Fight The Power

Fight The Power:

Re-envisioning Hip Hop as a Black Cultural Renaissance in a White Patriarchal Society

Ren·ais·sance

/ˈrenəˌsäns/

noun

1. the revival of art and literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th–16th centuries.

2. the culture and style of art and architecture developed during the Renaissance.

3. a revival of or renewed interest in something.

(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Hip Hop has undoubtedly become the pinnacle of pop culture in modern-day America. It has initiated a precedent for how Black life and Black culture is perceived while infiltrating the confines of all ethnic groups and in turn manifesting a multitude of variations of how different cultures identify with Hip Hop. Deeper than this, Hip Hop has represented and provided a face for protest and social change. Whether it has been Kendrick Lamar encouraging Black solidarity and highlighting Black struggle through his album “To Pimp A Butterfly” or N.W.A. explicitly denouncing abusive law enforcement, specifically in the Los Angeles area with their explosive song “F*ck The Police”, Hip Hop has unabashedly sponsored and cultivated Black culture and unintentionally contributed to the capitalistic and cultural framework of American society. However, as its initial purpose intended, it has simultaneously become the voice of the marginalized and gives a voice to tribulations and harsh realities that Black and Brown bodies endure on a regular basis, similar to the New Negro and Black Power Movements. Both the New Negro and Black Power exuded and promoted Black pride and Black liberationist ideologies through the introduction of new literary works and art forms. Following in the footsteps of these movements with a controversially received inception and introduction to society, Hip Hop has not gotten its just due historically and connectedly, there is a lack of education on the subject in its entirety.

Staying true to the definition of renaissance, The culmination of events of the Hip Hop era constitutes it as a Black renaissance that has not been properly documented yet falls amongst the ranks of Black socio-political movements such as the New Negro movement and Black Power. With the understanding that Hip Hop has served as a resurgence of the Black voice used as a vessel to promote Black liberation and visualization of Black power, the documentation and analysis of Hip Hop as a cultural movement, specifically through a Black feminist framework, will allow for a respectful and yet brutally honest education about this era and its irrevocable influence on America.

Understanding that there is a lack of education on the origins and impact of Hip Hop, the research and information within this paper sought to detail the gaps within the manner in which education on hip hop has been consumed and the problematic nature of this, as well as the emergence of hip hop by way of historical precedents set by the New Negro and Black Power movements. Another important element of this paper is the analysis of the holistic Hip Hop era through a Black feminist lens. Critically analyzing Hip Hop through this lens allows for the construction of the intersections of race, gender, and class to be introduced and broken down with due diligence as these components heavily contributed to the emergence and creation of hip hop.

This essay is greatly reliant on historical evidence as a means for comparison, which will allow for greater connections to the past and present to be drawn in hopes of a more coherent and informed future. Finally, with all data and information presented dutifully encapsulates all facets that have influenced Hip Hop’s creation as a cultural and socio-political movement, a framework for moving forward with such information on an academic front. Although it is potentially problematic to focus data solely on emotional evidence, it is extremely important to do so in relation to a topic that focuses on the human experience for a group of people who have been demonized and stripped of heritage and stories. In collaboration with the historical evidence, this paper is able to properly identify these issues at hand and provide a framework for moving forward.

One fateful day in 1973 at a Bronx house party on 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, as the story goes, the course of Hip Hop was marked in history. Clive Campbell, or DJ Kool Herc as he is more famously known as, introduced a merge of two tracks that overlapped on one continuous beat that changed the face of music. Other DJ’s such as Grandmaster Flash, continued to manipulate tracks and incorporated storytelling and performance to their sets. This stylistic addition became a staple in Hip Hop and influenced the soon to be culture.

New York has been a mecca for cultural innovation and Black self-expression. Out of this gloom and desperation came the four main elements of Hip Hop: deejaying, MCing or rhyming, B-Boying or B-Girling and graffiti. These elements came about in response to racist housing infrastructure, gang violence, poverty, and various other points of discontent in the Black and Brown communities. Like most great movements, the youth were overwhelmed with broken promises of a better tomorrow and tired of struggling to survive in conditions they did not put themselves in. The amalgamation of all these things created the culture Americans have come to know and love today.

Through emotionally charged imagery and well-constructed wordplay invoked thorough slick lyricism, the literary impact that Hip Hop has had in undeniable. With lyrics such as “Instead of the war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me” by the legendary and late Tupac Shakur, these rhymes spoke to hip hop culture and for the entire era. The spirit of such lyrical tenacity was not brand new as it mirrored the efforts of movements past.

The “Negro Problem” has not changed but the scope and way in which it has reared its ugly head has been altered. Because of this fact, generations of the Black community has unwaveringly searched for a method to solving this problem and entering a realm of limitless opportunity and impunity from racial persecution. The New Negro Movement took place during the 1920s and promoted Black pride and progressive politics for Black people, which differed from previous responses to Jim Crow policies in the sense that demands were made more aggressively. In Alain Locke’s text “The New Negro” he speaks more succinctly to this philosophy and the intentions of those who classify themselves as “New Negros.”

“To all of this the New Negro is keenly responsive as an augury of a new democracy in American culture. He is contributing his share to the new social understanding. But the desire to be understood would never in itself have been sufficient to have opened so completely the protectively closed portals of the thinking Negro’s mind. There is still too much possibility of being snubbed or patronized for that. It was rather the necessity for fuller, truer, self-expression, the realization of the unwisdom of allowing social discrimination to segregate him mentally, and a counter-attitude to cramp and fetter his own living ⎯ and so the “spite-wall” that the intellectuals built over the “color-line” has happily been taken down. Much of this reopening of intellectual contacts has centered in New York and has been richly fruitful not merely in the enlarging of personal experience, but in the definite enrichment of American art and letters and in the clarifying of our common vision of the social tasks ahead. (Locke 3)”

Similar to the ideologies that the New Negro Movement sought to establish, the Black Power movement took Black liberation and Black solidarity to another level. The Black Power Movement was an era of Black protest during the 1960s and 1970s that promoted the advancement of Black people in ways that were non-traditional to Black resistance. “Black power… a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community… to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations… to reject the racist institutions and values of this society. The concept of Black Power rests on a fundamental premise: Before a group can enter the open society, it must close ranks (Hines 608).”

As a reactionary response to the motives of the Black Power movement, the Black Arts Movement was born. The Black Arts Movement was a collective of Black artists, authors, poets, musicians, dancers who created Black socially conscious pieces of art forms of protest and whose motives were fueled by the Black Power Movement’s centralized quest for Black liberation. Leaders such as Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez revolutionized Black art which then bred a fundamental Black aesthetic that became the status quo for the Black community.

The common thread between these movements is the artistic approach to putting demands into practice. In response to unfair housing projects and horrific conditions in the South Bronx, Hip Hop originators chose to physically speak out and use their literal voices to make a change. Throughout the course of Black history, we have seen social activists carry out their messages and missions through a variance of creative methods and channels. With the cultivation of art forms as a method of protest and expressing discontent with societal conditions, the Hip Hop era is no different.

The desire to institute and promote Black liberation as a means for acquiring racial equity is a common thread within each of these respective movements. As a framework for fighting against social injustices, key leaders within these three movements clearly articulate their grievances with the times in which they are a part of, provide a solution young people utilizing their collective strength as leaders or artists exercising their creative agency to make impactful art which challenges the status quo, both demographics enforce the power of their voices to enact change toward the betterment Black diasporic community.

In Tricia Rose’s text Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary, she recounts the active efforts that hip hop undertook to ensure that change occurred and was consistent in comparison to prior Black liberation movements. “Attempts to delegitimize powerful social discourses are often deeply contradictory, rap music is no exception ( Rose 103).” This text similarly presents solutions rap musicians presented in response to the issues they experience and see within society and the artistry they coupled with a political charge and message. The explicit telling of reality through rap music shook the traditional visualizations of protest which was seen with movements such as the Black Arts Movement, whose raw language and unapologetic messages forced audiences to engage in ugly truths. These movements sought to find new and innovative outlets to make substantial changes.

A Black Feminist pedagogy seeks to abandon chauvinism and seek inclusion in spaces where it was typically and historically denied. It would be unwise to negate the erasure of the Black woman’s voice in each of these movements. The lived experiences of Black women are perceived to differ greatly from Black men which discredits the efforts of these movements as they are not intersectional or holistic. The erasure of Black women’s voices further promotes the notion that Blackness is monolithic and hence all elements of Black culture must be deconstructed through the varying lenses of race, gender and class identities and to actively and consistently engage in this pedagogy. This pedagogy is not only reliant on data and but true anecdotal evidence and physical proof of what this neglect has done and will continue to do.

Given that there are misconceptions about the origins and history of Hip Hop and how it does not stray far from other Black liberationist movements, there is a need for a reformative Hip Hop education that is fully inclusive and comes from a place of positivity and is uplifting. A Hip Hop education would require connection to the past in order to progressively acknowledge and reconcile the present and its shortcomings. This is especially important as Hip Hop is deeply rooted in the fight against racial injustices and education is the only way to change ill-warranted perspectives. “Hip-hop feminism as well as its critical race feminist progenitors theorizes and chronicles the intricacies of Black violability, but the continued invisibility of systemic violations against Black non-cisgender male bodies requires both existing and new theoretical approaches. These approaches do not de-center Black male violability but encourage an expansive center and co-extant Black subjects and subjectivities. This both and mode of engagement to theorizing Black violability refuses a hierarchical/competitive approach to addressing oppression and also recognizes and rejects the continued flattening of the Black violable subject as a cisgender, heterosexual male (Lindsey 66).” In conclusion, Hip Hop’s cultural impact is unquestionable and truly speaks to the portion of the total resilience and excellence that the Black community holds. Until America is truly willing to reconstruct the capturing of history and abandon the white knowledge framework, the richness of Black innovation will be forever lost in the greater scope of American society.