"The Natti Ain't No Punk City": Emic Views of Hip Hop Cultures

Writing in Twisted Tales in the Hip Hop Streets of Philly, James G. Spady claimed: "In the '95, Hip Hop scholarship continues to go unchecked." More than a decade later, as we celebrate thirty-plus years of Hip Hop, Hip Hop scholarship has entered a new phase of expansion and maturation (see Forman and Neal's That's the Joint! The Hip Hop Studies Reader). Hip Hop culture, now a billion-dollar industry, is receiving an extraordinary amount of attention from scholars in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, literature, drama, and other disciplines. In addition to the dozens of new courses on Hip Hop culture in academia, Harvard University established the first national Hiphop Archive, holding its inaugural meeting on September 28, 2002 (the archive is now at Stanford University). A brief anecdote from that meeting illustrates the potential tensions between the rise of Hip Hop scholarship and the Hip Hop Nation. At Harvard's Hiphop Community Activism and Education Roundtable—a historic conference that brought together pioneering and progressive Hip Hop artists, scholars, and community activists—Cashus D, a member of the Universal Zulu Nation, took control of the mic and said, in what was arguably the climax of the conference, "All of you are talking about 'Hip Hop is this, Hip Hop is that,' and the man who coined the phrase is sittin' right here in the room," pointing to Afrika Bambaataa. He concluded his impromptu speech and, later in the meeting, Afrika Bambaataa received a heartwarming standing ovation. Finally, it seemed, respect was given where it was due.

Hiphopography: Engaging the Culture Creators

A standing ovation is a nice symbol of respect, but, ultimately, respect is shown through our level of engagement with the members of the Hip Hop Nation, with the culture creators of this art form known as Hip Hop. In Nation Conscious Rap, this notion of engagement is at the core of what Spady termed hiphopography. Hiphopography can be described as an approach to the study of Hip Hop culture that combines the methods of ethnography, biography, and social and oral history. Importantly, hiphopography is not traditional ethnography. Hierarchical divisions between the "researcher" and the "researched" are purposely kept to a minimum, even as they are interrogated. This requires the hiphopographer to engage the community on its own terms. Knowledge of the aesthetics, values, and history as well as the use of the language, culture, and means and modes of interaction of the Hip Hop Nation Speech Community are essential to the study of Hip Hop culture.

In the groundbreaking piece, "Grandmaster Caz and the Hiphopography of the Bronx"—the first piece of scholarship to reveal Caz as the writer of the Sugar Hill Gang's now famous "Rapper's Delight"—Spady engaged Caz in his home community of the Bronx. Bringing Caz back to the actual sites where some of the earliest Hip Hop cultural practices took place enabled the narrative to unfold fluidly. What we have as an end product is really a beginning of a new approach to the study of Hip Hop culture. Hiphopography assumes that the culture creators of Hip Hop are quite capable of telling their own story. Oftentimes, as researchers, we are quick to interpret artifacts of the culture, like records, CDs, album covers, lyrics, videos, magazines, and other products, without ever attempting to obtain the artists' own interpretation. In hiphopography, the values, aesthetics, thoughts, narratives, and interpretations of the culture creators are our starting point. When we look deeper at artifacts' origins, back toward the culture creators, several questions arise: How are these artifacts actually created? What process do artists use to write lyrics, produce beats, videos, etc.? How much work is involved in the creation of these artifacts, and how do we characterize the nature of that work? The researchers realize that they do not have the answers and that there is much that can be learned from genuine engagement. This, of course, represents a theoretical shift from viewing Hip Hop as a product to viewing Hip Hop as a process, as lived experience, and cultural practice...