Are We There Yet? Yearnings for a Discursive Shift in Black Cultural Studies

During the winter of 2005, rappers 50 Cent and The Game staged a well-publicized feud replete with verbal sparring, public threats, media outcry, and a shooting outside of New York City's Hot 97—the largest and most influential urban music radio station in the nation. On cue, journalists, media personalities, and black public figures lashed out at hip-hop culture and the music industry in general for promoting negative values. Reminiscent of the activism of C. Delores Tucker with her anti–gangsta rap crusades of the 1990s and in a move that aligned black activists with right-wing values, Reverend Al Sharpton called for the Federal Communications Commission to issue a temporary ban of artists who promote violence.¹ The feud came to a temporary resolution when the two parties organized a press conference at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on the anniversary of the death of rapper Notorious B.I.G., who died in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in 1997. During the public reconciliation, the two artists made charitable donations to the Boys Choir of Harlem and 50 Cent read the following statement:

In the shadow of the untimely death of Biggie, today marks the anniversary of his death, we're here today to show that people can rise above even the most difficult circumstances and together we can put negativity behind us. A lot of people don't want to see it happen but we're responding to the two most important groups, that's ourselves and our fans.²

The media event was attended by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, other music industry representatives, and journalists. Adding another level of staging to the incident, the feud, shooting, and press release occurred on the eve of 50 Cent's release of his sophomore album, The Massacre, which debuted at number one on Billboard and sold over a million albums in the first four days of its release.³

Both The Game and 50 Cent have built lucrative and highly publicized careers by invoking the trope of hip-hop bad man popularized during the height of gangsta rap's success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 50 Cent's entrance into mainstream popular culture was marked by a highly anticipated album based on his underground success in New York and, more importantly, his having survived nine bullet wounds during his tenure on the streets as a hustler. In his breakthrough video for the song "In Da Club," he appears as a Terminator-like character built by producer Dr. Dre and rapper Eminem to be the twenty-first century bad nigger of hip-hop music. In essence, 50 Cent self-consciously enters the market as the latest, toughest commodity meticulously produced by the hip-hop culture industry. The Game, a prodigy of 50 Cent, Eminem, and Dr. Dre, was touted as the new generation of West Coast gangsta rap after more than a decade of decline in this genre.⁴ The Game quickly became known for a lyrical style of strategically linking himself to former rappers who made their names through street hustle and lyrical battles.

The highly orchestrated events and industry strategies to promote these rappers' individual careers and their "beef," as well as the media's and public's responses to the conflict, frame some of the central and overlapping concerns of Eithne Quinn's Nuthin' But a "G" Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap and Herman Gray's Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation. Gray focuses on cultural moves outside of dominant commercial music and visual culture, while Quinn traces the history of one of the most influential and controversial popular music forms. Since Herman Gray's seminal...