B: The Racier Side of Rap

Posted by chelseadavison , Jan, 2010 @ 4:47 pm

de_la_soul_1

Race is obviously a heated and sensitive issue so maybe as a middle class white girl I should avoid discussing it… Or maybe not. Regardless, I do want to discuss it now because I read an article today looking at the dynamic between black rap artists and their white fan bases. The blog’s writer, a guy I knew during my younger musical years of high school, does make some generalized statements, however I think that at the core of his post there is a valid question being asked; when art is embraced by a particular audience, is the content or meaning of the art changed or invalidated by its re-appropriated context? Would the work of Banksy, the anonymous graffiti artist from the U.K., be somehow invalidated if corporations suddenly celebrated his work as genius? Let me know your thoughts after reading this article:

“The weekend of New Years, I was in D.C. ringing in the holiday with a group of friends from home. We had gotten tickets to see Wale perform on January 1. It turned out that the show was late-nite, the second of two shows performed by the Deec area stalwart that night(he’s not really a stalwart, I just kind of wanted to use that word). Either way, we figured that the show would be a great time. Wale, playing to a sold out crowd at the 9:30 Club, in his hometown. We knew he would bring the fire.

Rap (and hip-hop) is known as an inherently “black” music medium. The vast majority of these artists are African Americans who discuss (I use that word loosely) African American topics. Dealing with women with “badonka-donks.” Fighting “the white man.” Growing up in “the hood.” ”Slangin’”. If I sound white writing these things, imagine how white I sound saying them. Anyways, for some reason, I was less than surprised to find that the crowd for this concert was about 95% Caucasians (I realize that I am also white and thus my entourage and I only added to this number, but that is beside the point). Not only that, it seemed like the show was the place to be if you were the “cool” or “indie” hipster at your local DC area high school. Jeff Tracy probably would have made a point of making an appearance at both shows if he had still been prowling the halls of Georgetown Day.

The audience of this show led me to a realization that I had not thought of before. Much of the overall rap audience is white. This may seem obvious to you, but to me it was not. I guess this tells us why Eminem was so successful. The primary consumers could relate to him. My main point here is that this has to bother these rappers, as long as they actually believe in the things that they rap about. If they only care about the money, then it doesn’t matter who is listening. But if I was a legitimate rap artist (which I am in many of my dreams), I would hate having all white fans. Who cares if I am making a ton of money? I am losing much of my credulity. I remember reading an interview with Del tha Funkee Homosapien where he voiced these concerns. Makes sense. I love Del and I’m white, so he must be doing something wrong in his mind. Fortunately MF Doom doesn’t care, as far as I can tell. All of his fans besides Mos Def are white. And he’s awesome.”

Read the full article here: http://nebulousmass.com/ and please let me know your thoughts on this issue.

Also, after writing this article I went to check out the blog “Stuff White People Like” where I found all of the following: Banksy, Mos Def, being the only white person around, self aware hip hop references, and black music that black people don’t listen to anymore. Sounds about right.