Open Journal Montreal

Hiphop DJ’s disrupt the flow from artistic production to market consumption by cutting and sampling old records- using them to create commodities. Rappers take apart language to build new rhythms, and to tell stories that hadn’t made it into music before. Between rap, turntablism, graffiti, and breakdance hiphop crafted a hybrid equation that came at mainstream culture with an onslaught of new ideas about how life is, how to survive it, how to be in your body, and make your mark on your environment. “As Flavor Flav said later, “We got some nonbelievers out here tonight.” But everywhere we went we made converts” (Simmons 60). And alongside this growing understanding of hiphop’s ability to disrupt, reconfigure, challenge and convert the status quo, developed the realization that, for the most part, the corporate structure’s imagination when it came this new culture was too small.

When Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow were still performing in clubs around New York, Russell Simmons worked promotions for PolyGram. He had access to a vision of corporate success from inside a major label’s headquarters, and we might assume he’d have learned a lot. But according to Simmons, everything he needed to know about how to build his organization was to be found in other situations: “on tour you learn retail, radio, marketing and promotion. And, of course all this information helps you grow as a manager. All this stuff can’t be learned from inside the building” (68). Simmons’ perspective on the ground, and out at the margins, contributed to his understanding of the fundamental elements of hip hop, and led him to believe that this culture he was a part of was going to be something much bigger and more transformative then a fad.

The fashion industry had quickly become fascinated with hip-hop culture, in part, at least, because of the culture’s deep investment in lifestyle, image and authenticity. With lines like “Calvin Klein’s no friend of mine” hip-hop had rejected mainstream culture, and chosen to triumph their street-wise Adidas instead. Some companies, especially Cross Colors, had begun to target the hip-hop market successfully. Simmons took their strategy further. Rather then thinking about hiphop as a niche market, Simmons sold it as the new mainstream. His style spoke to and helped create new cultural leaders- the upper class of hip-hop culture- and expected trend followers of every race and class to fall in line. This twist of logic, this change in communicative strategy, expanded the scope and importance of hip-hop culture.

Greg Wahl, in his essay “I Fought the Law (and I Cold Won!): Hip Hop in the Mainstream,” argues that “the potential for politically committed positive rap acts to enter the mainstream and jar it out of complacency” fails in part because of “the specific socio-economic system of the music and entertainment industry, with its conflicting constructions of rebellious resistance and commercial stardom” (99). Wahl’s analysis centers around Run-DMC and begins with Walk this Way.

In the video for Walk this Way, Run-DMC’s energy completely overtakes the aging rock band until Aerosmith is compelled to fall into step with these new contenders for the mainstream (Wahl 104). For people like me, this video was a revelation. Compared to Aerosmith, Run-DMC had a vitality and an authenticity that surprised and delighted even little white girls in small university towns in Ontario. “In a kind of commercial judo move, Run-DMC used Aerosmith’s momentum of failure and MTV’s momentum of regression in a way that propelled themselves into the mainstream” (104). But Wahl goes on to argue that Run-DMC’s revolutionary potential falls flat in the 1990’s, an argument based mostly on Joey Simmons’ religious conversion. Wahl argues that the music industry is able to manipulate the tension between oppositionality and conformity to make their profit and, also, to reinforce “violent systems of power and domination, especially racism” (110). Though this has undoubtedly proven true over the course of entertainment industry history, there have been other patterns at work as well. There have been other people- outside the industry system- who were changed by being brought into contact with the music, because of the widespread dissemination made possible by the industry system, and who took up hiphop’s tools and tactics to tell their own version of its story.

The other day on Etalk Daily Somalian/Canadian rapper K’naan said he had heard rap music when living in Somalia, and though he didn’t know the language, he had understood that this music was fundamentally about struggle. And when I was a little pre-teen and I bought Salt n’ Peppa’s tape- the one with Let’s Talk About Sex- I listened to it over and over again. Their way of being funny, brave, sexy, straight-talkin’ feminists was like a light at the end of my anger and confusion about being a girl. Plus you could dance to it. So I disagree with Wahl’s dark reading of the political potential of hip-hop within corporate culture. His argument performs a kind of slight of hand when he suggests that the trajectory of a few groups from the old school towards ‘conformity’ proves the inevitable triumph of the industry’s conservatism over the entire movement.

Because hiphop is not a few groups, it’s not a single rigid method or style, it is instead an open and multifaceted process of making that’s based on a single mental twist. And it’s this mental twist that hiphop shares with open source.

(Stay tuned for part 2!)

tags: communication, culture, DJ, fashion, feminism, graffiti, Hiphop, history, industry, marketing, perspective, theory, turntablism   

[ originally posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at 9:30 am and is filed under Music, Open Source, Media, Everything. ]