Divesting Hip Hop from Blackness

In The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk about When We Talk about Hip Hop – And Why it Matters (2008), author Tricia Rose makes the intriguing argument that in order to resuscitate Hip Hop, the genre must be divested of its racial otherness. Rose blames the commercialization of the genre in the 1990s and early 2000s with a narrowing of the identification of Hip Hop with pathologized sexuality, hypermasculinity, misogyny, and homophobia. Lost, according to Rose, was Hip Hop’s collective communitarian ethos of empowerment and resilience associated with early innovators of the genre. Rose, who is also the author of the academic text Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, focuses her current work on challenging the negative myths associated with Hip Hop in order to focus on its future.

In the preface, Rose writes, “So, if hip hop is going to get well, if we’re going to learn from what has happened to it, we need to arm young black men and women, and everyone else, with powerful critical tools so that they can expose and challenge the state of commercial hip hop, divest it from this pernicious brand of blackness, and make far more room for a wide range of alternatives” (xxii). One question that comes to mind is a traditional question. “Will divesting Hip Hop from blackness (pernicious or not) also dilute the authenticity of the genre?” This also brings up the question of whether Gangsta Rap is a legitimate heir to Hip Hop or an imposer fueled by the excesses of the commercial music market.

Rose’s deconstructive approach to Hip Hop criticism is admirable. It also raises the question of whether there are limits to the discourse of rehabilitation of Hip Hop? On the one hand, Rose goes to great lengths to critique the strategies used by early music writers and scholars who lauded Hip Hop, while side-stepping serious discourse related to the pathological aspects of the genre in favor of discussing “alternative” Hip Hop artists who offered conscious lyrics affirming positive messages of unity and triumph over adversity (x). I wonder if Rose might not be presenting a similar strategy only rather than making her appeal to scholars and critics, she is appealing to a broader audience, that of lovers of contemporary black music.

The book concludes with an argument in favor of bridging the gap between being a connoisseur of black popular music and being a critical reader of the text that is Hip Hop. What follows, under the chapter title “Six Guiding Principles for Progressive Creativity, Consumption, and Community in Hip Hop and Beyond” is a call for communal-reflexivity as it pertains to the future of the genre. I like the way Rose echoes the work of bell hooks, Patricia Hill-Collins, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Cornel West, and Michael Eric Dyson.

It would be interesting to note how Gramscian organic intellectuals might approach Rose’s call for a revisioning of Hip Hop discourse.