The Vinyl Ain’t Final

Michelle Gutierrez

11-10-08

AMST 125

The Vinyl Ain’t Final

In their collaborative work The Vinyl Ain’t Final, Basu and Lemelle analyzes hip-hop as music, politics, style of life, and business in the context of the international reach of black popular culture. Divided into two sections, the authors include a collection of essays that addresses both hip-hop in the United States and internationally. The book emphasize the diversity of style and culture influences that comes into play within hip-hop, in addition to the connections between hip-hop as commodified in the mass market. Emerging throughout each essay within the book are several major themes: the notion of hip-hop creating a “black” identity in a globalized world, an examination of the politics of gender within hip-hop (this development of masculinity) and the criminalization of underprivileged immigrant men. Additionally, a couple of the essays focus on hip-hop as a history of black political resistance to oppression and poverty, as well as the influence of urban communities on the expansion of hip-hop across the globe.

In the essay entitled “Nobody Knows My Name,” Basu and Harris demonstrate hip-hop music silencing and overlooking a generation of talented women. While focusing on the documentary “Nobody Knows My Name,” directed by Rachel Raimist, the authors portray female arties continuous battle to make it through the music industry, and their yearning to find a place within the male-dominated world of hip-hop. Additionally, they focus on female artist struggle to overcome the stereotypes and oppressive images of hip-hop women as objects and sexual objects. They reminds us that “ “even more is at stake in this unfaltering focus on the male presence in hip hop culture: the ideological power of maleness in a mass-mediated [hip-hop] culture…makes it so difficult to fully appreciate African-American women creative and expressive participation as anything other than subsidiary to men’s”(57). This illustrates the persistent invisibility of women and their role in shaping hip-hop’s culture. Artistic and intelligent female artist continually gets overlooked by the presence of male rappers and singers.

Furthermore, the article examines the fact that female singers and rappers who do make it through the music industry, attention is drawn solely on their external appearance and sexuality. They exclaim, “Nobody pushes the envelope of the observation that most female rappers have to foreground their sexual appearance even if their style and the weight of its substance impresses” (60). No matter how well a woman sings or how good her raps are, she still has to rely on her sex appeal to get through the door. In contrast to gender within hip-hop, in the essay “Hip Hop: Cultural Clout, Corporate, Control, and the Carceral Cast,” Dipannita Basu reveals the major concerns embedded within the construction and culture of hip-hop. While focusing on the lives of two artists, Lil Slim and T-bone, she demonstrates the racial realities and discrimination within hip-hop culture.

Basu recognizes the commercial and advertising market promoting a separation of white and blacks, representing blacks as criminals and whites as saints. According to Basu, thus the framing of hip hop to the masses, of shaping its cultural course and global imagery, is troublingly beholden to commercial interests and professionals whose social perceptions and ethical codes have an ignoble history of representing ‘blackness’ in the worst possible ways, often with complicity of black folks themselves” (40). This masquerade of ‘blackness’ that Basu describes is depicted within the advertising industry of hip-hop culture, portraying blacks as gang members. As mentioned by Basu, blacks are also responsible for this image because of the large amount of black males and rappers imprisoned. Also, Basu discusses this double standard within the hip-hop culture and the notion of white privilege. She demonstrates that no matter how successful black artist become in the music industry, they will always be restricted from economic growth. She states, “Although more African Americans have entered into the middle class fold in the last 40 years, their mobility into suburbia is routinely restricted as they are systematically steered to black middle class enclaves in the opposite direction of economic growth “(31). Although T-bone and Lil Slim were successful hip-hop entrepreneurs, because of their race they are blocked out and restricted from white markets.

The book does an astonishing job in portraying the globalization of hip-hop and its affect on many individuals in our society. In addition, it portrays how hip-hop has been culturally and ethnically influenced and continues to be involving. Each essay provided a great description of how hip-hop has empowered many communities and continues to communicate the struggle of people over the globe.