Why Hip-Hop Artists Aren’t Using Their Platforms And What Hip-Hop scholars have to say about it
“Rap is black America’s CNN,” a term coined by Public Enemy’s Chuck D, insinuates that hip-hop music, specifically rap music, is an art that imitates life. However, until the recent influx of protest music, some scholars felt that term didn’t apply to mainstream hip-hop. In an interview Charlie Braxton, journalist and author of Gangsta Gumbo, quoted Amiri Baraka, author of Blues People, saying “You can always tell what black people are thinking and what they’re going through by listening to their music.”
The author of, Gangsta Gumbo, a book detailing the history of Southern hip-hop also stated, “If we were to listen to mainstream hip-hop right now, sans a few people like Kendrick Lamar and J.Cole, you would think that black people are doing very well in this country.”
Braxton’s opinion is based on the recent radio hits that brag more about money, women, and cars than the current state of black America.
Black lives matter and black mainstream hip-hop artists aren’t expressing this or a counter-argument in their music. It’s as if they’re avoiding the subject.
The #BlackLivesMatter movement was created in 2012 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Since then the hashtag has been used and accompanied by names of victims who were either killed under controversial circumstances or by police brutality.
Trayvon Martin, a teen in Sanford, FL, was shot while walking to his house from the gas station. Jordan Davis, a teen in Jacksonville, FL, was shot in a gas station parking lot because the music in his car was too loud. Eric Garner (Baltimore, MD), Mike Brown (Ferguson, MO) and more recently, Alton Sterling (Baton Rouge, LA) and Philando Castile (Falcon Heights, MN) were all victims of alleged police brutality. All names bore the BLM hashtag.
However, with the exception of a few tweets and monetary donations to the bereaving families hip-hop hasn’t been using its platform to speak out.
Since 2012, less than five songs on Billboard’s Year End Top 25 Hip-Hop charts have been implicitly social and/or political. Hip-Hop has the Top 40 influence that it didn’t have in its inception and is able to reach a diverse audience of all races.
Hip-Hop artists have platforms of celebrity that transcend the local activist. Yet, artists who identify the most with these victims of racial injustice aren’t utilizing their art to its full potential.
Tommy Curry, Professor of Hip-Hop Philosophy at Texas A&M University, says the lack of platform use is partly about money and partly about a lack of understanding the movement hip-hop is supposed to represent. “In order for you to make money, you have to stay quiet about certain social injustice.”
“Hip-Hop as a product of the voices of this time period, doesn’t have a real argument about structural racism. [It] doesn’t have a real argument about white supremacy. When is the last time you heard about white supremacy in a hip-hop album? These things don’t happen.”
Southern hip-hop particularly gets the rap of being the most materialistic and money-driven. The region is the most prevalent on the charts and historically known for poor race relations.
“Southern rap does have a materialistic side. [People] don’t feel like it’s up lifting or conscious,’ but what in America isn’t [materialistic],” said Curry. “The thing that’s always frustrated me about how we judge not only southern hip-hop but hip-hop in general is, people make arguments that it’s materialistic as if that’s the only materialistic thing in society.”
Charlie Braxton believes the reason hip-hop and, more particularly, Southern hip-hop is not producing music regarding police brutality issue is because the big record labels.
The South, broken up into its five epicenters — Atlanta, Houston, Memphis, Miami and New Orleans — was once a hub for independent record labels, e.g., Cash Money Records, No Limit Records, and Hypnotize Minds. “Once the mainstream gets involved in hip-hop it has to be commercialized.” In order for it to be commercialized it has to be homogenized,” Braxton said. “So political records that deal with things like race, police brutality and things of that nature can’t happen.”
Some artists who have spoken up in the past not only run the risk of losing money, but also receiving black lash from the public.
Rolling Stone interviewed rapper Nicki Minaj after the death of Eric Garner. She discussed why black artists don’t speak up on political issues.
“I feel like when Public Enemy was doing ‘Fight the Power,’ we as a culture had more power — now it feels hopeless. People say, ‘Why aren’t black celebrities speaking out more?’ But look what happened to Kanye when he spoke out. People told him to apologize to Bush!”
There is a point, however, in an artists career they either reach a level of celebrity that allows them to say or do what they wish or they get to a point in their career where they no longer care how others react.
“I love what Beyoncé did at the Super Bowl. She caught so much hate for it, but I mean that’s America at it’s finest right there,” said rapper Rob Regal, a known “Backpack” rapper. ”You get a big platform and you speak your message. People were just mad that it wasn’t America the beautiful, but America ain’t too beautiful right now.”
Originally published at Keeping Up With Jae.
