In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

401 19 “I’ll Be Forever Mackin’” The Social Construction of Black Masculine Identity in Hip Hop’s Platinum Age JONATHAN W. GR AY Black manhood should be understood as a particularly instituted identity formation with a particular history of its own. —Marlon B. Ross, Manning the Race You know I thug ’em, fuck ’em, love ’em, leave ’em ’Cause I don’t fucking need ’em. —Jay-Z, “Big Pimpin’” In the wake of Bill Cosby’s infamous “Pound Cake” speech on May 17, 200, it is now fashionable for Black activists and intellectuals of a certain age to join their White conservative and reactionary counterparts in blaming the hip hop subculture for any and all shortcomings in the Black community.1 This is particularly true with regard to the problematic behavior of young Black men who belong to the hip hop generation, which Bakari Kitwana (2002, ) defines as “African Americans born between 1965 and 198 who came of age in the eighties and nineties and who share a specific set of values and attitudes.” Indeed, there seems to be an unspoken understanding whereby a reference to the hip hop subculture becomes shorthand for any unruly and unassimilated Black teen, despite the fact that hip hop’s discourses, although specific, are far from unified and coherent. The tendency to attribute the undesirable behavior of some Black youth to the corrupting influence of hip hop is troubling for several reasons. As Gordon (1997) notes in “The Cultural Politics of Black Masculinity,” many scholars continue to see Black masculine performance through the prism of a Black “culture of failure,” of which hip hop is just the latest iteration (Gordon, 402 JONATHAN W. GRAY 1997). Patrick Moynihan (1965) evokes the supposed Black American culture of failure in his infamous report on the Black family.2 Of course, to declare the hip hop subculture, which is characterized by its expressive and artistic production, a failure is to ignore the most basic point about any hegemonic performance— that it exists in part to serve the symbolic and intellectual needs of a given community, even if those needs are not readily apparent to an outside observer. Therefore, a subculture cannot fail its adherents as long as it retains its explanatory powers and its ability to entertain or inspire that group.3 The hip hop subculture retains its primacy in part because its narratives continue to enable its listeners to make sense of the world they live in, no matter how limited that world may be. The hip hop subculture must be understood as a vital subset of African American culture, indeed perhaps the most dominant vector to emerge since the end of the civil rights movement. The subculture began in the mid-1970s in New York City, and (to qualify Kitwana) gives rise to several hip hop generations, depending on which developmental period marks a listener’s first immersion into the genre. The initial development of the hip hop subculture is popularly called “Old School” and dates from the creation of hip hop in the South Bronx by DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, circa 1976 to 1985, when Hollis, Queens’ Run DMC proclaimed themselves the Kings of Rock on MTV. The nest period, hip hop’s Golden Age, 1986–199, evidenced the release of most of the seminal albums in hip hop (i.e., Eric B. and Rakim, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Boogie Down Productions, De La Soul, NWA, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, Dr. Dre, Snoop, NaS, and the Wu-Tang Clan), due in part to an increasing lyrical sophistication as well as various hip hop producers exploiting the power of the sampler to construct innovative sonic landscapes. Many students of hip hop refer to this period as the Golden Age because of the high quality of the music released. I endorse this terminology for that reason, but also because a gold record (500,000 units sold in the United States) was the mark of commercial success in hip hop during this time—the naming was also borne out by EMPD’s boast in 1989 that thirty days later their debut album/disk went gold (EMPD, 1989). The Golden Age of hip hop is followed by what I term the Platinum Age, 1995–2006. During this period, hip hop became the dominant musical genre and cultural force in the United States, selling more units than more venerated musical forms such as pop, rock...

Share