Hip-hop moves to beat its bad rap

As mainstream hip-hop moves away from the explicit lyrics of the past, is it finding a strong political voice or is it as offensive as some claim? Peter Crawley looks at the tensions and contradictions

Parental Advisory: Explicit Content. The monochrome sign is synonymous with hip-hop. Like the genre, the sign has evolved. While rap music moved from simple lyrics and turntable scratches to a more sophisticated, self-aware art form of intricate rhymes, samples, breakbeats and attitude, the sign was transformed. Switching its focus from "explicit lyrics" to "explicit content", the sticker became incorporated into the artwork of hip-hop albums. It became a badge of honour. NWA, early hip-hop proponents, did much the same thing with the first word of their acronym, Niggers With Attitude. Slap a tag on us and we'll use it against you. Unlike the ubiquitous warning sign and racial tensions, however, very little in hip-hop is black and white.

"We see our advocacy of the parental advisory label as part of our theme of taking back responsibility," says Minister Benjamin Muhammad, president of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HHSAN). "On one hand we defend the right to freedom of speech and artistic expression. But with freedom comes responsibility."

Hip-hop is the biggest-selling and fastest-growing genre in music. But it's much more than that. It is a clothing industry, a culture, a lifestyle, and a language. Now, with the HHSAN (and its affiliated political action committee, NuAmerica), it is a force to be reckoned with. The Washington Post dubs it "raptivism".

The HHSAN celebrated its first birthday last month, with the staging of the Mobilization for Education protest outside New York's City Hall. Hip-hop artists spoke out against Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed $1.2 billion budget cut from the financially ailing city's public education system. On June 4th 100,000 school children brought the city to a standstill while hip-hop figures such as LL Cool J., Alicia Keys and P. Diddy addressed the crowd. "You've got a mayor who's a billionaire," called out Public Enemy's Chuck D., "who wants to take the opportunity away from you to become the same kind of person". Several arrests were made, including that of hip-hop superstar Wyclef Jean. The following week $298 million was restored to the education budget. The HHSAN claimed it as a major victory.

"Usually when hip-hop activists or artists make the news, there is always something negative," says Muhammad. "Somebody's been arrested or somebody's been charged. A lot of people only saw the negative \ of hip-hop and assumed that it could not have any positive redeeming value." In other words, hip-hop had gotten a bad rap.

"Now I think people are taking a second look at hip-hop and beginning to see that there was this sustaining virtue all the while."

The negative side of hip-hop focuses on the violence, misogyny, racism and gleeful support of anti-social tendencies in some lyrics, particularly within the sub-genre, gangsta rap.

Another division in hip-hop might be between political awareness and crass materialism. Such opposition can be seen in the names of recently touted artists: the female rapper, Truth Hurts, or the male MC, B-Rich.

"Critics fail to understand that hip-hop is very diverse," says Muhammad. "All hip-hop is not gangsta rap. All hip-hop is not misogynistic. The fastest growing genre of gospel music is hip-hop gospel. But the media, the establishment, tends to focus on the controversial. When young people stand and speak out of context it has always [been considered] something out of bounds." Hence, for instance, more attention was given to R. Kelly's arrest for child pornography offences than to Wyclef's arrest during a political protest.

Nelson George, the music critic and commentator, called hip-hop "a product of schizophrenic, post-civil rights movement America" in HipHop America, a book that was equal parts musical history, critical assessment and autobiography.

Schizophrenic is not the correct word (not quite as wrong-headed as rapper Method Man's lyric: "I had to kill a schizophrenic nigga twice"), but hip-hop certainly suffers from a split-personality disorder.

It has been argued that being black in a white country provokes such identity fractures. Take the proliferation of hip-hop aliases: Christopher Wallace, the assassinated New York rapper, also went by the Notorious BIG, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls. Sean "Puffy" Combs was once known as Puff Daddy, but recently changed his name to P. Diddy. And even the phenomenally successful white rapper, Eminem, has named his three albums to date after various alter-egos, including Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady.

Benjamin Muhammad co-founded the HHSAN with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, the man behind Def Jam records, generally credited with building the hip-hop industry. "It's a multi-billion dollar, global, underground empire," paradoxically states Muhammad, who has served with various civil-rights movements for 40 years. "Hip-hop has penetrated the mainstream - that does not mean it has become mainstream. It has not become homogenised, enveloped or swallowed up."

Many disagree. Some consider hip-hop as yet another example of the exploitation of African-Americans, where transnational corporations use black style to develop and market products for mass (white) consumption. Naomi Klein's book, No Logo, records the turnaround in Tommy Hilfiger's profits once Hilfiger gear had aggressively targeted New York ghettos. Hilfiger is, coincidentally, friends with Russell Simmons. Nike, Sprite, numerous alcohol companies and several others all followed commercial suit.

"But they're all on the decline," counters Muhammad, pointing to the rise of black-operated sports-gear rivals. "What's on the incline are the Fubus and the Phat Farms."

Similarly, Muhammad sees hip-hop as a truly independent power. "When [hip-hop artists] retire, you won't have to worry about them going to the poorhouse. Forty years ago that was not the case. The leading singers in Motown are all broke. Some can't even afford their own funerals."

But hip-hop is (as Nelson George noted) overwhelmingly dependent on white money - the putatively independent label Def Jam is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, while Simmons has estimated that 80 per cent of hip-hop's audience is white, and even Muhammad admits that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and all the major record labels, have contributed funds to the HHSAN. "We have found that the business of hip-hop is more in the hands of the artists than the business of soul, R&B, jazz and gospel," says Muhammad. "Does that mean that we've solved all the problems? No."

Other critics of the hip-hop consortium point to its apparent indifference towards artists' movements such as the Future of Music Coalition. The Don Henley spear-headed organisation campaigns for fair contracts and health benefits from major music companies. Hip-hop's silence is alarming, given that black artists have suffered more visibly than white artists from unfair contracts - both TLC and Toni Braxton filed for bankruptcy despite multi-platinum selling status.

"I would say that [the exploitation] is true in terms of R&B. It is not true in terms of hip-hop," says Muhammad.

The HHSAN has been instrumental in calming the west coast/east coast hip-hop rivalry, in which the murders of the Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur remain almost mythologically significant. "We have forced a constructive dialogue. Reconciliation cannot take place without dialogue. As a result of that, we now have west-coast artists and east-coast artists doing records together." So that'sgood for business? "It's very good for business."

Nick Broomfield's extraordinary documentary, Biggie and Tupac, makes many startling revelations. One is that the FBI had hip-hop under investigation since 1993, for what Broomfield calls its "inflammatory nature". Intriguingly, hip-hop arose in the late 1970s following the militaristic Black Panther movement, an organisation feared and routinely harassed by US police and security services.

Above the HHSAN's manifesto, printed in The Source magazine (with whom the HHSAN shares an office), an illustration shows black fists gripping microphones, rising from a New York skyline. The image is directly reminiscent of the Black Panthers' clenched fist icon. Muhammad hesitantly admits there are analogies. Are they conscious? "Yes," he answers. "But this is a multi-racial ... " he trails off. "When a microphone is lifted into the sky, or somebody's putting down graffiti, or break-dancing, white kids identify with that. The black power movement was a direct response to the institutionalised racism in America. But hip-hop is, by definition, multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual."

The HHSAN is nothing if not ambitious (article three of their global manifesto calls for "the total elimination of poverty"). "Well, revolutions first start with revolutionary ideas," says the Nation of Islam Minister.

Muhammad, who concurs that the civil rights movements of old have lost their relevance to today's youth, knows that a visceral, lyrical medium is perfect for spreading messages. "Since that \ was published, which was about 30 days ago, we now have artists that are developing new lyrical content based on those points."

The network's next project is a literacy programme for inner-city youths. "In urban centres, the level of reading in minority children is way below standard. Hip-hop should be utilised more to encourage young people to read, to write, to count - [to show them] the importance of their education." Or as Ice Cube put it, "People, use yo' brain to gain."

But how will socially motivated concerns square with such materialist "hoorahs" as Busta Rhymes's recent avocation of expensive cognac? "Keep in mind, now, all the attention he's gotten from Pass the Courvoisier, when later on this year Busta Rhymes says, 'Pass the algebra book'. One of the things we say in hip-hop is, you must be truthful. Truth is what drives hip-hop. If there was ever an attempt to sweep something under the carpet, it would be exposed. I see the pendulum swinging in the right direction. Hip-hop has changed the dynamics of what's called the music game." The danger with pendulums, however, is that they swing both ways.