For many who grew up on “the Motown Sound,” there has always been an uneasy comfort about the world and the black American’s place in it. Distressed over the fight for civil rights, frustrated with the Vietnam War — a conflict that many blacks saw as an unnecessary show of force that took attention away from domestic concerns — and aggravated by perceived economic and institutionalized injustices, many R&B and soul musicians transitioned from romantic crooning to protesting the daily injustices they and their fans were forced to endure.
Many artists were fueled by sentiments similar to Muhammad Ali’s. He infamously justified his refusal to submit to the war draft by saying, “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father…”
Singers like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder would become lyrical activists and icons. Their music brought public awareness to injustices and gave a voice to the frustrations of the disenfranchised.
“You can hear the beats in the music change,” civil rights activist and poet Nikki Giovanni told online magazine Mo’ Betta Soul earlier this month. “Stuff like Edwin Starr doing ‘War, What Is It Good For?’ Even people like the Temptations and The Beatles all had a sound that changed.”
As R&B and soul flowed into rap and hip-hop in the 1980s, the impetus to use the platform to speak of social ills grew. With rap being born on the street, the music reflected not only the harshness of urban life, but also the extreme economic and social disparities between the black and white experiences. Even within the seemingly self-aggrandizing style of “bling-bling” rap, a contrast was drawn between the abject poverty much of the rap community know intimately and the dreams of wealth many of them would admit to fantasizing about.
However, as rap and hip-hop grow more accepted, the nature of the music seemed to change. While rock and country are still the nation’s most popular music genres, the growth of rap and hip-hop listenership outside of coastal urban areas — particularly, in the Midwest — suggests that a large part of rap’s current listenership is not privy to the same struggles as earlier audiences. As the face of rap and hip-hop grows more diverse and more reflective of an ever-shifting listenership, there is a sense that “angry rap” is slowly starting to lose its shock value.
“It seems to me that most artist are on the take — it’s all about the money,” Michael Soward, the author of “LifeOlogy 101: If All Else Fails, Smile,” told MintPress News. “Nothing else really seems to matter anymore; it’s a sort of ‘get as much as I can and sit on that can’ approach to life. In other words, fewer people are willing to risk their earning potential as opposed to taking a stand for any truth these days.”
The unusual case of hip-hop’s growing listenership
A case in point is Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who, in an interview with GQ, listed his three favorite rap songs as N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton,” Tupac’s “Killuminati” and Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”
“I think Tupac’s lyrics were probably more insightful — my opinion, with all apologies to the Biggie fans,” Rubio said in an interview with BuzzFeed.
“In some ways, rappers are like reporters. In particular, at that time, from the West Coast, it was a lot of reporting about what life was like … so the ’90s, a time when this was really taking off, was a time when this was really pronounced. … You had gang wars, racial tension, and they were reporting on that,” he said when asked about life lessons he may have learned from listening to Tupac.
While it is not surprising that 42-year-old Rubio would have grown up with hip-hop — a genre with nearly 40 years of history — it is shocking that a conservative Republican with designs on the White House and a short-list candidate for the 2012 Republican vice presidential nomination would admit his enamoration publicly.
Twenty-two years ago, Tipper Gore — the wife of then-Senator Al Gore, who would go on to become the vice president under the Clinton administration — led a fight on Capitol Hill against so-called “gangsta rap.” Her crusade resulted in the introduction of the parental advisory warning and age restrictions for the purchase of “violent” music. At the same time, then-Vice President Dan Quayle had deemed Tupac’s first album, the critically acclaimed “2Pacalypse Now,” a disgrace to music and called on Interscope Records to withdraw it.
The notion that, in a relatively short amount of time, political, “gangsta” and “angry” rap have grown so palatable that they are tolerated — and even enjoyed — by members of the political extreme right suggests two conflicting aspects of the state of black music today: while the musical genres have never had larger audiences than they do now, the music’s protest voice has never been so faint.
New sensibilities
“The days of hip hop artists using street influence and gritty beats to bring light to political agendas has all but passed,” Noah Rakoski, vice president for talent relations for Grooveshark, an online music streaming service, told MintPress. “Take a look at the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop charts and you’ll see Iggy Azalea’s ‘Fancy,’ or Ty Dolla $ign’s social media- and meme-inspired ‘Or Nah.’ Good catchy songs in their own right, but not quite the same content you’d hear from Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Common or M.I.A.”
Some might argue that the same could be said for all American music across the charts. While artists such as Brother Ali and Immortal Technique continue to perform to raise awareness and speak out against the status quo, the era of folk music, talking blues, protest music and awareness gospel seems more a matter of nostalgia than an active part of the musical conversation.
“It may not be that the urban music scene has grown too commercialized to speak ‘from the streets,’ rather what entertains today’s consumer have changed,” continued Rakoski.
“Take, for example, what you’ll find when you search ‘Rap Battle’ on Google. It’s no longer Mos Def challenging artists to bouts of the verbal intellect. What you’ll see instead is a YouTube channel titled ‘Epic Rap Battles of History,’ with over one billion views, the channel created by YouTuber’s Peter Shukoff (a.k.a. Nice Peter) and Lloyd Ahlquist (a.k.a. EpicLLOYD) shows short videos of actors portraying unlikely historical figures that ‘throw down’ in what can only be described as comical rap battles.”
Coming from the streets
While commercial interests and a shifting audience base may have blunted the need for mainstream acts to “speak from the streets,” there are those out there today who still choose to use music to speak out. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, for example, have come out as outspoken critics of modern society — their anthem “Thrift Shop,” for example, pokes fun at consumerism, while “Same Love” offers a personal and poetic defense of same-sex marriage legalization.
Another highly political current artist is Nas. Widely considered one of the mainstream rap industry’s best street rappers, his controversial career has brought him head-to-head with Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. His upcoming album — the last under Def Jam — is highly anticipated. Others on the radar include Kendrick Lamar, Bishop Nehru, Odd Future and Que Hampton.
“Hip-hop is in a transitional stage. At the top of the food chain you have established stars whose messaging becomes less believable/relatable with age and wealth, distancing themselves from stories of a hard-knock life that initially propelled them to stardom,” Michael Yeon, integrated marketing for Grooveshark, told MintPress.
“In addition, over the last few years, EDM [Electronic Dance Music] has quickly taken over as the standard bearer for the mainstream ‘party culture’ long associated with hip-hop, forcing the genre into a scramble to redefine itself. Some artists engaged the new sound, such as A$AP Rocky collaborating with Skrillex or Lil Jon embracing his recent career move as a DJ.”
Music is ultimately a business, and like all businesses, commercial success is something that will be always sought — even at the expense of the product.
However, as music is one of the most powerful forms of human expression, there will always be those that recognize its power to challenge, to empower and to enact change. It may be that success gentrified hip-hop and rap. But as long as there are a few willing to still rap from the streets, and as long as there is an audience willing to buy their tracks, rap will still be relevant. The genre hasn’t sold out … yet.
“Struggle and conflict — two things that aren’t going anywhere — has fueled some of the greatest hip-hop songs ever recorded,” Yeon continued. “It will continue to do so.”