Intro
"I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world." -Tupac Amaru ShakurIn our culture, in our America, we search for something that inspires us. A primary source of this was our own creativity. Stare at a blank canvas, throw paint all over it and call it art. Bang on the pots in the kitchen and call it music. Speak your heart in front of your peers and become a leader. Move to your own rhythm . . .
When you say the words “Hip-hop,” we used to just think mainly music and the MCs parading around calling themselves artists. Through this class and the literary works of Jeff Chang, there is so much more to Hip-hop that we are just beginning to understand. Endless content with elaborate context that can allow someone to showcase their talents and let them hide behind it at the same time.
This essay will focus on the positives and negatives from the tale that Chang tells in his History of the Hip-hop Generation. The positives will be about the discussion Chang encourages us to partake in as we travel into Hip-hop’s past. The negatives will be the paths that Chang either omitted, merely scraped on or that just deserves more attention to understand the struggle and strides that Hip-hop has taken.
Leave your assumptions behind and realize that Hip-hop isn’t just about music. Hip-hop a story that hasn’t ended yet.
Can’t Stop
"I met this girl, when I was ten years old,One day, when hip-hop has become more accepted in its transition from the radio to more classrooms around the globe, one of the text books kids will be sent home with will be Jeff Chang’s historical recollection of what rap music was and came to be.
And what I loved most she had so much soul,
She was old school, when I was just a shorty,
Never knew throughout my life she would be here for me...”
-Common Sense : I used to love her
Chang’s book differs from many others in the sense that he is reading facts, figures, dates, times, events and so on. Its not always about the “what.” Chang focuses on the “who,” “where” and “why” for a great portion of the book and allows DJ Kool Herc, Afrikan Bambaataa, Jeffery “DOZE” Green, Richard Colón aka “Crazy Legs” and other hip-hop pioneers tell the story for him. “When” all this starts is in the late 1960s before the Sugar Hill Gang wowed audiences with “Rapper’s Delight” and before anything close to resembling a modern-day MC grabs a microphone.
Reggae is the inspiration. Its unique rhythm is what makes the women move on the dance floor and have the men soon follow. The lyrics help its listeners understand what is right and wrong in their societies and the message is what catapults the people into knowing how things should be and how to make things better. The music is bigger than the radio stations that play it and the artists, including the world renowned singer Bob Marley, are more prominent figures than the officials running the government.
Most lessons in our academia have a certain view or theme to understand. For example, in business and economics, the big idea to be successful is to have your marginal cost equal your marginal benefit. In the first two “loops” of Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, he focuses on introducing four specific themes that establish what Hip-hop really was. These themes are DJing, MCing, B-boy Dancing, and Graffiti.
MCing is the first thing to come to the minds of many when concerning this rap game. The other lesser known aspects have a sweet, almost romanticized story of their birth into hip-hop. DJing, an art already mastered in other areas of music, has an awakening with DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash as its catalysts. The two DJs revolutionized the way music was played in clubs, dances and parties to keep the energy of the crowd on the dance floor. Herc began by recreating this sound and pumping the volume louder than anyone has ever heard before. Grandmaster Flash is almost made out to be a sort of geek that sits in his room playing with his sound system and trying to figure out how to get more out of it. These two figures reconfigure the mainstream music into breaks for the crowd to dance to that seem endless and a continuous amount of volume to pump the people up.
B-boying is an art that follows the parties and gives the music the visual it so sorely lacked. Its creation is not as significant as its resurrection. B-boying’s ways were slowly, but surely dying in the late 70's and what appear to be merely kids helped it back up and took it to a high plateau. Crazy Legs, Lenny Len and others traveled block to block, across neighborhoods and into parks and corners to battle anyone ready for the challenge. Once they defeated their opponents, they all quickly resolved and this rolling gang got bigger and bigger. The Rocky Steady Crew is credited as B-boying’s savior in 1979 and help it continue to be part of Hip-hop’s foundation.
The most romanticized story is that of Graffiti writing. A simple boy in Philadelphia going by the moniker CORNBREAD was seeking the attention of a girl named Cynthia. To get her to notice him, he wrote his name on every wall that she passed on the way home. The name soon got stuck in not only her head, but the heads of other teens from the Delaware River’s bay back up north to the Bronx. No one saw it as art but as a way of being famous. Having your name out in public for people to recognize. A status symbol for many who continuously took graffiti to new heights as history rolled on. Soon it became a topic for debate. Art or vandalism?
Won’t Stop
"Now hip-hop was a gift that lifted upChang continues to portray the evolution of hip-hop in loop 3 with the global fight against apartheid. In 1963, freedom fighter and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandella was captured and imprisoned. Following his imprisonment sparked a mass anti-racism and anti-apartheid movements in South Africa that were primarily funded by the U.S. However when Ronald Reagan gained presidency in 1980, he refused to contribute funds for anti-apartheid in South Africa and chose to focus on the anti-racism in America. Reagan’s decision sparked mass controversy among anti-apartheid movements and the government. Aided by hip hop artists like Run DMC, protests were held and opinions were voiced through underground and mass media until funds were returned. It wasn’t until 1990 that Nelson Mandella was freed and the apartheid had finally come to an end.
Loved rap 'til the companies ripped it up
Now the soul is set, we've been had like jazz
If you down for change then they take your voice away”
- Public Enemy/Chuck D: Hard Rhymin’
Following the protests, Reagan implemented the “trickle down theory,” an idea that tax cuts for the wealthy and for big businesses would stimulate the economy. However his plan created a gap between the rich and poor that was higher than at any time since the great depression. This created a huge gap between the wealth of white and blacks as well. His plan created segregation between poor black areas and white upper class wealthy areas, inevitably placing whites and blacks into their own separate domains. Following this, new gangs called the Bloods and Crips formed and crime, violence, drugs, racism and black-on-black crime elevated to a new level. This dramatic change affected and created an entirely new generation of artists that created new forms of hip hop, b-boy dance styles and graffiti to use as a form of expression.
To combat the negative changes being placed by the government, new politically conscious artists on the east coast like Public Enemy and west coast artists like N.W.A. arose. Hip-hop was no longer used as a method of dance, but became known as a way to voice your opinion to mass media. However as violence in urban areas increased and victims like Michael Griffith and Rodney King are victimized in the act of racism, hip-hop is blamed for preconceiving the anger in youths and is coined as “gangster rap”.
In 1991, George Bush gained presidency and the U.S military invaded Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War. Although “gangster rap” had continued to increase, a new form of hip-hop took shape. “Political rap” turned to “conscious rap” in the 1990’s and artists like The Roots, Talib Kweli, and Mos Def formed to combat the negative depiction of hip-hop and voice new opinions on how to positively change the racist society we live in. Chang concludes his book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop with the protest and march towards the Ronald Reagan State building on the day of the democratic national convention on August 15th of 2000. Although the protesters were stopped with tear gas and black bats of law enforcement, the protesters voiced their opinions that day and prevailed with arms raised high in the air that society needed to change.
Digging Deeper
The next few sections are areas that hip-hop has predicated itself on, whether it was throughout its history or in bits and pieces along the way. The four areas we will divulge on are the impact of drugs in hip-hop, gender roles for women, sexuality in the music and censorship.
Hip-Hop and Drugs
“Nobody put the crack into the pipeLet’s understand some givens about music throughout the culture in America, as well as on an international level, the popular songs often glorify sex, violence, and drugs. There are enough songs that can categorize each illegal substance and tell faithful listeners of its influential effects. We know drugs are a path that reggae traveled on and its also something that hip-hop used as a focal point in many instances.
Nobody made you smoke off your life
You thought that you could do dope and still stay cool? Fool.”
- Ice-T: You Played Yourself
With Chang’s book, it seems like he’s merely mentioning drugs and giving you a small back story to keep us up to date with the rest of the tales revolving around this history lesson. He mentions heroin, but doesn’t really dive into it. He mentions cocaine, but decides not to impart enough for our reading pleasure. He mentions marijuana, but there is little or no discussion about weed whether it could be a positive spin or negative. And he mentions crack-rocks and the story of its foundation and Ricky Ross’ extraordinary ability to produce, market and build a crack empire. But like the other narcotics, he doesn’t dig deep enough.
Through lectures and readings, we discover a general of sorts over Detroit’s drug-ridden streets and the gang that he ultimately builds into a business. In his article Marlow’s One-Stop, William Adler details Larry Chambers organization that grew off the distribution of crack rocks. The transformation that cocaine’s powder took into becoming a highly addictive pebble-like substance that ruled the corners. Chambers wasn’t just the pusher in Mo-town for the crack fiends and any other customers looking for the quick high, Chambers was the boss of what seems to be an informal business with a payroll helping giving residents a job with large income.
Chambers just giving people a job is an understatement to the connections that he built. Without acknowledging his drug associated business, Chambers set his hustle up with the help of local residents. One example is David Harvard, a building manager who allowed Larry and his cohorts the use of various apartments and being an on-call handyman for them. But Chambers, as I said earlier, was the boss and knew how to ensure that others, such as Pat Middleton and a twenty-something kid named Keith, acknowledged such in order to have them do as he said.
His business network reached everyone in these neighborhoods. Entry-level look-out jobs were given to kids that payed the youths $300 a week. He kept a contingent of guards, paid between $400-600 weekly, for him and his houses. His dealers usually grabbed about $800 a week. Adler also details the “support staff” Chambers used that provided services like cooking the coke, cutting it up, sidling up with rival dealers to gain information from them and even paying one woman to simply read the newspaper. Aside from his guards, he also had a “wrecking crew” to go out and get their hands dirty whenever Larry wanted to keep his clean.
Aside from the various job descriptions, there were also elaborate procedures for employees and customers to follow with raids, reassembling drug houses, the process of making the purchase and even something as simple as the way the cut-up girls traveled to work. All in all, Larry Chambers was making millions and had Detroit in the palm of his hand.
How does this correlate with hip-hop? Crack wasn’t just a trend running through the motor city. It swept major metropolitan cities and was both a blessing and a curse for its inhabitants. The blessed were the hustlers hovering over their respective corners while the customers became the cursed. An unquenchable thirst was stemming from crack’s stranglehold over its addicts and the victims that got in the way of their fix.
Cheo Hodari Coker, screen writer and author of the Vibe book Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G., helped define cocaine and crack’s crossover into hip-hop. Christopher Wallace was involved in a similar drug ladder in New York and climbed his way up from small time to what Biggie described as “big moves.” He made his living with crack and later was arrested for possession of a gun in 1989. Biggie received five years probation for the incident, which he later violated. He also spent nine months in jail after being arrested in North Carolina for selling cocaine.
Coker sums up chapter 2 with details about Biggie reaching a new height on that ladder stemming from his love of practicing his hobby of rhyming. Biggie later would tell his story on the mic, becoming The Source magazine’s Unsigned Hype and hooking on with Sean Combs, a talent recruiter and producer for Uptown Records.
Drugs, like music, are an escape for many people. Those living in underprivileged situations can relate to the hip-hop poets words defining their struggle. The connection between music and drugs remain a formidable one to this day, begging the question as to whether our artists remain on their fix to keep their rebel status and their ability to relate with listeners.
Hip-Hop and Gender Roles
“When I get the hoes I let all the boys f*ck 'em [Yeahhh!!]While Chang accurately depicts the story and evolution of hip hop in, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Chang fails to mention two very important issues that have significantly impacted hip hop in a negative way. Overwhelming male dominance and the negative connotation of women being used as objects of pleasure in hip-hop has become one of the most negative aspects of hip-hop today. While Chang makes an effort to incorporate the women’s neo-soul movement and specific instances of women being assaulted by men, he fails to incorporate in his book how these two issues have negatively impacted hip-hop and society.
No matter what she says, she still got to suck 'em
'Cause b*tches will be b*tches even when I'm dead [Riiight!]
And if I can't f*ck, then I'll take some head”
- 2 Live Crew: When we get them hoes
In Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Chang fails to mention the significant impact of male dominance over female hip-hop artists. Chang makes an effort to incorporate the women’s neo-soul movement in which artists like Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige created new R&B forms of hip-hop. However Chang fails to mention the strong impact of female hip-hop artists crossing into the mainstream.
In Byron Hurt’s documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Hurt observes and documents male dominance and masculinity in hip-hop. Throughout the documentary Hurt raises many questions and gives an interesting perspective as to the origins of groupies, black male dominance in urban areas, and the negative connotation of women being used as objects of pleasure. Disrespect for women and using them as sex objects has become one of the most negative aspects of hip-hop today.
Prominent female MCs like Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Da Brat and Angie Martinez were a few artists that entered the men’s market and attempted to solidify their status as marquee names in the industry. Unlike other artists that we’ll learn about, they did not need to embrace their own sexuality and just tried to record as men would.
We feel that Chang does not touch on this subject enough in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and feel that with this issue being as important as it is, should have been included in his book. Chang makes an effort to incorporate instances of black disrespect for women such as on June 30th 1988 when black males raped and killed a white female investment banker in Central Park after the release of Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing.
Male dominance and the negative depiction of women being used as objects are two very important issues that are not discussed in Chang’s book. With these issues being so important to explaining the evolution and misconceptions of hip-hop in society, we feel like Chang should have devoted an entire section to these issues.
Hip-Hop and Sexuality
“You let your dress fall down to the floorWith the idea that sex sells in mind, hip-hop artists have used this mind set to attract the demographics they desire in order to keep sales booming and for their videos to gain top spots on MTV and BET’s showcases. Many of the lyrics and imagery, as stated before, are put down as negative and disrespectful toward women. However, there are some artists that put sex into a different light.
I kissed you softly and you yearned for more
we experienced pleasure unparallel
into an ocean of love we both fell
swimming in the timeless, currents of pure bliss
fantasies interchanging with each kiss
undying passion unities our souls
Together we swim until the point of no control”
- LL Cool J: Hey Lover
Artists like Missy Elliot and Little Kim have significantly impacted hip-hop in a way that fights the stereotype of males holding dominance of hip-hop artists. These women, along with others like Trina, Foxy Brown, Shareeffa and Shawnna, use their sexuality as a pedestal and market their music on this power that they hold over their male listeners.
You also have women like Beyonce, who may be an R&B artist but fashions as a diva in hip-hop’s culture as she strides by Jay-Z’s side, who also embrace their sexuality. While using it to their advantage with men admirers, they also stress it as an empowerment to other women and even young girls as a way of feeling good about themselves and striving to be an independent woman outside of the reach of male influence.
Its not a stretch to see male artists play the sex melodies in another tune, far from exploitation but as a way of lyrical seduction. LL Cool J, The Roots and even Tupac Shakur knew how to incorporate sexual innuendos into their words in a sense of love-making context.
Chang completely skips over this piece of history when females made the cross over to mainstream. We feel like this was extremely important in understanding the entire spectrum of how hip-hop has evolved. If Chang were to include this into a section of his book, we feel like it would significantly strengthen the piece.
Hip-Hop and Censorship
Parts of this section cites information in my previous article
"This next record is dedicated to some personal friends of mine, the LAPD. For every cop that has ever taken advantage of somebody, beat 'em down or hurt 'em, because they got long hair, listen to the wrong kinda music, wrong color, whatever they thought was the reason to do it. For every one of those f*ckin' police, I'd like to take a pig out here in this parkin' lot and shoot 'em in their mothaf*ckin' face."Unlike our other themes, Chang discusses censorship to a far extent in his account of hip-hop’s history. There are a few areas that can be judged in censorship’s context. Obscenity, the act of censoring the art, incitement and the interpretations the law has with these. Of these four areas, Chang addresses half of them.
- Body Count with Ice-T: Intro to Cop Killer
Chang did nice work covering the areas of obscenity which include the most heavily debated case with 2 Live Crew, a popular rap group during the late 80's and early 90's that is based out of Miami, and the obscenity case dealing with their As Nasty As They Wanna Be album that was released in 1989. The case is so controversial because it was ruled to be obscene before it was later appealed, reversed and that decision being upheld by the Supreme Court.
After the album sold nearly two million copies, an investigation began in the Sheriff’s office in Broward County, Florida, to examine 2 Live Crew’s record. There was an obscenity statute in Florida that some believed the album violated. 2 Live Crew, who already had a history dealing with their albums being ruled obscene in different parts of the country, now had Sheriff Mark Navarro trying to find probable cause for the Nasty As They Wanna Be album to be ruled obscene. On March 9th, 1990, Navarro got his ruling that “Nasty” was legally obscene from Judge Mel Grossman. He then ensured that all of the record stores in the county were aware of the ruling and abided by it, thereby seeing the sales of the record ceased in Broward County. Days later, on March 16th, 1990, 2 Live Crew and Skywalker Records filed suit against Sheriff Navarro. During the suit, Sheriff Navarro wanted the court to determine if the “Nasty” album was obscene. That ruling came on June 6th of the same year, ruling in favor of Navarro that the album was, in fact, legally obscene.
The controversial part of the trial was the actual decision-making of the Judge hearing the case, District Court Judge Jose Gonzalez. He came to his decision by applying the Miller test for obscenity. This is a three-prong test that asks individual questions concerning the speech involved. Those questions are:
- whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
- whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law;
- whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
On May 7th, 1992, “the United States Court of Appeals decided to reverse the decision of Judge Gonzalez” and determined that the “Nasty” album was not legally obscene because it did not meet the prurient interest test and, through expert testimony, did have some artistic value. The court of appeals reversing by concluded the decision, which was later upheld by the Supreme Court.
Chang also excels with the act of censorship. Two main areas are when congress gets the go-ahead to put labels on records warning of their content and the fiasco that Ice-T went through.
Peter Blecha, author of Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands and Censored Songs, compared censorship to the Bible story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden “fruit of knowledge.” He says that the “knowledge more likely comes in the form of song, a book, a movie, or a public speech...” and when that knowledge is limited or completely taken away, that is the act of censorship.
The first example of censorship to discuss is the Senate hearing on Record Labeling. The PRMC, Parents Music Resource Center, was a group that wanted ways to censor music to protect the explicit lyrics from reaching their children’s ears. There was a Senate hearing organized to discuss the possibility of putting together a label that would alert people to the violent or sexually explicit lyrics contained in certain albums. After countless testimony and debate, the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) put together a uniform label that satisfied the PMRC. The label is the one we see today that reads “Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics”
Another way artists were censored was not by having their songs taken off the air, but through concert boycotts and other methods to put pressure on them economically. Certain stores such as Wal-Mart and K-Mart decided to not stock certain albums with questionable lyrics and content. The FBI tracked popular rap group N.W.A. and even went to such extremes to ensure that there would be no concert security at their shows, thus making it difficult to obtain insurance for their shows.
The biggest issues erupted with Ice-T and his album, Body Count, which he collaborated on with his heavy metal band of the same name. The real controversy came from the widely known song Cop Killer. The song’s lyrics and hard core theme threatened and offended many outside of the music world. Mainly police officers, officials or other figures apart of some authority post. Politicians got involved as well.
Cop Killer was not the first song to come out against law enforcement, and it certainly wasn’t the last. Coming out around the time of the Rodney King beating, the song was about the injustice dealt by police brutality. The song really caught headlines during the election year of 1992, when many came out to express their disgust with the album and Cop Killer. The people that complained included police unions, NRA followers, and various politicians including former Texas Governor and current U.S. President George W. Bush and Dan Quayle, who was the Vice-President at the time.
The heat on Ice-T was worse then anyone could imagine. Like his N.W.A. days, the FBI kept track of where he was, the IRS audited him and his kids were pulled out of school to be interrogated by federal agents. Time Warner had just as much going against them as they received numerous letters from Congressman, bomb and death threats to one of their subsidiary companies and a tough decision on how to respond to the issue. Surprising most, Time Warner spoke out in defense of Ice-T and his constitutional right to produce the song.
After long debate, Ice-T decided to pull the song off the album. Body Count was taken off the shelves and restocked without Cop Killer on the album. So due to all the controversy that followed the song until it was ultimately pulled off the album, its saga ends as the only song in American history to be banned.
There are two areas that are not discussed in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. How the law works to defend the art is a key omission. Details of the law’s interpretations and procedures are also listed int eh above explanations of obscenity and censorship. One aspect missed in Chang’s collection is incitement.
“...Rap stars Ice-T and the late Tupac Shakur produced music that arguably glorifies violence. The question is whether it incites violence.”The book Bleep! Censoring Rock and Rap Music introduces this idea about incitement. The lyrics of these musicians is considered speech and is protected by the First Amendment. But, those lyrics are not protected if they “would somehow be proven to cause or incite injurious activity. ” The two artists and cases we’ll look at here involve heavy metal rocker (and recent reality show husband and father), Ozzy Osbourne and the late, great hip-hop artist, actor and poet, Tupac Shakur.
The Osbourne case deals with one of his young fans, 19-year old John McCollum, putting a gun to his head and ending his life while listening to an Osbourne record. A year later, in 1985, the boy’s parents filed suit against Osbourne on several charges including negligence and product liability. After the case was initially dismissed. The parents appealed and challenged the court “claiming that Osbourne’s songs contained themes of satanic worship and death, and that particularly the song Suicide Solution had incited their son because it preached “suicide is the only way out.’”
The court ruled in favor of Osbourne after using the Brandenburg test to define the incitement of the speech involved with Osbournes’ lyrics. The Brandenburg test is one of a few tests that deal with incitement. The Test asks two questions:
- Who is the speaker? Does the person have a history of illegal activity or affiliation with an organization that does so? Do people take the speaker seriously?
- Is there a likelihood that the espoused actions will be carried out?
Above all else in the trial, after careful examination of the song in question, “Suicide Solution”, it was revealed that the song is actually a tribute to a friend, Bon Scott, a member of AC/DC, who had died from alcohol abuse.
This was not the last sign of trouble for Osbourne and Suicide Solution as another suit was filed by parents of another child who committed suicide after listening to the song. The parents claimed the song incited imminent lawless action, however the court again found in favor of Osbourne saying that the song would lose protection only if it were “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The next case of incitement deals with the music from Tupac Shakur. “In April of 1992, Ronald Howard ("Howard") was driving a stolen automobile through Jackson County, Texas. Officer Bill Davidson, a state trooper, stopped Howard for a possible traffic violation unrelated to the theft of the vehicle. During the traffic stop, Howard fatally shot Officer Davidson with a nine millimeter Glock handgun. At the time of the shooting, Howard was listening to an audio cassette of 2Pacalypse Now, a recording performed by Defendant Tupac Amaru Shakur that was produced, manufactured and distributed by defendants’ Interscope Records and Atlantic Records. In an attempt to avoid the death penalty, Howard claimed that listening to 2Pacalypse Now caused him to shoot Officer Davidson. The jury apparently did not believe this explanation, because it sentenced Howard to death.
Davidson’s widow, Linda Davidson, filed a suit against Shakur, Interscope Records and Time Warner. The trial was set for October, 1995, until the defense moved for a summary justice and had the case taken off the court docket. The summary judgement motion was because the plaintiff and defense agreed on the facts of the case and there must be a ruling in favor of the defense based on the law.
As far as the incitement arguments were concerned, the court saw that the album 2Pacalypse Now did not incite violence under the Brandenburg test. This was also the only incident that anyone claimed the album incited imminent, lawless action or conduct three years after the albums release. The Davidsons’ argued that Officer Davidson was killed because Howard was listening to 2Pacalypse Now. The court disagreed saying “it is far more likely that Howard, a gang member driving a stolen automobile, feared his arrest and shot Officer Davidson to avoid capture.”
There also was a motion to dismiss the charges after Shakur had been killed in September of 1996. The court said that his death did not affect their opinion. The court concluded, declining to strip Mr. Shakur of his free speech rights and granted the Defendants motion for Summary Judgement as well as its motion for the lack of personal jurisdiction.
There are a couple lines of thought dealing with incitement. The Drug Warriors believed that it didn’t matter what the song writer intended, but what the offended feels they read or heard. Professor Mathieu Deflem, and Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina, about the lawsuits dealing with incitement. He said “ Most research shows that incitement is a myth. Also, legally, incitement must present an imminent threat. Frank Zappa once said that if the lyrics of rock songs were influential, then everybody would love each other, because most lyrics by far are about love.”
The only other incitement test mentioned in any of the books or cases was Schenk V. United States. This is where the term “Shouting fire in a crowded theater”, stemmed from. Schenk deals with establishing a clear and present danger through speech or other expression.
One last interesting to think about before concluding the discussion on censorship. Many of the examples above are, in some ways, considered to be censorship. Not included, however, were the numerous boycotts that were established outside of concerts and record stores that did not put any economic pressure on the artists. Peter Blecha, author of Taboo Tunes, has a great thought here about boycotts and protests, saying they are “not censorship. It is citizenship in action.” These are your rights and it makes the country that much more beautiful when you exercise your freedoms.
Is This The End . . . ?
“We talk a lot about Malcom X and Martin Luther King JR, but It's time to be like them, as strong as them. They were mortal men like us and everyone of us can be like them. I don't want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who i am, this is what i do. I say what's on my mind.”These four themes are not alone. Chang’s history of hip-hop has a heavy influence on politics, but doesn’t help point us in the direction we need to go. The article Hip Hop as a Political Tool by Yvonne Bynoe points out several key issues for young and old to use as guidance with hip-hop’s movement to try and sway some political pull. One of the best points concern “thinking beyond voter registration” and getting involved the way young people did during the Civil Rights Movement and letting their voices be heard. Many of past musicians, including Immortal Techniques, Mos Def and those outside of hip-hop such as U2, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, have shown a responsibility to educate as well as entertain through their performances.
-Tupac Amaru Shakur
Also, there should be an emphasis on recognizing that the Presidential election may be important to the country, but it is not the most important election for each of us. Most of the government officials that directly affect us are in our communities and that is why many need to get down to politics on a state and local level to know who represents them in their respective communities.
"We were hip-hop history, and unfortunately a lot of hip-hop is history at this point ...”Is hip-hop slowly, but surely dying? With the movement from gangsta cultures into commercialism and capitalist dominance in music, Chang fails to point out rap music as a pop music selection. In Hip Hop Matters’ chapter entitled Remixing American Pop, S. Craig Watkins speaks about white pop icons like N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys adopting raw lyrics for their songs as well as female artists Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera digging into hip-hop’s dance and choreography for that added flavor. Is one end of the spectrum, American pop music, rushing to adapt to the other end that is hip-hop’s music and culture or is hip-hop trying to adapt to pop music standards? Are these two just slowly inching toward each other, taking the good with the bad and blending that mix together to put out the hits that will top the billboard charts? Or, to paraphrase Tupac Shakur’s quote and place it in this context, is this rap music’s dark night and the hip-hop community is waiting for the bright day to come back . . .
“...I'm interested in hip-hop only if it can reinvent the future, not if it's a reflection of the past. Much of the hip-hop that's out there right now is closer to what mainstream R&B was in 1981 — when we started — than the true essence of hip-hop...”
“I’m still interested in hip-hop, but I want the next sh*t,"
-Tommy Silverman, Tommy Boy Records
In the end, Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop deserves the praise it receives as an academic text that can be a foundation on Hip-hop’s roots. I believe despite his omissions, Chang educates people about something that isn’t just simply music.
“I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one thing. Through every dark night, theres a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it gets, stick your chest out, keep ya head up ... and handle it.”
-Tupac Amaru Shakur
