RAP ATTACK

Why hip-hop bores me rigid... My column in today's Times:

IN THE NORMAL course of affairs, rap doesn’t particularly impinge on my life. I did my share of listening to Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy a couple of decades ago, and that was enough, thank you. If my two teenaged sons adore Kanye West, well, I can leave them to it, safe in the knowledge that I spent the first dozen years of their lives inoculating them with Ray Charles records. That should enable them to work out that "I Got A Woman" is a better record than "Gold Digger", but if not, well, there’s only so much a parent can do.

Sometimes, however, there’s no avoiding the hip-hop home-boys. Rap is the all-purpose Muzak of modern life, as ubiquitous as the rattle of pneumatic drills on the North Circular. There I was the other day, for example, listening to "Timeless", the new record by that Sixties samba hero Sergio Mendes, when the Black Eyed Peas suddenly crashed into the studio and set about mutilating (yes, there’s no other word) that quintessential Brazilian anthem "Mas Que Nada". A grisly experience, and almost as grim as Black Eyed rapper will.i.am’s performance on the next track, That Heat, which included the deathless line "Brazilian beauties with booties that wobble . . ." After I had picked my jaw from the floor, I realised that will.i.am had done us all a great favour by reminding us how huge a gulf separates rap from the best pop music.

We’re not supposed to say things like this, obviously. Admitting to disliking hip-hop is, we are told, a sure sign that you have entered middle age. But it’s not necessarily so, is it? I thought rap had run out of steam when I was 23, yet I never grow tired of discovering new musicians from the realm of world music or — less often, admittedly — jazz. I love Motown and blues too. After journeying through those soundscapes, listening to the latest rap hit is like being invited for a five-course dinner at the local Burger King.

All the same, you court trouble by professing that rap is depressingly one-dimensional. As Slate, the online magazine, reported this week, the pop singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt has been accused of racism for saying that, although he liked the early days of rap, he is bored by the modern-day version. No one ever accuses me of being anti-Christian when I say I’m allergic to Cliff Richard. But rap is, well, different. Pop critics, who are — need I remind you? — overwhelmingly white and middle-class, and guilt-ridden to boot, employ a curious double standard here. It’s absolutely OK to ridicule the audience for country music — "white trash" have always been fair game. No one would ever try the same with Dr Dre’s posse — and not just because of the risk of flying bullets.

Of course, it’s worth recalling that there was a time when blues music was dismissed as worthless and socially unacceptable by many middle-class black Americans. Eager to be accepted by the white world, they regarded the shouters and big fat mammas as a coarse and painful reminder of hard times. Today, a Robert Johnson CD is the last word in chic, and we chortle over Bessie Smith’s gentle double entendres about “keyholes” and “jelly roll”. Maybe a similar process will one day carry 50 Cent into the pantheon, though I doubt it.

Rap sceptics should take comfort from the fact that there are black American intellectuals who are just as irritated by the adolescent swagger. The commentator Stanley Crouch never misses an opportunity to lay into gangsta rappers. "They are at the bottom of the evolutionary scale," was one of his politer comments. John McWhorter, the outspoken young fellow of the Manhattan Institute, ridicules hip-hop revolutionaries in his new book "Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America".

As it happens, McWhorter doesn’t dislike all the records. What irritates him beyond belief is the notion — universal among music journalists and the trendier breed of academic — that the radical voice-of-the-streets slogans are anything other than a lucrative form of theatre. For McWhorter, it is all just another symptom of what he calls "therapeutic alienation": too many black people, he argues, embrace alienation as a way of "hiding from facing the real world as self- realising individuals".

The ultimate irony is that the biggest market for in-your-face rap is not the dispossessed ghetto youth. The real money is made in the white suburbs, where teens who live in the most cosseted environment in the history of mankind are able to live out fantasies of being the roughest, toughest guy in the ’hood. As the cultural critic Martha Bayles has observed, the music has supplanted heavy metal as the soundtrack of a young man’s rite of passage. Meanwhile, the packaging and the slick videos exploit racial stereotypes that were all the rage in the Jim Crow era. The minstrel show is back, and nobody seems to have noticed.

UPDATE: More on what ails hip-hop from a long-time insider,  Jorge "Pop Master Fabel" Pabon. His lecture, "The Great Hip-Hop Swindle" is a slightly windy effort, judging by the version that appears in the Independent, but if you fast-forward to the end, you'll get the gist of it:

Once the recording industry convinced MCs/rappers they could stand alone without a DJ, hip-hop dancers or the element of aerosol art, the culture was stripped apart. This along with the death of the jams, also known as block parties, was the beginning of the end of hip-hop in its original state. In short, the recording industry hijacked the term "hip-hop" and made it synonymous only with rap...

Unaware of hip-hop's magnificent legacy, some of our youth use the rap element to perpetuate and glorify many of the social ills our hip-hop forefathers were trying to overcome. The majority of pioneers were using this culture progressively while today many of our youth have reversed the order by promoting destructive lifestyles via rap.

Thanks for all the constructive comments below. I'll listen to the acts I'm not familiar with. Maybe I'll have a Road to Damascus moment, but my problem with rap is that it's just too basic a form to compete with the greatest black music of the past. The big difference is that, as Pabon suggests, it's been co-opted into an extraordinarily lucrative marketing juggernaut. All that cash means there's no stopping it now. Sadly.

UPDATE 2: Judging by the responses I'm getting, some people have me down as a gnarled old racist. So I'd better point out that you don't have to be white to write for the Times. (And, for the 58th time, I'm not Clive Davis the mighty mogul either. I'm younger, I have much less money, and I can't stand Whitney Houston.)

I guess I'll also have to apologise to music writer Phil Freeman for talking about the "other kinds of Negro music" [his words] that I like. How tactless of me. And I didn't say in my article that I liked Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash. I said I'd listened to them. [Hat-tip: George]

Comments

[Steve Yates]

I agree with a lot of your piece, but your depiction of hip hop is far too monolithic to let pass. Speaking as a white middle-class but not particularly guilt-ridden critic I spend a lot of my time bemoaning the dearth of quality lyricists in mainstream hip hop and the way it panders to the basest cliches about black people being dick-fixated, anti-intellectual violent criminals.
I even agree that I Got A Woman is a better record than Gold Digger, though just five minutes scrutinising Kanye West's rhymes will reveal a lyricist who makes Ray Charles seem like a man still working his way through his braille Janet & John.
I was sorry to see you repeat that cliche about rap being music for white suburbanites. Given the demographics - both here and in the US - it's inevitable that it will have more white than black customers, but as someone who has spent 20+ years trying to persuade mostly white friends (and more recently readers) of its merits, I can promise you that on any pro rata basis hip hop's client base remains predominantly black.
It's sad and pathetic that anyone should accuse someone of racism for saying they don't like hip hop - or even 'black music' as a whole - but the notion that it gets a free pass from the media is absurd. No one ever mocks it? Maybe you don't remember The Day Today's MC Fur Q or Aphex Twin's Windowlicker video or even the 'wigger' parody that was Ali G. 50 Cent and his crew are relentlessy criticised - and quite rightly - for their one-dimensional portrayal of black life and i don't recall anyone crying 'racism!' when Mothers Against Guns successfully campaigned against the posters for his recent biopic.
Your last paragraph is half right. The packaging of hip hop & R&B perpetuates stereotypes that are quite possibly doing long-term damage to race relations, but listening to a wider range than just Black Eyed Peas or 50 Cent will reveal this hasn't gone unnoticed - rap music is more self-critical than any other music in history.
As for the 'minstrel show'? Well, I agree, as do the American group Little Brother, which is why it was the title of their last album, a conceptual parody of the hip hop industry. It was hailed as a classic by us white (and black) middle-class rap critics. If you're concerned about what your kids listen to, you could do worse than buy it for them.

[Laban]

I thought the minstrel show (whether perfomed by black minstrels or blackfaced whites) portrayed an idealised version of plantation life, whose black characters may have been portrayed as comical but not as evil or violent.

Rap may also caricature black culture - but much of it it portrays a warrior culture where to be evil and violent is high praise. And there's some reality behind the bluster - as witness gun crime here and in the US.

Robert Whelan, in the foreword to Patricia Morgan's "Farewell To The Family" put his finger on where these urban warriors were coming from.

"We have created the classic conditions for the emergence of a warrior class: separation of economic activity from family maintenance; children reared apart from fathers; wealth subject to predation; and male status determined by combat and sexual conquest."

http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2005/03/trevor-phillips-and-education.html

[Chris]

Just read your piece in the Times about rap, and felt compelled to write and say, well done. I certainly fit the profile of white and middle-class, but gave up classical piano at the age of 12 to turn my attention to blues and jazz.

And while in the early years, Public Enemy and so on, bought something new and exciting to the music world, today’s incarnation is base and banal (in my opinion of course) and I firmly believe it is doing no good at all for society as a whole.

Anyway – well said - and I wish more would stand up and be counted on this.

[DK]

While I agree that some, and I stress some, popular music acts lack integrity, I disagree with your assertion that hip-hop is one-dimensional. In your article in The Times this morning, you conveniently mention two of the lowest groups on the totem of musical integrity, Blacked Eyes Peas and 50-Cent.

While nostalgically mentioning hip-hop pioneers like Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy, you fail to research or even give mention of any contemporary acts worth more than their weight in the music business, while still possessing street credibility along with a positive image. In your article there is no mention of the group Dead Prez, the Roots, or countless other noteworthy groups that you undoubtedly would have come across if you did more research into the music itself and not just what McWhorter or other 'experts' had to say in their commentaries.

The present status of a whole generation of young people succumbing to studio rap is shameful, however, not all is lost. As you pat yourself on the back with your diverse love of jazz, Motown and the blues, there are many young people out there doing the same. Some hip-hop groups will be looked back on with profound respect due to their creativity in music. 50 Cent and Blacked Eyes Peas will most likely not be among those, but then again, hip-hop is much larger than your one-dimensional interpretation of it in your piece, 'Hip-hop: 50 Cent short of a dollar.'

I hope you can diversify your ears soon. I could give you a very long list of wonderful groups if you like...

[EC]

About your rap on rap, very funny and well written. Nevertheless, (oui
mais) I still love Le Cincante Centimes and find his music sensual and
flowing. Ditto for that Black Eyed Pea and o amigo Mendes. Great stuff.
Ben intesso, this doesn't take one note away from my enjoyment of Bach,
or Mahler's Adagietto or even Berg's Lieder. Music is music is music
and by any other genre it would sound just as sweet. Ceci dit, I find
most Rap, when not sweetened with Hip-hop or R &B, that is: raw
shouting in-your teeth, shoot-the-cop Rap, to be flyblown elephant
excrement.

[JB]

Good article and good analysis. Succinct and well thought thru.

[Phil]

flying bullets? from Dr. Dre's posse? are you actually believing some of these songs? Andre Young is a studio gangsta like 90% of the people out there. other than that you have a lot of valid points.

[MikeK]

DK, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the dead presidents biggest hit about white people controlling your brain. It could very easily be some other rap group that I hate, but I am pretty sure it was the D.P.

Laban, the gun crime in the U.S. is a caused by drug problems not guns and rap. I don't have the numbers, but I would bet at least 60% of the shootings are drug related.

[Justin]

Man. You really have to learn more about rap music. Your knowledge appears to be limited to hip pop. There is much more out there that is not only musically tight but that also carries political and social commentary relevant to today.

[RSB]

I agree with most of your piece '50 Cent short of a dollar' but I do think that you are being somewhat one sided. I hate 50 Cent, Eminem, and Black Eyed Peas with an ardent passion, but I think Mos Def, the Roots, and Saul Williams are some of the most innovative artist today. As a blogger I am surprised that another connection didn't pop-up. Just as the best news, opinion, and investigation are on the internet and off the popular mass radar, so is the best hip-hop. Yes, popular hip-hop is baseless and trash, but please give credit to the Roots, Saul Williams, and the many others who performs feats of majesty with their combustible concoctions of rhythm and lyrics.

Furthermore, you missed the obvious connection between Sptizer's recent $12M fine of Universal and the modern day decline in music quality over the airwaves. 50 Cent would never have been as popular if it hadn't been promoted with lots of payola. This is endemic of the surrounding system like you point out in your article, but that is not a reason to ban Hip-Hop to cultural irrelevance.

[Steve Yates]

Mikek
Dead Prez's biggest record is 'It's Bigger than Hip Hop'. You can find the lyrics here.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/dead+prez/its+bigger+than+hiphop_20038333.html

[fridgemonkey]

Surely criticising Hip Hop for being The Black Eyed Peas and 50 Cent is like criticising World music for being Paul Simon and Julio Eglesias. i.e. Valid but only about half the picture. If your exprosure to any genre is limited to what is available in the mainstream then your perception of genre, whether it be hip-hip, electro, jazz or death metal will be, wel..., limited.

As other peoiple in the thread have mentioned there's a whole world of lyrical and sonic invention out there beyond what appears on The Box. Look out for Anti-Pop Consortium, Beans, Roots Manuva, The Dead Prez, Dan The Automator, Anticon, Prince Paul.... the list goes on and I've only scratched the surface.

"MCs get a little bit of love and think they hot
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
Y'all don't here me though
These record labels slang our tapes like dope
You can be next in line and signed; and still be writing rhymes and broke
You would rather have a Lexus? or justice? a dream? or some substance?
A Beamer? a necklace? or freedom?"

[fridgemonkey]

Oh and Mikek

"Uh, one thing 'bout music when it hit you feel no pain
White folks say it controls yo' brain
I know better than that, that's game"

Is the Dead Prez lyric you refer to, I think

[Nes]

The rappers you see are mostly just the talking, selling figureheads for a massive industry that has very little to do with music. You talk about "world music" and old jazz and blues without taking into account that these artists existed in a completely different era. Even if corporations paid their bills, I suspect that they had a lot more artistic control than most platinum-plus emcees of today do.
And on the topic of creative control, I am willing to accept that Lil Wayne and TI and Jeezy and 50 Cent and whoever else want to make most of the songs they do, but corporations choose guys like that to get marketed and get big. They control which kind of creative people get put on, period.
To ignore the business machine that puts people in positions of entertainment fame and treat popular hip-hop as simply a music genre is a short-sighted cop out.

[Robert]

"The real money is made in the white suburbs"

I don't doubt this truism Clive... but precisely because it is (as Steve Yates says) something of a cliche, it would be good if someone could point to some sales statistics or polls which back this up.

[NDN]

Why do I get the distinct feeling of some kind of racial overtones in this article? When you were young didn't you listen to music that the adults did not understand or relate to? Why is it soooo difficult to understand the generational gap in reference to taste in music when the people just happen to be black and from the forgotten class of society? These hip hop artists did not create the conditions about which they rap, they rap about what they see and know. The same way the lady in your article song about sex, but in a coded way of double entendre to make old white people like yourself more comfortable.

Well, if 50 cent and the rest of them were using that same formula I doubt if you would even be bothered to notice the conditions in their communities. If you want to be upset with a population of people, why not be upset with the generations after the civil rights movement who helped create this state of affairs by not upholding what that era truly meant. This include people like Stanley Crouch and McWhorters. They were so eager to "assimilate" into white society that they dropped the ball in their own communities. They left and started criticizing conditions of which they help create. By the way, has any of your record companies profited from this rap music?

I am a 33 year old African American woman living in Chicago and the only rap album that I have ever purchased was a Salt n Peppa album and I still love Whitney Houston even though she is having a hard time right now. What is your position on drugs and sex in the music industry? or do you only have opinions about the hip-hop? Surely, it's not the only genre in music that needs criticizing. What about greedy record label owners? Hip-hop came to being after Reagonomics, I wonder what will spring up after the Bush years.

[Graham]

So, you admit to not liking the music (not even when you were listening to it like 20 years ago) and thus you admit to not knowing anything about the culture (or its history) in the first place, except for what you can gleam from the latest Black Eyed Peas single ... and you still think your opinion is valid?

[dave heasman]

"that there was a time when blues music was dismissed as worthless and socially unacceptable by many middle-class black Americans".

It still is. The US black audience has always been ahistoric. They just don't listen to oldies much, and modern blues, since about 1965, has had an almost totally white audience.

My daughter, 22yo, white, English, likes rap music. Thinks K West & Nas are funny. The posturing's meant to be a joke.

[santanu roy]

Clive

Listen to NERD and Common. NERD will just blow you away - fanstatic musicians and powerful lyrics.

I wish some of the hip hop crowd would listen to Stephen Merrit ( Magnetic Fields ) - genius.

Glad I got into punk in the early eithties !!!

[Sean]

Re your article... Very good; H-H fits in very well with what I, and others, call the Emperor's New Clothes' Cultural Tide that is current; I observe:

Men Talking to music; good sample tracks (sometimes)-but where's the 'beef'?

Is this form of Popular Culture just lazy?

Do the lyrics, and sentiment, of some tracks brutalise immature minds?

I recall the much-sampled Isaac Hayes' remark that he did not want to be used in any art that encouraged a third party to stab someone.

On a train, a few years ago, and discussing H-H with a black woman; she stated that the reason for the content of such H-H was the 'black experience'; she got rather upset with my criticism of its content. Ironically, I was going to a Rare Soul Allnighter, that evening....