Entering a post-civil rights movement era, middle-class America experienced relative peace. The underside of this peace, however, housed an underclass who felt none of these privileges – the United States Ghetto. This space, a “hotbed of unrest, dispossession, and powerlessness” (Smitherman 4), would birth a culture America had never witnessed – hip-hop. Serving as a lens into the conditions of both the ghetto and the “marginalized experiences of black and brown people in the United States” (Bradley 1) through rap and cinema, hip-hop disturbed the middle-class peace – rebelling against white economic and psychological hegemony (Smitherman 5). However, this culture has not been met without criticism, and the mainstream media uses a good/bad binary to patronize hip-hop.
Hip-hop’s strength partly derives from its discourse-creating tendencies. This space, primarily through rap music, allows “violence, sexuality, spirituality, viciousness, love, and countless other emotions and ideas” (Perry 6) to “sit next to each other holistically” (6). There is no ideological hierarchy here. Misunderstanding, hip-hop critics pan for gold – searching for the good in an art form they consider bad (6). This investigation is disingenuous – hip-hop is a response to the “messiness of the generational angsts about race, class, and identity” (Bradley 1) left behind from the civil rights movement – a messiness America created. The media fails to realize good and bad do not exist here as opposites but as an interwoven part of complex communities. Panning for gold is redundant, for all is gold here.
Moreover, ideological messages do not constitute good or bad artists. While an artist’s music may be deemed good, their lyrics may be deemed bad, and vice-versa (Perry 40). Rap blends both good and bad together, making their definitions outside its space obsolete. The good or bad label only categorizes “quality according to politics” (40) and contains a plethora of biases. Labeling rap as good or bad carries with it the implication it needs this label to be taken seriously. But deeming rap legitimate is neither the media nor an individual’s responsibility. Rap is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be examined.
Ultimately, the media does what it does best: sowing divisive seeds under the guise of discourse. If hip-hop is either good or bad, then both sides are subtly encouraged not to discuss but dig deeper trenches, constantly finding examples that refute rather than explain. The mistake hip-hop critics make is believing things cannot exist holistically, but rap proves life’s complexity – life is more complicated than a good/bad binary.
Works Cited
Bradley, Regina. Close-Up: Hip-Hop Cinema. Indiana University Press, 2017.
Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood. Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 1-8, 38-57.
Smitherman, Geneva. The Chain Remain the Same: Communicative Practices in the Hip Hop Nation. Sage Publications, Inc., 1997.
Kevin P. Coogan 