Black Music 2007 - Part III: Marching In The Wrong Direction

Marching In The Wrong Direction: Hip-Hop 2007 -- A Safer Reality

As we enter into the third week of June -- Black Music Month -- we find ourselves in the midst of a four week period during which we seize the opportunity to raise the level of consciousness regarding the many contributions that African-Americans have made to the music business and to society.

Speaking of society, every generation comes along and brings with it its culture and its music. Some say that because of the hip-hop culture we are "marching in the wrong direction." In this the third of our current series for Black Music Month 2007, we want to examine this newest musical generation - hip-hop and look at the impact it has had on society in general and radio in particular.

Throughout the history of music business black music has been associated with artists who have defined the music of their generation, providing a soundtrack for the myriad of social and cultural changes of each decade. For many we are now in the hip-hop or rap generation. And perhaps because we have lived with it and understand it better, even if we don't completely agree with it, we fear it less. For that reason, much like hard rock, today's hip-hop has become a "safer reality."

In spite of the notion of diminishing fear, hip hop's insistent lyrics, aggressive pulse and often, no-nonsense overview are still scary for some. We attribute that at least partly to racism and ignorance. The fact that hip-hop represents a unique subculture and its message seems very much over stated. Actor/comedian Bill Cosby has launched a vocal crusade against what he calls the insulting depiction of African-Americans in hip-hop generation television shows.

One of the first assumptions is that the language of youth-oriented music matters and the language of other forms of popular music do not. The second assumption is that the intentions of music forms such as heavy metal and rap are subversive in ways that the intentions of other forms of popular cultures are not.

The two assumptions are understandable, given the social history of each musical genre. Rap and heavy metal appeal to youth, particularly male youth, who are, presumably more impressionable than the adult audience of say, country. And if country songs get interpreted more benignly perhaps it's because they rarely have been enlisted in the cause of generational warfare in the way that rap has. Nonetheless since America seems on the brink of yet another shouting march over popular music, it seems fair to submit each of these assumptions to more rigorous review: Is it really true that youth-oriented music such as heavy metal and rap represents a special case?

The first assumption that rock and rap lyrics should be interpreted literally, is one that has been addressed extensively by scholars who study popular music. But their conclusions are equivocal. Popular music lyrics, not surprisingly, seem to track the social mores of the time. A study of more than a thousand songs recently found a strikingly different image of women in songs of the past few years.

For example, in the 1990s popular rap songs were more than twice as likely to portray women as evil as songs in the 1980s, but only half as likely to depict them as needing a man.

But whether these changes create social attitude, particularly among youth, or simply reflect them is up in the air. For one thing, teens simply don't seem to understand what they are listening to most of the time. A recent study found only 14 percent of college students who heard the most popular hip-hop songs could accurately interpret their true meanings.

The second assumption - that youth-oriented music is somehow more subversive than other music, is even more difficult to evaluate. The language of youth music had stubbornly remained outside of the mainstream since its beginning with each new generation of performers vying to outdo the last in the level of sexual explicitness.

The history of profanity is profoundly cyclical, varying wide from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and Victorian era, according to the moral temper of each generation. The important thing is that one generation of language catalysts distinguishes itself from its predecessors and that process can take many forms. Some hip-hop artists whose beat is the harsh landscape of urban America reflect a racially polarized society in which cultural heritage is obscured, opportunities limited and social services minimal.

Don't Run From Rap

In today's musical environment, with all of the available choices, urban radio can't run from rap and expect to score big ratings victories. This is particularly true with the advent of Arbitron's new personal people meter (PPM). Even today's adult audience wants to hear the most popular rap artists. And although today's urban adults have traditionally been a fixed commodity and always brought in a uniquely wide age demographic, that largest audience is changing as the median age of the baby boomers population rises.

For urban radio, the answer is that you will have to play some rap songs early, just like the rest of the hits. Yes, you have will have to be careful of the transition songs on either side of the most popular rap hits. But you can not ignore them. Black adults, in particular, are impatient. They won't wait for a new song they want to hear. They'll just run to your competition to hear it. Winning in 2007 and beyond means playing all the big hits at the right times and being careful of what you play and say around them.

Yes, there are the beginnings of a new candor about our culture, but the question remains, how did one segment of the African-American community come to represent the whole? First, black society itself placed emphasis on that lower caste. This made sense because historically that where the vast majority of us were placed. It's where American society and its laws were designed to keep us. Yet although doors have opened to us over the past twenty years, it's still common place for black leaders to insist on correcting the misconceptions that some whites have little knowledge or, and less interest in, black culture, particularly young black culture.

They have no picture, no concept. Rap is a language they don't speak to and a race of people whose language they don't speak either. While it's true that a

majority of those who become successful rappers started out in the projects, brought up to be hard because of what they've been through, rap has many forms and much stronger appeal than most give them credit for.

Mending Pieces Of A Patchwork Quilt

In spite of the considerable progress that has been made on some areas of rap music and certainly important musical strides, discrimination still exists in our industries, business and government. Common sense and reality have both been affronted regularly in the anti-discrimination war. Much of this silliness and confusion stems from simple blindness to what a polyglot society is really like. In 2007 our country is still like a patchwork of many sub-societies (based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, education, cultural taste and language).

Every group naturally tends to exclude outsiders under certain circumstances. But this need not inevitably conflict with the achievement of a society that does not shut anybody off from any reasonable path of opportunity. The notion of an open pluralistic society becomes a contradiction in terms - unless there is some common sense to limit both its openness and pluralism. To define that limit is difficult. Perhaps it can be fixed only case by case, as are conflicts between equally valid constitutional rights.

A grain of sense needs to be applied to the current situation. Too many excursions into absurdity will achieve more than amusement; they could make the whole cause of fair play seem silly. But fair play in a sense is what we need to be all about. The question then becomes "fair to whom?" And the answer is "fair to those who deserve and recognize that we are a different breed." We think different. We act different and we live different. That's because many of us in this music and radio business tend to be cut from a different cloth: a fabric that outsiders often simply do not understand. Not because they don't want to, but because we live in two different worlds.

And this patchwork story holds many lessons for us today. It reminds us that history does not just happen. It does not unfold naturally like the seasons or rise and fall like the tides. History is made by people, who bend and shape the present to create the future.

Today, in 2007, most African-Americans are no longer "marching in the wrong direction." Instead, we have accepted hip-hop as a music format and we are moving toward seeing ourselves as we really are and demanding that others see us as individuals, not as shards of a degraded monolith. The American ideal places primacy on the rights of the individual. Yet historically, many African-Americans have been denied those rights. We can effectively demand those rights, effectively demand justice only when each of us sees him or herself as an individual with the right to any of the opinions, idiosyncrasies and talents accorded any other American.

Word.