[When I wrote a Thanksgiving
post on Macklemore, I realized I had never written a full series
AmericanStudying rap, one of the most distinctly American, and most complex and
contested, musical genres. Well, that changes this week. I’d love to hear your
own Rap Readings in comments! And I have to highlight here the work of Dr. Regina Bradley, AKA Red Clay Scholar, the best current
scholar of all things rap and hip hop.]
On two complementary
ways rap can engage and extend a social movement.
Back in that
Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I wrote about “White Privilege”
(2005), the rich and thoughtful song through which he (at a very early moment
in his career) considered what it means to be a white rap artist and the roles
that race, culture, and identity have played and continue to play in the genre
and its evolution. Well, just over a month ago Macklemore released a sequel, “White Privilege 2” (2016),
and the new song is richer, more thoughtful, and more complex than the first in
every way, including its use
of multiple voices and perspectives, its layered engagements with
Macklemore’s own identity as both a person (speaking to himself as Ben, his
actual rather than stage name) and an artist, and, especially, its focus on the
#BlackLivesMatter movement to ask questions about white agency, responbility,
and limits not just in rap music but in American culture and society overall. Those
looking to critique Macklemore as a poser or cultural appropriator will I’m
sure find plenty to dislike—but to my mind, the song not only engages with
precisely those issues, but also serves as a vital model for how all white
Americans can support the #BlackLivesMatter movement honestly and
self-critically.
It remains the
case, however, that, as Macklemore put it in the first “White Privilege,” “hip
hop started off on a block I’ve never been to/To counteract a struggle that I’ve
never even been through.” Portraying that block and struggle quite powerfully,
in both implicit and direct conversation with #BlackLivesMatter, is another
recent rap album: J.
Cole’s amazing 2014 Forest Hills Drive
(2014). Named after his childhood home in Fayetteville, North Carolina (also home
to my favorite American artist, Charles
Chesnutt!), Cole’s album is rivaled only by Kendrick
Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012)
as an artistic expression of what it means to grow up and live as a young
African American male in late 20th and early 21st century
America. And the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the years between
the albums has allowed Cole, both in his album and in his public
statements and conversations, to consider those social and historical
issues of race and community even more directly and fully. Indeed, alongside Ryan
Coogler’s stunning debut film Fruitvale
Station (2013), I would call Cole’s album the best cultural complement
to the #BlackLivesMatter movement to date.
It’d be easy to
see Cole’s and Macklemore’s engagements with that movement as alternatives or
even competing options—and given that radio airplay and journalistic stories
and the like are ultimately limited in time and scope, I would agree that often
priorities have to be established (and, to be clear, that Cole’s perspective on
this issue should take priority over Macklemore’s in that case). Yet as I have
done in so many posts here, I would also and most importantly return to an
additive rather than a competive model for our culture and collective attention
and memory. Not only because our digital and multimedia moment makes it far more
possible for us to listen to and share lots of songs and artists (whether they’re
getting radio play or media coverage or not), although that’s an important rejoinder
to my first point in this paragraph to be sure; but also because as powerful as
any individual work and voice might be, there’s an even greater power in putting
them in conversation and resisting what Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie has called “the danger of a single story.” As I hope this
week’s posts have reflected, rap has never been a single story, and indeed its
many stories and voices are a key part of what makes it such an important American
genre.
February Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other rap artists, songs, or analyses you’d share?
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