From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances

11 Hip-hop and Capitalist Interests

159 DAMION WAYMER 11 Hip-hopandCapitalistInterests HIP-HOP It is art It is culture. It is music It is entertainment. It is HIP Hegemonic, Influential, Powerful. It is extravagant spending It is mimicking the possessions of performers It is class conflict It is conspicuous consumption It is HOP Herald Obsessive Purchasing The Miami rapper Trick Daddy raps quite simply and bluntly in his 1998 hit titled “Nann Nigga”: “You don’t know nann nigga / that dress fresher than me / and you don’t know nann nigga that wear 160 Damion Waymer mo’ Polo shit than me”!1 Trick Daddy’s promotion of Polo in his lyrics is not meant so much to challenge listeners to identify a better, fresher dressed niggah as to persuade them to join him in sporting specific name brand apparel. When the song came out, my friends and I followed Trick without question. We were already donning Tommy Hilfiger—Tommy shirts, Tommy cologne, Tommy jeans, Tommy briefs—and if there had been Tommy toothpaste , we would have had that, too. Once, while hipping along to the hop of the song, one of my homeboys said, “See, I told you, Polo is the shit! Tommy ain’t got nothing on Ralph Lauren.” Of course, before the song this homeboy was the Polo oddball among our Tommy crew. But the song changed that. So what did the rest of us do? What else? We stepped up our Polo game. We weren’t stupid enough to ditch our Tommy clothes. We knew another song was bound to come out the following month, extolling how fly we’d be in a Tommy jacket. We now had Polo and Tommy—a diverse wardrobe. Ten years later, while shopping at Walmart with my wife and brotherin -law, I jokingly recalled the powerful one-liner of Trick Daddy and revised his lyrics for a little ditty of my own. I tapped my wife and sang: “You don’t know nann niggah who dress cheaper than me, and you don’t know nann niggah who wear mo’ Walmart shit than me!” We fell out laughing. It’s obvious that times have changed for me. While hip-hop remains a part of my life, the lyrics no longer hold the same sway over me. They do not influence my spending and behavior as they once did. And this is not because hip-hop artists have stopped encouraging excessive consumption of the attire they advertise in their music. And it is also not because consumers —poor and middle class alike—are no longer influenced to purchase beyond their means. It is because my viewpoint on life has changed. Material possessions do not make the person. They become dated, break, stop working, and most likely will lose their value. Therefore it is paramount that I choose to store my treasures in things that won’t decay. Instead of buying some nice shoes, I would rather invest in the enlightenment of people. So, I ask, why does hip-hop have the power, like Eric B. and Rakim, “to move the crowd”? Why, in 2002, when Nelly rapped about needing two pair of Nike Air Force One’s did all sorts of folks flock to buy these sneakers, and not just one pair but two? Why is it that when I tune in to BET’s highly popular show 106 and Park, I witness star-struck youth dressed in the garb that the latest lyrics suggest? Hip-hop and Capitalist Interests 161 It is obvious that following the dictates of these lyrics affects poor black folks more adversely, since they have to sacrifice more necessities in order to keep up with the Joneses of the hip-hop world. While they may realize that they cannot afford one pair of high-priced sneakers—let alone two— simply telling them to stop is ineffective; it is not as persuasive as the lyrics . Indeed, telling me to stop did not persuade me, and I am an otherwise reasonable and intelligent man. I ask, then, what is really behind the lure of the lyrics? Why are such lyrics aimed at poor people when even producers and performers are aware of the adverse affects? Hip-hop, which originated as, and is still prominently considered, African American art, has emerged as a dominant force in popular culture. Its beginnings can be traced...