Unmasking Hip Hop Landscaping the Shifts and Impacts of a Musical Movement , Shani Smothers

1. UNMASKING HIP HOP: LANDSCAPING THE SHIFTS AND IMPACTS OF A MUSICAL
MOVEMENT
A Thesis
submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
of Georgetown University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of
Master of Arts
in Communication, Culture and Technology
By
Shani Ali Smothers, B.A.
Washington, DC
April 29, 2004

2. Copyright 2004 by S.A. Smothers
All Rights Reserved
iv

3. UNMASKING HIP HOP: LANDSCAPING THE SHIFTS AND IMPACTS OF A MUSICAL
MOVEMENT
Shani Ali Smothers, B.A.
Thesis Advisor: Matthew Tinkcom, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
The hip hop movement originally grew out of the ranks of urban oppression in
and around the New York City boroughs in the 1970s. The movement at that time used
music, dance, and graffiti art to challenge status quo values, institutions, and the
dominant order over society. In this study, I propose that the movement of hip hop has
changed due to an ideological split manifesting within the culture. I hypothesize that
the rap facet of the hip hop movement has divided and is traveling two extreme paths,
one which maintains and reinforces the dominant order of society and one, which
critiques this order. This divisiveness of hip hop is a result of the culture industries, but
moreover the hip hop community has allowed the movement’s original purpose, as an
outlet to critique society and politics, to be redirected. This study attempts to make
sense of what has caused this division and the impact this now divisive movement has
on listeners’ mentality, ideological preferences, and social and political engagement.
Hip hop is an undeniable social force for youth, particularly urban youth. This musical
form exercises its force by shaping the identities, and furthermore the social character
of its listeners. It grooms individuals, particularly youth to accept or reject their
economic, political, and social conditions. The future path of the hip hop movement is
v

4. uncharted. Ultimately it is up to the hip hop community to accept or reject the current
construction and appropriation of this musical form, which potentially can work as an
agent of social and political change.
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5. PREFACE
Over time, hip hop music has had its share of academic supporters as well as
critics. One particular academic article motivated me to work on this topic. “Music and
Music Videos” by Christine H. Hansen and Ronald D. Hansen (Oakland University) in
Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer’s Media Entertainment: The Psychology of Its
Appeal (2000), enraged me and filled me with a need to respond intellectually. Hansen
and Hansen (Zillman and Vorderer, 2000) make questionable statements such as,
“…BET (Black Entertainment Network) offers music videos for a (mostly) Black
audience.” First of all BET stands for Black Entertainment Television NOT Black
Entertainment Network. Secondly, it is a questionable fact that BET’s audience is
mostly Black. Assumptions such as this example absolutely need data to support them.
In the authors’ discussion of popular music and its appeal, they mention rap and
“gangster rap” as having negative effects, but they fail to mention any rap that is
positive or socially/politically conscious. They also fail to qualify any historical
contexts from which rap arose. The section on rap music has a blatantly negative tone
filled with negative generalizations about rap, rap fans, and the effects of rap music.
Not only did this article contain statements, which were questionably false or had no
evidence to support them, but also the authors admitted that their sample of 100
participants was predominantly female and 96 percent of White descent. It is this type
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6. of intellectualism, which is often fed to the public through articles and segments about
hip hop.
Realizing that every academic writer has his or her biases, I am not offering a
critique of Hansen and Hansen’s opinions, but their method. Acceptable academic
work typically covers various perspectives on the chosen topic and then offers a unique
perspective. Additionally, intellectualism typically uses sourced information and
thoroughly structured samples, surveys and results. These authors should have written
on the White female perspective on hip hop, rather than making generalizations about a
hip hop culture based on this non-representative sample. Hansen and Hansen have
much to learn about hip hop and maybe a better approach in the future would be to
gather findings from individuals who listen to and are affected by hip hop.
With this in mind, I have derived this study of hip hop by drawing from a wealth of
academic subjects such as, African American studies, African studies, anthropology,
communications, cultural studies, education, history, liberation theology, media
studies, musicology, political science, poverty studies, sociology, sociolinguistics, as
well as academia on hip hop. Although Chapter 5 of this study uses a convenience
online sample to describe how hip hop can be connected to several ideological and
behavioral patterns, the methods used are statistically accurate and the results are of
sound use in the pilot study. For every bad apple, there are several good ones. This is
to say that for every anti-intellectual piece written on hip hop, there are ten times as
many thorough and intellectually stimulating pieces on this cultural art form.
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7. Hip hop is a dynamic musical movement, which impacts the lives of individuals,
communities, and cultures, especially American culture. Hip hop, over time, has
proven its viability and its power of influence—its potential to change the world in
which we live.
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8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special Thanks goes to:
Dr. Matthew Tinkcom, my thesis advisor, for all of your support, understanding, and advice. Thank you
for your Georgetown presence, your enlightening perspectives and for encouraging me and other
students to think ‘outside of the box’.
Dr. Diana Owen, my second reader, for your tireless dedication to the students, your amazing statistical
expertise and for your interdisciplinary and unbiased perspectives.
Dr. Richard Wright, my third reader, for your dedication to social change, your enlightening cross-
generational perspective and for challenging me and other students to take the extra step in critical
analysis.
My fellow Thesis Colloquium students for your comments and criticism, which helped me to improve
my content.
Dr. Pensri Ho and Professor Jessica Davis for your dialogue which particularly helped to shape this
research.
CCT alum, Autumn Lewis (’03), for being my CCT saving grace and opening my eyes to the power of
selection.
Robert Pham for all of the technological support and genuine care and support of CCT students.
Heather Kerst, Davina Sashkin, Kendra Fowle, and Tonya Puffet for all of the administrative support.
Dr. Mikell, Bernadetta Killian, Veronique Dozier, and Denis Williams for all of your support and for
helping me to have such a remarkable experience in Tanzania.
To all of the students, professors, and others whose conversations and dialogue helped to shape my
project.
My editors and proofreaders: Letita Aaron, Elaine Ayensu, Dr. Pensri Ho, Allissa Hosten, Kisha Ross,
Dejuan Stroman and Grant Tregre.
Father Phillip Linden, Jr., S.T.D, Ph.D for helping me to change my perspective, my goals and my life
for the better and to fulfill my purpose.
To my mother, Gladys Cole, for her unconditional support, her endless sacrafice for her children, and for
envisioning my infinite potential.
To my fathers, James Smothers III and Lionel Cole, for all of your love and support over the years.
To my siblings, Malaika, Kiesha, Dale Janette, Jimmy, Courtney, and Gabriel, for all of your love and
support.
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9. To my friend, confidant, and soul-mate, Grant, for all of your love, support and encouragement. Thank
you for believing in me.
Special Thanks goes to the Johnson, Cole, Smothers, Hicks, Doyle, Reels, Reese, Ward, Caldwell,
Cochran, Lewis, Rhodes, Tregre, Rovaris and Hebert families for all of their love and support.
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10. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover Sheet………………………………………………...……………………………i
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………....…ii
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………..v
Chapter I: The Changing Face of Hip Hop—The Movement of this Musical
Continuum……………………………………………………………………………....1
Defining and Reinventing Hip Hop………………………………………………...…..3
Contextualizing the Evolution of Hip Hop……………………………….………….....6
Project Summary………………………………………………………….…………….9
Chapter II: Exploring the Functionality of Hip Hop: Moments and Evolution……....12
The Communication and Communal Functions of Music……………………………13
Hip Hop’s Communication and Communal Functionality………………………..….18
Staccato Moments in Hip Hop History………………………………..….…………..22
The Sub-Genres of Hip Hop………………………………..…………….………..…24
Summary: Beyond Moments and Functions……………………………...………..…26
Chapter III: Power, Culture Industry, and Hip Hop as an Undermined Movement….28
The Power of the Repressive State and Ideological State Apparatuses………………30
Mechanisms of Power and Social Movements…………………………...…………..32
The Power of the Culture Industry…………………………………………………....36
The Undermining of the hip hop Movement………………………………………....44
Summary……………………………………………………………………..……….52
.
Chapter IV: Words Are Weapons: The Hip Hop Language Dialectic………………..53
The Power of Music Language…………………………………...…………………..56
Lyrical Analysis……………………………………………………….…………..….59
Summary…………………………………………………………………………...…93
Chapter V: Hip Hop’s Impact on Mentality, Ideological Preference and Political and
Social Activity…………………………………………………..…………………....96
Methodology……………………………………………………………………..….100
Sample Characteristics…………………………………………………………..…..100
Variable Description………………………………………………………………...102
Results: Ordinary Least Square Regression Analysis……………………………….102
Results: Logistic Regression Analysis………………………………………………107
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11. Results: Correlation Analysis……………………………….………………………..108
Discussion of Results……………………………………………………………...…111
Summary……………………………………………………………...……………...123
Chapter VI: Conclusions: Understanding Hip Hop’s Potential and Moving Toward a
Collective Movement……………………………………………………………...…132
Future Research………………………………………………………………………134
What is in Hip Hop’s Future…………………………………………….…………...136
Notes……………………………………………………………………………...….139
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….149
Statistical Appendix A……………………………………………………………….156
Statistical Appendix B……………………………………………………………….161
Statistical Appendix C……………………………………………………………….170
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12. LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 5.1: Race and Ethnicity Demographics
Table 5.1: Dependent Variables
Table 5.2: Independent Variables
Table 5.3: Regression Analysis
Table 5.4: Logistic Regression Analysis
Table 5.5: Correlation Analysis I
Table 5.6: Correlation Analysis II
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13. It is past time for all poor people to release themselves from the deceptive
strangulation of society, realize that society has failed you; for an attempt to ignore
this system of deception now is to deny you, the need to protest this failure later. The
system has failed you yesterday, failed you today, and has created the conditions for
failure tomorrow
_John Africa 1
The black revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon once asserted that each generation, out
of relative obscurity, must discover its own destiny. Then it has a choice: it may
fulfill that destiny or betray it. How can today’s rising generation of African-
American young people come to terms with their own destiny? What is the meaning
of the challenges and opportunities that history has planned for them? What kind of
ethics or moral anchor is required for group empowerment and collective
advancement?
—Manning Marable2

14. Chapter I
The Changing Face of Hip Hop—The Movement of this Musical Continuum
Hip hop is not a political movement in the usual sense. Its advocates don’t elect public officials. It
doesn’t present a systematic (or even original) critique of white world supremacy. Nor has it produced
a manifesto for collective political agitation. It has generated no Malcolm X or Dr. King. It has
spawned no grassroots activist organization in the order of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, the Black Panther Party, NAACP, or even the Country Music Association. Hip hop has
actually had surprisingly little concrete long-term impact on African-American politics. It has made
its mark by turning listeners onto real political icons (Malcolm X), radical organizations of the past
(The Black Panther Party), and self-sufficient operations of the present (the Nation of Islam). It
spread the word about the evils of apartheid. It articulated and predicted the explosive rage that
rocked Los Angeles in 1992. It has given two generations of young people a way into the
entertainment business and
an uncensored vehicle for expression.
—Nelson George3
Rap music is, in many ways, a hidden transcript. Among other things it uses cloaked speech and
distinguished cultural codes to comment on and challenge aspects of current power inequalities. Not
all rap transcripts directly critique all forms of domination; nonetheless, a large and significant
element in rap’s discursive territory is engaged in symbolic and ideological warfare with institutions
and groups that symbolically, ideologically, and materially oppress African Americans. In this way,
rap music is a contemporary stage for the theater of the powerless. On this stage rappers act out
inversions of status hierarchies, tell alternative stories of contact with police and the educational
process, and draw portraits of contact with dominant groups in which the hidden transcript
inverts/subverts the public, dominant transcript. Often rendering a nagging critique of various
manifestations of power via jokes, stories, gestures, and song, rap’s social commentary enacts
ideological insubordination.
—Tricia Rose4
Both Nelson George and Tricia Rose portray accurate depictions of the current
state of hip hop, especially the culture’s facet of rap music. While George discusses hip
hop’s social and political shortcomings, he also articulates this movement’s greatest
social and political triumphs and furthermore its potential to impact individual
1

15. consciousness. Rose, in particular, illustrates one path of the present divergent
directions of this underestimated and furthermore underplayed musical movement.
Since its origins, rap music has possessed an element, which critiques dominant
institutions and values; but in the last two decades, it has also moved towards the
maintenance of dominant ideologies and institutions. Just as rap music challenges
domination, powerlessness, and oppression of the American poor, it also has moved to
maintain dominance, increase and reinforce powerlessness, and contribute to the
material, economic, and political manipulation of the urban oppressed. Rap is a hidden
transcript, but as George and Rose suggest, it has moved along a different political and
social plane than traditional activism or leadership. Rap has made its mark by
spreading ideological, political, and social messages, which undeniably have an impact
on individuals as well as society at large.
How is it possible that this musical form engages in a critique of the American
political economy, while still confined to economic, political, and social subservience?
This question brings to bear the reality of all American-based social movements, which
either achieve success based on skillful and effective critique within the bounds of the
economic, political, and social order, or succumb to failure as a result of infiltration
and divisiveness. George (1998) says that it is essential to understand that values,
which underpin hip hop, are by products of the function and dysfunction of the
American cultural context.5
2

16. In this study, I intend to connect hip hop to the American context by showing
how it maintains and reinforces American repressive and ideological apparatuses,
while simultaneously critiquing these institutions and power structures. By situating
this musical art form within the social context of American life, it can then be
positioned as a social and political force, which exercises influence over individuals.
Defining and Reinventing Hip Hop
Trying to devise a clear-cut definition of hip hop is a challenging task. Artists,
record executives, academics, and critics define hip hop in several different ways. As
with any term in need of definition, it is advisable to reflect on various perspectives
and then try to potentially formulate a comprehensive definition of the term. In the
early 1980’s, published definitions of the term hip hop were scarce, but currently hip
hop is defined and seriously discussed in several academic discourses. Its definition is
multi-faceted and it has changed to fit sporadic inner-city urban cultural shifts.
Todd Boyd in The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of
Hip Hop (2003) states,
Hip Hop 101; rap is the act of rapping, spittin’ rhymes over beats produced by a
DJ…The word ‘rap’ also came to denote the more popular aspects of the genre
by the mainstream, and this label was also used by true heads to call out anyone
who was thought to be abandoning the culture’s roots. As the age-old
assumption goes, as one becomes more popular or mainstream, the less
politically engaged and substantive the music would become. Hip hop changed
the game on this though (Boyd, Todd, 2003, p. 45).
3

17. As Boyd (2003) notes, the transformation of hip hop over time has left us with this
distinction, which has had complex effects. “Rap is what you do; Hip Hop is what you
are. Rap is the act; Hip Hop is the culture (Boyd, 2003, p. 48).” Hip hop is a testament
to the strength of the oppressed, which have and continue to overcome the obstacles
that American life often imposes on inner-city urban communities, especially the youth
(Boyd, 2003, p. 152). Boyd suggests an age-old assumption that says, as rap artists
become more popular, the less politically or socially engaged the music becomes.
Boyd is correct in his conclusion because hip hop often uses its popular status to
channel social and political messages. Hip hop is a movement that evolved over a long
time span and is not just a historical moment in the urban cultural experience.
Alonzo Westbrook in Hip Hoptionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop
Terminology (2002), defines hip hop as,
The artistic response to oppression. A way of expression in dance, music,
word/song. A culture that thrives on creativity and nostalgia. As a musical art
form it is stories of inner-city life, often with a message, spoken over beats of
music. The culture includes rap and any other venture spawned from the hip
hop style and culture (pg 64).
Westbrook makes an important point, hip hop has always creatively drawn on nostalgia
in order to connect to its audience. This nostalgia could be musical, social, or even
political, but in almost every instance it reflects collective experiences of the urban
poor. George says that hip hop at its most fundamental level is a product of the post-
civil rights era—a multifaceted culture born of African American, Caribbean American
4

18. and Latin American youth in and around New York in the 1970s (George, 1998, p.
viii).
Rose (1994) reiterates these points,
Hip hop is a cultural form that attempts to negotiate the experiences of
marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity, and oppression within the
cultural imperatives of African American and Caribbean history, identity, and
community. It is the tension between the cultural fractures produced by post-
industrial oppression and the binding ties of black cultural expressivity that sets
the critical frame for the development of hip hop (p. 21).
Rose emphasizes that hip hop culture grew from attempts to negotiate the oppressive
experiences of youth living in the multicultural environment of the New York
boroughs. New York youth in this transition, were relegated to the margins as a result
of post-industrial economic backlash, rapidly changing political landscapes, and shifts
from segregation to multicultural integration and back to cultural polarization. These
divisive circumstances of cultural communities in New York fueled the fusion of a
unified hip hop cultural community.
This study will show that academics, critics, and rappers appropriate these and
other definitions of hip hop as needed. It should be noted that hip hop in the 1970s
could be thought of as a single culture with distinctive elements, whereas over the last
decade hip hop has become more like a melding of several local and regional cultures
and sub-cultures. In a broader sense, I realize that hip hop is regarded as the culture
and rap as one facet of that culture. For the purposes of this study, I use hip hop and
rap interchangeably. These definitions of hip hop and rap will be useful in further
5

19. discussions of the evolution of this culture and particularly the changing landscapes of
rap music.
Contextualizing the Evolution of Hip Hop
Hip hop is a form of communication and an agent of community building. In
the past, various genres of music have served particular functions. Music often
supplied responses to societal or community needs. American hip hop emerged at a
time when the inner city youth of New York needed an outlet to express emotion about
the social ills they faced and the environmental, political, and economic conditions of
their marginalization. Hip hop, in these early stages, operated as a force, which
challenged the social, political, and economic order of American society. It used its
communicative power and its ability to reach the masses to engage the urban
oppressed.
The hip hop movement did not emerge spontaneously, but followed the
historical and social pattern of movements born out of inequality and subsequent
communal uprising. The hip hop movement is the musical successor to movements,
which attacked social inequalities of the 1950s and 1960s. Maultsby (1985) says, “new
styles, rather than evolving independently, arise out of existing traditions (Berry and
Manning-Miller (eds.), 1996, p. 266).” She explains this in terms of the evolution of
conscious music into the formation of rap. She says that rap music discloses shifts in
values, attitudes, and social needs.6 These social needs, which Maultsby mentions, now
6

20. have become part of a market-embraced display of popular culture.
Pratt (1990) discusses what he terms ‘emancipatory uses’ of popular culture.
He says popular culture is emancipatory when it challenges dominant institutions (p.
14). He notes a parallel in Douglas Kellner’s (1987) work, “TV, Ideology, and
Emancipatory Popular Culture”.
“Emancipatory” signifies emancipation from something that is restrictive or
repressive, and for something that is conducive to an increase of freedom and
well-being. Such a conception, as Kellner describes it, ‘subverts ideological
codes and stereotypes…It rejects idealizations and rationalization that
apologize for the suffering in the present social system, and, at its best, suggests
that another way of life is possible’ (Pratt, 1990, p.14).
These emancipatory functions of music still exist in hip hop music. Some forms of hip
hop continue to challenge dominant institutions and situations of inhumane cultural
practices that contribute to the marginalization of the poor. Hip hop also functions as a
communal backbone to support an identification in collective values. Pratt (1990) says
music like any other form of art is an ‘impulse of opposition to existing conventions’.7
Pratt (1990) elaborates on this reinforcement of support and morale. He says music
serves as “substitute imagery,” which mediates experience (p. 5). Music mediates
individual experiences, though perhaps not to the same degree as television.
Nevertheless, it creates a commonality of cultural experience that remains part of each
individual’s cultural heredity (Pratt, 1990). Though Pratt speaks of this phenomenon in
terms of elites that control culture industries, which then use rap to manipulate the
public, this script is flipped by socially conscious music that uses critique to attack
7

21. dominant ideologies and institutions. Music often embodies cultural and social
commonality. Furthermore, he asserts that music has the capacity to create and reflect
community forms—it is the product of social relationships within a community (Pratt,
1990). As E.P. Thompson (1963) notes, that class as a social relationship must always
be situated in a pragmatic context (Pratt, 1990). Pratt (1990) explains the functional use
of music, which can be seen in all forms of music produced from the experiences of the
African and African in America. Hip hop reinvents their historical experiences to shed
light on the present situation of communal oppression facing the multicultural
American lower working class, and furthermore, it helps to build on the global
community of those oppressed everywhere. “Serving cultural and social purposes, rap
music provides a vehicle for group interaction, an outlet for creative expression, and a
forum for competitive play (Berry and Manning-Miller (eds.), 1996, p. 256).” The
appropriation of rap music as a force, which maintains the current social and political
order, is to combat its effectiveness as a threat to this order8.
Societal constructions of Blackness9, and furthermore the construction assigned
to all urban youth, particularly males, historically have operated as forces which
combat the potential threat of these social actors.10 Rose (1990) says in “Never Trust a
Big Butt With A Smile,”
The history of African –American music and culture has been defined in large
by a history of the art of signifying, recontextualization, collective memory and
resistance. ‘Fashioning icons of opposition’ that speak to diverse communities
is part of a rich Black American musical tradition to which rappers make a
significant contribution (Bobo, 2001).
8

22. Rose is one of the first critical theorists to recognize the positive contributions rap has
made to the establishment of community and collective consciousness. It is important,
however, to recognize the negative impacts of rap music that emphasizes and
encourages acceptance of status quo values, solutions, and maintains ruling elite’s
political and ideological power over the masses. The connection between
consciousness and cultural expression has the potential to evidence hip hop’s success
and failure as a social movement.
Project Summary
The purpose of this study is to explore the duality of the hip hop movement and
how it has shaped the divergent paths in which rap music has and continues to travel.
This study proposes to answer the following research question: How has the division of
the hip hop movement given way to two extreme-driven paths of rap music; on one
hand, hip hop provides political and social criticism, on the other hand, it has some
adverse characteristics and consequences. Rap music while critiquing Althusserian
Repressive State Apparatuses (prison system, courts, governing bodies, etc…) and
Ideological State Apparatuses (education system, churches, media, etc…), it also
maintains and reinforces those values and institutions. Chapter III will theoretically
situate this project by providing a foundation of how power mechanisms, the music
industry, and furthermore the culture industry have ushered this divisional path of rap
9

23. music and its influence. Chapter IV will explicitly focus on the language of hip hop
and how rap lyrics evidence this divisional shift of hip hop. Finally, Chapter V presents
a pilot study on how this division and the resulting paths of rap music have affected
individuals situated within the hip hop community in terms of mentality, ideological
preference, and social and political engagement.
This study primarily focuses on the language and lyrics of hip hop which
inevitably shape individual perception by influencing attitudes, ideological
preferences, and furthermore social and political engagement. Just as William Eric
Perkins11 gives a fresh perspective on rap music’s ongoing and bewildering love/hate
relationship with American society and its role in the continuing evolution of popular
culture, this study intends to give a fresh perspective on rap music’s role in shaping
individual attitudes, ideological foundations, and social and political action. Recent
research on hip hop and politics studies how hip hop actors have stepped into the realm
of social and political activism. This study is more concerned with how the music,
itself, plays a role in the formation of character—how it grooms individuals towards
complacency, disengagement, or activism with American society. This study will show
that the hip hop movement is more than celebrities raising money or publicly
supporting causes—it is a movement because its music and language affect individual
mentality, ideological preferences, and social and political participation. Thus, this
study will unmask hip hop by landscaping the shifts in this musical movement as well
as by showing how this musical phenomenon acts as a socializing agent.
10

24. Chapter II
Exploring the Functionality of Hip Hop: Moments and Evolution
“I met this girl, when I was ten years old
And what I loved most she had so much soul
She was old school, when I was just a shorty
Never knew throughout my life she would be there for me
on the regular, not a church girl she was secular
Not about the money, no studs was mic checkin her
But I respected her, she hit me in the heart
A few New York niggaz, had did her in the park
But she was there for me, and I was there for her
Pull out a chair for her, turn on the air for her
and just cool out, cool out and listen to her
Sittin on a bone, wishin that I could do her
Eventually if it was meant to be, then it would be
because we related, physically and mentally
And she was fun then, I'd be geeked when she'd come around
Slim was fresh yo, when she was underground
Original, pure untampered and down sister
Boy I tell ya, I miss her.”
Common Sense12
In this verse, the artist Common Sense, now known as just Common,
personifies his relationship with hip hop music. This relationship with the opposite sex
that he describes is undoubtedly his relationship with his other half—hip hop. By
reviewing academic and non-academic intellectualism, this chapter intends to explore
hip hop’s total being; her definitions, her history, her function and her evolution.
Common’s nostalgia for the old hip hop he knew evidences the ‘evolutionary’ or
11

25. ‘counter-evolutionary’ path this culture has taken and the joy ride it has endured. The
original flow of resistance, which mainstreamed into a commercially viable industry
has taken society on a full throttled ride leaving a distinct mark on American urban
culture.
The Communication and Communal Functions of Music
In order to indulge in a discussion of hip hop as a musical movement, it is
necessary to situate this movement historically. Black music, including hip hop, has
served both communication and communal functions. These functions of music have
paved the way for hip hop to engage and disengage individuals. Something to note is
that the Black musical continuum serves as only one of the three cultural contexts
within which hip hop can be historicized.13 Music has been used to help preserve
communication and thus community, especially by the use of language within musical
texts.14 Musical language, and particularly hip hip language, functions as a force,
which communicates to urban communities. It can build and preserve these
communities or divide them.
For Africans and Black-Americans, music as communication dates back to the
indigenous tribal experiences. The Scottish surgeon, Mungo Park, is noted as the first
European to explore the region of the middle and upper reaches of the Niger River,
which is the land of the Mandingos and Malinkes. Park describes the connection
between music and language through the form of poetry.15 Angela Davis in “Black
12

26. Women and Music: A Historical Legacy of Struggle” says that West African music
functioned as more than an external tool—more than music, which facilitates human
activity. Music was inextricably embedded in the activity itself (Bobo, 2001).
Thus music was not employed as an aesthetic instrumentality, external to work
but facilitating its execution; rather, work songs were inseparable from the very
activity of work itself. Janheinz Jahn has referred to the West African
philosophical concept of Nommo—‘the magic power of the word’—as being
the very basis of music. According to the world-view of West African
culture—if such a generalization is permitted—the life force is actualized by
the power of the word (Bobo, 2001).
This power of the word is a clear retention, which reappears, in conscious
music across history and cultures. This instrumentality of Nommo also shows up
within the plantation community in new form—work songs, which though grounded in
the foundation of West Africa, evolved to serve new functions as well. Music has
always resided in the realm of freedom—has always had a role in concrete historical
and social transformations (Pratt, 1990). Davis says that Harriet Tubman’s spirituals
were functional in relaying concrete information and collective consciousness about
the struggle for liberation (Bobo, 2001). She infers that collective consciousness of
freedom is not a result of oppression, but rather communal resistance must be taught.
Tubman contributed to these teachings by the music and content of her spirituals. Karl
Mannheim (1936) says the spirituals established by the plantation community suggest
that music may function in a profoundly utopian way. Spirituals were the plea of slaves
to transcend the existing order of slavery and oppression.
During Reconstruction, a cruel and sorrowful time for newly freed slaves, the
13

27. musical art form of Blues developed and was used as a communicative channel to
voice the conditions of oppression faced by the communities of freed slaves. This new
form of music drew on personal trials, which arose as a result of a collective
experience. Pratt says the Blues were understood in terms of meaning established by a
community.16 The Blues, as M. Dyson (1993, 1997, 2001) notes thrived on its ability to
spew forth reality to its audiences. Dyson also says this realism within blues appears in
more modern forms of conscious music.
African American culture places high value on ‘telling it like it is.’ Again, this
realism is reflected in the lyrics of the blues and gospel music (White and
Parham, 1990) as well as rap and hip-hop music, all of which portray the
difficulty of life and advise a cool steady, and persistent toughness needed to
overcome this difficulty (Hecht, Jackson, and Ribeau, 2003).
This type of realism-based communication has always been instrumental in the
preservation of identification in a collective experience of struggle. Black musical
forms have been noted to “tell it like it is.” From tribal songs within West African
culture to spiritual; blues to jazz; soul to hip-hop; the reality of collective Black
experiences has always been communicated through music.
In addition to serving as a channel of communication, music has served as a
catalyst for the establishment and reestablishment of community. In African tribes
music was essential to communal life. Davis says West African music was always
functional—inextricably linked to communal economics, interrelationships, and
spiritual pursuits.17 Park also describes the West African function of music as a means
of preserving community. His description of the function of West African music
14

28. resembles music’s function within the plantation community.
They lightened their labor by songs, one of which was composed extempore,
for I was myself the subject of it. It was sung by one of the women, the rest
joining in a sort of chorus…Among the free men [in the slave-coffle
procession] were six Jillikea (singing men) whose musical talents were
frequently exerted, either to divert fatigue or obtain us a welcome from
strangers (Southern (ed.), 1983).
The plantation community utilized the creative expression of music to voice
their consciousness of personal struggle and alleviation from suffering. Comparatively,
the free Black community during Reconstruction and Segregation used music to voice
their personal struggles, which pertained to a collective experience. Ernest Borneman
describes a scenario in his account of songs sung by Africans in America. He says one
type of song was, “used by workers to make their task easier: work songs to stress the
rhythm of labor, group songs to synchronize collectively executed work, team songs
sung by one team to challenge and satirize the other (Bobo, 2001).” Pratt (1990)
further elaborates on the oppositional character of work songs as being a critical form
of collective consciousness.
Collective forms of oppositional consciousness grew under the very eyes of the
overseer. As Alan Lomax put it concerning work songs, “Here, right under the
shotguns of the guards, the black collective coalesced and defiantly expressed
its unity and belief in life, often in ironically humorous terms (Lomax, 1977)!”
(Pratt, 1990).
Music in this way contributed to the physical and spiritual survival of slaves on the
plantation. It was used as a spiritual escape from the daily physical brutality suffered
by Black people under the institution of slavery. James Cone, noted in his insightful
15

29. theological research, says Black music has been essential to the unity and the
realization of collective struggle and liberation.
Davis dutifully notes Ma Rainey as an example of music, which strengthened
community based in identification of struggle related to race, gender, and class
collective experiences. Davis says,
Ma Rainey, on the other hand, performed in circuses, tent shows, minstrel and
medicine shows, singing all the same about the Black predicament and
establishing the basis in song for the sharing of experiences and forging of a
community capable of preserving through private tribulations and even
articulating new hopes and aspirations. Ma Rainey’s most essential social
accomplishment was to keep poor Black people grounded in the Southern
tradition of unity and struggle, even when they had migrated to the North and
Midwest in search of economic security (Bobo, 2001).
Davis further expands on Ma Rainey’s music as emanating from problems in
personal relationships. “She [Ma Rainey] used creative expression to speak of sexual
love, but metaphorically revealing economic, social, and psychological difficulties,
which Black people faced during the post-Civil War era (Bobo, 2001).” The men and
women of the Blues era used music to relate the personal experiences of, for example,
losing a man or a job, which in turn voiced an experience, which others within the
community could relate to their own similar experience. The Blues spoke of collective
experience, but it manifests in terms of the individual. Cone (2001) says Black music
“unites the joy and the sorrow; the love and the hate and the despair of Black people
and it moves the people toward the direction of total liberation.” He also says that
Black music shapes and provides a definition of Black being which creates cultural ties
16

30. and forms the structure for Black creative expression. “Black music is unifying
because it confronts the individual with the truth of Black existence and affirms that
Black being is possible only in a communal context (Bodo (ed.), 2001).”
Black music, which often arises from marginal and oppressed communities,
functions to awaken a collective sense of struggle and furthermore a motivation to rise
up against that source of struggle. Music was an important tool of empowerment—a
strengthening arm of the Black community, providing hope and the possibility of
improvement. Pratt (1990) states,
Music functions in important ways as political behavior…However it has been
used, throughout its history it has proven to be highly effective politically in
terms of its instrumental utility (Billington, 1980). This function arises out of
the unique ability of music seemingly to create a kind of spontaneous collective
identity or facilitate the investment of people’s psychological energies.
Pratt’s example gives music a direct connection to collective identity and the political
behavior of communities. This foundation sets the stage for an exploration of the
present forms of hip hop music which act as political agents spawning collectivity and
social change. The present forms manifest in terms of hip hop and modern Soul music.
Hip Hop’s Communication and Communal Functionality
Hip hop’s form and function has given breath to its communicative capacity.
Maultsby (1985) says new styles, rather than evolving independently, arise out of
existing traditions.
New forms of black musical expression are, in essence, new impulses drawn
17

31. from the environment, blended with the old forms and given a new shape, a
new style, and a new meaning…Black music is a manifestation of black culture
and it serves a communication function within tradition. Because rap music
exists as a functional entity within black America, the creation of this new style
discloses shifts in values, attitudes and social needs (Berry and Manning-Miller
(eds.), 1996).
These social needs now have become part of a market-embraced display of popular
culture that serves as an outlet to voice concerns to structural oppression.
Hip hop has been and continues to be the voice of the voiceless. Boyd (2003)
says,
What I find so compelling is the way in which this relatively simple form of
communication, rhymes over beats, however you slice it, is truly quite
complex. Because Black people have always had to make do with so little, the
relative abundance of one’s own words is at times all we have to use in fighting
against a corrupt and vicious society (pg 143).
Even in its most irate and eclectic forms, hip hop continuously engages in some sort of
fight against the dominant order of society.
This is not to say that hip hop does not engage in contradiction as well. For
every revolutionary or radical message, there is a corresponding mainstream, quieting
and conformist message, and often this message, which conforms to the society at-
large, prevails because of reinforcement from societal institutions and trends. Hip hop
since its mainstreaming in 1979, has displayed the double-character of a fragmented
community. It has been a viable communication method, which has expressed both
distress and pride in the reality of oppression and its aftermath.
Hip hop serves a second function as an agent of community and collective
18

32. consciousness. In Marx and Engel’s on Literature and Art18, “It is not the
consciousness of men [and women!-AYD] that determines their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness (Bobo, 2001).” Davis
expands on the Marx and Engel’s point that social consciousness does not occur
spontaneously, but arises based on human life and concrete conditions within society
(Bobo, 2001). Davis says,
If it is true that music in general reflects social consciousness and that African
American music is an especially formative element of Black people’s
consciousness in America, the roots of the music in our concrete historical
conditions must be acknowledged…And indeed, precisely because Black music
resides on a cultural continuum which has remained closest to the ethnic and
socio-historical heritage of African-Americans, it has been our central aesthetic
expression, influencing all the remaining arts (Bobo, 2001).
It is this particular connection between consciousness and cultural expression, which
gives enlightenment to the rise of hip hop. The rhythmic retentions from African and
Black American music as well as the language of the lyrics has enabled Black youth to
reconstruct a community in which collective consciousness enabled the potential for
social change. Over time, the strength of community has been recognized and targeted
by governmental and nongovernmental institutions in order to maintain control over
dissidence. Pratt (1990) notes in The Hidden Dimension by Edward Hall, he speaks of
music as an element of communal cohesion.
Human perceptions of the world are ‘programmed’ by the language spoken
(Hall, 1969). Can music, itself a language and composed of language, program
or ‘reprogram’ human existence? Because people live in communities, their
popular music may become a significant constituent of community—however it
19

33. is defined, whether spatially, denoting a particular location or milieu (Buttimer,
1973), or through psychological identification (Pratt, 1990).
Pratt establishes music as part of a social relationship. “Music both creates and reflects
forms of community…The music of a people is a social relationship (Pratt, 1990).” As
E.P. Thompson (1963) notes with respect to social class, “The relationship must
always be embodied in real people and in a real context (Pratt, 1990).” Pratt (1990)
says that every form of modern popular music can be traced back to real people and
real contexts. Pratt (1990) also notes an extremely important use of music, which can
be seen in all forms of music produced from the experiences of the African and
Africans in America.
Music is used to construct some sense of collectivity memory, but what kind of
memory is it? How is it used? What are the functions? What images does it
maintain? Perhaps Orwell’s antiutopian projection of a brainwashed future has
come about in ways more elegant and subtle and yet more total than he ever
dreamed possible as a synthesized past is processed and bought (Mander,
1978). Yet, as the use of musical examples might suggest, it can also be a
‘usable’ past—a means of resistance and a way to revision the future through
invoking past and presently used cultural materials (Hebdige, 1987).
This dynamic is especially invoked as part of the backbone of hip hop. Rose (1990)
says in “Never Trust a Big Butt With A Smile,”
The history of African –American music and culture has been defined in large
by a history of the art of signifying, recontextualization, collective memory and
resistance. “Fashioning icons of opposition” that speak to diverse communities
is part of a rich Black American musical tradition to which rappers make a
significant contribution (Bobo, 2001).
This form of music looks to the historical experiences of Africans and Africans in
20

34. America to shed light on the present situation of communal oppression facing the
American lower working class. Furthermore, hip hop has gained popularity with urban
oppressed youth globally, making it a reference point for building a community of
those oppressed everywhere.
Staccato Moments in Hip Hop History
In a Los Angeles hospital lobby in 1979, my mother, suffering from extensive
labor pains, gave birth to me, her third child, standing up. The same year, conscious
music was also being birthed again in America as a response to the third generation of
labor, pains, and suffering. Whipped through the plantation slave community, reduced
to mediocrity in the segregated community, and underdeveloped in the post segregated
community, in the new generation of the oppressed, a new form of conscious music
developed. Standing up and in pain, the impoverished and marginalized youth of the
South Bronx borough of New York gave birth to a new voice in the eyes of
mainstream America—hip hop. Hip hop may have been born to mainstream America,
but it was its second or maybe even a third birth for this dynamic art form.
This new form of conscious music lived and grew on the underground scene for
some time before traveling its path to mainstream acceptance. Hip hop culture evolved
from speeches, spoken words and poetry of resistance in the marginalized
communities. Tricia Rose, one of the early 90’s hip hop scholars, said in Black Noise:
Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994),
21

35. Musical and oral predecessors to rap music encompass a variety of vernacular
artists including the Last Poets, a group of the late 1960s to early 1970s black
militant storytellers whose poetry was accompanied by conga drum rhythms,
poet, and singer Gil Scott Heron, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, the 1950s
radio jocks, particularly Douglas ‘Jocko’ Henderson, soul rapper Millie
Jackson, the classic Blues women, and countless other performers.
Even before the 1960s, Nathan Davis (1996) notes,
Although rap gained its popularity during the 1970s, its roots date back to the
1940s and 1950s when African American youth gathered on urban street
corners to sing acapella and participate in ‘rap’ sessions. These sessions, in
which young African Americans talked ‘jive’ to each other, told a story about
an event or crisis that had affected the storyteller. The stories were revealed in a
rhythmic and poetic manner, and always in a provocative and suggestive way.
Rap evolved from a communicative form of arranging language in rhythmic patterns,
which can even be said to date back to African tribes, and the words recited over
rhythmic beats of the drum.19
In 1979, Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records created the Sugar Hill Gang
and released the first known mainstream hip hop song, “Rappers Delight” (Rose,
1994). After “Rappers Delight” was released, the music industry, print media, and the
fashion industry ‘discovered’ rap as a viable profit-making trend, which they needed to
cash in on quickly before the fad of hip hop passed (Rose, 1994). Media quickly
realized that hip hop culture was much more than a passing fad. This developing
culture was attracting the lucrative youth market and soon became part of popular
culture.
22

36. The Sub-Genres of Hip Hop
Davis (1996) hits the mark when he says, “Rap mirrors the rap artist’s society.”
Just as society has been fragmented, rap has evolved in fragmented ways to reflect
virtually all aspects of American social schizophrenia. Like the youth of New York in
the 1970s, who found an alternative identity (Rose, 1994. p.34) and social status in hip
hop culture, hip hop itself in various environments has undergone identity formation.
Rose (1994) says,
Identity in hip hop is deeply rooted in the specific and local experience, and
one’s attachment to and status in the local experience, and one’s attachment to
and status in a local group or alternative family. These crews are new kinds of
families forged with intercultural bonds that, like the social formation of gangs,
provide insulation and support in a complex and unyielding environment and
may serve as the basis for new social movements (Rose, 1994, p.34).
Hip hop’s specificity to the local experience of oppression resulted in the formation of
alternative hip hop characters or identities. The generalization of these local
experiences has added to the categorization of hip hop into sub-genres including, but
not limited to, Gangster Rap, Message Rap, Popular Rap, Underground Rap, and Local
Rap.
Gangster Rap: According to All Music Guide to hip hop: A definitive Guide to Rap
and Hip Hop (2003), gangster rap is described as having an edgy sound with abrasive
lyrics that either accurately reflect reality, or exaggerate ‘comic book
23

37. stories’(Bogdanov, etal., 2003).
Message Rap: Definitions of political rap seem consistent with what I term ‘message
rap.’ Political rap is hip hop, which merges rhymes with political philosophy to create
a new style of rap. I add that message rap expresses frustration with power structures
and economic, political, and social oppression.
Popular Rap: The guide describes pop-rap as, “…a marriage of hip hop beats and raps
with strong melodic hooks, which are usually featured as part of the chorus section in a
standard pop-song structure. Pop-rap tends to be less aggressive and lyrically complex
than most street-level hip hop, although during the mid-to late ‘90s, some artists
infused the style with a more hardcore attitude in an attempt to defuse backlash over
their accessibility (Bogdanov, etal. (eds.), 2003).” I would also add that popular forms
of hip hop or rap have music industry backing because they can produce crossover
sales with the American white hip hop audience as well as some global hip hop
audiences.
Underground Rap: I simply define underground rap as rap that is not mainstreamed,
but passed along, heard, or sold, through an underground network of hip hop or rap
fans. Underground rap is not mainstreamed to radio, television, or any other industry-
controlled outlets. It does not seek commercial appeal, but it rather thrives on the
24

38. support of live audiences. Sarah Thornton, in “Moral Panic, the Media and British
Rave Culture,” says, “Undergrounds denote exclusive worlds whose main point is not
elitism, but whose parameters often relate to particular crowds (Ross and Rose, 1994,
p. 177).”
Local Rap: Local rap is a unique style of rap that rises out of a particular local culture
and experience and remains true to that particular local style of flow, local style of
beats, and local vernacular of English.
The Hip Hop Guide (2003) also defines other categorical distinctions of hip
hop including: Alternative Rap, Bass Music, Christian Rap, Comedy Rap,
Contemporary Rap, Dirty Rap, and Freestyle Rap, just to name a few.
Summary: Beyond Moments and Functions
This chapter discusses how music functions in society as a social force, and
furthermore how hip hop as a communicative form socially functions to strengthen
communities. The many births of hip hop convey this art’s communicative and social
functions. Boyd (2003) sums up hip hop’s past, present, and future. He says,
Hip hop is a lifestyle. It is an ideology. It is a mode of being. It is an all-
encompassing life force that far supercedes any dismissive tactic from those
whom Flava Flav once chided as ‘nonbelievers.’ No matter how much you
want to dismiss it, it is still here, having passed many tests, and poised to
triumph even more in the future (pg 152).
25

39. It is these triumphs as well as failures of hip hop that I wish to further explore in
subsequent chapters. Hip hop, as a movement, has triumphed as well as failed inner-
city urban oppressed communities. These next chapters will grapple with how the split
of the hip hop movement has occurred over the past two and half decades. This split is
inevitably a result of historically situated economic, political, and social moments,
which will be hermeneutically approached, focusing not just on individual moments.
26

40. Chapter III
Power, Culture Industry, and Hip Hop as an Undermined Movement
Poet laureate of power, herald of freedom—the musician is at the same time within society, which
protects, purchases, and finances him, and outside it, when he threatens it with his visions. Courtier
and revolutionary: for those who care to hear the irony beneath the praise, his stage presence
conceals a break. When he is reassuring, he alienates; when he is disturbing, he destroys; when he
speaks too loudly, power silences him. Unless in doing so he is announcing the new clamor and glory
of powers in the making…Ramblings of revolution. Sounds of competing powers. Clashing noises, of
which the musician is the mysterious, strange, and ambiguous forerunner—after having been long
imprisoned, a captive of power
(Attali, 1985, p.11).
Six short years after the mainstream birth of hip hop, Jacques Attali, through
his analysis of music in Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), prophesized
the great expansion and destruction of the movement known as hip hop. Attali’s
description of the double character of musicians can be directly paralleled to the
present lifestyle and career choices faced by contemporary hip hop artists. Hip hop
artists can be likened to the musicians Attali describes; while noble, reassuring,
disturbing, and loud, the creativity of hip hop artists can be simultaneously
revolutionary, alienating, destructive and silenced. Over time, competing forces within
hip hop have determined the path and pattern, whether chosen or contrived, of the
movement’s evolution.
Attali (1985) discusses music in terms of its economic and political attributes.
He says the political economy of music is,
More than colors and forms, its sounds and their arrangements that fashion
27

41. societies. With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music is
born power and its opposite: subversion. In noise can be read the codes of life
the relations among men. Clamor, Melody, Dissonance, Harmony; when it is
fashioned by man with specific tools, when it invades man’s time, when it
becomes sound, noise is the source of purpose and power, of the dream—Music
(pg 6).
Music is an uncontestable source and subject of economic and social power, but I will
argue that music is also a source of unseen political power. In noise can be read the
codes of life which define relations, analyze, mark, restrain, train, repress, and channel
the sounds of language, of the body, of tools, of objects, and of relationships between
self and others (Attali, 1985, p.6). Attali recognizes the double character of music and
musicians especially those who operate within the confines of the industry. In an
attempt to understand the power dynamics used to control, maintain, and creatively
direct the hip hop industry, this framework will explore these dynamics and how they
apply to the hip hop movement
This chapter will first define Louis Althusser’s concepts of the Repressive State
and Ideological State Apparatuses. It will then delve into a theoretical framework of
power and cooptation as it applies to the evolution of movements, especially hip hop. It
will discuss the power mechanisms and exploitative channels by which hip hop has
expanded, and been thus concurrently created and destroyed. Finally, this chapter
intends to make sense of the relationship between the culture industry and the
simultaneous success and failure of this musical movement. Overall, this chapter
discusses the uses of power within industry to exploit and undermine musical
28

42. movements, especially the hip hop movement.
The Power of the Repressive State and Ideological State Apparatuses
It is necessary to discuss power mechanisms and more specifically the specific
power of the Althusserian concepts of State Repressive and Ideological State
Apparatuses (Althusser, 2001). In order to understand what forms these constructs take
in society, we must first comparatively define these terms. Althusser discusses the
State in the context of power and power relationships. In this particular instance he
positions the bourgeois class as the ruling class, which uses the State to ensure their
domination over the working class, thus subjecting, by repression, the working class to
the extraction of surplus value; capitalistic exploitation. Althusser’s concept of the
State resembles the Marxist concept of the base. Marx discusses this same dynamic of
the State, but in terms of the hierarchal levels it manifests.
Marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by ‘levels’ or
‘instances’ articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, or
economic base (the ‘unity’ of the productive forces and the relations of
production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two ‘levels’ or
‘instances’: the politico-legal (law and the State) and ideology (the different
ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.) (Althusser, 2001, p.90).
The State is the economic, political foundation of any given society. It could also be
referred to as what is thought of as the political economy. If we think about the State as
this machine of repression, this complete and hierarchical control, then understanding
its apparatuses becomes much clearer. Althusser (2001) says the State is the
29

43. government, administration, army, police, courts and prisons—these institutions make
up what he calls the repressive state apparatus (p. 92).
With this theoretical base, Althusser’s concept of the Ideological State
Apparatus can be discusses in relation to this Repressive State Apparatus. Althusser
argues that when you think about power and certain classes or cultures that rise to
power, they inevitably take their values, social norms; language and other aspects with
them into power and these things become dominant (Althusser, 2001,p.98). For
example, when Europeans colonized Africa and in turn rose to power within African
countries, their European value systems, social norms and languages became the
dominant ideological tools upon which the restructuring of society was based.
Althusser further maintains that, “No class can hold State power over a long period
without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological
Apparatuses.” Through institutions established early on as trustworthy, ideologies
enforced by these institutions maintain subjugation to the State, or political economy
and its state apparatuses, both repressive and ideological.
It might be helpful to break down Althusser’s concept of the Ideological State
Apparatus. Althusser describes this phenomenon as, “a certain number of realities,
which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and
specialized institutions (p. 96).” The examples present are institutions in the form of
religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade union, communications, and
cultural. Whereas the Repressive State Apparatus functions by “violence,” the
30

44. Ideological State Apparatus functions by ‘ideology’ (p. 97). This is what makes it
powerful because it has the capacity to affect the unconscious, further enacting
messages that by subliminal injection maintain subjection.
Political class struggles revolve around the state and its execution of power via
ideologically driven apparatuses. This is where Althusser gives the means to explore
the Ideological State Apparatus, in terms of real world examples. He says that
institutions like education, church, and communications, helped to repress the
resistance of the marginalized by expressing contradictions, which inevitably divide. It
is these types of institutions which are the most pertinent when discussing the hip hop
movement. This is not to say that studies, which cite the blatant policing of rap, are not
important.20 These studies are inextricably linked to this discourse. Blatant examples of
how repressive state institutions (police, the courts, and the prison system) clearly
define how policing and overt force is exercised to contain hip hop, but these are not
the only mechanisms of power used to control rap. For the purposes of this study, I will
focus on the subliminal forms of control, those mechanisms that use ideological
manipulation to contain the hip hop movement.
Mechanisms of Power and Social Movements
In order to discuss the hip hop movement as a force caught in the dialectic of
social subservience to Repressive State and State Ideological Apparatuses, the concept
of power must be defined and then discussed in terms of its mechanisms. David A.
31

45. Baldwin in Paradoxes of Power (1989), says, “[Power], in Max Weber’s classic
definition, ‘is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a
position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which
this probability rests’ (Weber, 1947, p.152). Power can be exercised in two ways: 1)
through the use of overt force; 2) or through the use of influence, persuasion and
sometimes manipulation. Althusser’s Repressive State Apparatus is characterized by
the use of power by overt force, while the Ideological State Apparatuses exercise
power by force which influences, persuades and often manipulates. Neither does
conflict or fear necessarily accompany power and how it is exercised (Jackman, 1993,
p. 29).21
This study will focus on the use of power in the more implicit forms—those
used by the Ideological State Apparatuses to maintain societal order and control. A
close examination of power and how it has been most successful in history will provide
an enlightened view of the role of fear in exercising power. Power is most successfully
imposed when exercised without using fear. Fear only induces resistance and thus the
possibility of social revolution. Jackman (1993) suggests that fear is not the actor,
which induces a relationship between influence and compliance, but moreover
conditioning and socialization play key roles. Jackman describes force in a similar
way.
Like power, force involves a conflict of values, and therefore, of interests,
Unlike power, force does not induce compliance: the exercise of force is
instead an admission that compliance cannot be induced by other non-coercive
32

46. means. Those who use force are indeed attempting to achieve their goals in the
face of noncompliance (Jackman, 1993, p. 30).
It is important to note that power necessarily involves a relationship, which is often
negotiated, between actors. Crozier and Friedberg (1980) suggest,
‘[Power] can develop only through exchange among the actors involved in a
given relation. To the extent that every relation between two parties
presupposes exchange and reciprocal adaptation between them, power is
indissolubly linked to negotiation: it is the relation of exchange, therefore of
negotiation, in which at least two persons are involved (Jackman, 1993,p. 30)’
Not only can power only be exercised in the presence of at least two actors, it
necessarily thrives on the unbalanced relationship between the actors. Shifts in power
and resulting relationships born of these shifts inevitably foster social movements.
Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison in Music and Social Movements (1998) say
that social movements are central moments in the reconstitution of culture. Eyerman
and Jamison’s cognitive approach to the study of social movements involves an in-
depth analysis of the relationships between culture and politics; and music and
movements, as collective learning processes (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998).
These collective learning processes are constantly testing the universalibility of
the normative order of civil society (Stewart, 2001, p. 261). Stewart (2001) also notes,
‘Their mechanism is the resolution of contradictions by argumentation or
“critique”.’ Collective learning processes have therefore become the foundation
for the model of modern society; the greater the extent to which social relations
can be organized and integrated through the medium of such processes, the
greater the possibility of the democratic organization of the well-being of
society (Eder, 1993, p.24)’ (Stewart, 2001,p. 216).
Because social movements enable this possibility for a truly democratic organization of
33

47. society, they are dangerous because of their capacity to break down existing social
orders that benefit ruling elites. Stewart (2001) says that social movements coexist with
institutionalized order of economic policy and cannot be regarded as completely
divorced as an emancipated critique because they draw on structural and institutional
necessity, on social networks excluded from the dominant order (Stewart, 2001,
p.225). He says social movements flourish on the necessity of constructed new
political identities (pg 225) (Stewart, 2001). They cannot completely denounce ties to
the dominant order of society because in part the movement in one way or another
thrives on some of those dominant structures. Furthermore, the only accounts of
successful movements in history were inevitably connected in many ways to dominant
ideology, political and economic structuring, as well as social dynamics, which favored
ruling elites more so than the oppressed. Stewart (2001) explains how the break down
of conflicts based on the collective consciousness of class struggle were deemed as one
of the most dangerous types of mobilization and thus demobilization of collective class
conflicts occurred (Stewart, 2001,p.225). This is by far not the only means nor the
most effective means of controlling social uprising. Over time, the strength of
collective social movements has been recognized and targeted by governmental,
nongovernmental, and private institutions in order to maintain control over social
dissidence. History has proven that effective infiltration uses the power of implicit
force in order to break down the organization, momentum, and support of the social
movement. These implicit methods of force cause social movements to implode from
34

48. within, thus disabling the movement’s capacity to communicate with its supporters and
maintain a collective plan of action.
One of the most important power dynamics used to control social movements is
cooptation. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of American English (2003)22,
cooptation is “creating alliances/arrangements with a group that allows you to redirect
the groups priorities so they fall in line with the interest of the status quo.” Cooptation
of movements uses collaboration and the arrangement of alliances in order to redirect
the priorities and foundational goals of the movement. The cooptation of the hip hop
movement began in 1979 with its birth, which was really a rebirth, of hip hop as a
mainstream American phenomenon. The hip hop movement, which was quoted as a
“passing fad” quickly gained mainstream success and spiraled into a corporate entity
capable of creating, building, and redirecting profit, but always subject to industry
control. One of the most instrumental mechanisms of power used to co-opt the
blossoming movement of hip hop is ideology. Whether it was imparted through the
lyrics, through videos, or used to shape artists, ideology has played a key role in the
split of the hip hop movement.
The Power of the Culture Industry
I might've failed to mention that this chick was creative
But once the man got you well he altered her native
Told her if she got an image and a gimmick
that she could make money, and she did it like a dummy
Now I see her in commercials, she's universal
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49. She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle
Now she be in the burbs lickin rock and dressin hip
And on some dumb shit, when she comes to the city
Talkin about poppin glocks servin rocks and hittin switches
Now she's a gangsta rollin with gangsta bitches
Always smokin blunts and gettin drunk
Tellin me sad stories, now she only fucks with the funk
Stressin how hardcore and real she is
She was really the realest, before she got into showbiz
I did her, not just to say that I did it
But I'm committed, but so many niggaz hit it
That she's just not the same lettin all these groupies do her
I see niggaz slammin her, and takin her to the sewer
But I'ma take her back hopin that the shit stop
Cause who I'm talkin bout y'all is hip-hop
–Common Sense23
In “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” Common Sense, personifies hip hop and describes
the evolutionary journey “she” undergoes. I argue that this path of hip hop he
describes is characteristic of the developing divisiveness of the movement once it
became mainstreamed and exploited by the industry. Hip hop became a true pop
culture commodity and in the process it left behind some its resistive origins. Common
acknowledges that once hip hop gained its popular culture status it was susceptible to
the engineering, marketing, and rearrangement of the music industry, which is
reinforced by past productions of a deep-rooted culture industry. Culture in American
society is a controlled concept. The evolution and split of the hip hop movement is
inevitably a result of the power of the culture industry.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1997) describe the culture industry as a universal stamp, a systematic uniformity of
forms of art, especially those arts, which thrive on mass production. "Culture now
36

50. impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a
system which is uniform as a whole and in every part (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1997,
p. 120)." Adorno (1991) clarifies that ‘industry’ is not to be taken literally. He says it
refers to standardization and the rationalization of distribution techniques, but not
strictly to production processes (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 100).
Horkheimer and Adorno (1997) argue that the culture industry is produced by a
combination of mass production and monopoly. They say,
Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial
framework begin to show through. The people at the top are no longer so
interested in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its
power grows. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth
that they are just business is made into and ideology in order to justify the
rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and when
their directors' incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the
finished products is removed (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1997, p. 121).
As the discursive practices of those in control become more openly apparent, the
power of culture as an industry grows and its effects are more apparently felt. Because
millions of participating consumers fuel these industries, certain reproduction
processes become necessary and as classical economic models reassure, the required
supply must matches the demand for the product. Horkheimer and Adorno (1997)
claim that standards are based on consumer needs, therefore standards are usually
accepted with little resistance. Although Debord and others argue that these needs are
manufactured. Horkheimer and Adorno (1997) say the result is a circle of manipulation
in which the unified system steadily gains strength.
37

51. Whereas Horkheimer and Adorno argue that the manipulation of individual
consciousness represses the need for resistance, Arthur Asa Berger (1995) argues that
not only does the manipulation of consciousness result in repression of the culture
industry itself, but also in the repression of resistance against existing social and
ideological orders of control.
Berger in Cultural Criticism: A Primer to Key Concepts, (1995) says the
purpose of the culture industry is to manipulate the consciousness of the masses in
order to maintain state repressive and ideological state apparatuses (p.45). “Capitalists
societies utilize the arts and the culture industries to maintain themselves and to
prevent revolution or radical social change (Berger, 1995, p.45).” Music as a “culture”
industry manipulates the audiences’ consciousness to complacently accept the
dominant social order. Berger (1995) describes a similar process, where culture
industries act more forcefully than manipulatively. He says interpellation is the
process by which cultural representations coerce individuals into accepting ideologies
carried by these representations (Berger, 1995, p. 57).24 Berger also notes that
reproduction and reinforcement work hand in hand to maintain this ideological control.
Industry controlled cultural commodities are governed by the realization of their
market value not by the variation of their content. In “Culture Industry Reconsidered”,
Adorno notes that Brecht and Suhrkamp, nearly thirty years prior to his work,
expressed,
The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto
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52. cultural forms. Ever since these cultural forms first began to earn a living for
their creators as commodities in the market-place they had already possessed
something of this quality. But then they sought after profit only indirectly, over
and above their autonomous essence (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 99).
Adorno connects a profit motive to the production of cultural forms. However, he
cautions that at a particular point profit became the only motive and autonomy no
longer a concern. Adorno implies that cultural reproduction is a characteristic of texts
produced by culture industry. In terms of the effect of reproductions of culture on the
masses, Adorno argues that there is a blind acceptance of routines and behavioral
patterns by the masses that has a detrimental effect on not only the differential lines
between art and reality, but also the reality of what is changeable and unchangeable
within society (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 105). This blind acceptance also manifests as
a complacency of the masses.
Attali (1985) notes that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz describe the ideal political
organization as a ‘Palace of Marvels,’ which is a harmonious machine within which all
of the sciences of time and every tool of power are deployed.
‘These buildings will be constructed in such a way that the master of the house
will be able to hear and see everything that is said and done without himself
being perceived, by means of mirrors and pipes, which will be a most important
thing for the State, and a kind of political confessional’
(pg 7).
A ‘Palace of Marvel’ is exactly how the culture industry is governed as an Ideological
State Apparatus. Attali (1985) argues that eavesdropping, censorship, recording, and
surveillance are weapons of power. These weapons are exercised well by the culture
39

53. industry, especially the power to censor and record noise. Attali (1985) adds,
The technology of listening in on, transmitting, and recording noise is at the
heart of this apparatus. The symbolism of the Frozen Words, of the Tables of
Law, of recorded noise and eavesdropping—these are the dreams of political
scientists and the fantasies of men in power: to listen, to memorize—this is the
ability to interpret and control history, to manipulate the culture of a people, to
channel its violence and hopes. Who among us is free of the feeling that this
process, taken to an extreme, is turning the modern State into a gigantic,
monopolizing noise emitter, and at the same time, a generalized eavesdropping
device. Eavesdropping on what? In order to silence Whom (p. 7)?
The Culture Industry operates as the State’s gigantic noise emitter. It emits the noise of
reproduced and reinforced cultural value. It reproduces stereotypes and ideologies
which ruling elites maintain in order to ensure the existence of a permanent underclass,
and thus their financial stamina as top beneficiaries of the western capitalistic
economic order. It is the culture industry’s ability to disguise its manipulation of
consciousness, which enables it to control this machine. Adorno adds that the culture
industry uses its facade of concern for the masses in order to “duplicate, reinforce and
strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchangeable (Bernstein
(ed.), 1991, p. 99).” Attali (1985) also says that the banning of subversive noise is
necessary to curb the demands for cultural autonomy. He says totalitarian theorists
argue that bans on revolutionary art are used as controlled tonalism. Attali (1985) says,
Support for differences or marginality: a concern for maintaining tonalism, the
primacy of melody, a distrust of new languages, codes, instruments, a refusal of
the abnormal—theses characteristics are common to all regimes of that nature.
They are direct translation of the political importance of cultural repression and
noise control (pg 7) (Attali, 1985).
Modern musical distribution strategy contributes to social censorship of art and
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54. cultural reproduction. Attali notes that economic and political dynamics lead to the
investment in art, which then becomes controlled and industry-shaped art. Artists are
left with few options because they have less and less control over content artistically
speaking and it seems whatever is produced serves an ulterior function as commodity,
as reproduction, or as meaningless popularly accepted “noise”. Attali (1985) further
explains this phenomenon of control.
The economic and political dynamics of the industrialized societies living
under parliamentary democracy also lead power to invest art, and to invest in
art, without necessarily theorizing its control, as is done under dictatorship.
Everywhere we look, the monopolization of the broadcast messages, the control
of noise, and the institutionalization of the silence of others assures the
durability of power. Here, this channelization takes on a new, less violent, and a
more subtle form: laws of political economy take the place of censorship laws.
Music and Musicians essentially become either objects of consumption like
everything else, recupertors of subversion, or meaningless noise (p. 8).
It is this type of cooptation of music, which helps to repress its capacity to be an agent
of social change and to motivate and encourage social and critical consciousness
amongst listeners.
Various types of media reinforce different viewpoints, perspectives, and
ideologies. Music is not an exception. Berger (1995) says, media are most effective
when stimulating people and activating already stored material, which generates
desired responses. In addition he says, “people respond to works not on an individual
basis, but collectively, generally as part of an unrecognized massification or
mobilization of acceptance.” It is this individual choice, manifested in terms of
collective decision-making, which has enabled the success and thus maintenance of the
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55. culture industry of music, and furthermore the cultural production of popular hip hop.
Attali (1985) says,
Music is prophecy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of
society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire
range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will
gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of
things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday,
the herald of the future. For this reason, musicians, even when officially
recognized, are dangerous, disturbing, and subversive; for this reason it is
impossible to separate their history from that of repression and surveillance (p.
11).
Attali recognizes that artists are inevitably linked to the processes and goals of the
industry, which in turn reports to the demands of the State to operate within the
confines of subservience to the political economy. Horkenheimer and Adorno say the
effect of the culture industry in total is one of “anti-enlightenment” in which
enlightenment is described as the:
The progressive technical domination of nature, becomes mass deception and is
turned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development of
autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for
themselves. These, however, would be the precondition for a democratic
society, which needs adults who have come of age in order to sustain itself and
develop (Bernstein (ed.), 1991, p. 106).
Horkenheimer and Adorno suggest that because culture industry acts as anti-
enlightenment, that it prevents the formation of necessary preconditions for
democracy. The “fettering of consciousness” they describe works against fully
developed adults’ ability to sustain and continue to develop a functional democratic
system. Attali further connects this construct of musical texts as part of the total
42

56. construction of society. He says in the reality of everyday life, few are given a voice
(Attali, 1985, p. 8).
The culture industry phenomenon and its manifestation in the music industry
have inevitably shaped the cultural shift of musical movements, especially the split of
hip hop into either the noise of a mass produced culturally-deafening industry or a
repressed, lost, and forgotten self supported underground whisper of empowerment.
The Undermining of the Hip Hop Movement
The undermining of the hip hop movement has occurred primarily as a result of
power exercised by ideological state apparatuses such as the culture industry and mass
media. Indirectly, other ideological apparatuses such as education, the church, and
family also reinforce the power and control of the culture industry and mass media.
Studies on venue resistance25 and radio airplay trends26 exemplify the explicit policing
of hip hop, but few studies categorically look at ideological institutions and how these
“trusted entities” falsify, construct, and embed values, ideals, and stereotypes that
benefit the status quo. Even though this study separates the repressive state
apparatuses, such as the police, from the ideological state apparatuses, such as
education, it is important to think of these apparatuses as a system or machine that uses
specific parts to achieve particular goals. These apparatuses function in everyday life
and from remarkably early ages, individuals are socialized—ideologically-trained as a
result. Hip hop is a movement of no exception. From its mainstream birth, the
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57. traditional apparatuses (culture industry, mass media, education, church, family) as
well as some created apparatuses such as The Parents Music Resource Center27, have
worked to undermine the movement. This undermining, which has resulted in
divisiveness, manifests in both explicit and implicit ways. The culture industry and
mass media continue to have the most damaging impact on the hip hop movement.
The culture industries and mass media work to construct hip hop for the
masses, this undermines its potential as an effective social movement. Hip hop artists
are caught between two worlds; one, which provides the riches, fame, and glory of
mainstream industry success, and another which leaves the artists to fend for
themselves as outsiders of the economic order, which ensures their survival, but
necessarily contradicts their politics. As a result, hip hop has undergone a divide. One
path of hip hop evolution is rich, famous, and glorified by mainstream industry and
maintains and reinforces governmental ideological controls by maintenance of
Repressive State and Ideological State Apparatuses. The other path of hip hop’s
evolution critiques governmental and industry power structures and control
mechanisms, but is often forced to operate outside mainstream recognition and success.
The latter path of hip hop gathers success on an underground, usually local small venue
circuit. Keith Negus in Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (1999), notes that Kevin
Powell, a hip hop historian, said in a magazine profile of Death Row Records
published prior to Tupac Shakur’s death:
‘There is no way to truly comprehend the incredible success of Death Row
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58. Records—its estimated worth now tops $100 million—without first
understanding the conditions that created the rap game in the first place: few
legal economic paths in America’s inner cities, stunted educational
opportunities, a pervasive sense of alienation among young black males, black
folk’s age-old need to create music, and a typically American hunger for money
and power. The hip hop Nation is no different than any other segment of this
society in its desire to live the American dream’ (Negus, 1999, p.84)
Powell acknowledges that the hip hop industry is no different then any other American
capitalist industry, which seeks to profit and make the rich richer, while keeping the
poor poorer. The “American Dream” here is discussed as the pursuit of money and
power and Powell makes the connection between the current direction of hip hop and
what life goals are ideologically embedded in the minds of youth—the goal of
achieving money and power. Negus (1999) adds,
The approach to the relationship between rap music and the recorded
entertainment industry that I am proposing here is more complex than the often
narrated tales of co-optation, exploitation and forced compromise to a
commercial agenda, although these pressures are certainly not absent. At the
same time, it is an attempt to avoid the celebration of black entrepreneurialism
or the endorsement of rap as a type of material success-oriented ‘fun
capitalism’ (pg 85).
Here Negus points to the internal pathology of the movement as part of the complex
relationship between rap music and industry. I argue that the cooptation and
exploitation of rap is socially situated and ideologically grown as part of larger
political, economic, and social contexts. Negus says in his chapter titled, ‘Between the
street and the executive suite’, rappers simultaneously are identified with “the street”
but also take on the role as executives (Negus, 1999, p.85).
This level of analysis points the finger at the “Othering”28 of the hip hop
45