joeschmo said:
<i> any comment about hip hop and race would have to bear in mind that a signicant proportion of its audience is, and has been for some time, white.</i>
Sure. And the relevance of that is... what?
Erm, that your 'hey you can't say anything about hip hop coz it's black' point might require some nuancing...
<i>The fact that a few, a very few, indeed a handful, of black males have managed to acquire capital through hip hop has done nothing to help the vast majority of the black population make that same acquisition. On the contrary, by peddling a fantasy that is unattainable for most people (black or white), it has exacerbated the situation. This will always be the case in capitalism, which is structurally unequal, and which produces poverty as one of its inevitable side-effects. It is the idea that the majority of black people will ever benefit from capitalism that is astonishingly short-sighted and naive. </i>
I might or might not agree with this. (I might agree that capitalism produces poverty as a side-effect. I might also note that the massively expanded black middle class is one of the great stories of the last 50 years in America.) But it's at such a high level of abstraction that it's beside the point. This is music we're talking about, not social theory. [/QUOTE]
Your position is really quite nihilistic. .... Music can have no impact on the social... It is fated to be merely an expression of the current socio-economic conditions and can in no way challenge them... At best it can be a kind of lottery which hoists a select few out of poverty....
I don't expect hip-hop artists to magically produce an alternate social system out of nothing. Especially when almost noone else is working on it.
You seem to be entirely ignoring the ways in which music reinforces the existing social system, actually making things worse by narrowing options, if only at the level of fantasy. Presumably on the grounds that all that can be imagined is the forced/ false choice of capital itself: adapt or starve. Hip hop's ideological work consists in reproducing that opposition for capital, a significant task, and one that shouldn't be underestimated. It isn't as if pop has always been like this.... Why do you like Dylan, I wonder? For the formal qualities of his music alone, or because he articulated some desire for change? When it comes to contemporary black artists, though, we must, it seems, lower our expectations... THEY can't be expected to do anything but rhyme about money, violence and sex... It strikes me that this is the real 'white liberal' opinion of hip hop.
And I don't blame them for dealing with the conditions they're presented with.
How could anyone avoid dealing with the conditions they're presented with, since even ignoring them is 'dealing with them'? It's HOW they're dealing with them that's the issue...
Oh, so 50 Cent hasn't produced a Marxist critique of American society? He wants to make money so he can get out of the ghetto? He's not a middle-class revolutionary?
Yes, because we all want him to be middle class revolutionary. And being a revolutionary would automatically mean that you were middle class, of course. There has never been such thing as a BLACK revolutionary, that's unthinkable.
For shame! There are far more worthy targets.
Such as? I can't think of many that have such direct and pernicious influence on young males as hip-hoppers.
And there's something that's fundamentally moralistic about criticizing hip-hop for greed. Greed compared to what? The rest of American society?
Now, here's a thought, maybe American society ain't all that...
The only difference is that hip-hop stars just wave it in your face a bit more. They're loud--such poor manners! How gauche!
OK, so you're now accepting the original claim that hip hop is no different to mainstream capitalist society, a claim you previously rejected as 'specious'. It's not only greed that's the issue... violence... individualism... misogyny... they also play their parts... but I suppose that they, too, are just examples of 'poor manners'... women get attacked all the time, live with it! People get shot in the head everywhere... and I'm blaming hip hoppers for GLORIFYING it? Hush my mouth.