The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop

2. Brothas Gonna Work It Out: Hip Hop’s Ongoing Search for the Real

2 Brothas Gonna Work It Out Hip Hop’s Ongoing Search for the Real We went from pickin’ cotton/to chain gang line choppin’/to beboppin’/to hip hoppin’/Blues People got the blue chip stock option/Invisible Man/got the whole world watchin’/We’re in your house/high/low/east/west/all over your map/I’m givin’ big props for this thing called hip hop/where you can either get paid or get shot. —Mos Def, “Hip Hop” Put That Rap Shit Second and Hip Hop First What is the difference between rap and hip hop? I have been asked that question far too many times by those not hip to the game. When I was growing up in the late ’70s and early ’80s, rap was what the few of us who listened to the music called it. At some point in the early 1990s, around the same time that MC Hammer was beginning to embarrass all of those who had originally embraced his “James Brown on crack” routine, people began calling anything with two turntables and a microphone “rap,” and thus it was now necessary for the culture to make clear distinctions between the real and the imitation. Hammer would go on to drop the “MC” from his moniker, and in doing so, distance himself and all other pop wannabes from the true hardcore hip hop heads. Because hip hop could see that Hammer’s all-out stage show, genie pants, and weak rhyme schemes were only a short-lived moment, the culture wanted nothing to do with this trite cotton candy that the music industry was selling to 44 the ignorant masses. Rap came to be associated with the pop charts and hip hop was that which stayed true to the genre’s original urban underclass roots. The “true heads” as they are called in hip hop circles now wanted nothing to do with this thing called “rap.” Rap soon came to be a verb of designation, defining the act that an artist would do when on stage or in the studio. Hip Hop 101; rap is the act of rapping, spittin’ rhymes over beats produced by a DJ. An MC not only is a master of ceremony in the traditional sense but is very much a “microphone controller,” charged with the fundamental task of moving the crowd. The word “rap” also came to denote the more popular aspects of the genre by the mainstream, and this label was also used by the true heads to call out anyone who was thought to be abandoning the culture’s roots As the age-old assumption goes, as one becomes more popular or mainstream, the less politically engaged and substantive the music would become. Hip hop changed the game on this, though. There have been several pop rappers, of course, from Hammer to Will Smith and most recently someone like Nelly, but this is to be expected. Yet, unlike in the past, hip hop did not sell out or change itself to become popular, the mainstream changed so as to accommodate the music. In response to the charge of going pop, Jay-Z, one of hip hop’s only MCs to have both popular appeal and retain his street credibility, says, “I didn’t cross over/I bought the suburbs to the ’hood/made ’em relate to your struggle/I made ’em love you.” In other words, the music remained hard-core, yet the public became fascinated with this sensibility and took it from there. The old way of thinking says that in order to be popular, one has to sell out. What underlies this is a sentiment that assumes that mainstream White society is not interested in Black culture and that the music industry is interested only to the extent that it can exploit a particular image for profit. It has also been long held as a belief that in order for a Black person to make it in White society he or she must compromise himself or herself and fit into an BROTHAS GONNA WORK IT OUT 45 acceptable nonthreatening image that reaffirms the dominance of the mainstream, as opposed to exerting any distinct progressive Black identity. If we take this deeper, it reveals a racial conundrum where metaphors like “whitewash” become quite appropriate. The question becomes, can one be commercial and continue to be relevant at the same time? Is it...