Hip-hop has gotten the rap for furthering a lot of bad things: homicide, violence, gang-banging, sagging, drugging, promiscuity and degrading of women.
In fact, while I was writing this article, former St. Louis City Comptroller Virvus Jones, stopped by the American’s newsroom, ranting about some youngsters on Natural Bridge who asked him to donate to a building fund for a new hip-hop museum.
They might as well have cussed him. Jones can’t fathom why hip-hop would need a museum, let alone what would go inside it.
He’s a jazz baby and doesn’t see the good in hip-hop (except that a jazz artist was probably the first rap performer).
Jones’ attitude toward the art form once called “the CNN of the ghetto” mirrors that of a lot of folks. Especially older folks.
But local hip-hop producer Ahmed Oliver recently gave the life-imitating and aggrandizing art form credit for something even Jones, a politico and Barack Obama supporter, could appreciate.
“Hip-hop music is why Obama has so many young white supporters,” said Oliver, who has produced hits for Nelly under his then Mo Beatz production outfit.
“They love hip-hop music, and it has introduced them to black culture and issues, which let them know that we share some common battles and desires.”
Could this have contributed to the record numbers of young voters at this year’s Super Tuesday primary and beyond?
Organizations like the national Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and Rock the Vote deserve some credit. And so does the Obama platform and campaign, which last summer zagged to a hip-hop event starring Usher instead of zigging to a AARP-sponsored candidate forum in Iowa. Obama drew a record number of under-25 voters to the Iowa caucuses, giving him a surprising and substantial victory margin.
Bakari Kitwana, former editor of the Source (hip-hop mag), spoke on the subject of hip-hop and race in America in his 2005 book, White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America.
He writes, “The best remedy for leaving the old racial politics on the pages of history is a successful hip-hop political movement… This generation, as its cultural movement turns toward politics, is creating for us all another choice.” That has some truth to it. Obama is certainly another choice, one young people – black, white, red, brown and yellow – can buy into.
White kids bought into hip-hop’s rebellious charge, and blacks into bought into the rebellion of young whites – even Eminem’s rebellion against his mother. Though you’d be hard-pressed to find a black rapper dissing his mother on wax, as Bakari points out.
To comprehend the hip-hop voting bloc (age 18 to mid-40s) that has emerged, Barkari writes that one must “think of hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon that began as an influential local force in black communities but now captures the imagination of youth across racial, ethnic and economic imperatives.”
So it’s good for race relations. My visits to mostly-white clubs are always backdropped with hip-hop music. Thus it introduces us to one another, whether we party together or apart. Good race relations is a good thing.
And if hip-hop plays a part in that – good for hip-hop. But if hip-hop plays a part in electing America’s first black president – with all the ramifications and symbolism of that – that’s absolutely great.
That would be something to be jazzed about, Virvus!
