tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/gangsta-rap-20003/articlesGangsta rap – The Conversation2023-02-16T11:38:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999152023-02-16T11:38:01Z2023-02-16T11:38:01ZGet Rich or Die Tryin’: 50 Cent’s seminal hip-hop album 20 years on<p>It is January 2003 – many years before I began researching popular music professionally – and I’m flicking around the music channels on TV. Disillusioned by the usual paint by numbers chart fodder and ready to call it a day, I chance upon the video for a new song called In Da Club by a rapper called 50 Cent.</p>
<p>The video shows a van driving through a desert on its way to the “Shady / Aftermath Artist Development Centre”, where lab coated rap legends <a href="https://theconversation.com/analysing-stan-what-eminems-ill-fated-fictional-superfan-can-tell-us-about-the-brain-and-mental-health-88968">Eminem</a> and Dr. Dre observe a “patient” through a Perspex screen. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5qm8PH4xAss?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The music video for 50 Cent’s In Da Club.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The patient in question looks like he’s just burst off the pages of a comic book. All bulging muscles, smouldering stares and chiselled good looks, he’s hanging upside down from a pull up bar as he performs eye-watering stomach crunches.</p>
<p>The message is clear: Dre and Eminem have created a hip-hop monster, a living embodiment of the threat and danger hip-hop had always flirted with. And in among it all, was an irresistibly infectious song.</p>
<p>This was back in the days when I’d be “in da clubs” myself and during the following months, two things were inevitable:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>50 Cent’s song would be played at least twice every night.</p></li>
<li><p>Each time, it would be accompanied by screams and stampedes to the dance floor.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In Da Club reached number one on the <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Hip_Hop_around_the_World_An_Encyclopedia/6mR2DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=50+cent+get+rich+or+die+tryin&pg=PA240&printsec=frontcover">Billboard Hot 100</a> and by the time its parent album, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, was released, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson had achieved his aim of putting “<a href="https://genius.com/50-cent-in-da-club-lyrics">the rap game in a chokehold</a>”. Part of his success may be attributed to the backing of Eminem and Dre, but it was Jackson as an individual that provided the main draw.</p>
<p>50 Cent, listeners soon discovered, was an artist who possessed the <a href="https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jsr/article/viewFile/4503/3750">authenticity</a> so important to hip-hop. Jackson wasn’t just posturing about the “gangsta” lifestyle – he had the scars to prove it. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/15/power-player-how-50-cent-went-from-rapper-to-unlikely-tv-kingpin">Nine of them</a>, to be precise, from a shooting in 2000.</p>
<p>Underprivileged youth with a tragic backstory? <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Hustle_Harder_Hustle_Smarter/5zm2DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=50+cent&printsec=frontcover">Check</a>. Drug dealing past? <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Hustle_Harder_Hustle_Smarter/5zm2DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=50+cent&printsec=frontcover">Check</a>. Spent time in prison? <a href="https://www.grunge.com/707664/what-50-cents-life-in-prison-was-really-like/">Check</a>. Jackson had lived the life he rapped about. </p>
<p>Inadvertently his distinctive flow, a <a href="https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/retrospective-get-rich-die-tryin/">mumbling southern monotone</a> caused by the aforementioned shooting (which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1VmFi_18Y">left bullet fragments in his tongue</a>) may even have spawned “mumble rap”, much as Jackson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0OdmRtuQew">scoffs at the sub-genre</a>.</p>
<h2>The return of the ‘Gangsta’</h2>
<p>Although “Gangsta rap” had <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/quin12408">been around for decades</a>, by the time Jackson arrived on the scene in 2003 many big name rappers such as Nelly were <a href="https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/retrospective-get-rich-die-tryin/">making softer, pop-inspired hip-hop.</a></p>
<p>The release of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ brought back “<a href="https://www.insider.com/50-cent-get-rich-die-tryin-20-anniversary-inside-story-2023-01">hip-hop in its rawest form</a>”. The album itself was styled to look as though the plastic cover had been shot, and the <a href="https://i.imgur.com/jrcTPsr.jpg">CD booklet</a> contained a photograph of Jackson pointing a gun at the camera.</p>
<p>In his 2009 research on the importance of authenticity in Gangsta rap, professor of rhetorical studies, Erik K. Watts, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/10510979709368490?needAccess=true&role=button">observed</a>: “One of the most meaningful accomplishments of gangsta artistry has been to open a window on the daily, gritty grind of inner city living.”</p>
<p>It would be hard to argue the case that Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ offers social commentary in the same way as a NWA’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/straight-outta-compton-why-now-46983">Straight Outta Compton</a>, or Kendrick Lamar’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-hip-hop-needs-to-be-taken-more-seriously-in-academic-circles-95177">To Pimp a Butterfly</a>. But at the time of its release it was, as a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/p9mq/">BBC review explained</a>: “The antithesis to the pop looped chart friendly sound of mainstream hip-hop.” </p>
<p>With Get Rich or Die Tryin’, 50 Cent brought back some much needed credibility to the world of commercial hip-hop.</p>
<h2>Picking up the Cent</h2>
<p>To those listening in English nightclubs, songs like In Da Club, P.I.M.P, and 21 Questions offered a glimpse into a culture that was thousands of miles away, both literally and metaphorically. </p>
<p>Sugar-coated as it was with catchy beats and melodies, 50 Cent’s music allowed audiences to observe, as Pitchfork described it: <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3045-get-rich-or-die-tryin/">“the pull between community and wealth, morality and survival”</a> that Gangsta rap focused on, away from the real danger the lyrics were discussing.</p>
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<p>There was discomfort, watching white, middle class audiences singing along to songs that featured both misogynistic and homophobic slurs and the n-word. Race theory professor Michael Dyson has explained the phenomenon as a form of <a href="http://erginguney.com/web/coursematerial/Gangsta_Rap_and_American_Culture.pdf">“voyeurism”</a> that sometimes offered an excuse to express offensive views in a way that couldn’t be attributed to the individual singing them.</p>
<p>But from my perspective, standing awkwardly to the side of dance floors rather than on them, the impact this music could have on a group of people so far removed from the lifestyle the lyrics were presenting was impressive. Such is the power of music – and of 50 Cent’s unforgettable album.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glenn Fosbraey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>50 Cent possessed the authenticity so important to hip-hop. He wasn’t just posturing about the ‘gangsta’ lifestyle – he had lived it.Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of WinchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1864432022-07-07T12:26:53Z2022-07-07T12:26:53ZScapegoating rap hits new low after July Fourth mass shooting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472870/original/file-20220706-25-p2t2ut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=862%2C181%2C4889%2C3638&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flowers are laid near the scene of a mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/flowers-are-laid-near-the-scene-of-a-shooting-at-a-fourth-news-photo/1241722394?adppopup=true">Jim Vondruska/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When local police named 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as “a person of interest” in the July 4 mass shootings in an affluent Chicago suburb, several news outlets described him in headlines as a “rapper.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/05/robert-crimo-highland-park-parade-shooting/">A Washington Post</a> headline read “Robert Crimo III, ‘Awake the Rapper,’ arrested in Highland Park shooting.” A <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zvxz/highland-park-person-of-interest-robert-crimo">Vice News</a> headline read “Police Arrest Local Rapper in Connection to Highland Park Mass Shooting.”</p>
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<p>In addition to the headlines, media outlets noted that Crimo had musical references to mass shootings on his social media accounts as well as crude drawings depicting violence.</p>
<p>But none of these justify the use of “rap” or “rapper” in describing Crimo’s alleged criminal behavior — and everything to do with criminalizing rap and rappers. </p>
<p>In my view, referring to this genre of music and those that make it is a racially loaded signal to readers that Crimo’s musical interests are a significant part of the mass shooting and somehow led to the crimes of which he is accused.</p>
<p>Those crimes include at least <a href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/highland-park-illinois-parade-shooting-what-we-know/40523471#">seven counts of first-degree murder</a> which, if he’s convicted, carry a maximum sentence of life without parole. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/05/us/robert-e-crimo-highland-park-suspect/index.html">Crimo is scheduled to appear</a> for a preliminary hearing on July 28 and is being held in detention without bail. </p>
<p>As far as I can tell, none of those alleged crimes had anything to do with Crimo’s career as a rapper.</p>
<p>But rap is an easy target.</p>
<h2>Scapegoating rap</h2>
<p>Rap has long been used to conspicuously stereotype, caricature and reinforce mythologies about Black people. As <a href="https://music.virginia.edu/people/profile/acarson">a rapper and scholar</a>, I wrote about this scapegoating in a <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/file_sets/pv63g236n">chapbook</a>, “Rap & Storytellingly Invention,” published with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-professor-looks-to-open-doors-with-worlds-first-peer-reviewed-rap-album-153761">peer-reviewed album</a> I released in 2020. </p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 410px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<p>Since the rise of hip-hop in the early 1980s, critics of rap sought to tie the music to violent crime. </p>
<p>One of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">the first targets</a> was <a href="https://www.rundmc.com/">Run-DMC</a>, the rappers from Queens, New York, given credit for <a href="https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a30644382/run-dmc-facts/">bringing hip-hip to mainstream</a> music and culture. </p>
<p>During the group’s 1986 “Raising Hell” tour, police and journalists <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-19-me-16897-story.html">blamed its music for violence</a> that occurred in towns it visited. At its show in Long Beach, California, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/19/us/42-are-hurt-as-gang-fighting-breaks-up-california-concert.html">gang violence in the crowd</a> also was blamed on rap. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, politician and civil rights activist <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-fi-tupacdelores20march2096-story.html">C. Delores Tucker</a> became one of the most outspoken anti-rap voices, focusing her ire on <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/tupac-shakur">Tupac Shakur</a> and the <a href="https://historyofthehiphop.wordpress.com/music-genres/gangsta-rap/">“gangsta rap”</a> subgenre.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing against rap – or some version of it – continues to this day.</p>
<p>The latest target is <a href="https://theconversation.com/chief-keef-changed-the-music-industry-and-its-time-he-gets-the-credit-he-deserves-170172">drill rap</a>, a hip-hop subgenre that originated in Chicago and has since spread across the world.</p>
<p>New York City Mayor Eric Adams <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mayor-eric-adams-drill-rap-1299108/">condemned drill rap</a> on Feb. 11, 2022, after the murders of two Brooklyn rap artists, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/jayquan-mckenley-funeral/">Jayquan McKenley </a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/rising-brooklyn-rapper-tdott-woo-fatally-shot-gun/story?id=82647146">Tahjay Dobson</a>. </p>
<p>Adams said the violence portrayed in drill rap music videos was “alarming” and that he would sit down with social media companies to try to remove the content by telling them they “have a civic and corporate responsibility.” </p>
<p>“We pulled Trump off Twitter for what he was spewing,” Adams said, “yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We’re allowing it to stay on these sites.”</p>
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<p>Similar tactics have been employed in the past to shut down drill music. </p>
<p>London drill rappers have been targeted since 2015 by the Metropolitan Police’s <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-drill-music-removal">Operation Domain</a>, a joint effort with YouTube to monitor for “videos that incite violence.”</p>
<p>It’s as if politicians and police don’t understand that the music emerging from these places is a reflection of crisis, not the source of it.</p>
<h2>Tragic myths and realities</h2>
<p>Despite the immense popularity of hip-hop, the culture and the music continue to be portrayed as a cultural wasteland in both subtle and explicit ways.</p>
<p>Worse, in my view, these harmful assumptions affect the ways ordinary people who experience tragedies are described. </p>
<p>The word “rapper” is used to conjure negative imagery. It leaves hollow expectations in its place, to be filled with the specter of death and the spectacle of violence. The person described by it becomes a <a href="https://scalawagmagazine.org/2018/11/boogeymen/">boogeyman</a> in the public imagination. </p>
<p>In the most unjust of circumstances, “rapper” has become a social shorthand for presumptions of guilt, expectations of violence and sometimes worthiness of death. </p>
<p>Such was the case with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy-shooting-vallejo-police-55-shots">Willie McCoy</a>. In 2019, the 20-year-old was killed by six policemen while he slept in his car at a Vallejo, California, Taco Bell. The officers claimed they saw a gun and tried to wake him. When McCoy moved, the officers fired 55 shots in 3½ seconds. </p>
<p>While rap music appears to have had nothing to do with the tragic events of his death, <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/17/vallejo-police-officer-colin-eaton-disciplined-for-excessive-force-in-2020-according-to-investigation/">descriptions of McCoy</a> as a rapper were reported more prominently and consistently than the 55 shots police fired at him while he slept.</p>
<p>Even playing rap music might result in death. In 2012, a 17-year-old named <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2016/11/17/michael-dunn-convicted-killing-17-year-old-after-telling-teen-turn-down-rap-music/15732203007/">Jordan Davis</a> was shot and killed by a man who complained about the <a href="https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/monday-night-marks-8-years-since-murder-of-jordan-davis-over-loud-music-at-jacksonville-gas-station/77-2297d230-84cb-4cdf-bacd-00b583df6648">“loud” music Davis was playing</a> in his car at a Florida gas station. </p>
<p>During the proceedings, dubbed “the loud music trial,” Michael Dunn testified that <a href="http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/atonal-notes/on-white-thugs-like-michael-dunn-and-the-scapegoating-of-hip-hop">the music Davis and his friends were playing</a> in Davis’ car was “thug music” or “rap crap.”</p>
<p>Dunn’s defense depended on his victims’ being viewed as thugs by association with rap. </p>
<p>In jail, Dunn was <a href="https://participant.com/film/3-12-minutes-ten-bullets">recorded</a> on the phone speculating whether Davis and his friends were “gangster rappers.” He claimed he’d seen YouTube videos. </p>
<p>In describing these tragedies, the words “rappers” and “rap music” are code for “Black” and “other,” meant to elicit fear and justify violence. There’s no question in my mind that they would have been perceived differently if the words “poets” or “poetry” had been used instead. </p>
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<h2>Moral decline blamed on rap</h2>
<p>The day after the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-victims/">May 24, 2022, mass shooting</a> at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. Rep. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/district/ronny-jackson/J000304">Ronny Jackson</a> promptly blamed the violence on rap music and video games.</p>
<p>“Kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays,” the Texas Republican <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-school-shooting-god-family-ronny-jackson">told Fox News on May 25, 2022</a>. “I think about the horrible stuff that they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch … with all of this horrible violence.”</p>
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<p>For Jackson and other critics, rap seems to explain criminal behavior and signal moral decline. In the eyes of Georgia’s <a href="https://fultoncountyga.gov/districtattorney">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis</a>, rap might be something else as well – evidence. </p>
<p>Atlanta rappers <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/young-thug-focused-faith-mental-192746912.html">Young Thug</a> and <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/rapper-gunna-now-in-fulton-jail-on-racketeering-charge/SW5HGGXXIJFNLAYD2A5EZEH324/">Gunna</a> were among 28 defendants <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/13/young-thung-gunna-rap-lyrics-court/">charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act</a> in May 2022 with conspiracy and street gang activity. </p>
<p>They are now in jail in Atlanta awaiting trial. </p>
<p>In the indictment, prosecutors cite lyrics from Young Thug’s songs as “overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.” </p>
<p>Several tracks are quoted, including “Slatty,” on which <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=slatty+lyrics&oq=%22Slatty%2C%22&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l2j46i512l2j0i512j46i10i512j0i512j46i10i512j0i10i512.3369j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Young Thug raps</a>: “I killed his man in front of his mama /
Like f–k lil bruh, his sister, and cousin.”</p>
<p>Free speech has its limits. </p>
<p>“The First Amendment,” Willis explained, “does not protect people from prosecutors using [lyrics] as evidence if it is such.” </p>
<h2>Made in America</h2>
<p>Indeed, violence perpetuated by people who rap is as real any other American violence.</p>
<p>Young Thug, Gunna or any other rapper accused of crimes is not exempt from accountability. But, in my view, assuming people are criminals simply because they rap – even if they rap about violence – is wrong. </p>
<p>Admittedly, throughout hip-hop history, rappers have constructed personas as antiheroes. Performances of masculinity, violence, intimidation, gun ownership and misogyny are meant to signal a kind of authenticity. </p>
<p>In her 1994 book “Outlaw Culture,” bell hooks included a <a href="http://challengingmalesupremacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Misogyny-gangsta-rap-and-The-Piano-bell-hooks.pdf">chapter on “gangsta rap.”</a> Hooks explained that the abhorrent behaviors scrutinized and highlighted in rap are American values that people living and surviving here adopt.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">December 1986 story on Run-DMC</a>, Rolling Stone writer Ed Kiersh said out loud what many were thinking.</p>
<p>“To much of white America,” Kiersh wrote, “rap means mayhem and bloodletting.” </p>
<p>Perhaps.</p>
<p>But those who still seek to vilify rap might do well to focus on the sources of the crisis of violence in America rather than blaming the music that reflects it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since rap music emerged in mainstream culture in the late 1980s, politicians have derided its lyrics and imagery as violent. Over the years, rap has become an easy target to blame for violence.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843732022-06-14T12:29:27Z2022-06-14T12:29:27ZWhen all else fails to explain American violence, blame a rapper and hip-hop music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468098/original/file-20220609-24-ehtoua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=94%2C152%2C3406%2C2178&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young Thug performs onstage on March 17, 2022, in Austin, Texas. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/young-thug-performs-onstage-at-samsung-galaxy-billboard-news-photo/1386115571?adppopup=true">Amy E. Price/Getty Images for SXSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The day after the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-victims/">May 24, 2022, mass shooting</a> at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. Rep. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/district/ronny-jackson/J000304">Ronny Jackson</a> promptly blamed the violence on rap music and video games.</p>
<p>“Kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays,” the Texas Republican <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-school-shooting-god-family-ronny-jackson">told Fox News on May 25, 2022</a>. “I think about the horrible stuff that they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch … with all of this horrible violence.”</p>
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<p>For Jackson and other critics, rap seems to explain criminal behavior and signal moral decline. In the eyes of <a href="https://fultoncountyga.gov/districtattorney">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis</a>, rap might be something else as well – evidence. </p>
<p>Atlanta rappers <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/young-thug-focused-faith-mental-192746912.html">Young Thug</a> and <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/rapper-gunna-now-in-fulton-jail-on-racketeering-charge/SW5HGGXXIJFNLAYD2A5EZEH324/">Gunna</a> were among 28 defendants <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/13/young-thung-gunna-rap-lyrics-court/">charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act</a> in May 2022 with conspiracy and street gang activity. </p>
<p>They are now in jail in Atlanta awaiting trial. </p>
<p>In the indictment, prosecutors cite lyrics from Young Thug’s songs as “overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.” </p>
<p>Several tracks are quoted, including “Slatty,” on which <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=slatty+lyrics&oq=%22Slatty%2C%22&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l2j46i512l2j0i512j46i10i512j0i512j46i10i512j0i10i512.3369j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Young Thug raps</a>: “I killed his man in front of his mama /
Like f–k lil bruh, his sister, and cousin.”</p>
<p>Free speech has its limits. </p>
<p>“The First Amendment,” Willis explained, “does not protect people from prosecutors using [lyrics] as evidence if it is such.” </p>
<h2>Scapegoating rap</h2>
<p>Rap has long been used to conspicuously stereotype, caricature and reinforce mythologies about Black people. As <a href="https://music.virginia.edu/people/profile/acarson">a rapper and scholar</a>, I wrote about this scapegoating in a <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/file_sets/pv63g236n">chapbook</a>, “Rap & Storytellingly Invention,” published with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-professor-looks-to-open-doors-with-worlds-first-peer-reviewed-rap-album-153761">peer-reviewed album</a> I released in 2020. </p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 410px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<p>Since the rise of hip-hop in the early 1980s, critics of rap sought to tie the music to violent crime. </p>
<p>One of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">the first targets</a> was <a href="https://www.rundmc.com/">Run-DMC</a>, the rappers from Queens, New York, given credit for <a href="https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a30644382/run-dmc-facts/">bringing hip-hip to mainstream</a> music and culture. </p>
<p>During the group’s 1986 “Raising Hell” tour, police and journalists <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-19-me-16897-story.html">blamed its music for violence</a> that occurred in towns it visited. At its show in Long Beach, California, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/19/us/42-are-hurt-as-gang-fighting-breaks-up-california-concert.html">gang violence in the crowd</a> also was blamed on rap. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, politician and civil rights activist <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-fi-tupacdelores20march2096-story.html">C. Delores Tucker</a> became one of the most outspoken anti-rap voices, focusing her ire on <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/tupac-shakur">Tupac Shakur</a> and the <a href="https://historyofthehiphop.wordpress.com/music-genres/gangsta-rap/">“gangsta rap”</a> subgenre.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing against rap – or some version of it – continues to this day.</p>
<p>The latest target is <a href="https://theconversation.com/chief-keef-changed-the-music-industry-and-its-time-he-gets-the-credit-he-deserves-170172">drill rap</a>, a hip-hop subgenre that originated in Chicago and has since spread across the world.</p>
<p>New York City Mayor Eric Adams <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mayor-eric-adams-drill-rap-1299108/">condemned drill rap</a> on Feb. 11, 2022, after the murders of two Brooklyn rap artists, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/jayquan-mckenley-funeral/">Jayquan McKenley </a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/rising-brooklyn-rapper-tdott-woo-fatally-shot-gun/story?id=82647146">Tahjay Dobson</a>. </p>
<p>Adams said the violence portrayed in drill rap music videos was “alarming” and that he would sit down with social media companies to try to remove the content by telling them they “have a civic and corporate responsibility.” </p>
<p>“We pulled Trump off Twitter for what he was spewing,” Adams said, “yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We’re allowing it to stay on these sites.”</p>
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<p>Similar tactics have been employed in the past to shut down drill music. </p>
<p>London drill rappers have been targeted since 2015 by the Metropolitan Police’s <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-drill-music-removal">Operation Domain</a>, a joint effort with YouTube to monitor for “videos that incite violence.”</p>
<p>It’s as if politicians and police don’t understand that the music emerging from these places is a reflection of crisis, not the source of it.</p>
<h2>Tragic myths and realities</h2>
<p>Despite the immense popularity of hip-hop, the culture and the music continue to be portrayed as a cultural wasteland in both subtle and explicit ways.</p>
<p>Worse, in my view, these harmful assumptions affect the ways ordinary people who experience tragedies are described. </p>
<p>The word “rapper” is used to conjure negative imagery. It leaves hollow expectations in its place, to be filled with the specter of death and the spectacle of violence. The person described by it becomes a <a href="https://scalawagmagazine.org/2018/11/boogeymen/">boogeyman</a> in the public imagination. </p>
<p>In the most unjust of circumstances, “rapper” has become a social shorthand for presumptions of guilt, expectations of violence and sometimes worthiness of death. </p>
<p>Such was the case with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy-shooting-vallejo-police-55-shots">Willie McCoy</a>. In 2019, the 20-year-old was killed by six policemen while he slept in his car at a Vallejo, California, Taco Bell. The officers claimed they saw a gun and tried to wake him. When McCoy moved, the officers fired 55 shots in 3.5 seconds. </p>
<p>While rap music appears to have had nothing to do with the tragic events of his death, <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/17/vallejo-police-officer-colin-eaton-disciplined-for-excessive-force-in-2020-according-to-investigation/">descriptions of McCoy</a> as a rapper were reported more prominently and consistently than the 55 shots police fired at him while he slept.</p>
<p>Even playing rap music might result in death. In 2012, a 17-year-old named <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2016/11/17/michael-dunn-convicted-killing-17-year-old-after-telling-teen-turn-down-rap-music/15732203007/">Jordan Davis</a> was shot and killed by a man who complained about the <a href="https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/monday-night-marks-8-years-since-murder-of-jordan-davis-over-loud-music-at-jacksonville-gas-station/77-2297d230-84cb-4cdf-bacd-00b583df6648">“loud” music Davis was playing</a> in his car at a Florida gas station. </p>
<p>During the proceedings dubbed “the loud music trial,” Michael Dunn testified that <a href="http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/atonal-notes/on-white-thugs-like-michael-dunn-and-the-scapegoating-of-hip-hop">the music Davis and his friends were playing</a> in Davis’ car was “thug music” or “rap crap.”</p>
<p>Dunn’s defense depended on his victims’ being viewed as thugs by association with rap. </p>
<p>In jail, Dunn was <a href="https://participant.com/film/3-12-minutes-ten-bullets">recorded</a> on the phone speculating whether Davis and his friends were “gangster rappers.” He claimed he’d seen YouTube videos. </p>
<p>In describing these tragedies, the words “rappers” and “rap music” are code for “Black” and “other,” meant to elicit fear and justify violence. There’s no question in my mind that they would have been perceived differently if the words “poets” or “poetry” were used instead. </p>
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<h2>Made in America</h2>
<p>Indeed, violence perpetuated by people who rap is as real any other American violence.</p>
<p>Young Thug, Gunna, or any other rapper accused of crimes are not exempt from accountability. But, in my view, assuming people are criminals simply because they rap – even if they rap about violence – is wrong. </p>
<p>Admittedly, throughout hip-hop history, rappers have constructed personas as antiheroes. Performances of masculinity, violence, intimidation, gun ownership and misogyny are meant to signal a kind of authenticity. </p>
<p>In her 1994 book “Outlaw Culture,” bell hooks included a <a href="http://challengingmalesupremacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Misogyny-gangsta-rap-and-The-Piano-bell-hooks.pdf">chapter on “gangsta rap.”</a> Hooks explained that the abhorrent behaviors scrutinized and highlighted in rappers are American values that people living and surviving here adopt.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">December 1986 story on Run-DMC</a>, Rolling Stone writer Ed Kiersh said out loud what many were thinking.</p>
<p>“To much of white America,” Kiersh wrote, “rap means mayhem and bloodletting.” </p>
<p>Perhaps.</p>
<p>But those who still seek to vilify rap might do well to focus on the sources of the crisis of violence in America rather than blaming the music that reflects it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since rap music emerged in mainstream culture in the late 1980s, conservatives have derided its lyrics and imagery as violent. But hip-hop artists argue those images reflect urban realities.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855502017-10-18T15:05:33Z2017-10-18T15:05:33ZMumble Rap: cultural laziness or a true reflection of contemporary times?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190580/original/file-20171017-30436-1ebpurg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Migos performs during the Made in America Music Festival on 2 September, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Makela/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.vibe.com/featured/mumble-rap-essay/">Mumble rap</a>. Sorry, what was that? </p>
<p>Mumble rap - the most recent art form of rapping - or arguably the art of not rapping. Rather than rapping clearly, eloquently, articulately and with prowess and esteem, mumble rappers <a href="https://studybreaks.com/2017/03/29/mumble-rap/">string</a> occasional words together, like “cat”, “sat” and if you’re lucky, “mat”. And mumble rappers tend to do just that, they mumble.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Some examples of ‘mumble rap’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And it’s <a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-have-mumble-rappers-become-so-successful">catchy</a>, which contributes to its popularity. A good example is the hugely popular American trio, <a href="https://genius.com/artists/Migos">Migos</a>, who in May this year had an unprecedented nine songs in the US Hot 100 hit parade. The trio have embarked on a world tour which includes performances in Australia, the US and <a href="http://www.enca.com/life/entertainment/bad-and-boujee-migos-to-perform-in-sa">South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>The term “mumble rap” is <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7625631/rise-of-mumble-rap-lyricism-2016">attributed</a> to rapper <a href="http://www.billboard.com/music/wiz-khalifa">Wiz Khalifa</a> following a June 2016 interview on the American urban radio station <a href="http://www.hot97.com/">Hot 97 FM</a>. But artists such as <a href="http://www.guccimaneonline.com/">Gucci Mane</a>, <a href="http://chiefkeef.com/">Chief Keef</a> and <a href="https://pitchfork.com/artists/30068-future/">Future</a> had been practising this <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/4/18/16047136/mumble-rap-moratorium-lil-yachty-desiigner-15bc3647dae9">genre of music</a> for several years previously. </p>
<h2>Culture as a joke</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=true%20school">True school</a> hip-hop advocates have been critical of recent trap music and mumble rap of late. This was amplified by early 1990s hip-hop star, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/realpeterock/">Pete Rock’s</a> outspoken social media posts in September last year.</p>
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<p>These comments really fuelled anger in the nation, and following some fiery exchanges, Pete Rock aimed a missive at <a href="https://genius.com/artists/Lil-yachty">Lil Yachty</a>, his assumed alter ego Lil Boat and <a href="http://www.youngdolph.com/">Young Dolph</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m a lil tired of people taking this culture for a joke.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But what really is the problem with mumble rap?</p>
<p>As a derivative of <a href="http://thesource.com/2014/02/14/trap-music-the-difference-between-real-trap-sht-and-edm/">“Trap”</a> (an umbrella term for hard Atlanta street rap), mumble is largely linked to the Atlanta scene. But lyrically it is quite different to the semantics and linguistics of Southern pioneering trap artists like <a href="http://outkast.com/">Outkast</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/cool-breeze-mn0001343538">Cool Breeze</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ghetto-mafia-mn0000946481">Ghetto Mafia</a> who developed their style in the mid-1990s.</p>
<p><a href="https://djmag.com/content/trap-music-under-lock-key">Trap</a> refers to the creating and selling of crack-cocaine, the “trap” being the dwelling within which it is manufactured, sold and smoked. This context provides a narrative framework much reminiscent of earlier <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/gangsta-rap-ma0000002611">gangsta rap</a> records popularised in the late 1980s by <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/eazy-e-21257001">Eazy-E</a> and his crew <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/nwa-mn0000314793/biography">NWA</a>, yet pioneered in the early part of that decade by artists such as <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/schoolly-d-5102">Schoolly D</a>, <a href="http://www.unkut.com/2009/02/funkmaster-wizard-wiz-the-unkut-interview/">Funkmaster Wizard Wiz</a> and <a href="http://www.icetfinallevel.com/">Ice-T</a>.</p>
<p>These formative styles of gangsta rap might appear to celebrate drug dealing, pimping, gangs and the materialism of money, cars and jewellery. However, records like Funkmaster Wizard Wiz’s “Crack It Up” and Schoolly D’s “<a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/6784905/schoolly-d-psk-first-gangsta-rap-song-anniversary">P.S.K.- What Does It Mean?”</a> serve as narrative driven ethnographic and <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0162.xml">autoethnographic</a> studies, effectively, they are social commentaries based on real events, people and experiences. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Schoolly D with the gangsta-rap classic ‘PSK, What Does It Mean?’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These narratives also intertwine strong metaphors as in Ice-T’s expansive “Six in the Mornin’”, where Ice undertakes the role of the dealer narrowly escaping a bust, but takes solace in hip-hop as part of everyday life. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ice T with his gritty tale from the street, ‘6 in the mornin’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Broader cultural context</h2>
<p>So is it mumble rap’s omission of clever, eloquent storytelling and wordplay that is disliked by the older hip-hop community?</p>
<p>The lackadaisical delivery and lyrically sparse approach that a majority of new wave mumble rappers such as Migos and <a href="http://www.billboard.com/music/rich-homie-quan">Rich Homie Quan</a> practice clearly upsets fans of hip-hop’s golden era great <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Emcee%20%28rap%29">emcees</a> - the likes of <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rakim-mn0000389137">Rakim</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/big-daddy-kane-mn0000050434">Big Daddy Kane</a>, and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/q-tip-mn0000376613">Q-Tip</a> - whose <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Flow">flows</a> (delivery) were paradigm-shifting, and whose delivery was precise and professionally effortless.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the sociopolitical awareness that eminent emcees like <a href="http://www.publicenemy.com/">Chuck D</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/poor-righteous-teachers-mn0000852698">Poor Righteous Teachers</a> and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gk8bb/tragedy-khadafi-is-still-queensbridges-realest-456">Tragedy Khadafi</a> bring to the consciousness of hip hop is clearly absent from mumble rap. From Brother D’s <a href="https://genius.com/Brother-d-how-we-gonna-make-the-black-nation-rise-lyrics">“How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?”</a> released in 1980, consciousness has, to a greater or lesser extent, played a key role in the evolution of rap vis-à-vis its social and political context. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Brother D with one of the first socially aware hip-hop songs.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what if the current cultural context is informing the production of mumble rap? In the contemporary western world daily life is fuelled by widespread consumption – of both products and images. They in turn saturate social media in an attempt to raise social status, a process that is itself highly disposable, and filled with bite-sized snippets of communication in the form of emojis and text abbreviations. </p>
<h2>Creativity born out of boredom</h2>
<p>To understand mumble rap I think it’s useful to consider the thoughts of cultural theorist <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbzbn5/paul-virilio-506-v17n9">Paul Virilio</a>. He philosophises on the ideas of the <a href="http://soulellis.com/tag/dromosphere/">dromosphere</a> – the sphere within the evolution of humanity where speed inevitably causes the accident – and the <a href="https://romeosyne.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/paul-virilio-for-the-love-of-speed-part-two-the-death-of-a-thousand-cuts-in-the-soundtrack-an-introduction-to-picnolepsy-by-james-l-kelley/">picnolepsy</a> – an almost epileptic consciousness generated by the perceived speed and immediacy of the world. Cultural cause and human experience both are interlinked. </p>
<p>As the dromosphere becomes heavy with information, people’s physical experience slows down in a bid to absorb as much as possible. When life becomes devoid of speed, gaps appear between the slowing down and fast pace of information, triggering a picnoleptic consciousness. It is within these voids and this consciousness, I would argue, where mumble rap is created.</p>
<p>Mumble rap is a negotiation that offers relief from the invisible acceleration of life, yet concurrently praises the disposable production-consumption model that ignites this acceleration in the first place. It is creativity born out of boredom. </p>
<p>To this end, mumble rap represents much more than at first it may appear. The picnoleptic experience is channelled through almost incomprehensible lyrical delivery, while locating certain tangible status symbols and narratives (such as acquisition of money, speeding cars, and overseeing drug deals) meagerly in the lyrical content. </p>
<p>Mumble rap offers the opportunity to reassess what is of cultural value. Like jazz and reggae, hip-hop has a rich musical culture. Now nearing the end of its fifth decade, there is a place for all sub-genres and agendas. The old school needs to let mumble rap be what it wishes to be, and allow this new wave of rappers do their thing, not forgetting the broader social context which may be exactly why these rappers mumble.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam de Paor-Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What if the current cultural context is informing the production of mumble rap? In the contemporary western world, daily life is fuelled by widespread consumption of both products and images.Adam de Paor-Evans, Principal Lecturer in Cultural Theory / School Lead for Research and Innovation, School of Art, Design and Fashion, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847272017-10-03T12:16:02Z2017-10-03T12:16:02ZGabon’s political force is its thriving hip-hop scene<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187574/original/file-20170926-17414-bikw6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Duo Movaizhaleine and artist Wonda Wendy take a minute's silence to honor the dead during a concert in Paris, February 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Silber Mba </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Gabon as in <a href="http://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_CEA_209_0143--masculine-strength-and-rap-music.htm">other African states</a>, rap has become instrumental in constructing political identity.</p>
<p>On August 17, Gabon celebrated 57 years of independence with a massive <a href="http://news.alibreville.com/h/74818.html">free concert</a> in the capital, Libreville. The aim: to promote national unity in a festive fashion. An impressive lineup of local hip hop stars – including Ba'Ponga, Tris, Tina and Ndoman – were invited to draw in the younger crowds.</p>
<p>The celebrations held particular significance in light of another, darker anniversary. Last year on August 31, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/31/gabon-election-results-disputed-incumbent-ali-bongo-victor-jean-ping">shockingly violent</a> crisis erupted following President Ali Bongo’s <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/09/09/presidentielle-gabonaise-comment-truquer-une-election-pour-75-000-euros_4995385_3212.html">contested electoral victory</a>.</p>
<p>One year on, the country is <a href="http://www.jeuneafrique.com/depeches/468781/politique/gabon-un-an-apres-la-presidentielle-un-pays-en-situation-delicate/">still feeling</a> the social, political and economic effects, as is its rap scene.</p>
<h2>Violent demonstrations</h2>
<p>In the early 1990s, Gabon’s government was shut down by violent demonstrations and a general strike. It forced dictator Omar Bongo, who <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-africaine-2009-2-page-126.htm">had been in power since 1967</a>, to set up a national conference reestablishing a multiparty system and granting greater freedom of expression.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘African revolution’, one of V2A4’s first hits, explicitly mentions the misappropriation of public funds.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Against the backdrop of this popular uprising, the youth of Libreville began writing rap music. Inspired by American hip hop artists like Public Enemy and NWA, and French rappers like NTM and Assassin, they expressed their need for escape, freedom and change.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Si'Ya Po'Ossi X bluntly describes daily life in the ‘mapanes’, poor urban areas where the majority of people live.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet this subversive scene hasn’t been totally exempt from the kinds of ties between music and politics that have existed since the onset of African independence in the 1960s. In fact, some protest rappers have links to the “system” through family ties with political elites. V2A4, for example, is made up of the son of the Interior minister (a close relative to former president Omar Bongo) and the child of a local businessman. Both study in France and live off the wealth of the “system”.</p>
<h2>Bling Gabon style</h2>
<p>From the 2000s on, inspired by <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gangsta-rap-2857307">gangsta rap</a>, video clips have started to feature more gold chains, souped-up cars, women in suggestive poses and virile displays of masculinity.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The rapper Kôba is an icon of bling culture in Gabon.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ushered in by bling style rapper Kôba, a new generation of rappers began to write songs that deviated from the protest-driven hip hop of their predecessors. This trend was encouraged by the appearance of new record labels, with close ties to the government and elites, further reinforcing the link between music and politics.</p>
<p>This fusion between music and politics reached new highs during the 2009 election. Presidential candidate Ali Bongo used the popularity of rap artists to attract youth support and distinguish himself from his father, Omar, who had died in June that year.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Presidential candidate Ali Bongo on stage with rap stars from Hay'oe, who supported his campaign.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following his election in 2009, Ali Bongo brought new faces from the world of hip hop into the government. Due to these kinds of affiliations, Bongo’s semi-authoritarian regime has exercised particularly tight control over the hip hop scene, in particular via the media.</p>
<h2>Without jobs</h2>
<p>Right from the start, Bongo’s first seven-year term in office was <a href="https://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=POLAF_144_0157">marked</a> by a decline in living standards and social infrastructure and continuing high unemployment levels – more than 20% of the population, and 35% of young people are <a href="http://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/feature/2015/03/31/gabons-unemployment-conundrum-why-economic-growth-is-not-leading-to-more-jobs">without jobs</a>. This, while the Bongo family’s spending has <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2015/08/20/ali-bongo-seme-a-tout-va-la-fortune-de-papa_1366491">reached outrageous highs</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://gabonreview.com/blog/musique-f-a-n-g-entre-nouveau-single-diatribe-contre-censure/">Censorship</a>and the co-option or <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2014/12/20/gabon-des-manifestants-reclament-le-depart-du-president_4544324_3212.html">silencing of opposition</a> have become increasingly common. Dissenting hip hop artists now have to find alternative ways to spread their messages.</p>
<p>Most subversive rap is now produced abroad, with several well-known Gabonese rappers making their music in China, South Africa, the US or France. These artists-in-exile form a highly political network. Their songs reach the streets of Libreville through social media, becoming calls for political debate and action.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LKcndEmtgxA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The title ‘Mister Zero’ was recorded in south of France by rapper Saik1ry who condemned Ali Bongo’s disastrous record, now an anthem at opposition demonstrations. </movie
Back home, many artists continue the fight in spite of censorship. In 2015, outspoken rapper Keurtyce E became the first to release a song openly opposing the current regime.
Keurtyce directly threatens the President in his song ‘We’ll make a fresh start’
Beyond the lyrical content of these songs, Gabonese artists ingeniously use the musical arrangements to subversive ends.
Clever use of sampling
Sampling, cutting and looping allow artists to anchor their music within the local context, by using samples from traditional instruments or famous local songs, for instance. These techniques also carry political meaning, with artists mixing in lyrics, musical samples or slogans from activist musicians who they see as their ideological forebears.
Pierre-Claver Akendengué, for example, an icon of 1960s pan-Africanism and resistor to the authoritarian regime during the one-party system, remains a major source of inspiration for Gabonese musicians today.
The chorus from Movaizhaleine’s song ‘Aux choses du pays’ (To the stuff of our country) is adapted from the music of Akendengué.
Rapper/producer Lord Ekomy Ndong recently demonstrated another means of subversion. In a new song in which he samples excerpts from a speech by President Ali Bongo, juxtaposed with the words of social media activists, to condemn corruption and misappropriation of public funds.
Subversion through juxtaposition by Lord Ekomy Ndong.
Flareups on social media
During last year’s election, a great rift appeared in the rap scene between supporters and opponents of the president. A series of flareups on social media and diss-and-response songs deepened the divide.
Bongo had his praise singers:
On the one side, rappers aligned with the Bongo family, involved in rallies and producing songs to support the incumbent party.
But Bongo’s opponents were as vocal:
On the other side, protest rappers, denounce increased corruption and poverty since Bongo has taken office.
Rappers who had previously cooperated with Bongo joined opposition movements to demonstrate their disappointment with government failures. It intensified after troops opened fire on demonstrators following the release of the election results. Several people were killed and numerous others disappeared.
Just two months after this crackdown, Kôba, former poster boy for the system, released the song “Odjuku”. The title is a reference to Bongo’s supposed Nigerian biological father. The rapper reignited the controversy surrounding the president’s origins and joined other artists in declaring “On ne te suit pas” (We don’t follow you).
Kôba,‘Odjuku’
Forgetting the quagmire
One year on, the government is trying to make people forget its quagmire with events such as the massive August 17 free concert.
Yet, the protest movement is still active: demonstrations continue within striking government departments and at Libreville University. In the streets of Paris and New York, Gabonese expats rally together.
LestatXXL/Lord Ekomy Ndong ‘Sur mon drapeau’ (By my flag)
Through their songs, rappers like Lestat XXL and Lord Ekomy Ndong, commemorate the sorrowful anniversary of the 2016 repression:
Here no one will forget. We’ll hoist up the flame…
No red on my flag. Nothing will ever be the same.
<em>Alice Aterianus-Owanga is the author of “Rap Was Born Here! Music, Power and Identity in Modern Gabon”, published by Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, September 2017.</em>
<em>Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for Fast for Word.</em></span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Aterianus-Owanga received funding from French Minister of Higher Education and research for this research, and she is currently receiving fundings from the Swiss National Fund for research. </span></em></p>Rap has become instrumental in constructing identity and radically reshaping relations to politics in Gabon and other African states.Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Postdoctoral researcher in Anthropology, Université de LausanneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/702232016-12-12T18:05:01Z2016-12-12T18:05:01ZYes, 2016 was crazy. But the future of art is bright and black<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149656/original/image-20161212-26048-1bxvh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of Childish Gambino's album 'Awaken my love'.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>Review 2016: This has been a year most of humanity would like to forget with war, disasters, racism, sexism and, especially in arts and culture, the deaths of revered icons. But it is also in the arts and culture where people look for and find hope. The Conversation Africa has asked a number of our contributors to give us five books, records, buildings, works of art and so on, in their field that made a difference to them in 2016. Here is Michael Shakib Bhatch’s year in review.</em></p>
<p>In our haste to conclude 2016 (for various obviously bad reasons) we shouldn’t forget to reflect on all the wonderful works of art that inspired and distracted us from the craziness of this period. Below I share some of the grand works that made this year memorable for the right reasons. I limit myself through the lens of Afrofuturism and African studies specifically because this article has a word limit …</p>
<p>To recap quickly: the <a href="http://www.fabrikzeitung.ch/afrofuturism-reloaded-15-theses-in-15-minutes/">still relevant</a> term Afrofuturism was first coined by American cultural critic, <a href="http://markdery.com/">Mark Dery</a>, in his seminal 1994 essay <a href="https://thenewblack5324.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mark-dery-black-to-the-future.pdf">“Black to the future”</a>.</p>
<p>Dery <a href="https://futuristicallyancient.com/tag/mark-dery/">defined</a> Afrofuturism as a: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture – and more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced – might, for want of a better term, be called “Afro-futurism.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>1. Josef Leimberg – "Astral Progressions”</h2>
<p>In late November I was taken on a sonic journey through <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/west-coast-rap-ma0000002932">West Coast rap</a>, <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/the-history-of-spiritual-jazz.html">cosmic spiritual jazz</a> and P-funk by California-based trumpeter and hip hop producer Josef Leimberg. His debut solo album: <a href="https://worldgalaxyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/astral-progressions">“Astral Progressions”</a> has been a staple in the car, home and office ever since. The album explores West Coast <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/g-funk-ma0000011824">G-funk</a> and two major historical components of Afrofuturistic sound art: spiritual cosmic jazz in the vein of artists like <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/pharoah-sanders-mn0000330601">Pharoah Sanders</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alice-coltrane-mn0000006143">Alice Coltrane</a>, and cosmic funk as created by <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/funkadelic-mn0000187581">Parliament-Funkadelic</a>.</p>
<p>Anyone who is a scholar of Afrofuturism will agree that the album really connects the dots (both sonically and stylistically) between then, now and the future. For me the album is part of a movement of deliberately conscious black music that is using ancient soundscapes to explore the future sound of black music. This conscious black music movement is to avant garde jazz musician, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sun-ra-mn0000924232">Sun Ra</a>, and funk master, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/george-clinton-mn0000533117">George Clinton</a>, what the genre <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/neo-soul-ma0000004426">Neo-Soul</a> is to <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/roy-ayers-mn0000345168/biography">Roy Ayers</a> (who successfully straddled bridged jazz, funk and disco in the mid 1970s and early ‘80s), with hip hop sandwiched right in the middle.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149657/original/image-20161212-26074-1mfw3cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Josef Leimberg’s debut album Astral Progressions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Childish Gambino - “Awaken, my love”</h2>
<p>Roughly 29 days before the closing of this year actor <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22671-awaken-my-love/">Donald Glover</a> under the guise of his rapper alter ego, Childish Gambino, made waves when he released <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/12/09/504969213/childish-gambinos-new-album-is-a-funky-left-turn">“Awaken, my love”</a>, an album that draws heavily on the works of Funkadelic, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jimi-hendrix-mn0000354105">Jimi Hendrix</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sylvester-sly-stone-stewart-mn0000751663">Sly Stone</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/prince-mn0000361393">Prince</a>. While many reviews of the album didn’t find it particularly Afrofuturistic in nature, I did. I feel that while it draws on the same influences as Neo-Soul artist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dangelo-mn0000134600">D'Angelo</a>, its sonic aesthetic leans more toward rapper <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/kendrick-lamar-mn0002709646">Kendrick Lamar</a>’s Afrofuturistic album <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/to-pimp-a-butterfly-mw0002835159">“To pimp a butterfly”</a>.</p>
<p>In my humble opinion Gambino (along with like-minded artists such as <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sa-ra-mn0000955123">Sa-Ra</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/bilal-mn0000057280">Bilal</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/adrian-younge-mn0001646944">Adrian Younge</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/terrace-martin-mn0002366358">Terrace Martin</a>) is ushering in the stylistic progression of neo-soul to neo-psychedelic space funk (if you could call it that). The crazy thing about this is that the said “progression” is taking place during a sociopolitical period that is often likened to the late 60’s/ early 70’s: when George Clinton and Sly Stone altered soul and funk, and Hendrix altered the blues. I am very chuffed that I can bear witness to the development of this sound, especially within the context of the <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">#BlackLivesMatter</a> movement and the looming Donald Trump administration.</p>
<h2>3. “Birth of a Nation” - Nate Parker</h2>
<p>Finally, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196450/">a film</a> about one of the most important heroes of black resistance in the USA and beyond, <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/nat-turner">Nat Turner</a>. The movie, which is co-produced and directed by Nate Parker who also plays the leading role is significant in many ways. It is a prime example of the very necessary process of reclaiming and reframing of black history in order to change the trajectory of the future of black people worldwide.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149659/original/image-20161212-26051-1o2gwqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nate Parker, director of ‘Birth of a nation’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film was shrouded in <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/08/timeline-of-the-nate-parker-rape-scandal.html">controversy</a> and was received with mixed feelings. Seventeen years ago Parker and a wrestling teammate were accused of raping a female student, while attending Penn State university. Parker was found not guilty. Four years ago the woman who accused him committed suicide.</p>
<p>With the release of “Birth of a Nation” in October and Parker’s raised profile the spotlight turned back on the case.</p>
<p>Despite one’s personal judgements of his character, the project might inspire other young black artists to boldly rewrite and reimagine the often skewed whitewashed historical accounts of black revolutionary action.</p>
<p>Hopefully soon someone might present the world with say, the story of the <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/haitian-revolution-1791-1804">Haitian Revolution</a> (1791-1804) or of revolutionary hero, the late Burkinabe president <a href="http://qz.com/415257/why-burkina-fasos-late-revolutionary-leader-thomas-sankara-still-inspires-young-africans/">Thomas Sankara</a>, who was revered as the “African Che Guevara”. Who knows. Either way, Parker has sown the seed. </p>
<h2>4. “Luke Cage” TV series</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149660/original/image-20161212-26036-dgoa9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poster for ‘Luke Cage’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I never was a fan of comics and superheroes but the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3322314/">“Luke Cage”</a> series might have changed my mind. The television series caught my attention for the same reasons as “Birth of a Nation” and “Awaken, my love”. Essentially it is an Afrofuturistic blaxploitation series with a brilliant retrospective, and futuristic score created by the great <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/adrian-younge-mn0001646944">Adrian Younge</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/people/390269464/ali-shaheed-muhammad">Ali Shaheed Muhammad</a>. What is not to love about this? </p>
<p>The series brings Afrofuturism and neo-psychedelic space funk to the living rooms of the masses and it is likely to be a strong point of reference for many years to come. I definitely will be watching more of the series in my spare time – you should too.</p>
<h2>5. “Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro – How far we slaves have come”</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.kwela.com/Books/19606">book</a> contains the speeches of two icons, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro, who are equally loved, and hated by many. It offers us insight (via the speeches exchanged by these icons upon their first meeting in Cuba in 1991) into Cuba’s role in catalysing the end of apartheid. </p>
<p>It also sheds some light on how these two giants related to each other as revolutionaries. This is essential reading material, especially in the wake of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/fidel-castro-cuba-revolutionary-icon-dies">Castro’s death</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-crisis-could-become-a-monster-if-zuma-is-left-unchecked-68350">current state</a> of the ruling ANC in South Africa. Ironically the book was republished by Kwela Books a few months prior to the passing of Castro who is often referred to as the world’s last revolutionary, this reaffirms my belief that revolutionary ideas do not die when revolutionaries do.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149661/original/image-20161212-26039-no5dqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of Shabaka & the Ancestors’ debut album.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In closing I would also like to make special mention of the album <a href="https://shabakaandtheancestors.bandcamp.com/">“Wisdom of the Elders”</a> by Shabaka Hutchings and the Ancestors as a key Afrofuturistic spiritual jazz release to come from South Africa this year (British saxophonist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/shabaka-hutchings-mn0001092571/biography">Hutchings</a> recorded “Wisdom of the Elders” in Johannesburg in 2015 with some of South Africa’s finest young jazz musicians).
I’m waiting for the album which I ordered in vinyl format for further exploration. Don’t delay the purchase like I did.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Shakib Bhatch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a gloomy year filled, a number of artists with an Afrofuturist perspective gave hope with inspired works of art.Michael Shakib Bhatch, Lecturer of English, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/472122015-09-08T08:01:23Z2015-09-08T08:01:23ZISIS propaganda and gangsta rap videos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94110/original/image-20150908-4358-a0gd5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Franco as Alien, gangsta and gangsta rapper, from Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers (2012)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/miguelvaca/10655300984/in/photolist-feRrMQ-feRrTA-feB9S6-feB9NP-feB9Qz-feRrRj-feRrSf-feB9NZ-e2DZgk-feRrPQ-feRrRE-hezcKW-emy7sY">miguelvaca/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a muscular, tattooed man holding a machine gun. He is in front of an expensive sports car, with gold chains around his neck and what looks like a Rolex on his wrist. The man is standing proudly in front of the camera. </p>
<p>On the same social media site, there is an image of several women in front of the same car; possession of the women, perhaps, leads to possession of the car which, apparently, leads to unbridled wealth. </p>
<p>What was it that Tony Montana, aka <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086250/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Scarface</a>, said, back in 1983? </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The brawny fellow in this image seems to have listened to Montana’s words – though accumulation of these assets (money, power, women) does not necessarily occur in this order. </p>
<p>These images, as one might have suspected, function as recruitment propaganda for ISIS. (They are accessible through simple Google searches.)</p>
<p>Now I switch over to YouTube, and watch some gangsta rap videos – perhaps, for example, Young Jeezy’s appearance on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ite6FNbmSc">Smack DVD volume 9</a>. I am presented with strong, muscular, tattooed men, who are singing about money, guns, and women, in video clips replete with images of aforesaid trifecta. </p>
<p>Indeed, brought to the surface in myriad gangsta rap videos are the core elements that undergird the ethos of American possessive individualism: accumulation through consumerism, greed, and exploitation. </p>
<p>It is possible to abstract from comparison of (some) gangsta rap videos and (some) ISIS propaganda images a similar vision of the contemporary “hero,” Gordon Geckos, Scarfaces, and ISIS warriors alike (for a convincing discussion of the “hero” of our age check out Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s recent book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22246108-heroes?from_search=true&search_version=service">Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide</a> – 2015). </p>
<p>The contemporary hero, apparently, is defined through his rabidly masculinist impulses towards the domination and control of spaces and people, the consumption of as much as possible, and the display of his success through the spectacle of his spoils.</p>
<p>There are, however, despite the similar ideological underpinnings of these cultural artefacts, a couple of notable differences. </p>
<p>The face of the hero of the ISIS poster is whited out, as though emitting a burst of light towards the viewer. This has a genuinely uncanny effect – and, though (obviously) done for security reasons, weakens the poster’s effect as propaganda. </p>
<p>As philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas showed, the face is the centre of human affective attention, the one element of human physiognomy that demands sympathy from an interlocutor or observer. Replacing the ISIS warrior’s face with a burst of light creates an uncomfortable anonymity, reminiscent of some of the images of early 20th-century anatomy research. </p>
<p>The other noticeable difference involves the sexualisation of the female figures. In the music videos (as in most versions of contemporary popular culture) women are sexualised according to their presence of flesh and the erotic charge of this flesh. In the ISIS recruitment image, the women are in burqas, their sexuality implied through its open repression. </p>
<p>Even so, the ISIS hero’s facelessness reminds me of Mark Seltzer’s analysis of contemporary US culture in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/421373.Serial_Killers?from_search=true&search_version=service">Serial Killers: Death and Life in American Wound Culture</a> (1998). </p>
<p>Seltzer discusses contemporary public space as defined through the psychopathology of “wound culture,” with the serial killer simply the most exaggerated version of modern man living under turbocapitalism. </p>
<p>The serial killer embodies the pathology of the modern age, of a subjectivity that overidentifies with the modern crowd, and compensates for this facelessness through acts of extreme (identity-defining) violence. This violent assertion of identity – as a panacea to facelessness in the modern age – defines, as Seltzer points out, contemporary celebrity culture at large.</p>
<p>Hyperconsumerism, commodity accumulation, misogyny and an overarching atmosphere of competitive violence - all of these elements, so definitive of contemporary neoliberal affects and structures, are simply restated in ISIS images and gangsta rap videos alike. </p>
<p>Not to give gangsta rap a bad name – a moralising tendency wonderfully lampooned in Ice Cube’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzeZhCt5PVA">Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It</a>. These qualities are, after all, celebrated in all kinds of popular cultural artefacts (two films of 2013 immediately come to mind: Martin Scorsese’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Wolf of Wall Street</a> and Michael Bay’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1980209/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Pain and Gain</a>). </p>
<p>Furthermore, it should be acknowledged that these elements of the popular culture of the “West” – a vision culture in which appearance reigns supreme – are the source of the ISIS propaganda’s appeal, rather than some kind of pseudo-Orientalist desire for heroic death. </p>
<p>ISIS ideology should thus not be envisioned in stark opposition to Western ideologies of consumerism and exploitation, but simply as another variant of them.</p>
<p>Joseph Conrad showed more than 100 years ago that one doesn’t need to go down the Congo to locate the “heart of darkness” – that darkness spreads and fills the spaces between “ordinary” people, and the gaps between people and their subjectivities. Hannah Arendt, similarly, discussed the “banality of evil” in her take on the infamous Eichmann trial in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52090.Eichmann_in_Jerusalem_?from_search=true&search_version=service">Eichmann in Jerusalem</a> (1963). </p>
<p>So instead of looking at irreparable rifts – rifts that are often widened in political discourse as justification for greater military domination – let’s ask, what does it mean to be human in a globalised consumer society? </p>
<p>Greed, social division, fierce and violent competition, and needless waste seem to be the definitive factors. ISIS ranks highly in these categories – as do the rest of us. </p>
<p>Hope arises when we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
There is a muscular, tattooed man holding a machine gun. He is in front of an expensive sports car, with gold chains around his neck and what looks like a Rolex on his wrist. The man is standing proudly…Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/469832015-09-02T05:10:51Z2015-09-02T05:10:51ZStraight Outta Compton – why now?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93615/original/image-20150902-6748-1wgcc2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Straight Outta Compton</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/urban_data/145931062/in/photolist-dTWdN-8SErq-bEgPqU-53HmzL-64w7V9-aSJaW-imeHV-9Nj1wH-ewiZC-5HsMBu-bEgmFL-5X1BSz-6AKd3Y-bTbadp-ofiF9B-oyy4YT-9KboT-7jhEyn-8P633-5jQRwA-mUGZK-ofirud-9YLkpn-9Y4a6B-NdCtm-4pGeWp-3Xb3cX-5zQ65V-mUFLm-mUG3m-mJ42K-4JZkXb-5NZuUD-5NZuUH-vhBmD-5ks1o9-4i5xQ-4pnbAq-4nx3W2-3Xb8Bz-2hV7Hi-bKGML-dDD2dx-vhBmz-7NirZn-2c8owd-6VxPcr-9oyQep-ewiWh-58wXwk">urban_data/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the eve of the national Australian release of F. Gary Gray’s Straight <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1398426/">Outta Compton</a> – a biopic about legendary LA rap group NWA that takes its title from one of their most popular albums – a few questions come to mind. </p>
<p>Why is this film being released now? Is it in response to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter">Black Lives Matter</a> movement spreading across the US via social media, in turn a response to racist police violence in Miami Gardens, Ferguson, Baltimore? </p>
<p>If so, what kind of a response is it? </p>
<p>Is it promoting a message of greater civic unity in opposition to the identitarian politics often favoured by governments (and their most potent civic arms, police forces)? Or is it simply Hollywood cashing in on a social trend, fad, fashion that has arisen as a result of civil unrest?</p>
<p>Since Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci discussed it nearly a hundred years ago, the function of cultural hegemony has become so obvious that discussions of it appear rather banal. </p>
<p>It is as self-evident, under capitalism, as the associated notion of “selling out” that has been so popular in discourses about commercial “art” in general. Anyone who knows anything about the history of LA rap (as a populist political medium) knows how quickly its subversive impulses were colonised by and connected to the machine against which it was putatively rallying. </p>
<p>As an 11-year-old, middle-class white boy growing up in Sydney’s suburbs circa 1993, I was certainly attracted to the rap “fad” – the music of NWA was incredibly thrilling. It offered an anti-authoritarian message that still seemed to be based around the rabid (and rabidly masculine) assertion of self. Throw in a dash of cultural voyeurism, and you have a potent, intoxicating mix for a kid on the verge of puberty. </p>
<p>Furthermore, biography, of course (including the biopic, its most formulaic incarnation), is always about great (or at least awe-some) people transcending an unpleasant or mediocre social reality. It celebrates at its core the ideology of the individual reigning triumphant over the social and relational. </p>
<p>Biographies thus tend to serve the function of keeping downtrodden people – most people in the world in fact – falsely dreaming that they, too, can “make it.” As Nike – sneaker company, rather than Greek goddess – tells us: “Just do it.” </p>
<p>If you don’t “just do it,” it’s obviously because you didn’t have enough talent, or didn’t work hard enough. </p>
<p>The biography industry (in ways eerily similar to the self-help industry) elides the fact that for every Lebron James, there are 10,000 amazing basketballers who don’t get the opportunity to earn US$24 million a year, because of injury, or inadequate coaching, or simply a generally draining life-context. Steve James’ brilliant documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110057/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Hoop Dreams</a> (1994) plays this out to devastating effect. </p>
<p>That’s the nature of capitalism, which, based as it is on the notion of the virtue of competition, is (by definition) fuelled by the pursuit of inequality. </p>
<p>So: does Straight Outta Compton promote positive anti-fascist activism? Or does it simply channel our negative affects, our despair, reconfiguring them in a way that sells, in a form that is shallowly uplifting, falsely optimistic – and therefore a symptom of the crippling cynicism of our current age? </p>
<p>Is Straight Outta Compton simply another vessel for our affective exploitation? Or, to quote Ice Cube from NWA’s anthem, <a href="https://theconversation.com/prophets-of-pain-the-art-of-nwas-f-tha-police-46931">Fuck tha Police</a>, does it “have something to say?” </p>
<p>We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
<br>
<strong>See also</strong>: <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/prophets-of-pain-the-art-of-nwas-f-tha-police-46931">Prophets of Pain: the art of NWA’s Fuck tha Police</a>.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Straight Outta Compton is in Australian cinemas from September 3.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46983/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Why is this film being released now? Is it in response to the Black Lives Matter movement spreading across the US via social media, in turn a response to racist police violence in Miami Gardens, Ferguson, Baltimore?Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/469312015-09-02T04:28:31Z2015-09-02T04:28:31ZProphets of pain: the art of NWA’s F*** tha Police<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93490/original/image-20150901-25723-1hbj4ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ice Cube and his bandmates had a point, albeit one mired in controversy. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eva Rinaldi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the most viscerally exciting scenes in the new biopic about NWA – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1398426/">Straight Outta Compton</a> (named after the band’s <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11791-straight-outta-compton-efil4zaggin/">1989 album</a>) – recreates the infamous Detroit concert where the group had apparently been warned by local police not to perform the controversial hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5fts7bj-so">Fuck tha Police</a>, a song considered so inflammatory the FBI felt compelled to issue a veiled warning to the group.</p>
<p>Despite the geographic and temporal distance between 1989 Detroit and 2015 Brisbane, Australia (where I saw the film in a packed advance screening), as the performers worked up the courage to defy the authorities, the onscreen tension was palpably transferred to an electrified audience. The eventual release of middle-finger-brandishing defiance created a tangible rush in the room. </p>
<p>This ability to move a crowd legitimates NWA’s success in terms that are not often acknowledged or recognised: gangsta rap is music. Organised sound, created to excite and entertain (usually a group of) people. To understand it, you have to hear it and for best results, experience it physically.</p>
<p>The aesthetics of gangsta rap are mostly overlooked, however, because of the immense web of social, economic, racial, gendered, political and cultural issues that surround it. </p>
<p>The social and political debate tends to obscure all but the angriest of emotional states embodied in NWA’s music. It’s unfortunate that a more compassionate sense of the deep emotional wellspring of discontent tapped into by many of the songs on Straight Outta Compton is drowned by the hype, controversy, and commodification. </p>
<p>Naturally, however, it’s impossible to fully grasp the significance of the music without first acknowledging contextual issues.</p>
<h2>Order, order, order …</h2>
<p>Emerging from the de-industrialised urban environment of 1980s South Los Angeles, significantly impacted by the slow death of its middle-class and Reagan-era social policies, members of NWA have always maintained that a form of street reporting defined their lyrical style. Fuck tha Police is essentially a protest against police harassment. </p>
<p>Given the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Gates#Operation_Hammer">aggressive practices</a> of LA police chief Daryl Gates’ law enforcement approach at the time (essentially a paramilitary response to the spread of crack cocaine in 80s urban environments), a robust artistic response should hardly have been surprising.</p>
<p>Yet Fuck tha Police became exhibit A in the case for moral panic about the state of black male youth across America. It was a win-win situation: social conservatives had evidence of transgression and threat, and NWA had an album that would soon go double platinum, all without a major label, radio airplay (too profane) or significant touring.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93491/original/image-20150901-25756-9ukbaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester raises his hands as he blocks the road in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Alexy Furman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course the <a href="http://www.southcentralhistory.com/la-riots.php">post-Rodney King trial conflagration of 1992</a> imbued NWA with a retrospectively-applied prophetic veneer. This has in turn been amplified by recent unrest in contemporary <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ferguson-erupts-45930">Ferguson</a> and the steady drip-feed of video footage capturing the tragic results of failed police practices across America, a full quarter of a century since the release of Straight Outta Compton.</p>
<p>NWA’s free speech, street reportage angle is of course notoriously problematized by the confrontingly violent, misogynist and homophobic lyrics that come with the package.</p>
<p>So the social and political commentary around NWA and gangsta rap generally is clearly necessary and compelling, not to mention bewilderingly complex. </p>
<p>But the noisy debate obscures and often diminishes the artistic impulse behind songs like Fuck tha Police, ironically extinguishing any chance of hearing the emotional message being communicated beneath the hype.</p>
<p>To start with, some pain might have been avoided (although possibly less money made) if a simple basic fact had been acknowledged from the beginning: Fuck tha Police is meant to be a bit funny.</p>
<h2>A gang is with whoever I’m stepping …</h2>
<p>The first thing to remember is that “gangsta rap” was <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/music/who-invented-the-term-gangsta-rap-its-complicated-5540741">not an established term</a> when Straight Outta Compton was created and released - to be sure, gangster-themed music existed – NWA were not the first. But this was a group of young men operating in a hip-hop tradition, rapping about street life (sometimes called reality rap).</p>
<p>One of the most fundamental traits of much hip-hop music is the use of irony or parody, and Fuck tha Police is clearly set up as an ironic parody of the justice system.</p>
<p>The song’s introduction (which isn’t featured in the movie) depicts a humorously inverted scene in which <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/dr-dre-507628">Dr Dre</a> is the presiding judge over a court case where members of the LAPD are on trial. <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/ice-cube-21265309">Ice-Cube</a>, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/artists/mc-ren/biography/">MC Ren</a> and <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/eazy-e-21257001">Easy-E</a> are the lead prosecutors. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93492/original/image-20150901-25771-11qawgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Street memorial to Easy-E, who died in 1995, aged 31.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christiaan Triebert</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The emcees take turns indicting the police for their unacceptable harassment, at the same time indicting themselves as murderously-inclined wannabe cop-killers - a contradiction that reflects the rich seam of ambivalence and ambiguity running through hip-hop.</p>
<p>To understand gangsta rap in a historical continuum is to recognize the evolution of the thug/gangster personae from the oral traditions of African-American folklore (such as the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007766.2012.671098#.VeUp-dOqpBc">Badman</a> and the <a href="http://gotheretoknowthere.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/trickster-figure.html">Trickster</a>). The rapping gangster persona was an extension and recontextualization of existing vernacular types, less than a radical new glorification of criminal life (of NWA, only Easy-E had a criminal past).</p>
<p>Back in the courtroom, the defendant is finally found guilty, not of harassment, or abuse of power, but of being a “redneck, white-bread, chicken-shit motherfucker”. </p>
<p>In the end, the policeman is not even deemed worthy of a violent end, and is merely laughed out of court. The mocking tone of this pseudo-conviction was possibly just as genuine an irritant to the collective law and order psyche than the hyperbolic intimations of physical violence.</p>
<h2>Lights start flashing behind me …</h2>
<p>To be clear, individual lines within Fuck tha Police are profoundly serious (“police think they have the authority to kill a minority”) and violent (“and when I’m finished, it’s gonna be a bloodbath of cops, dying in LA”). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93493/original/image-20150901-25759-1a3p0h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr Dre in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the song’s courtroom parody frame and the lurid ludicrousness of some aspects of the emcee’s testimonies are signs that raise the whole thing to the level of metaphor rather than literal expression of intention.</p>
<p>This lyrical complexity is typical – ambivalently juxtaposing incontrovertibly violent imagery with artistically sincere poetic aspiration. It also partially accounts for why debates over songs of this sort are never resolved.</p>
<p>One thing is certain though: Fuck tha Police took America by storm not because its youth had been waiting for NWA’s moral support to go out and murder law enforcement officers, but because the song was effective as music. The excessive focus on rhymes results in the neglect of beats, the other crucial component of hip-hop. </p>
<p>It’s therefore worth considering Fuck tha Police as sonic expression, as music. To understand how it works as sound is to acknowledge that it transcends the vulgar and blunt piece of profanity its critics like to paint it as.</p>
<h2>I’m a sniper with a hell of a scope …</h2>
<p>Hardwired into the DNA of hip-hop is the art of sampling, and the genes of gangsta rap are particularly linked to 1970s funk. </p>
<p>It’s funk’s propulsive rhythmic irresistibility that underpins the entire vibe of Fuck tha Police. Like most rap of this time, it’s based on the most utterly funky bits of the most unbelievably funky music ever created.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/51t1OsPSdBc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fuck tha Police.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sampling and looping the grooviest parts of earlier songs is one of the defining features of hip-hop musical culture, a practice that evolved from the earlier DJ practice of alternating between two copies of the same record on a double turntable in order to keep repeating the instrumental breaks that crowds best responded to in street parties.</p>
<p>A whole tradition of making music based on the funkiest and grooviest parts of another genre that was already itself devoted to funk and groove.</p>
<p>Indeed the skill with which a DJ/producer selects, edits and most importantly layers samples is crucial to the aesthetic success of a hip-hop track.</p>
<p>The song opens with a scratch as fanfare, a signal that there’s a DJ in charge. Dr Dre then sets the scene over a funky instrumental break from Marva Whitney’s It’s My Thing:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LDie0tv6DAg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sample appears at 1:40.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cascading drum fills create an improvised feel, and Dre’s deliberate slowing down of the Whitney sample (from the original’s 110 to 102 bpm) creates a slightly chilled vibe that other producers would have likely picked up on – an encyclopaedic knowledge of sample-able breaks is one of the less widely known nerdish qualities hip-hop producers have.</p>
<p>Slowing down the tempo also creates a less disruptive connection with the sample underpinning the rest of the song, Roy Ayer’s The Boogie Back:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYLJhc4NHEQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sample appears at 0:12.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ice-Cube is the first to take the stand (0.31) - the Boogie Back sample kicks in, and there is a discernible change in tempo and feel. While the overall speed of new section is slightly slower (from 102 to 99 bpm), elements of the new sample such as the fast hi-hat actually the create the impression of an increase in speed.</p>
<p>What matters more than the specifics of tempo is that the looped repetition of sample-based hip-hop creates its own sense of propulsion, a groove that is subtly different to that which the original music would have presented. </p>
<p>The simple fact of repeating a musical idea gives it a sense of heft and import it likely didn’t convey in the original, and the mechanically cyclic nature of looping creates its own distinct aesthetic sensation. </p>
<p>So when the pattern and tempo change at 0:31, after a period of tightly controlled and predictable repetition, the effect of changing gears constitutes a distinctly pleasurable aural novelty, as the ear and body take a few milliseconds to resolve the disorientation and adjust to the new groove.</p>
<h2>Put in my clip, yo, and this is the sound …</h2>
<p>The effective use of contrast in both large and small degrees is a fundamental element of effectively organised music, and Dre’s choice of sample here includes guitar lines in dialogue creating an intertwined <em>horizontal</em> melodic counterpoint to the overwhelmingly <em>vertical</em> percussive rapping and punchy vibe.</p>
<p>A single metallic knife-like sample stabs each downbeat, creating a slightly industrial machine-like quality, appropriately enough sampled from Wilson Pickett’s Get me Back on Time, Engine #9:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n7sfOlQbD28?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sample appears at 5:14.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The syncopated rhythmic complexity created between the rapping voice and the funk accompaniment is most skilfully exploited by Ice-Cube, and some of his most striking lines are deliberately enhanced by the unexpected dropping-out of the accompaniment (e.g. “Black police showing out for the white cop”).</p>
<p>Virtuosity imparts its own sleek form of aesthetic pleasure, and the skill with which Ice-Cube rhymes “product” with “narcotics” is enviable. The finessed placement of the “cs” at the end of narcotics artfully preserves the rhyme as well as clarity of the word.</p>
<p>But it’s the intervening cuts (choruses) and scenes that give Dr Dre a chance to shine as producer - he creates a stifling, almost nauseous atmosphere (to be sure, my highly subjective response). </p>
<p>During another beautifully placed dropping out of the instrumental accompaniment, Ice-Cube here announces, “Yo Dre I got something to say”, and the anthemic line is launched.</p>
<p>Scratches alternate with a sampled solitary “fuck” (Eazy E’s voice, although I’m unsure of the origin), articulated three times (if you’re going to say it, why not milk it?) followed by “tha Police”.</p>
<p>I break down this particular line because it’s one of my favourites from a musical point of view. Due to the way “fuck” is sampled separately to the spoken “tha police”, it’s articulated differently than when one simply says “fuck the police”.</p>
<h2>Yeah, I’m a gangsta, but still I got flavour</h2>
<p>Usually, the “ck” of “fuck” elides with “the” - the end of one consonant is grafted onto the beginning of the next, and the expirative release of the “ck” is swallowed.</p>
<p>But in this song, because of the sampling, there’s a brilliant percussive effect created by the break between “fuck” and “the” (an incredibly crisp triplet rhythm, if you listen carefully). The staccato sound creates the satisfying sensation of vigorously spitting the words out.</p>
<p>A blaring synthesizer chord in the background generates a sustained, dissonant and slightly sickening feel that balances against the generally rapid fire texture - a core of angst to the song.</p>
<p>After each of these chorus-like sections there is a scene, the first two of which depict the emcees bearing the brunt of vicious police harassment on the street, the events that landed the LAPD in the dock in the first place. </p>
<p>Spinning through these scenes is a guitar sample based on the same intervals of the Twilight Zone theme’s famous motif: </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XVSRm80WzZk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Twilight Zone theme.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This allusion (which I have no evidence is deliberate) enhances the sense of surreal dread anyone would feel when targeted by the very institution charged to “protect and serve”. </p>
<p>After these chaotic interludes, the return to the courtroom is underscored by a familiar sample – the famous break from James Brown’s Funky Drummer: </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dNP8tbDMZNE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sample appears at 5:35.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The return to narrative order is supported by and reflected in a return to musical normalcy.</p>
<p>As the guilty policeman is removed from the courtroom (revealing his racism in a final insult) the song finishes with another round of “fuck the police” and the blaring synthesizer emphasises the fundamentally bizarre nature of the song with hints of microtonal pitch-bending, also exacerbating the underlying nauseous quality that sound already conveyed.</p>
<h2>Shining the light in my face, and for what …</h2>
<p>Beyond the ironic courtroom framing device, I haven’t delved into the lyrics of Fuck tha Police (such analyses are easily found on the web), so as to focus on aspects of the song that are less discussed in the general commentary. For the same reason, I haven’t been able to address the role NWA played in the evolution of gangsta rap, their effect on future generations of hip-hop artists, or the issues of violence, misogyny and homophobia that swirl around their lyrics and biographies.</p>
<p>Instead, this modest analysis has focused on some of the musical features of Fuck tha Police in order to suggest that deeper appreciation of what goes into this genre apart from provocative raps can change the way songs like this are perceived and received. </p>
<p>The notion that Fuck tha Police was intended to be at least partially funny can mitigate the fear-based reaction to transgression and aggression.</p>
<p>And evidence that a sophisticated and tradition-based process of musical craft underpins the song allows us to re-conceive Fuck tha Police more richly as an artistic object of complexity, one that exists in the aesthetic realm as well as the social, communicating emotions as well politics.</p>
<p>Perhaps if the art of Fuck tha Police were not obscured by reactive controversies, the message of the song might have been clearer. Not the lyrical message so much as the tinder-box emotional quality that was coded into the total musical object.</p>
<p>And if that emotional message had been fully apprehended back in 1989, if those in power had been able to hear and respond compassionately to the rising discontent in the hearts and minds of black American youth, perhaps (admittedly a big ‘perhaps’) things could have been different in 1992 and beyond.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Straight Outta Compton is in Australian cinemas from September 3.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Viney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some pain might have been avoided (and probably less money made) if a simple basic fact had been acknowledged from the beginning: Fuck tha Police is meant to be funny.Liam Viney, Piano Performance Fellow , The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.