“You are about to witness
the strength of street knowledge.”
Niggaz With Attitude[1]
The focal concept of this essay is “authenticity” as it is given meaning in the rap subculture. It is through this general lens that we ca n examine and evaluate the work of the Beastie Boys. This chapter, then, considers the existence and nature of the rap subculture, and thus lays the foundation for later discussions of the Beastie Boys.
There are a number of ways of analysing a subculture. I adopt a view
which sees a subculture as an imagined group, best analysed by considering how
it has been represented, and how it represents itself. I show that rap has been
aligned with the rock end of the pop-rock dichotomy, since it is concerned with
being perceived as “authentic” expression. I probe various meanings of
“authenticity”, considering how “authentic” texts are seen to oppose the
mainstream and articulate the attitudes of a specific section of society. In
particular, rap's desire to remain “authentic” has resulted in the construction
of imagined localities which ground the imagined community of the subculture.
The specific conventions and attributes of this subculture— the markers it uses
to define “authenticity” — are elaborated on in further chapters.
Popular music can be divided into genres: heavy metal, techno, country
and “world music” are just a few examples. In many cases, these genres are
associated with subcultures, audiences which share similar demographic
features. As Shuker explains, “rock consumption patterns, most notably genre
preferences, follow discernible trends in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, and
in particular, class.”[2]
A subculture, though, is more than just a grouping of demographically similar
individuals.
As a starting point, a subculture can be thought of as “ a cultural
group or class within a larger culture, esp.
one having beliefs, interests, customs etc., at variance with those of the
larger culture.”[3] Greentz defines
subculture as “a system of shared meanings.”[4]
Viewing
a subculture as an integrated collection of stylistic elements — a “homology”—
has characterised the work of a number of influential subcultural theorists,
notably Willis[5] and Hebdige.[6] But as Middleton has pointed out, this kind of subcultural theory may
have limited use in a study of popular music, since it often ignores the
evaluation of music as music, looking only at its appropriation and
incorporation by existing groups.[7]
The value of Middleton's critique is evident when we consider that in a
number of subcultures (skinheads or bikers for example), music is only one
element of the overall style.[8]
Rap music, too, can be viewed as just one element of the subcultural
movement of hip-hop, which also involves graffiti, breakdancing, distinctive
clothing and slang. Of all the elements of hip hop, however, rap
has the widest exposure, largest following and appears to articulate most
clearly the views and attitudes of the subculture. It is thus possible to speak
of a rap subculture, that, while undoubtedly being connected to the wider hip
hop subculture, can be analysed separately.
How, then, do we determine which people participate in the rap
subculture? Structural and semiotic theorists such as Hebdige and Willis
emphasise the presence of signifiers attached to members of the subculture.
Hebdige's analysis of punk culture, for example, concentrates on that
subculture's “style”; elements such as piercing, haircuts and ripped clothes.
His implicit assumption is that the subculture is composed of the people who
display these signifiers.[9]
In the case of rap, participants in the subculture could be similarly
identified by their baggy pants or use of words like “ill” and “dope”.
While analysing the significance of style is certainly illuminating, I
view subculture less as an identifiable group and more as an imagined
community. That is, a subculture exists primarily as a communal concept, not as
an empirically assessable list of people and attributes. The idea of invented
cultural spaces has been used in other contexts: for example, Said viewed the
idea of the Orient as an “imaginative geography”[10]
used by Europeans to negatively define their own identity.[11]
The European view of the Orient was fashioned not only by actual encounters
with Eastern countries, but also by a “textual universe”[12]
including poetic and artistic representations of the Orient.
From another angle, Anderson has argued that the concept of a “nation”
can be viewed as an “imagined political community.”[13]
Even in the smallest country one cannot meet all the inhabitants, “yet in the
minds of each lives the image of the communion.”[14]
Anderson goes on to say that “all communities larger than primordial villages
of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined.”[15]
If “nations”, where participants are at least somewhat geographically
proximate, are imagined communities, then worldwide, diffuse “subcultures” are
even more so. And the potency of representations in creating these communities,
as pointed out by Said, is perhaps even more pertinent in the case of a
media-based subculture. The site of the rap subculture is no more literal than
a CD, a radio frequency or a temporary gathering at a concert.
Not only is the rap subculture an imagined space, but its members are,
in my view, constantly negotiating the extent of their participation. De
Certeau has written of the ways in which consumers adopt various aspects of a
cultural system in forming their own identity. He writes that cultural users
“select fragments taken from the vast ensembles of production in order to
compose new stories with them.”[16]
Given this fluid response to cultural stimuli, my focus will be on
representations about the rap subculture — in the general media, and in the
work of rappers themselves — rather than on its manifestation in the lives of
youth. Specifically, I look at the way in which the rap subculture is presented
as a community.
“Community” can be defined as “an organized political, municipal or
social body; a body of people living in the same locality; a body of people
having religion, profession, etc., in common.”[17]
Anderson gives the term a more emotive quality in his discussion of nations,
writing that a community is a “deep, horizontal comradeship.”[18]
In my analysis, a community is a more close-knit group than a subculture. In
the case of rap, not only is a subcultural community imagined — through a
commonality of “style”, dress, language and broad thematic concerns in lyrics —
but specific local communities are imagined to bolster rap's “authenticity”. To
analyse this, it is necessary to further explore the concept of “authenticity”.
Discussion of popular music often places specific genres on a continuum
between pop and rock. Pop singers, such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue or the
Backstreet Boys, are identified with mainstream culture[19].
Further, the music they produce is seen as manufactured, often according to a
formula, with profit rather than artistic integrity as the central concern.
Thus critics assert that pop is governed by the “performance codes of artifice”[20]
and even call it “brainless robotism”.[21]
Rock (or “folk”)
genres, by contrast, are seen as genuine grassroots articulations of social
conditions. Artists in this category include social protest singer-songwriters
such as Bob Dylan and, more recently, Bruce Springsteen. The key value of rock
music is that it is “authentic”. As Shuker writes, in
descriptions of rock music the concept of authenticity “is imbued with considerable
symbolic value.”[22] Similarly, Grossberg writes
that “rock’s special place was enabled by its articulation
to an ideology of “authenticity”.[23]
“Authenticity” can be seen as the criterion which distinguishes rock music
genres from more generic, mainstream popular music.
The rap subculture is clearly identified with the rock end of the
pop-rock continuum. A number of commentators have referred to the tendency for
rap music to be perceived as “authentic.” Ross, for example, describes rap as a
“world of music conventionally governed by the performance codes of
authenticity.”[24] Benjamin
states that “in the case of hardcore rappers, excessive reliance on artistic
imagination is anathema, because authenticity is central to the legitimation of
their views.”[25] Longhurst
states that raps “tend to have value ascribed to them because of their
authenticity”[26] and Bayles
observes that rap is about “trying to make it real.”[27]
The media has also contributed to the image of rap as an “authentic”
music genre. The media is a powerful tool in portraying subcultures, and hence
constructing the popular image of them. In the case of rap, news reports,
reviews and advertisements heavily influence the image of the artists and
events associated with the subculture. McRobbie comments that “just as reviews
construct the sense of a particular film in different ways, so an album or
concert review lays down the terms and the myths by which we come to recognise
the music.”[28]
A recent media exploration of the association of rap with “authenticity”
was the 1998 Warren Beatty film, Bulworth.[29]
In this film, a campaigning senator (Bulworth) arranges his own murder, to be
carried out sometime during the following week. His resulting sense of freedom
leads him to abandon the rhetoric and artifice of his usual campaign speeches,
and he instead speaks honestly about the inadequacy of politics in addressing
social inequalities. As part of Bulworth's rejection of dishonesty, he begins
rapping in his speeches. His use of the rap form signals his new integrity. The
film, however, is more complex than this summary indicates: problematic
elements include Bulworth's extremely poor rapping skills, which conceivably
mark his raps as token efforts rather than a new form of speech for the
Senator. Further, Bulworth appropriates actual sentences spoken by the black
people he meets, and develops a relationship with a young black woman. One of
the dominant messages of the film, however, is that dishonest political speech
can be contrasted with the “authentic” communication of rap.
While this is a positive depiction of rap's counter-cultural influence,
there are many media portrayals of rap which are sensationalist and fear-based
— yet equally supportive of rap's claims of “authenticity”. McRobbie observes
that “the moral panic and smear campaign construct what the subculture
“becomes” just as much as the kids on the street,”[30]
and this has clearly been part of the way in which the rap subculture has
developed. Following the LA riots of 1992, there was a “moral panic generated
by the Newsweek rap cover story”[31]
which featured Bill Clinton's censure of the comments by Sister Souljah (from
Public Enemy) which had apparently encouraged or at least condoned the rioting.
Similar media scare-mongering occurred during the Beastie Boys Licensed to
Ill tour of the United Kingdom, where “the mydia hyped them as being a
threat to the nation's youth”[32]
and they were described as “a godsend for the downmarket daily tabloids.”[33]
While rap artists
may react violently against such portrayals — see, for example, Public Enemy's
song “A Letter to the New York Post” [34]objecting
to an article about Chuck D beating his wife — the truth is that being seen as
dangerous to the mainstream is integral to rap's self-definition as
“authentic”. Rappers constantly emphasise their opposition to the social and
moral order of society — the Beastie Boys, for example, say “I cheat and steal
and sin and I'm a cynic.”[35] Rap artists also
insist on their distance from “pop” musicians. For example, Ice-T's album Home
Invasion opens with the following monologue:
Attention. At this moment you are now
listening to an Ice-T LP. If you are offended by words like shit, bitch, fuck,
dick, ass, ho, cum, dirty-bitch, low motherfucker, nigger, slut, tramp,
dirty-low-slut-tramp-bitch-ho-nigger-fuck-shit
whatever, take the tape out now.
This is not a pop album.[36]
Ice-T's tactics
may seem crude, but the desire to shock is central to rap's “authenticity”. To borrow Clarke's phrases, the power of subcultures is a temporary
“power to disfigure” the everyday world of the dominant cultural group, and rap
thrives on “shocking the straights”.[37]
Ice-T very clearly differentiates his music from the mainstream, acceptable “pop”
music — the criterion of difference in this case is his willingness to use
street expressions and portray street ugliness. This is “authentic”
communication.
Beyond being
other to mainstream pop, rock's “authenticity” is a vague
term. As defined in the dictionary, “authentic” means “real, actual, genuine,
original.”[38] This
abstract definition does little to clarify what is meant when rock music is
labelled as “authentic”. Some theorists have elaborated more usefully on the
term's meaning. Shuker states that “authenticity is underpinned by a series of
oppositions: mainstream versus independent; pop versus rock; and commercialism
versus creativity.”[39]
He also offers a more general definition, writing that authenticity can be
“equated with the ability of rock to resonate with youth’s common desires,
feelings and experiences in a shared public language.”[40]
Grossberg links authenticity with community: authentic rock “constructs or
expresses a “community” predicated on images of urban mobility, delinquency and
bohemian life.”[41] Thus it
seems that “authenticity”, in rock music, is used to refer to music which
apparently speaks directly from and to close-knit groups.
Grossberg's above diplomatic phrase, “constructs or expresses”,
acknowledges arguments that the “authenticity” of rock is a construct, much
like the image of pop music. The pop-rock dichotomy is indeed problematic, since rock
genres are in general as much controlled by commercialism and mass media as the
pop genres.[42] Critics
have acknowledged the rhetorical, rather than descriptive, value of
“authenticity”. One writer states that “authenticity
is a constitutive moment of rock, not in the sense that it ever has or can
exist, but in the sense that it constructs the political mythology of rock.”[43]
Thus the evaluation of individual texts or genres as “authentic” cannot be
based on a search for actual, objective authenticity. As Frith observes:
To be authentic and to sound authentic is in the rock context the same
thing. Music cannot be true or false,
it can only refer to conventions of
truth and falsity.[44]
The source of
rap's claim to “authenticity” lies in its origins. Rap sprang from a literal community — the predominantly black youth population of
inner-city New York. It was here that street-dancing to disco music with a
pronounced beat was developed in the early 1970s as an inexpensive alternative
to the fashionable disco clubs. When MCs began reciting improvised street
poetry over the top of the music, it became known as rap.[45]
With the first recorded rap in 1979 — “Rapper's Delight” by the
Sugarhill Gang — rap became a media-based phenomenon and the subculture with
which it was associated transcended the physical locality of New York. Rap
music is now both produced and consumed worldwide.
Not only has rap moved beyond its physical location, but its audience is
no longer almost exclusively lower-class and Afro-American. One result of hip
hop's commodification has been the growth of a significant white, middle-class
audience for rap. For example, at a Public Enemy (PE) concert in Seattle in
August 1990, “nearly half the audience was white — typical of PE concerts and
its audience.”[46] The
attraction of rap for white youth is presumably its articulation of rebellion.
More particularly, its very clear associations with black lower-class society
make identification with the rap subculture a highly potent way for white
middle-class kids to terrify their parents. This could be seen as culture
channelling political fears into a safe medium, as rap offers listeners
vicarious thrills rather than real ones.[47]
On the other hand, there was at least the perception of a strong link between
rap music and the 1992 LA riots.[48]
The extent of music's influence on youth behaviour is an ongoing debate.
The acknowledgment of white fans by militant black rappers adds another
interesting dimension to the construction of the rap community. Ice-T's album Home
Invasion is perhaps the most explicit example. The cover features a white
boy listening to a walkman, an open book about Malcolm X by his side, while in
the background there are floating images of black men — one bursts through a
door, one cracks the skull of a white man using the butt of a gun, and one
molests a near-naked white woman. The lyrics on the album also address white
listeners. Similarly, Kool Moe Dee refers to (presumably) white audiences in
“The Avenue”:
“Here come the cops”
Oh yeah that again
Rather than beating them down I just talk to the men
They don't understand how I've got so much cash
Then I get mad and tell them to ask their daughter
I bet she bought a Kool Moe Dee tape for her recorder[49]
Both Kool Moe Dee and Ice-T are using white audiences to boost their
image of power (both economic and political) and at the same time playing with
what Clarke terms “the U.S. political culture's enormous appetite for images of
black men misbehaving.”[50]
The presumed intent of these rappers is to transform the apparent
commodification of rap into another aspect of rap's counter-cultural force.
Despite the diffusion of rap amongst countries
outside the US and demographics outside lower-class Afro-Americans, the close nexus
between musicians and audience persists at least as an image. Raps are frequently spoken in the second person — “you wake up late for
school, man you don’t wanna go”[51]
— or in the interrogative voice — “listen all y'all it's a sabotage.”[52]
This fosters the illusion that those who listen to rap are part of the rapper's
literal community. In “The Maestro”, the illusion is made even more explicit,
with the Beastie Boys pretending to live on the same block as their audience: “Who is the man
coming down your block/It’s me you see with the
funk in my walk”.[53]
The image of a shared local community in the rap subculture is highly
significant. As Ross observes, in rap:
the lyrics are directly
addressed to the listener, the audience is assumed to be a 'community', bound
together by common experiences and a shared history, and the performers have
roots in that community which they draw upon to verify their right to be heard.[54]
This chapter has established some of the key concepts underlying my analysis of the Beastie Boys and their place in the rap subculture. First, we saw that a subculture is an imagined space, created through representations made in the media and in the work of rappers themselves. We then examined these representations, and saw that the central value attributed to rap is “authenticity.” “Authenticity” was seen to be a vague term, and one which can only be defined by genre conventions. In the case of rap, “authenticity” is aligned with the idea of speaking from and to a specific local community. We saw how the importance of community was manifested in raps which directly address audiences, building an imagined community spanning geographical and even at times racial distance. The actual construction of rap’s imagined local communities is the subject of Chapter Two, which looks at the role of detail ¾ about places, people and products ¾ in giving shape to the community, and in differentiating the rap community from the mainstream.
[1] Opening of album "Straight outta compton"
[2] Shuker at 231.
[3] New Shorter Oxford, "subculture" definition 2, page 3115.
[4] Greentz in Middleton at 167.
[5] In on record
[6] In on record
[7] Middleton at 158 and at 166.
[8] Middleton at 158.
[9] Hebdige in on record at 56.
[10] Said at 57.
[11] Edward W Said at 1-2.
[12] Said at 52.
[13] Anderson at 6.
[14] Anderson at 6.
[15] Anderson at 6.
[16] Michel de Certau, The Practice of Everyday Life trans. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of Claifornia Press, 1984) at 35.
[17] New Shorter Oxford, "Community", def. 2 at 455.
[18] Anderson at 7.
[19] Garofalo at 237
[20] Ross at 103.
[21] Bayles at 342.
[22] Shuker at 36.
[23] Grossberg, we gotta, at 205 - 206.
[24] Ross at 103.
[25] Longhurst at 154.
[26] Longhurst at 156
[27] Bayles at 341.
[28] McRobbie at 76.
[29] Bulworth, dir Warren Beatty, 20th Century Fox, 1998. Color, 108 minutes.
[30] McRobbie at 72.
[31] Mitchell at 26.
[32] Beastie Boogaloo website.
[33] Mike Clifford at 14.
[34] Discography info….
[35] "Shadrach", Paul's Boutique
[36] "Warning", Ice-T, Home Invasion.
[37] Clarke at 84.
[38] New Shorter Oxford.
[39] Shuker at 36.
[40] Shuker at 38.
[41] Grossberg, we gotta, at 207.
[42] Ross at 104.
[43] Bennet et all at 173. Describing Grossberg.
[44] Aah! Where was this from!!!
[45] Oxford Companion to Popular Music, p481
[46] Ted Swedenburg, "Homies in the 'Hood: Rap's Commodification of Insubordination." New Formations No 18, Winter 1992 (London: Lawrence and Wishart) at 58.
[47] Mitchell at 30.
[48] Mitchell at 25.
[49] Ohhla, song and album, discography???
[50] Stuart Allan Clarke, "Fear of a Black Planet', Socialist Review, vol 21, nos 3 and 4, 1991 p40.
[51] Beastie Boys, "You've Gotta Fight", Licensed to Ill.
[52] Beastie Boys, "Sabotage", Ill Communication
[53] “The Maestro”, Check Your Head.
[54] Ross at103.