Staged alienation

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views June 2, 2003]

Apologists for the grotesque, vulgar noise called "hip-hop" music like to point to those songs that contain positive or "constructive" messages, when defending against the critics of this genre. The defenders would have you believe that the more benign lyrics found in occasional songs are as representative of this music style as the songs containing blatantly coarse lyrics. In his article, "Mean Street Theater" (Wall Street Journal, 5/30/03), author John McWhorter impertinently asks, "How many hip-hop magazines would there be if the music delivered only positive messages?" The question suggests there would be very few. (A recent count of these phenomenally popular, in-your-face magazines and webzines came up with at least 63, and growing.)

McWhorter recounts the recent murders of several of these rappers with names like Camoflauge, Freaky Tah, and Jam Master Jay, observing that "The most popular music in black America presents a grim, violent, misogynist, sybaritic black male archetype as an urgent symbol of authenticity." He asserts, "In the hip-hop world, 'keeping it real' is everything, and the gutter is considered the 'realist.'"

McWhorter claims that hip-hop is not a message from the streets (as its defenders like to proclaim), "but a histrionic pose." He tells of an aspiring black rapper who worked so hard to impress a New York Times reporter with his ghetto identity, that his "strident vulgarity and sexism" chilled the reporter. To the charge that "white people act up too," McWhorter replies:

Yes, but Garth Brooks does not bring a "piece" to the Grammys, and Martin Scorsese does not get into ugly scuffles on the street. There is a fine line between playing the bad boy and becoming one, and in the "hip-hop community" too often violence jumps out of the quotation marks and becomes a tragic reality. . . .

The staged alienation of the hip-hop scene shows black Americans celebrating attitude over action at best and violence over civility at worst. For 350 years white America told blacks they were beasts. Now a black-generated pop music presents us to whites and ourselves as beasts, while a cadre of black intellectuals celebrate this as "deep" and black impresarios glide by in their limos calling it a "revolution." Revulsion is more like it.

[Also see I&V commentaries : The demented scribblings of hip-hop; Rappers summit; NAACP stoops still lower]

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