CPS

Rap Music and Street Consciousness: A review

Author: Janis McNair
Date: March 2003

Cheryl L. Keyes’ Rap Music and Street Consciousness is a comprehensive examination of the urban youth arts movement which emerged in the South Bronx in the late 1970s comprising MCing, disc jockeying, break dancing and graffiti art. This analysis of hip-hop culture and rap music is studied from perspectives of ethnomusicology, folklore and cultural studies and provides a strong theoretical background to Keyes’ qualitative research.

Although the terms ‘rap’ and ‘hip-hop’ are used interchangeably, rap artist KRS-One made the crucial distinction between rap as "something one does or performs" and hip-hop as "something one lives or experiences" and it is from this perspective that Keyes seeks to explode the myth of rap as a passing trend but as a cohesive arts movement which provided a vehicle for self-expression for a disenfranchised youth.

Unlike many commentators on hip-hop who commence with Sugar Hill Records’ release of Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang, Keyes begins much further back with an examination of rap’s origins in the African bardic tradition. The bard was a storyteller-singer who according to Keyes, chronicles history and transmits cultural traditions through performance. African American traditions such as sermons, ‘the dozens’ – a game of exchanging insults, field hollers and toasts are all regarded as antecedents of rap. Toasts – a long narrative poem composed in rhymed couplets – often makes use of exaggerated language, metaphor, expletives and boasting - stylistic devices often present in rap.

Jive talk emerged amongst Negroes in Chicago in 1921 and comprised vocabulary derived from a specifically urban context with words such as ‘cat’, ‘chick’ and ‘crib’ gaining popularity. Keyes identifies the importance of early African American DJs jiving to music over radio airwaves in the development of rap culture. Other techniques used included "talking through" (lowering the volume of music and continuing to talk as it plays) and "riding gain" (boosting or lowering volume in order to accent various parts of a record) were emulated by early hip-hop DJs.

Black Nationalist activist Hubert "Rap" Brown, the Black Arts Movement, The Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron (who is most renowned for The Revolution Will Not be Televised) have all been given their rightful place in the history of rap’s development.

Interestingly, Keyes acknowledges the influence of the Jamaican dancehall tradition of toasting and DJing which is often overlooked by commentators of rap and drew parallels between the early followers of hip-hop and rude boy culture (‘rudies’) which was identified by a distinct style of dress and attitude. It was the rude boy gangs’ penchant for carrying knives, guns, misogynistic attitudes and sexually explicit language which rendered them a precursor to gangsta rap.

Geo-political factors specific to New York, such as depleted federal funding for arts, radical changes in housing policy and social service cuts provided the impetus for rap music. The concentration of a Black and Latino underclass in a specifically urban environment, institutionalized poverty, crime, drug addiction, unemployment and the development of neighbourhood gangs provided the context for rap’s emergence. Keyes acknowledged the importance of ‘the streets’ where local neighbourhood block parties emerged as "an institution as important as the church, school and family in African American culture".

Afrika Bambaataa, who is oft cited as the god father of hip-hop, is credited with being the first to use the term ‘hip-hop’. Bambaataa and his Zulu Nation envisaged the rechanneling of violent competition between neighbourhood gangs into artistic contests. Strongly influenced by the Nation of Islam, Bambaataa hoped to mitigate youth gang violence by encouraging creative efforts.

Although hip-hop comprises four elements (graffiti, MCing, disc jockeying and break dancing), early hip hop did not have much verbal rapping in it – the genre was dominated by DJs competing against each other, showcasing their turntable acrobatics: Grandmaster Flash pioneered the techniques ‘backspinning’ and ‘phasing’ whilst Grand Wizard Theodore is credited with creating ‘scratching’.

Keyes quite rightly identifies hip-hop and rap as "giving voice to a disenfranchised segment of urban America" and claims "rap music is an amalgam of street language coding, style and raw beats." Rap Music and Street Consciousness gives an accurate and interesting insight into the historical development of hip-hop from the ‘old school’ of Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc and Bambaataa through political rap of Public Enemy to commercial rap of Beastie Boys and Run DMC to the advent to gangsta rap pioneered by NWA (Niggaz With Attitude) and Ice T and developed by Suge Knight’s Death Row records, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Notorious B.I.G, Puff Daddy and 2Pac.

However, it is Keyes’ analysis of the criticism cited against rap music which is most illuminating. Rap music has been vilified and discredited on the grounds of sexism, misogyny, glamourising violence, materialism and associations with criminality. Keyes, on the other hand, regards rap in a more positive sense as a display of cultural values, a vehicle for self-expression, an educational tool, a vehicle for social control (within the hip-hop community) and a political forum.

Gangsta rap in particular has been reviled for its often inherent violent imagery and sexually explicit lyrics (2 Live Crew’s 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be was declared legally obscene although the court ruling was overturned on appeal). The ensuing censorship debate in the States was heralded by Tipper Gore and Parents Music Resource Center claiming that gangsta rap was "polluting the minds of American youth". Keyes retorts by suggesting "controversial forms that threaten mainstream sensibilities will always face intense scrutiny from powerful political forces".

Rap music was also labeled a catalyst for violent behaviour after a series of high profile incidents of violence at rap concerts. Keyes notes that Boogie Down Production’s (BDP) Stop the Violence Movement, which sought to address crime at concerts and raise public awareness about black on black crime, received less press attention.

Defenders of gangsta rap, or ‘reality rap’, have contended that it does not glamourise violence and so-called gang-banging but vividly portrays the brutality of street life. NWA’s much castigated song F*ck tha Police, which dealt with the thorny issue of police brutality, has been regarded by some as a verbal prelude to 1992 LA riots which followed the acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating. Furthermore, gangsta rap artists claim to caution their audiences of the high risks associated with a criminal lifestyle such as Notorious B.I.G.’s Niggas Bleed, BDP’s 9mm Goes Bang and the video associated with Ice-T’s High Rollers which depicts a story about street hustling that ends in tragedy.

The hip-hop community’s effort to address problems such as drug addiction is similarly overlooked. Anti-drug messages have been integral to rap from Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s anti-cocaine anthem White Lines: "either up your nose or through your vein, with nothin to gain except killin your brain", MC Lyte’s I Cram To Understand U (Sam) which documents a lover’s descent in crack addiction and Public Enemy’s Night of the Living Baseheads.

The 1996 compilation album America is Slowly Dying featuring Wu-Tang Clan, Goodie Mob and Coolie provided an important statement from the hip-hop community about the proliferation of AIDS and a crusade for safe-sex practices following the aids related death of Eazy-E, the founder of NWA, the previous year.

Gangsta rap has also been heavily criticized for its material emphasis and for exploitation and commodification of rap artists by large multi-nationals (eg. advertising Pepsi, Sprite and Nike). Whilst it is impossible to refute the material fetishism of gangsta rap, hip hop has always marked by its own distinct sense of style including the wearing of sneakers, leather, monogrammed jewelry, gold necklaces and designer clothing. Keyes points to the more positive material potential of hip hop as an avenue out of the ghetto.

The most overriding and enduring criticism levied against rap is, of course, sexism; hip hop has been regarded as a heterosexual, masculine domain. Women’s representation in gangsta rap is particularly problematic – women in gangsta rap videos are often objectified and muted. Keyes’ analysis of women in rap attempts to redress the balance. Female rappers, and there are many of them, address issues pertinent to women such as domestic violence, dominant notions of femininity and black female sexuality. According to Keyes, female rappers "use their performances to refute, deconstruct and reconstruct alternative visions of their identity".

Keyes considers women’s contribution to rap music to be significant. She categorises female rappers as Queen Mothers (African centred icons such as Queen Latifah who address political and economic issues facing black women. For example, Latifah provided a gritty portrayal of impoverished women vulnerable to white patriarchal power in The Evil That Men Do and a critique to sexism in rap in Ladies First: "Some think that we women can’t flow, stereotypes they got to go". Other categories include Fly Girl (Salt-N-Pepa, Missy Elliott), Sista with Attitude (Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte) and The Lesbian (Queen Pen) who have contributed significantly, for example, by appropriating negative terms like ‘bitch’. It is the appropriation of terms like ‘bitch’, ‘ho’ and ‘nigga’ which is often misunderstood and Keyes claims "people who react negatively to this music (rap) are often unable to decode its lyrics, style and message."

Keyes refers to signifying in rap lyrics which has constituted the development of a distinct rap lexicon. Words have alternative meanings beyond their conventional interpretations such as cut (turntable technique), bite (stealing someone else’s rhyme’s), dope (great), dog (male friend) and new words such as edutainment (KRS-One) or raptivist (Chuck D of Public Enemy).

Thus, Keyes regards rap music as a part of a continuum of black expressive forms. She refutes the many charges made against hip hop in a well-researched and reasoned manner. Her identification of the positive impact of rap is a breath of fresh air in a genre continually dogged by criticism.

Updated: 3 July, 2007 | Site editor | Legal