’m like, ‘that's not the words’ and then I [realize], ‘Oh no, now I'm actually of that generation that they’re interpolating [from].”
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