Quote:
Originally posted by Bamboozled
......most of those "fans of hip-hop" (read: young, white, suburban kids) that will run out in hordes to see Malibu's Most Wanted, won't give Platinum (assuming it's legit) the time of day. There's not enough buffoonery going on. Where were they when Brown Sugar was released? Oh yeah, there were no 40 ounces, fat gold chains and Air Force Ones, so why bother? 
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You hit the nail right on the head, and this is why I object to the "mainstreamness" of hip-hop or rap if you will. Because the mainstream always seeks to decontextualize the portions of black culture it appropriates. When sistermadly states that most of the white hip-hop fans are born in the 80's and have made Eminiem the most popular rapper in the planet, she doesn't understand that Eminem does not represent the purest form of the art, the voice of oppressed people who were once voiceless. The content of the rap music that sells today is as mainstream as it gets, from the crass materialism, to the minstrelsy; you see nothing countercultural or revolutionary in the pop rap that sells in droves to these white kids. Now, the litmus becomes how many of these white kids will buy Dead Prez's new album, I'm sure some will, but 10 mil like 50 cent and Eminem? I doubt it very seriously.
A few years back I hosted a forum on campus during black history month about minstrelsy and hip-hop in which several white students came to try to understand "why we can't like Tupac?" (as one student asked me). During the forum I discussed the history and social role that minstrelsy has had in this country. Minstrelsy has always represented to mainstream America the idea that no matter what social-economic standing that a white person may have, at least they do not have blackness-the anathema of any white supremacist culture. To portray blacks as hedonistic, hypersexed, undisciplined, materialistic, and just down right sub human (culturally) it affirms their position in this society as abject- a constant reminder to those in the mainstream of what can happen if you adapt these virtues (these values were never actually the values of blacks at the time, they were simply ascribed to blacks in an effort to get people not to have those values, since they already equated black people as being subhuman. This aided in the normalizing of the Protestant work ethic and aided in the hegemony of both Capitalism and White Supremacy in this country). It also (in the minds of whites) justifies the position of blacks in this society and essentializes the black identity as that of perpetually disadvantaged and helps to negate the possibility of or need for social change. The reason why whites have enjoyed the cultural artifacts of black people throughout the years is because they have been able to take it out of its context, redefine it, and then sell it back to America as something completely different, useless in the struggle for liberation. After I explained this, a white student says "I didn't know it was that deep, I just like the music," again affirming my point that whites don't appreciate black art in the context in which it was intended.
Some may think that I am blowing this way out of context, but In the 90's, this minstrel stuff began to take on creepy aspects as whites not only wanted to see black abjection, but now they want to see black death. Record companies are marketing black death to the mainstream as the ultimate solution to this abject entity in American society, the "black" identity. Look At all of the titles of Biggie's Albums, the cover of "Maciavelie" and the whole media blitz about 50cent (everybody knows he's been shot 9 times).It wouldn't suprise me at all to start seeing more and more rappers die and a continual release of their albums "posthumously"
Blackwatch!!!!!!