music midterm paper 1

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, yo! I’m the e of epmd.

—Erick Sermon of epmd, ‘‘You’re a Customer’’

You see I floats just like some helium and stings

just like Tabasco, been nice wit my skills ever since I had an Afro!

—Crazy Drayz of Das efx, ‘‘They Want Efx’’

I don’t fight clean, float like a butterfly,

stings like a scorpion ridin’ on the tip of a sick ding a ling.

—Heltah Skeltah, ‘‘The Grate Unknown’’

3 Stinging Like Tabasco

Structure and Format in Hip Hop Compositions

This chapter begins with lyrical references to Muhammad Ali. Count-

less such references to Ali exist in hip hop. He was one of the fore-

runners of hip hop, with his introduction of black oral rhyming cul-

ture into the mainstream. Hip hop uses Ali’s style—whether referring

to his Cassius Clay bragging or his Nation of Islam–inspired conver-

sion into an outspoken black nationalist athlete—as a metaphor for skill

and grace. Ali was one of a handful of the first black celebrity figures to

bring black language styles and traditions into the public eye with dig-

nity, self-possession, and power. He provided part of the foundation for

the explosion of hip hop, an artistic variation of traditional black cultural

forms, into the American popular cultural framework.

Boxing may serve as a good metaphor for hip hop anyway. Not only

because both foster a diverse group of bragging personalities with ag-

gressive styles but also because they are strategic competitions. Hip

hop is poetry that shifts styles of defense and offense, moving between

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grace and bull-like forward barreling. It dances, it leans back, and then

it attacks. It uses the broadest allegory to discuss the individual mo-

ment of confrontation. In the so-called ‘‘Rumble in the Jungle,’’ the 1974

Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight, Ali threatened to match Fore-

man’s crushing power with dance.When the actual impact of Foreman’s

power became apparent, Ali responded with strategy, first surprising

Foreman with an insulting right hook, then faking him out for three

rounds, using up Foreman’s energy, and coming back in the final rounds

with new vigor. Analogously, in 8 Mile, the film loosely based on the early days of Eminem, the climax of the movie occurs when the young

rapper prevails in a battle by asserting all of his weaknesses, anticipating

his opponents dissing, and thereby subverting power.

Todd Boyd speaks of the relationship between music and sport in Afri-

can American culture, saying,

I remember hearing Miles Davis talk about how he structured a trum-

pet solo after watching a Sugar Ray Robinson boxing match. Sugar Ray

was known as a master of style. You know, he would walk into the ring

wearing two robes, and he’d take off the outer robe and underneath

would be this white silk robe. It was all about presentation and perfor-

mance. But Miles focused specifically on how Sugar Ray, in the first

round of a fight, would set traps for his opponent without springing

them. And then he’d come back in the second round and spring one of

those traps, and the fight, of course, would be over. And Miles took that

idea and applied it to his solo, so at the beginning of the solo there are all

these traps set, and in the second half of the solo, he’s springing the trap.

So you can flow between those two disparate forms and find that sort

of inspiration. Art really does lay bare the questions, and the questions

can become much more interesting than the answers sometimes.1

Likewise, in hip hop tactical shifts occur within the style of metaphor,

which is highly variable even within one song, as well as in the distinc-

tive style an artist might have as an individual, or if he or she is part

of a group, within the group. Hip hop music is a war of position, and

the position one takes manifests itself in the performance or language.

One of the most commonly used metaphors in this war is that of mur-

der, one frequently employed in boxing as well. In the film depicting the

1974 Ali-Foreman fight, When We Were Kings (dir. Leon Gast, 1996), the people of Zaire, in support of Ali, chant, ‘‘Ali bimboye,’’ meaning ‘‘Ali,

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kill him!’’ Boxers themselves speak metaphorically of murdering oppo-

nents. In the lyrics, ‘‘Like Ali-Frazier / thriller in Manila / pinpoint, point

black microphone killer am I,’’ Chuck D of Public Enemy is the mur-

derer on the microphone, verbally killing competing mcs.2 The use of

murder in hip hop varies. Narratives of gratuitous violence do exist, and

they are heavily critiqued by media pundits, yet there are also rhymes

in which violence stands in as a symbolic explication of skill, courage,

or power, as in the following example: ‘‘Picture blood baths in elevator

shafts / Like these murderous lyrics tight from genuine craft / Check the

print / swear a veteran sparked the letter and / Slow movin’ mcs waitin’

for the edition.’’3

At times, the mc will directly refer to the symbolism, telling the audi-

ence what he or she plans to do lyrically to other mcs; at other times, the

reference to skill or power comes obliquely, as in moments of role-play

as Asian martial arts experts or mafiosi. The reference to the crafted or

powerful violence of another, such as a mafioso, a Bruce Lee, or a boxer,

often comes combined with descriptions of the artist’s skill. Heltah

Skeltah rhyme:

I control the masses with metaphors that’s massive

Don’t ask of the nigga’ll bash shit like Cassius

I’m drastic when it comes to verbs I’ll be flippin’

Cause herbs just be shittin’ off the words I be kickin’

I scold you knuckleheads swore for the petty

But I told you rich niggas that heads ain’t ready

Now I mold you back into the bitch that you are

Fuckin’ with the Ruckus get bruised worse than scars.4

Here, the murder metaphor stands alongside proclamations of competi-

tive orality and superiority. It is in fact an ego assassination that takes

place through the skillful dis. As in much of hip hop, here we find varia-

tions on the game of playing the dozens (an African American folk prac-

tice of competitive insult) and its competitive discourse.

Signifying, another element of black language that appears in hip hop,

is distinguished in African American culture from the dozens largely

for its suggestive and subtextual critique, an expression of cleverness

rather than overtness. The folk expression of signifying finds articula-

tion in the stories of the Signifying Monkey, who tells the Lion that the

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Elephant has been insulting him.The furious Lion demands an apology

from the Elephant, who refuses and roundly stomps him. Only then

does the Lion realize his mistake of taking the Monkey’s word. So, for

example, mc Lyte and Antoinette battled in the late 1990s. mc Lyte, in

her song, ‘‘10% Dis,’’ rhymed, ‘‘Beat biter / dope style taker / tell you to

your face you ain’t nothing but a faker,’’ a dozens-style confrontation,

while Antoinette responded, ‘‘Lights out, now the party’s over / Home-

girl reminds me of my dead dog rover,’’5 using the world light as a double entendre, signaling the impending demise of her competitor, and call-

ing her ugly without saying it directly. While the monkey’s indirect as-

sault in the folktale comes through false gossip, Antoinette employs the

homophone for hers.

Relying on Henry Louis Gates’s call for a vernacular-based literary

criticism in The Signifyin(g) Monkey, Sam Floyd describes the meaning of Signifyin(g) when applied to the black music tradition: ‘‘Signifyin(g) is

a way of saying one thing and meaning another; it is a reinterpretation,

a metaphor for the revision of previous texts and figures; it is tropologi-

cal thought, repetition with difference, the obscuring of meaning—all

to achieve or reverse power, to improve situations, and to achieve pleas-

ing results for the signifier.’’6 As Nelson George says, ‘‘Recontextualiz-

ing someone else’s sounds was, after all, how hip hop started.’’7 It is a

Signifyin(g) form in its origins.

Signifiyin(g) also manifests itself in the previously mentioned mul-

tiple registers of hip hop. Access to these registers constitutes a test

in familiarity with the artist and, for example, his or her sociopolitical

or philosophical location. Sometimes the various registers conflict, so

that the first level of text may actually affirm stereotypes of black men,

for example, or appear to be misogynistic. Yet a deeper register of the

text may then challenge the assumptions, describe feeling locked into

the stereotype, reinterprets it to the advantage of the artist, or make

fun of the holder of the stereotype.8 When registers conflict with each

other, listeners find themselves in a quandary regarding the music’s in-

terpretation. Should it be interpreted according to the deeper registers

or the most superficial, more accessible ones? Floyd writes, ‘‘Through

the energizing and renewing magic of myth and ritual, there emerged

from the volatile cauldron of Call-Response a music charged with mean-

ings centuries old—meanings to which the initiated, the knowledge-

able, and the culturally sensitive responded in heightened communi-

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cation.’’9 Nelson George has described his surprise at the support for

2 Live Crew, the notoriously misogynistic and exploitative Miami Bass

rap group, expressed by black women students during a lecture at Spel-

man College in Atlanta.10 What the episode reveals, however, is that the

female listeners clearly understood a regional cultural register that told

them, ‘‘you can escape this misogynistic construction by not behaving

in a certain manner’’ thereby possibly not identifying the misogyny with

themselves, even if they perhaps should have been appalled by it.

Beyond the arena of music, the Signifyin(g) call-response trope ex-

tends to clothing styles, colloquial speech, spoken word, and the like, all

in conversation with rap and rappers.George describes this in video cul-

ture: ‘‘An exciting interplay—a kind of videographic loop—developed

between the consumers and performers. Performers would latch on to

a new clothing style in the street. That style would be showcased in a

video and the audience would then be turned on to the style, be it Run’s

hat or Snoop Doggy Dogg’s braids.Within a few weeks, an outfit worn in

Queens or Compton would suddenly become a national and sometimes

international trend. Or the dialogue would go the other way.’’11 The call

issued from the video to a national audience response is consistently

reinterpreted, modified, made local, and then made national again.

The Signifyin(g) that Gates articulated in landmark fashion in his

work on the African American literary tradition is abundant in hip hop.

Both the cultural tradition of Signifyin(g) that hip hop in many ways

descends from, as well as the literary theoretical articulation of signifi-

cation that Gates conceptualizes form part of the music. Gates quotes

linguist Geneva Smitherman’s eight features of signification:

1. Indirection, circumlocution

2. Metaphorical-imagistic

3. Humorous, ironic

4. Rhythmic fluence and sound

5. Teachy but not preachy

6. Directed at person or persons usually present in the situational

context

7. Punning, play on words

8. Introduction of the semantically or logically unexpected 12

These elements are present within the universe of the hip hop narra-

tive, but also in the construction of the music, through deejaying, and

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as part of a musical canon. While the textuality is distinct in hip hop as

it is brief, oral, and aural rather than written, and has the appearance

of being entirely vernacular (a false appearance, but significant none-

theless), it does rely on some of the same tools Gates articulates. The

Signifyin(g) on other texts in hip hop occurs both within the world of

rap, and across black music, and even across music in general. When

Dr. Dre lays lyrics of gangster destruction over mellow soul, his compo-

sition signifies on that earlier music’s interpretation of black experience

and yet uses it as a vernacular for creating the contemporary meaning

he articulates. When Biggie Smalls first came out, he was an East Coast

signification on West Coast forms of storytelling, language, and celebra-

tions of wealth and death. Gates describes Signifyin(g) as it appears in

oral tradition:

Motivated Signifyin(g) is the sort in which the Monkey delights; it func-

tions to redress an imbalance of power, to clear a space, rhetorically.

To achieve occupancy in the desired space, the Monkey rewrites the re-

ceived order by exploiting the Lion’s hubris and his inability to read the

figurative other other than as the literal.Writers Signify on each other’s

texts by rewriting the received textual tradition.This sort of Signifyin(g)

revision serves, if successful, to create a space for the revising text. It

also alters fundamentally the way we read the tradition, by defining the

relation of the text at hand to the tradition.13

Biggie’s genius as an mc was to take heed of the manner in whichWest

Coast rap had eclipsed the East and to adopt and reinterpret the symbols

of West Coast hip hop through an East Coast style. In 2003, the Queens-

bred 50 Cent, whose album was released at number one, made a similar

move integrating Southern and Western hip hop sensibilities into his

style. In rap, the figure of the lion as having brute power, as opposed

to the intellectual nuance and trickery of the monkey, might be read as

white supremacy, but other readings are possible too: it might be read

as the power of the trained musician, the power of the civil rights–era

establishment for determining black public discourse and concerns, the

perceived greater social and economic power of black women as com-

pared to black men, all of which might be troped in text.The Signifyin(g)

in rap in sophistication far exceeds a simple reference or response—it

is engagement with other texts and their traditions in the midst of one’s

own piece, using the former as part of the ultimate creation of the latter.

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In fact, the use of the monkey in the folktale itself reminds us that rap

is but a child of earlier forms.

Of the many colorful figures that appear in black vernacular tales, per-

haps only Tar Baby is as enigmatic and compelling as is the oxymoron,

the Signifying Monkey. The ironic reversal of a received racist image

of the black as simian-like, the Signifying Monkey, he who dwells at

the margins of discourse, ever punning, ever troping, ever embodying

the ambiguities of language, is our trope for repetition and revision,

indeed our trope of chiasmus, repeating and reversing simultaneously

as he does in one deft discursive act.14

Exploiting the stereotype while simultaneously expressing literary skill

is one of the prominent ways of using the black literary tradition.

The complex use of the structures of language and storytelling are

critical features that help to describe what hip hop does, and to begin

to develop a critical eye toward its evaluation. The basic elements of

figurative language abound in the form, particularly metaphor. In hip

hop, metaphor allows transcendence. Its frequent use lies at the heart

of artistry in hip hop. It plays on the African American male tradition

of finding freedom in mobility.15 Metaphor in hip hop is about motion

and transformation; its usage allows the artists to move outside of the

boundaries of their communities, and even transcend the limitations of

human fallibility.

Milk: Do you understand the metaphoric phrase ‘‘lyte as a rock’’? It’s

explaining how heavy the young lady is, you know what I’m saying,

king?

Gizmo: Yes, my brother, but I would consider ‘‘lyte as a rock’’ a simile

because of the usage of the word ‘‘as.’’ And now, directly from the planet

of Brooklyn, mc Lyte as a rock!16

This exchange, spoken by mc Lyte’s hip hop artist brothers the ‘‘Audio

Two,’’ a.k.a. Milk and Gizmo, introduces her song ‘‘Lyte as a Rock.’’

It explains the simile in the title with the word heavy (as a rock), meaning having profound insight and wisdom. This song features a

self-conscious use of figurative language, with metaphor and simile

functioning as the most important nonliteral elements in the lyrics, a

phenomenon found throughout hip hop lyrics.

‘‘I’m like . . .’’ is probably one of the five most popular phrases to begin

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hip hop stanzas. Metaphor and simile function in three notable ways in

hip hop. First, they fulfill the obvious task of explication. The mc tells

the listener about him- or herself, or whatever other subject is up for dis-

cussion, through comparison with or use of the characteristics of other

objects, creatures, or entities. Second, they serve as great tools for ex-

hortation and proclamation because through the metaphoric naming

of great things, the mc proclaims his or her own greatness: ‘‘Lyte as a

rock / or I should say a boulder rollin’ down your neck / poundin’ on

your shoulders.’’17 But perhaps most important, metaphor and simile

engage the imagination and expand or transform the universe in which

the mc dwells. With them, the author creates a space of possibility.

Emcees often create dramatic contrast within the sphere of the rhyme

between life as it exists and life as it might be, and they often juxta-

pose those two realities. The conclusion of Special Ed’s ‘‘I Got It Made’’

is reminiscent of Nikki Giovanni’s famous 1970s poem ‘‘Ego Trippin’,’’

as he tells his readers through example about his greatness, or rather

how he ‘‘has it made.’’18 Interspersed with tales of part ownership of

Tahiti and his personal waiter bringing him potato alligator soufflé, are

‘‘My hair was growing too long so I got me a fade / and when my dishes

got dirty, I got Cascade / when the weather was hot, I got a spot in the

shade.’’19 These are distinctly possible and mundane aspects of Special

Ed’s daily life.The music video to accompany the song was partly shot in

front of Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and in aban-

doned lots. In the video, the juxtaposition of expansive imaginative pos-

sibilities and the daily existence of the teenager in New York proves even

more dramatic. During the line ‘‘I got a frog, a dog with a solid gold

bone,’’ Special Ed smiles and holds up a dirty old bone.

It is important to note, however, that metaphor does not always ex-

press great hope or great ability. It can also serve as the expression of

despair, stagnation, or destruction. Natural Bee rhymed, ‘‘Vermin I ter-

minate verbally / I offend more niggas than the Mark Furman tapes,’’20

manifesting a clever destructive power. The appropriation of the names

of the infamous or of weaponry for stage names is a sign of power,

but also a glamorization of destruction. Capone, Noreaga (after General

Manuel Noriega), Smif-N-Wessun (after the gun manufacturers), and,

perhaps most disturbingly, Concentration Camp are names that oper-

ate as metaphors of violent destructive capability. So in the midst of the

great beauty of expression and emotion that operates through metaphor

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in hip hop, there exists an ugliness (with cultural antecedents in toasts)

that must be acknowledged as well.The tradition of harnassing ugliness

to claim power is found in the cultural antecedents of hip hop.

As John Szwed explains, ‘‘The most likely candidate for a direct fore-

bearer of modern rap is the toast, the rhymed monologue, an African-

American poetic form that typically recounts the adventures of a group

of heroes who often position themselves against society either as so

shrewd and powerful as to be superhuman, or so bad and nasty as

to be sub-human.’’21 Figurative language is not only used for the self-

aggrandizement so popular in hip hop music but also for the sake of

making interesting artistic statements. Craig Mack rhymes:

Craig Mack

1000 degrees

You’ll be on your knees

You’ll be beggin’ burning please

Brother freeze man

Undisputed deep-rooted

funk smoke that leaves your brains booted.22

Hip hop is high-sensibility music. Even before music videos became

popular, the use of visual images was common in the poetry of hip hop.

This holistic culture, and participatory performance culture, engages

multiple senses anyway, but in addition, the lyrics themselves speak of

sensory diversity in describing the effects of the music. Senses are trans-

ferred and interchanged. For example, where touch would be, sound has

entered, reinforcing the sense of inundation in the musical experience.

Heavy D. rhymes: ‘‘With moves that sensual / three-dimensional / un-

questionable lover’s a professional.’’23 The multisensory figurative lan-

guage makes reference to the fact that the music is simply the most

prominent expression of a broader cultural form. In addition to the audi-

tory, the visual and the kinetic, the variety of senses and expressions

of senses, are experienced as part of hip hop culture. Renowned dj Kid

Capri has said, ‘‘I made my tapes sound like a party. No matter what it

was. My tapes just made you feel like you were there while the tape was

being made.’’24

The aesthetics of the music have demanded that the multisensory

experience of live music be incorporated into the recorded composi-

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tions, both poetically and in the creation of the sounds of partying. Paul

Gilroy, observing such gestures, writes, ‘‘The hip hop nation has con-

fined its loudly trumpeted enthusiasm for improvisation within strict

limits. Most of the time its favored mode of reality is a virtual one in

which only the illusion of spontaneity is created and the balance be-

tween rehearsed and improvised elements of the creative event shifts

decisively toward the former.’’25 Gilroy does not necessarily locate this as

a criticism, but rather sees that the process impacts the performance of

rap as compared to other black music forms. Certainly, one rarely finds

improvisation in performances of popular artists or onstage, where the

aesthetic of live performance is marketed rather than the reality. But one

does find it at the local venue or party, contexts which continue to pro-

vide inspiration for recorded imitations of multisensory improvisation.

Composition

The more common use of the word composition is useful as it explains the way in which hip hop meets the African/African American ‘‘hetero-

geneous sound ideal.’’ In The Power of Black Music, Sam Floyd cites Olly Wilson in describing this musical ideal ‘‘that results from the timbral

mosaic created by the interaction between the lead voice, chorus, rattle,

metal gong, hand clapping, various wind or strong instruments, and

drums which exists in greater or lesser degrees in almost all African

ensemble music.’’26 By and large, however, hip hop is not the music of

singers or instrument players. One of the effects of desegregation in

some communities and school cutbacks in others was the loss of a ritual-

ized formal space for instrument learning and practice for many African

American children, and this is part of the reason hip hop is not primarily

musician’s music.

Yet I do not wish to posit rap as a music of deprived resources, sug-

gesting that if only young African Americans had learned to play in-

struments, they could have made more ‘‘valuable’’ music. One of the

genius elements of the creation of hip hop is that it has allowed a re-

conception of a number of ways to fit the musical ideal, and I say re- conceive because, as Chuck D told me when I approached him to tell him about this book, ‘‘Ain’t nothin new under the sun,’’ even without

traditional musical tools. Floyd writes about the ideal that ‘‘the combina-

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tion of these sounds creates a contrasting, not a blending conglomerate,

resulting in a sound that is ideally suited to the rhythmic, polyphonic

and tonal stratifications of African and African American music.’’27 In

order to do this in hip hop, instead of putting together different kinds

of instruments or styles of singers to create a conglomerate, different

sorts of repeated sounds and voices—some singing, some talking—are

placed together, arranged, manipulated, and transformed with a heavy

dependence on technology. Houston Baker described hip hop deejaying

as postmodern, saying, ‘‘The high technology of advanced sound pro-

duction was reclaimed by and for human ears and the human body’s

innovative abilities. A hybrid sound then erupted in seemingly dead

urban acoustical spaces. (By postmodern I intend the nonauthoritative collaging or archiving of sound and styles that bespeaks a deconstructive

hybridity. Linearity and progress yield to a dizzying synchronicity.)’’28

Although he describes the collage effect as postmodern, in fact its ref-

erence to the montage of memory creates a deep historical awareness.

Artistically what occurs is postmodern construction, but intellectually

and emotionally, hip hop makes for a largely compositional form. Con-

struction is at least conceptually the opposite of realism. Theodor W.

Adorno posits construction in opposition to composition because while

composition is the distinct putting together of elements, construction

‘‘tears the elements of reality out of primary context and transforms

them to the point they are once again capable of creating a unity.’’29

While the constitutive elements of the music of hip hop are almost

always clearly distinguishable, maintaining a compositional framework,

lyrically there are artists capable within individual songs of blurring the

lines of added literary elements—realist, imaginative, metaphoric—to

such an extent that the listener is brought into the specific unity of that

artist’s realm. Rakim has often been regarded as such an artist: ‘‘The

tempo’s a trail / the stage is a cage / the mic is a third rail.’’ 30 We, as

the audience, are on his train, riding to the destination of satisfaction

having consumed and appreciated his rhyme. Only he, the mc, can get

close enough to the site of power and potential execution, the third rail,

the microphone, and use its electricity to channel its power into art.We

move with him from discrete metaphors into a holistic ‘‘Rakim World.’’

In the late 1990s, the Wu-Tang Clan, using themes from Asian martial

arts, comic book characters, multiple names and metaphors, and sym-

bolically representing their homes on Staten Island, constructed their

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own sort of ‘‘Wu world,’’ complete with graphics, family trees, and at-

tire. Construction is often the most complex sort of rhyming; it stands

next to other sorts of hip hop almost as jazz does to blues. Both are

potentially brilliant, but the brilliance of the former comes in part from

multitextuality, shape-shifting, and minute interactions put together

smoothly and seamlessly. Killah Priest rhymes:

Eat lamb with Abraham and break bread with the Son of Man

So slowly hold these hands and stretch forth from the skies

Like a rubber band begins to pop you above the land out of the

atmosphere

Don’t look back,Why? We’re almost there

Just tryin’ to prepare and adapt to the air pressure now

We stretchin’ for the mental treasure pleasure beyond measure

beyond you can’t comprehend the God or the distance

Between stars, pickin’ up quasars and signs of radars

We goin’ past any astronaut movin’ so fast in this aircraft

Everything we pass get hot from the takeoff

The blast turnin’ glass into rocks at last!

My supreme task was no longer to walk on green grass till

I become a beam of gas and travel through extreme draft

Unable to be picked up through cable

Out of there each of all manners of sky examiners heaven scanners giant

antennas and high tech space cameras.

No evidence in any cemetery or obituary

Not found in any library or encyclopedia or media

I’m in star mode!31

Where is this artist? Beyond ordinary means of research, and also be-

yond imaginations of celestial realms. He creates through his charac-

terization of physical and intellectual impact a simultaneously attractive

and elusive vision of his location. He has constructed a space where we

travel with him only through engagement with his artistry.

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Deejays and Producers

I nominated my dj the president.

—Rakim, ‘‘Eric B is President’’

The mc composes the narrative, but the aesthetics of composition are

heavily dependent on the dj or producer, as well as the relationship be-

tween the mc and those individuals. The mc, true to the title master of

ceremonies, has always been the front man or woman. On stage, the dj

originally spun records standing at a set of turntables behind the mc. As

time went on, a number of mcs replaced partnership with a dj by digital

production. Deejays are still not to be forgotten, however, and a number

of noted djs, such as Funkmaster Flex, Kid Capri, dj Premier, Jazzy Jeff,

and Hi-Tek, have released solo albums and all along had informally sold

mixed tapes, using a number of different mcs to showcase their skills.

On these albums, they seamlessly mix various songs into each other,

transitioning between them by matching rhythm time before switching

from one record to the next. They may create new rhythms or beats be-

tween and within records, pull the record back to the same place again

and again to repeat a riff or a set of words, or scratch out rhythms with

the needle and play break beats repeatedly, a signature feature of early

hip hop. They create what in poetry is called the purple patch, that is,

a space where the rhythm is changed for dramatic purpose in order to

call particular attention to the words or music at that point. New music

is composed using old hip hop songs, funk, soul, ballads, easy listening,

rock, and all manner of other music forms. The work of the dj is the

foundation of the particular aesthetic that has emerged within hip hop’s

specific heterogeneous sound ideal. And even as the dj becomes less

prominent nowadays, in live venues one can see what ferocious, adept,

and amazing an artist an excellent dj actually is, and how easily the dj

can take attention away from the mc if he or she so chooses.

Producers can put the sounds of a door creaking or a television play-

ing in the background, along with various other sounds of home and

community, into the musical composition. An excellent producer puts

together a multilayered web of sounds using rhythms, beats, and noise.

And as live instrumentation becomes more popular in hip hop, as op-

posed to heavy sampling, producers have to put live music together with

other elements in order to satisfy the aesthetic sensibilities cultivated by

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the auditory tessellations of djs. For the most part, just playing a song,

any song, with rhyming over does not prove satisfying to the hip hop

head, even if it’s funky. Another digital beat, or sample—or an element

from a song or a blend of those elements—have to be included because

the heterogeneous aesthetic of hip hop comprises widely divergent ele-

ments and the bringing together of disparate sounds.

Within the context of a party, as opposed to a show, a dj, whose job is

not to be a composer but rather to play records, still composes. Although

musically the composition is often not as complex as that of a dj doing

a show, it is still complex in terms of community. A good dj, not just

in hip hop but in other musical forms as well, responds to the crowd.

Taking in its styles, professions, ages, socioeconomic class, and ethni-

cities, he or she discerns what will make them dance. A dj sustains the

crowd’s interest by playing the correct blend of favorites, unknowns, and

the mediocre, putting on records to climax the crowd and then bring it

down again gently. Some have signature orders of music styles—reggae,

contemporary hip hop, old-school hip hop, r & b—in some combination

that allows for smooth transition. By mixing, he (or she, but usually he)

teases the crowd with a quiet taste of the next song to be played, a song

it might really want to hear. Sometimes he teases the audience even fur-

ther by making it the song after the next instead of the next song. In tran-

sitioning between songs, his beats are put together so they sound good

in composition, but still remain recognizable as belonging to separate

songs. The dj at a party might also lead the crowd by calling for differ-

ent affiliations, identities, or hometowns to be shouted out, asking for

particular dances, or creating unexpected silence in order for the people

to shout out the missing lines. Each part, and each good party, consists

of its own composition led by the dj and sustained by the energy of the

partygoers.

Emcees

Make the music, make the music, make

the music, with your mouth.

—Biz Markie, ‘‘Make the Music with Your Mouth Biz’’

The mc blends his voice with the dj and the audience to make the com-

position complete. Not simply limited to language, the mc in early hip

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hop was a musician as well. Before expensive drum machines became

readily available to the average young person wanting to rhyme, beat

boxing was fundamental. Producing the sounds of a drum machine with

one’s mouth and tongue stands in the tradition of scatting, a style in

which vocalists replicate instrument sounds. Rather than instruments,

however, beat boxers replicated the sound of late-twentieth-century

technology complete with multiple beats, beeps, eeks, motors, and

robotlike vocal interruptions. Again, this was hip hop’s interpretation

of a black music tradition. Floyd cites the ‘‘use of wordless sounds for

their own value rather than for the communication of verbal meaning’’

in his charting of the musical continuities of black American music with

African music.32 In the mid-eighties, several prominent mcs were also

great beat boxers, such Buff Love of the Fat Boys, now deceased, Doug E.

Fresh, and Biz Markie. In recorded music, beat boxing added another

layer of sound to the basic beat and the mc’s speaking voice. As increased

technology, more sophisticated deejaying, and production became avail-

able to the average mc who could easily buy studio time, the art of beat

boxing virtually disappeared. This is a shame because beat boxers made

some outrageous, funky sounds and, as testified to by a summer 1999

concert featuring old school mc Doug E. Fresh, the artful skill continued

to elicit enthusiastic response long after its heyday.

The response elicited by the audience from djs or mcs forms part of

the hip hop composition. Hence Rakim’s lyrics: ‘‘To me mc means move

the crowd.’’33 Even as recorded music, rap has a live sensibility, and art-

ists often test songs out on local audiences before recording or deciding

on which songs to release.The mc’s ability to make the audience partici-

pate constitutes an essential measure of his or her success. The music

offers a site of collective collaboration, and one of the central methods

of collaboration in hip hop is the origin of Floyd’s Call-Response trope,

the actual call and response, a popularly understood element of black

music. Classic calls, repeated again and again over the years, include

‘‘Everybody say ho!’’ then answered by the crowd’s ‘‘Ho,’’ which is re-

peated three times, each time slightly differently, and concludes with a

variation on ‘‘Somebody scream!’’ causing screams to rise up from the

audience. Some call-and-response patterns offer directions for various

parts of the crowd to say different things, according to location, gender,

place of origin, or some such defining characteristic. Call and response

is not limited in hip hop to verbal response but might also manifest itself

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in body movements. So when the mc says, ‘‘throw your hands in the air,’’

‘‘raise the roof,’’ or ‘‘give it up,’’ the motion and visual become part of

the composite musical experience. To rock it, to set it off, is to create a

holistic experience that engages at least three or four of the senses. Even

music not intended as dance music should at least make listeners nod

their heads, hence songs like the ‘‘Nod Your Head to This’’ or ‘‘The Head-

Nodder.’’34 However, the infectiousness of the grooves might make the

audience do a little more: as Mad Skillz says in ‘‘The Head-Nodder,’’ ‘‘My

shit’ll have hard niggas in soul train lines, bumpin’ with a big black

broad named Belinda.’’35

Call-and-response motions include simple arm movements, as well as

dances. In ‘‘Return of the Boom Bap,’’ one of krs-One’s choruses goes:

‘‘Bogle in the dance / Bogle in the dance,’’ referring to a Jamaican dance

of pointed fingers, bent elbows, and undulating back and shoulders.36

In ‘‘Ladies Night,’’ Lil’ Kim says in the flow of her rhyme, ‘‘Let me see

you do the bankhead,’’ referring to a Southern dance gone national of

rapidly bouncing shoulders as the body rocks back and forth.37 And who

among listeners of hip hop in the mid-eighties could forget the classic

dance rap record put out by Joeski Love, ‘‘Pee Wee’s Dance’’? ‘‘Listen up

party people ’cause the party is burnin’ / For a new dance I know you

been yearnin’ / so for all you people concernin’ / the brand new dance

called the Pee Wee Herman.’’38 Inspired by the awkward gestures of the

children’s actor who starred on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Paul Rubens, the dance and the song had young hip hop heads stepping back and forth

with bent knees and trembling fists.

Even outside of parties, open mics, and concerts, the audience and the

artist still have a dynamic relationship in freestyle sessions. In the circle

of listeners, whether it be one or ten, the listening parties lean in, heads

bowed, with their bodies bobbing up and down to provide encourage-

ment for the continuation of the flow. One or two might create a beat

(with the mouth) for the freestyler, but in a larger group the majority

will become part of the composition with their bodies in motion. The

mc of the moment often comes within inches of the listener’s face with

gestures and movements intended to further communication and keep

the flow and rhythm alive. This kind of artist-audience relationship is

rooted in the tradition of functional art in that it stresses community and

heterogeneity of individuals in the composition. It also stands as an im-

portant democratic gesture because it identifies hip hop as a collective

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everyperson’s music. Black American music existed under the threat of

co-optation throughout the twentieth century. The black community’s

presence within the music composition offers protection against co-

optation and hierarchical commodification: anyone might emerge from

the (theoretical and sometimes literal) crowd and grab the mic if he or

she is smart and skilled enough.

The call-and-response theme appears in the interaction between art-

ists as well. Part of what made Run-dmc such great hip hop lyricists

was their verbal interaction. They would finish each other’s phrases,

answer each other’s questions, and respond to each other’s calls. Their

interaction contributed to the heterogeneous sound of the music; dmc’s

voice was lower and mellower, while Run often hollered himself hoarse.

Run: Now Peter Piper picked peppers

dmc: But Run rocked rhymes

Run: Humpty Dumpty fell down

dmc: That’s his hard times

Run: Jack B.

dmc: Nimble

Run: was

dmc: Nimble

Run: and he was quick

Together: Jam master’s much faster, Jack’s on Jay’s dick.39

The fictional Jack B. Nimble ‘‘on Jay’s dick’’ is in awe of his lightning-

quick dj stylings, according to the collaborating mcs. The relationship

between artists on a cut is generally speaking more about heteroge-

neity than harmonic sound, with some exceptions as in the group Bone

Thugs-N-Harmony, who create rolling sounds with only slightly nu-

anced vocal differences that do not compete but blend instead.

In ‘‘Check the Rhyme,’’ the two mcs of A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip

and Fife, each have solo sections preceded by a call and response, the

response being given by the one who is about to have the solo.

Fife: You on point Tip?

Q-Tip: All the time Fife

Fife: You on point Tip?

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Q-Tip: All the time Fife?

Fife: You on point Tip?

Q-Tip: All the time Fife

Fife: Well then play the Resurrection and give the dead some life.

Q-Tip: Okay if knowledge is the key then just show me the lock.40

Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith of epmd (Erick and Parrish Mak-

ing Dollars) conversed frequently within their rhymes. Sometimes one

would personify the individuals that the other encountered in the course

of a narrative, and at other times he would play the listener to the nar-

rative, as though a friend were telling him a story, with the appropri-

ate responses and exclamations. In their song ‘‘Who Killed Jane?’’—con-

cluding the saga of Jane, a transvestite they encounter on each album

embroiled in some drama—Erick plays both the police officer and the

listening friend.

E (as policeman): Sit up straight, state your name and your birth date

and your whereabouts last night about eight.

P: Slow down.

E: Slow down?

P: Something’s missing, where’s my lawyer?

cop grilled me and said

E: Yo there’s your lawyer!41 Things’ll get rough, so don’t act tough and

try to play games. You headed up north.

P: For what?

E: You know what boy, the death of Jane.

P: You must be insane with no brain sniffin’ cocaine, and if I caught a

body it’d be yours and not Jane’s.

E: Oh mister toughie you wish you had a nine to bust me I’m not a child

I don’t play my name ain’t Chuckie.

P: Cop got pissed, and stepped back and grabbed his blackjack, swung

for my dome ducked and caught my damn back.

E (as friend): Ooh.

P: Couldn’t feel the pain.

E: Why?

P: Thinkin’ bout the payback.42

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Parrish narrates yet also participates in the internal dialogue between

him and the cop. This transition between roles is signaled by Erick’s

personification of the cop. The interaction facilitates temporal shifts be-

tween the past and present moments and brings the past moment alive.

Alternately, a number of artists might rhyme on one song without this

sort of direct interaction, each separate segment having a different fla-

vor according to the style and voice of the artist. Even then, like a girl

warming her body up to the rhythm of the double Dutch ropes before

jumping in, we may hear the next mc making rhythmic sounds in prepa-

ration for coming forth with his or her own rhymes. Before Lil’ Kim’s

segment in ‘‘Benjamins,’’ she grunts ‘‘uh uh’’ on beat and then shouts an

aggressive Jamaican patois curse word, with etymological roots in the

female reproductive cycle, ‘‘What the blood clot!’’

In this song, Lil’ Kim identifies herself as the only female in her Bad

Boy label crew.The crew holds great importance within the performance

of hip hop: it is the group of artists who constitute a clique or family

within the larger musical community, yet it exceeds the individual act.

Within a crew, cameos from other acts are quite common. The Boot

Camp Clik, including the Cocoa Brovaz (formerly Smif-N-Wessun, who

had to change their name for copyright reasons) Heltah Skeltah, and

Black Moon, often make references to each other’s names and to the

clique, as well as make cameo appearances in each other’s songs. Each

mc in the group is distinctive, but all of them share an almost harrow-

ing soulful sound and a plethora of metaphoric and personified violent

references.

Of course, the consumer appeal of having several popular artists

rhyme on one song also serves as a motivation for putting artists from

various groups together. A parade of stars can prove a big moneymaker,

particularly when it signals the reunion of artists formerly in conflict,

like East and West Coast collaborations, or when artists from the former

n.w.a. Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, worked together again, or when epmd re-

united with the album Back in Business after being broken up for five years.

Given the popularity hip hop has achieved, however, the breadth of

recorded sound far exceeds the correlated live interactive space, which

is part of Paul Gilroy’s observation discussed earlier about limited im-

provisation in hip hop. The tension created by the limited interactive

worlds gives rise to the kind of suspicion and authenticity politics one

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finds among hip hop audiences in young urban black communities.This

community of hip hop listeners—for whom the music defines its gen-

eration, who feels it deeply and loves it, and who participates in the cul-

ture surrounding hip hop as a whole—sees its role in the composition of

the mc as essential.When heads perceive that the intended audience for

a cut is not lovers of hip hop, largely those of or connected to the urban

black community but rather the general white population, a crossover

audience, accusations of selling out come quickly. Some artists have felt

this accusation to unwarranted, believing that any time they begin to

make a lot of money, they are referred to as sellouts. While there may

be some truth to the notion that commercial success in the mainstream

puts the artist under greater scrutiny and suspicion, the success of art-

ists like Biggie Smalls, Lauryn Hill,Wyclef Jean, or Wu-Tang, who have

had crossover appeal while maintaining a committed following among

hip hop heads, demonstrates that the resentment tackles more than the

encroachment of capitalism. It also stems from a sense of audience be-

trayal, as artists who cater to the aesthetics of music, dancing, and styles

of those outside the hip hop community disturb the community com-

position of hip hop culture.

Narrative

In addition to the internal compositional elements, the format of the

stories told figure as an important feature of hip hop. These formats

largely derive from black folk oral and literary traditions. The narrative

is the classic form, often marked as a signature feature of the old school,

although all four forms (narrative, exhortation/proclamation, descrip-

tion, battle) I will discuss existed in some form or another in older hip

hop songs. The narrative is a yarn, and

the intention of the narrator of the Yarn is to tell outrageous stories that

stretch and shatter credibility, overblown accounts about characters ex-

pressed in superlatives: the greatest liar is the hero of the yarn, or the

strongest woodman, or the most cunning gambler. We listen incredu-

lously, not believing a single word, our delight based on skepticism and

wondering whether the storyteller can top the last, preposterous epi-

sode he’s spun—by definition the traditional Yarn is always episodic in

structure, one outrageous lie after another.43

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The narrative in hip hop is a kind of storytelling, a late-twentieth

century and early-twenty-first-century extension of traditional African

American folktales, the mc replacing Dolemite or Brer Rabbit. Within

the story, time is traversed, and the topic might be mundane, dra-

matic, or comic.Oftentimes it contains elements of a morality play. krs-

One’s narrative song ‘‘Love’s Gonna Getcha’’ explicitly warns the listener

against the dangers of drug dealing through a first-person narrative of a

poor young black man and his brother who is eventually murdered as a

result of his pursuit and ‘‘love’’ for material things.44 At each stage of the

song, the first-person character becomes more deeply entangled in the

web of illegal activity, and he repeatedly asks the listener, ‘‘Now tell me

what the fuck am I supposed to do?’’ He simultaneously warns others of

this kind of life by accurately presenting the dilemmas that might lead a

young man to participate in illegal activities and which then might make

it extremely difficult to leave them behind. krs-One here made a mean-

ingful social statement, particularly because it was written in the era of

Nancy Reagan’s simplistic and ineffective ‘‘Just Say No’’ to drugs cam-

paign. The hip hop piece employed the narrative as a kind of morality

play with a political message attached.

Alternately, in a comedic narrative, ‘‘Delancey Street,’’ Dana Dane

spins a tale about being robbed by three women. They chase him

through the streets of Brooklyn until he’s cornered in a dead end and

must quickly think of a way to get out of the situation. Like Superman

he opens up his outer wear and ‘‘printed on my shirt just as bold and

plain / I’m not the one the rapper Dana Dane / Well the girls caught the

message it was plain to see / They might as well have said ‘‘Dana Dane

you’re free.’’45 All of the women begin to fawn over him, and the song

concludes with them fighting for his attention as he walks away. These

two narratives reflect the styles of each of the rappers. krs-One has been

known for years in hip hop as the teacher of social consciousness, and

he described the album which featured ‘‘Love’s Gonna Getcha’’ as using

hip hop as a revolutionary force. Dana Dane was a comedic romantic,

the lover winding up in a number of bizarre situations created by female

obsession with him. He was ‘‘Cinderfella Dana Dane,’’ the male hip hop

version of Cinderella, with Bally shoes and a Kangol hat instead of glass

slippers and a ball gown. In ‘‘Nightmares,’’ he was a young man being

chased down high school halls and in a therapist’s office by an unattrac-

tive woman, Anita the Beast.46

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A third narrative example may be found in Genius/gza’s dark tales of

drug dealing episodes.

I’m deep down in the back streets in the heart of Medina

About to set off somethin’ more deep than a misdemeanor

Under the subway waitin’ for the train to make noise

So I blast a nigga and his boys

For what? He pushed up on the block

And made the dope sales drop like the crash in the Dow Jones stock

I had to connect across ceilings to catch more bills than more bitches

got birth control pills

I’m on the part settin’ up a deal over blunt smoke

nigga sleepin’ on the bench they had him wired

Peep my convo, address of my condo

How I change a nigga name to John Doe

And while he set up camp

He got vamped

But the stake through his heart

I ripped his fucking lungs apart

Snake got smoked on the set

Like Brandon Lee

Blown out the frame like Pan Am flight 103.47

This story line is reminiscent of a gangster flick, complete with terri-

tory conflicts and crime setups. Genius/gza create a harrowing narra-

tive film.

A fourth example of the narrative form can be found in Ice Cube’s ‘‘It

Was a Good Day’’ from his Predator album. In the course of the song, Cube describes his ideal day, which includes a breakfast cooked by his

mother without pork, pickup basketball, dominoes, attention from a girl

he’s been trying to date since the eighth grade, sex with another girl

named Kim, and watching a Lakers/Supersonics basketball game which

the Lakers win. Equally important are the things absent from this day—

police harassment and death in South Central Los Angeles. The music

video to accompany this song comes to a dramatic conclusion. After the

song ends, Ice Cube enters his home, which is surrounded by police

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cars and helicopters. The oasis provided by ‘‘the good day’’ is over, and

he again falls victim to the surveillance and abuse of the lapd. Ice Cube

rhymes as the everyday black man living in Los Angeles, but a black

nationalist consciousness informs his work. It fits that identity or label

by insinuating the tragic circumstances of the lives of black men into

ritualized pleasurable activities to imply rather than assert a political

message (although some of Ice Cube’s work is more explicitly political,

and other parts of it remain explicitly apolitical). Narratives are used to

entertain and educate, but also to explicate the personality and lifestyle

the mc projects.

Exhortation/Proclamation

Hip hop has been characterized as bragging music because it is com-

mon for entire songs to be dedicated to proclamations about the mc’s

greatness. Yet this format of proclaiming something, or exhorting an

argument, is not limited to the mc alone, although that emerges as

the most frequent subject. Many songs serve as advisories or encour-

agements for the listener to comprehend a given idea. These exhorta-

tions and proclamations are composed of sets of short exempla, brief

stories, metaphors, or examples to support the general theme. Take, for

example, Nas’s ‘‘It Ain’t Hard to Tell’’:

It ain’t hard to tell

I excel then prevail

The mic is contacted I attract clientele

My mic check is life or death

Breathin’ a sniper’s breath

I exhale the yellow smoke of Buddha through righteous depths

Deep like the shinin’

Sparkle like a diamond sneak an Uzi on the Island in my army jacket

linin’

Hit the earth like a comet invasion

Nas is like the Afrocentric Asian

half man half amazin’

’cause in my physical I can express through song

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Delete stress like Motrin

then extend strong.48

He shifts between metaphors of elemental greatness to street hardness,

exemplified by smuggling weapons into the prison on Rikers Island.

LL Cool J’s song ‘‘I’m Bad,’’ from the Bigger and Deffer album, offers the following set of example:

I’m like Tyson

Icin’ I’m a sole jaguar

Makin’ sure you don’t try to battle me no more

Got concrete rhymes been rappin’ for ten years

And even when I’m braggin’ I’m bein’ sincere

mcs can’t win I’ll make ’em rust like tin

They call me jaws my hat is like a sharks fin.49

This set tells the listener that the artist has the skills of boxer Mike

Tyson, then heavyweight champion and a metaphor for strength, that he

rhymes alone with the predatory instincts of a wildcat, that he is estab-

lished and experienced, and that despite his metaphoric bragging, he’s

serious about his abilities. LL has always worn a hat, it is his signature,

and he likens it to the symbol of danger that the fin was in the movie

Jaws. Each exemplum supports his contention that he is bad in the black English sense of the word meaning ‘‘good.’’

While ‘‘I’m Bad’’ is a self-exhortation song, the next song on the cd,

‘‘Kanday,’’ is an exhortation about another person, a girl with whom LL

is fictively involved. Here, he rhymes:

Her body’s bad

The girl’s built

Skin like silk

Wet steamy warm just like a hot cup of milk

She’s all the way live

Keeps me satisfied

I don’t go outside

I like to stay inside her

Ways are like an angel with bright white wings

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And I’m crazy bout the way Kanday shakes her thing.

Wouldn’t leave her for nothing only a crazy man would

That’s why I had to tell you that I Feel Good,Whoo!

about Kanday!50

Kanday’s sexy attributes and her effect on the mc here become the focus

of the proclamation. The subject of an exhortation might range from

either positive or negative assessments of the opposite sex to the superi-

ority of one’s neighborhood or region. Examples for the latter can be

found in ‘‘Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)’’ by Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, ‘‘Cali-

fornia Love’’ by Tupac Shakur, ‘‘Southside: Houston, Texas’’ by Scarface,

or the classic ‘‘South Bronx’’ by Boogie Down Productions, rhymed by

krs-One. The song might even focus on the brand of sneakers one fa-

vors. Many people will be familiar with Run-dmc’s ‘‘My Adidas’’ in this

vein, but there was also ‘‘Nike’’ by Heavy D. and the Boyz, and several

mcs who made songs or references to Filas in the early to mid-1980s.51

Some exhortations/proclamations constitute theories about some sort

of practice, for example, a discourse about how an mc should rhyme,

or an idea about how one should operate within the world. Run-dmc

combined a theory about artistic excellence with self-proclamation in

the song ‘‘Perfection’’ from the Raising Hell album.

Run: Perfection to D is quite essential, he has to live up to his potential.

dmc: I work real hard all day and night I get to it and do it ’cause I want

it right. I got Bass

Run: Tone

dmc: A new

Run: Cologne

dmc: And then I rock a funky

Run: Rhyme

dmc: On the micro-

Run: Phone52

The components of dmc’s aspiration toward perfection include not only

labor but the right sound elements, including the bass, an attention to

sound quality, and funky rhymes. Among the list of accusations against

hip hop as a viable art form is the criticism that the music is not ‘‘about’’

anything. When people voice this accusation, they are usually talking

about the exhortation/proclamation form, which only loosely centers

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around a general theme and allows the author, through the use of ex-

empla, to spiral into a wide diversity of formulations, metaphors, and

analogies to make the point. The creative space is so expansive that the

logic of the moment can be lost to the casual listener, whether that logic

be an exhortation of the mc’s greatness, an expression of his or her lyrical

dexterity, or some other engaged idea.

Description

Similar to narratives, descriptive rhymes often outline a particular situa-

tion, dynamic, or thing, but they lack the linear time frame the narrative

form possesses. It is difficult to find descriptive rhymes that are not also

somehow exhortations on wax, but freestyling, improvisational rhym-

ing, is more often predominantly descriptive. An excellent freestyler can

comment on his or her environs, what clothes people have on, the dy-

namics in the room, much like an excellent comedian who can make

jokes about the crowd on the spot. Or the freestyler might engage in a

stream of consciousness in which coherence is less important than the

quality and cleverness of individual ideas (as opposed to the entire piece)

and the flow of the rhyming. Take this example from Greg Nice of the

duo Nice ‘N Smooth: ‘‘Greg Nice / My life’s like a fairy tale / Orca was a

great big whale / I knew a fat girl who broke the scale / You won’t tell / I

won’t tell.’’53 Greg Nice’s narrative is comprised of a string of non sequi-

turs, and so it sounds like the spontaneous flow of a freestyler, rather

than a written song.The disjointedness has its own idiosyncratic appeal,

like the bizarreness of a Lewis Carroll poem.

Battle

Rap’s competitive origins have received much discussion. In the genre’s

early days, mcs and djs went up against each other in talent shows or

battles, and the best was decided on by the crowd.What was earlier called

breaking and boogaloo was redesignated in the 1990s as ‘‘battle danc-

ing.’’ This phenomenon moved from the live party to wax and the dis

or battle records of the mid- to late 1980s, sometimes to become pyra-

mids of rhymes all in conversation with one another. The 1984 ‘‘Rox-

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anne Roxanne,’’ by u.t.f.o. (the Untouchable Force Organization), was a

song dissing a stuck-up girl. Roxanne Shante responded with ‘‘Roxanne’s

Revenge,’’ as did another woman, who called herself the Real Roxanne,

with her self-titled ‘‘Real Roxanne.’’ Sparky D also had some words for

Roxanne, such as ‘‘Roxanne you’re through / girl Ima walk all over you,’’

and then came another song by U.T.F.O, ‘‘Roxanne’s a Man.’’54 Boogie

Down Productions and the Juice Crew had a historic conflict, which

began with Boogie Down Productions challenging mc Shan’s song ‘‘The

Bridge’’ about the early days of hip hop in Queens. In response krs-One

rhymed, in ‘‘The Bridge Is Over,’’ ‘‘Bronx created hip hop / Queens will

only get dropped you still tellin’ lies to me / Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout the

Juice Crew funny but you still tellin’ lies to me.’’55 His cadence mimicked

the Billy Joel song ‘‘It’s Still Rock ’n’ Roll to Me,’’ another song hailing

musical authenticity.

The conflict in battle records supports the discursive space in hip hop,

which allows the listener to make evaluations about the relative merits

of songs or artists. Today one is much more likely to hear ‘‘The Bridge Is

Over’’ than ‘‘The Bridge’’ because ‘‘The Bridge Is Over’’ was ultimately

determined to be the better song and because krs-One’s career has had

much greater longevity and national prominence than mc Shan’s, al-

though Shan, too, was a great mc.

Conflicts manufactured by corporate entities knowing that a good

fight will improve sales have somewhat compromised the competitive

thrust of hip hop. Nonetheless, competition is sustained to some ex-

tent, even though the competition now witnessed by audiences of re-

corded music often is no longer intimate to a culturally specific hip hop

community as it once was. Battle records between the East and West

Coasts in the mid 1990s signaled an end to battling as a demonstration

and sharpening of skills, because in those days, the critical measure for

the audience had more to do with one’s origins than with who was the

better mc. In the postcoastal feuding world, battling records not moti-

vated by regional affiliation or corporate manipulation have continued

to appear, though in smaller numbers: 1998 witnessed a surprise attack

on LL Cool J by a relative newcomer, Canibus, which the old-school rap-

per responded to in kind. Canibus’s song was called ‘‘2nd Round k.o.,’’

in reference to LL’s use of boxing metaphors and imagery. Even this ex-

ample proved more personal than battle records once were. Canibus’s

attack did not just focus on rhyming skills or clothes or general wack-

ness; it attacked actions, and it made accusations of hypocrisy. ‘‘Battle

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songs’’ in the post-battle era that have maintained an attention to artis-

tic or stylistic weaknesses are usually songs aimed at a prospective or

imagined competitor, rather than a specific one. The Poor Righteous

Teachers’ ‘‘Da Rill Shit’’ may serve as an example:

mcs try to do me

I’m not livin’ like that

Speak that wack behind my back

’Cause in my face you’ll get waxed

I’m the best ’cause I’m convinced

’Cause I ain’t been stopped yet

I’m straight from Trenton out the projects

In the Wild Wild West

If you want me come and find me

You, your posse, and your friends

Your family, your dog Toto, neighbors, lovers, and kids

Line ’em up and watch ’em fall

Faster than you’d believe . . .56

Wise Intelligent owes a debt here to Rakim for his classic phrasing of

collecting a mass of competitors who might be swept away in a single

blow: ‘‘I take seven mcs put ’em in a line / I take seven more brothers

that think they can rhyme / Well it’ll take seven more before I go for

mine / That’s 21 mcs ate up at the same time.’’57

Exhortations of power seduce listeners as much as the cleverness with

which the mcs imagine the configuration of competitors. In general, the

formats of the songs provide a basic framework, although the formats

are intertwined and combined regularly. One might find a distinct for-

mat in each stanza, or songs in which within each sentence there is a

combination of formats.

Allegory

Allegorical tales have tradition in African American culture. In the con-

text of telling ‘‘big lies’’ the idiosyncrasy, greatness, strength, or skill of

a folk hero or of oneself might find expression. Within the context of

narrative songs, or as exempla in exhortatory songs, allegorical tales are

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used to entertain and inform. In one of mc Lyte’s songs from her first

album, ‘‘Kickin’ 4 Brooklyn,’’ she tells a story that sounds rather like an

old Southern tale of the frightful power of a High John de Conqueror or

some such character. She rhymes:

I was chillin’ in Flatbush mindin’ my own

When a girl walked up with a chrome microphone

She said Hey mc Lyte, I heard about you

So here’s the microphone let’s see what you can do

So I took the microphone and threw it to the ground

’Cause I needs no assist when it come to gettin’ down

When I started to rap, she started shake

She knew to confront me was truly a mistake

So she took the microphone off the great concrete

And before I turned around she was down the street.58

This fictional episode alerts us to Lyte’s courage and ability to compete,

as well as to incite fear. The rhyme stands as an assertion of her artistic

ability. The presentation does the same work as she crafts an entertain-

ing story to make this assertion. The allegorical tale provides a format

that supplements the arguments made in the song as a whole, and also

supplements the metaphor or simile of an individual line.

Realism

What you think now, I think I love you, what you feel now,

I feel I need you.What you know, to be real, it’s got to be real!

—Cheryl Lynn, ‘‘To Be Real’’

Following a discussion of the constructive elements and composition of

hip hop, as well as the formats of hip hop storytelling, a discussion of

genre is appropriate. While several genres analogous to literary genres

exist in hip hop, I would like to focus on hip hop’s form of realism be-

cause it tells us something about the political, artistic, and philosophi-

cal ethos of the music. In the 1990s, the call to ‘‘keep it real’’ became

a rallying cry in hip hop. The 1970s classic song, ‘‘To Be Real’’ is about

genuine love, emotional authenticity, and depth, a loyalty that superfi-

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cial or material matters cannot bastardize.Calls to keep it real in hip hop,

however, have included celebrations of the social effects of urban decay

and poverty, for example, assertions of a paranoid vigilance in protect-

ing one’s dignity, which leads to violent action or ruthless individualism

à la ‘‘fuck the world / don’t ask me for shit / cause anything you do you

got to work hard for it / honeys shake they hips / you don’t stop / and

niggas pack the clip / keep on.’’59 The ‘‘real’’ is also an authenticating

device responding to the removal of rap music from the organic relation-

ship with the communities creating it. It demands that artists maintain

or use symbols asserting their allegiance to black youth populations, or

subgroups within that community. The real for hip hoppers means set-

ting the terms for allegiance. It does not disallow fiction, imaginative

constructions, or hip hop’s traditional journey into myth. Rather, it is

an explicitly ideological stand against selling one’s soul to the devils of

capitalism or assimilation as one sells the art form and lives life. The

frequent calls in the hip hop community to keep it real not only require

the maintenance of an authentic black urban identity; they also consti-

tute a theoretical space that functions as a living testimony to African

American experience. As Nas says in ‘‘Represent,’’ ‘‘Straight up, shit is

real and any day could be your last in the jungle.’’60 Being ‘‘real’’ is a

call to authenticity that becomes a political act. Such symbols of authen-

ticity in hip hop are not only found in cinema verité representation of

ghetto existence but also in honest portrayals that may be abstract in-

sofar as their truths are emotional, rather than completely factual. In

the spring of 1996, a comedian on an episode of the hbo comedy series

Russell Simmons Def Comedy Jam noted that if rappers killed as many people as they claimed to, they would all be in jail, concluding with the

words, ‘‘That ain’t real.’’ Hence, the ‘‘Real’’ with a capital R, constitutes a political rather than purely sociological stance that gives testimony to

the emotional state resulting from the experience of poverty, blackness,

and the crises of urbanity. Mobb Deep rhymes,

I keep it real

Pack steel

Like my man yg

When a fool try to play me

Wet him up

And I’m Swayze.61

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In another song, the group asserts, ‘‘We livin’ this ’til the day that we

die / Survival of the Fittest / Only the strong survive.’’62 Both lyrics ex-

press the artists’ commitment to realness. While an assertion of social

Darwinist aggression forms part of the Real in hip hop, it is by no means

the sum total.The Real is the location where an individual remains com-

mitted to his or her community, professes that allegiance, and remains

honestly and organically rooted in his or her position in the world:

My mentality is money-orientated

I’m destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it

’Cause yeah we were beginners in the hood as Five Percenters

But somethin’ musta got in us ’cause all of us turned to sinners

Some rest in peace, some sittin’ in San Quentin

And others such as myself we tryin’ to carry on tradition63

Taking its name from a literary genre, realism in hip hop is an artistic

format inextricably linked to the material conditions of black American

urban communities.

Witnessing proves incredibly important in hip hop. Being present for

the ills of the ghetto and watching someone go through the transfor-

mations of drug abuse, murder, poverty, and mental illness can be as

traumatic as experiencing those things. Hip hop at once witnesses and

then testifies to certain events, whether or not the speaker participates

in them, and acts as a witness to realism in the religious sense, as some-

one or something bears witness to life’s hardship and difficulty. Michael

Eric Dyson asks, ‘‘Did Tupac draw from his own experiences or did he

raid the experiences of others to spin his haunting tales of urban woe

and social neglect? If he did would he be different from any other art-

ist whose primary obligation is to make art out of imagination, fiction,

and fantasy? Stories don’t have to be real to be true. Wouldn’t Tupac

have been artistically authentic in borrowing the lives, experiences, and

stories of others as the grist for his powerful rap narratives?’’64

Hip hop music concerns itself with both the self and the we. Its con-

sciousness is both of the ego and of the collective. While explorations

and expressions of the self abound as descendents of big lies, toasts, and

folk ballads from the African American oral tradition, they are not ulti-

mately individualistic, even when referring primarily to the individual.

The stories of Dolemite and Stagolee were narratives about heroic fig-

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ures repeated in communities across the country. The repetition made

them collective, as did their articulation of the community’s sentiments.

The heroes’ ability to traverse the boundaries of society tightly bound by

white supremacy and religious convention made them popular figures.

In hip hop, the community sustains that tradition of self-expression,

and the artistically depicted self is overwhelmingly a self the listener

can identify with, either through the depictions of life it offers, through

the aspirations and hopes it articulates, or through the language, cloth-

ing, and body politics of the artists, who operate as cultural signifiers.

The community as an identifying and authenticating force holds huge

significance, especially as artists validate themselves against claims of

artifice. I have often thought that hip hop offers the first popular cultural

space in the African American community that celebrates, rather than

rejects as an embarrassment, one’s origins in the projects (that is, not

when the projects were new and considered a step up from tenements,

but the projects as they are today, the dwelling place of the underclass).

References to the projects in part give testament to a certain hardness

or edge, and they also assert a class-based proud identification with poor

black people.

Hip hop music celebrates Me and We, as opposed to You. At various

moments in hip hop, the Other is the competing mc or dj, the challenger

in a fight, or white people. The Other might also emerge as a sympa-

thetic opposite, such as the audience being seduced by the rhymes. But

either way, the Other occupies a position of relative powerlessness vis-

à-vis the I. The frequent exception to this rule would come in the form

past-tense narratives about being dissed or hurt by a lover or a friend,

but in the present confrontation of Me and You, the Me is always at an

advantage, either due to knowledge, ability, or power. As the producers

and djs produce the show, the mc emerges as an actor on the stage, not

a supplicating performer, but a captivating one. In the composition, he

or she engages the audience and gets its feedback and participation, but

the mc still remains the leader, the distinguished Self among the collec-

tive heads.This is obvious to the listener of hip hop, but relevant to point

out in comparison with other music forms. The importance of the Self

at once stands as the perfect expression of American politico-religious

identification and individualism and yet also becomes translatable into

a communitarian consciousness, locating hip hop voices as metonymic

black expression.

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In the wake of hip hop’s meteoric rise to the top of American popu-

lar music, mass-produced hip hop maintains its ‘‘authenticity’’ in part

by encouraging artists to live out the artistic narratives they portray.

Motown was notorious for its efforts to groom and socialize its artists,

and hip hop business apparently provides its own kind of grooming

—to hardness, sensationalism, and scandal, all of which sell records.

This ‘‘real deal’’ is apparently what the consumer wants. In the United

States, that means the grittier, edgier, more fantastically urban. This au-

thenticity is double-voiced, at once constituting an exploitation of racist

imagery and an expression of the problems of the ghetto.

In ‘‘Village Ghetto Land,’’ Stevie Wonder asks, ‘‘Now some folks say

we should be glad for what we have. Tell me would you be happy, livin’

in this ghetto land?’’65 His question concerns how one would feel, and

implicitly and perhaps even more profoundly, who one would be in the

ghetto? What does this space create? Of course the answer is diverse—

endlessly diverse—as is the collection of human beings living in poor

communities of color in the United States. And yet the space art pro-

vides differs from the geography and complexity of a community. In

comparison to ‘‘reality,’’ art suffers limitations, but it can also do things

that life cannot. It can provide coherence of structure and form, it can

separate out particular elements and emotions, and it can choose cer-

tain images and metaphors about the world, be they horrific or beauti-

ful. And those choices, which operate as signs within the artistic space,

define the thing or place or person signified.

At the turn of the century, American literary realists concerned them-

selves with depicting what was real and true about daily life. Even as

they did this, artists and audiences understood that the depictions were

ideologically charged and artistically crafted. Simply put, both readers

and critics knew they were making choices. However, it proves com-

paratively difficult for listeners and critics to understand the realism in

hip hop as something crafted, ideological, and resulting from artistic

choices.Why? One frequent answer claims that the music’s audience is

too young and unsophisticated to distinguish between entertainment

and reality; another finds that critics scapegoat hip hop as opposed to

other music styles because of racism or a generation gap. And both hold

some truth. Yet the difficulty results from a far more convoluted dy-

namic than these answers can account for.

In part, the difficulty of realism in hip hop comes from the autobio-

graphical nature of the music, and of African American folk literary cul-

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ture, which entails the telling of one’s story in epic or comic terms. Art-

ists tell about their lives, and it is the task of the critic to avoid making

one-to-one correlations between the music and the artists, to avoid a

venture into some strange brand of artistic determinism, even as he or

she trusts the artist to tell the audience something.This task has become

more difficult with the 1990s, which witnessed many hip hop artists ac-

tively requesting that their words be taken as authentic, asking their lis-

teners to ferret out ‘‘fakes’’ and reject them. Nevertheless, the epic terms

of the tales distinguish them as artistic productions. As Killah Priest

succinctly puts it in ‘‘Fake mcs’’: ‘‘Too many mcs in the East wanna be

gangsters / Too many gangsters in the West wanna be rappers / Buncha

actors / I oughta smack ya.’’66

The Real, or realism in hip hop as a movement, takes on two per-

spectives, ‘‘telling’’ narratives and ‘‘being’’ narratives, which, in terms of

understanding hip hop as the production of a community and of indi-

vidual artists, are mutually dependent. In ‘‘Cell Therapy,’’ by Goodie

MOb., we hear a ‘‘telling’’ narrative.

My family moved in our apartment complex

The gate with a serial code was put up next

They claim that this community is so drug-free

But it don’t look that way to me

Cause I can see the young bloods hanging out at the store

24-7 junkies looking for a hit of the blow

It’s powerful

Oh you know what else they tryin’ to do

Make a curfew especially for me and you

The traces of the new world order

Time is gettin’ shorter

If we don’t get prepared people it’s gon be a slaughter

My mind won’t allow me to not be curious

My folks don’t understand so they don’t take it serious

But every now and then

I wonder if that gate was put up to keep crime out or keep our ass in67

Even in a narrative context, the speaker provides an internal critique

of sociological conditions and the prospects of social control through

planned communities. The function of the rhyme, then, is to inform

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and enlighten, rather than simply depict. Contrast this with a ‘‘being’’

narrative from Nas:

Yo! They call me Nas I’m not your legal type of fella

Moët drinkin’ marijuana smokin’ street dweller

Whose always on the corner rollin’ up bless

When I dress it’s never nothin’ less than Guess

Cold be walkin’ with a bop and my hat turned back

Love committin’ sin and my friends sell crack

This nigga raps with a razor, keep it under my tongue

The school dropout, never liked that shit from day one

’Cause life ain’t shit but stress, fake niggas and crabs guts

So I guzzle my Hennessey while pullin’ on mad blunts

The brutalizer crew de-sizer accelerator

The type of nigga who be pissin’ in your elevator68

Nas personifies a self-celebrating nihilist living a life of drugs, depres-

sion, and aggression. The difference between a being and a telling nar-

rative is that between personification and third-person didactics. Songs

about the lives of gangsters, for example, come in two varieties, the

first-person story of a gangster, and the third-person story about gang-

sterism. When the audience listens to the third-person telling story, its

comprehension depends on either knowing the character from the in-

side—through first-person narrative, the archetypes present in ‘‘being’’

tales—or knowing the actual lives in black urban communities.

Various character types are consistently personified in hip hop. Some

we might believe as ‘‘real,’’ while others clearly come across as ‘‘fictional.’’

Listeners more readily find the drug dealer authentic than an urban

guerrilla or prison escapee, to use some of the roles Ice Cube has played.

This is in part attributable to the fact that hustlers and dealers com-

monly form integral parts of the underground economy of US cities.

They are characters people can point to in communities, just like preach-

ers, grandmothers, store owners, and crackheads. And it is frequently

unclear in hip hop where art ends and life begins.The personification of

the life of a thug, hustler, or dealer might become complicated by some

artists’ personal involvement, past or present, with those activities.

Furthermore, the tendency to accept the Real as real has to do with the

democratic nature of the art form. Hip hop is supposed to be an every-

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person’s music, so when the artist takes on a familiar role, the people

should be able to believe it if it is good. Keeping it real emerged as a

shared community ethos and any debate over its meaning was minimal.

Unfortunately, criticisms of the Real primarily challenged it with the

positive-negative of music, messages, and images. The more interest-

ing challenge, however, would concern the choices made in depictions

of everyday realities and the contingent ideology that the artists pro-

mote with those choices. If violence or drug dealing constitute signature

features of life in black communities, expunging these things from the

music will not provide an ideal solution to the problems people have

with the Real. The question is: Why is the violence of the illegal under-

ground economy, for example, more compelling than other features of

community life?

There are several answers to that question. US culture socializes

the country’s residents to yearn for a particular brand of excitement

and glamour in entertainment. Sensational conflict exists on television

shows from the ‘‘real’’ Jerry Springer and Cops to crime dramas, and in countless action films with sequence after sequence of gratuitous vio-

lence. The only comparable titillation to be found in the daily life of

black and poor communities exists in the intrigues of illegal activity.

Furthermore, the consistent depictions of black Americans as mur-

derers, robbers, and rapists in entertainment and news media not only

incites yearnings for images of Cosby Show–like professionals and 227- like lower middle-class working people but also creates the desire to

breathe life into empty stereotypes. Hip hop provides the most pro-

vocative, humane, and insightful images of the black underworld in the

popular media.

Hear shots and sirens

When I fiend first they yo’ rings

Now they my rings

So give it up punk then I just

Put another jack in progress

It’s the American way

’Cause I’m the g.a.n.g.s.t.a.

In the shadow of Hollywood dynastic wealth and on what was the West-

ern frontier, jacking or robbery of various sorts do seem to be the Ameri-

can way, as does conspicuous consumption, which motivates the illegal

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acquisition of jewelry and other ‘‘things.’’ How, one asks, does this gang-

ster pursuit qualitatively differ from that of the white gangster families

who so glamorously made money off of liquor during Prohibition? Is it

the ferocious black body that gives the gangster his bite?

The personifications and realist depictions in hip hop reflect this vivid

concern. Such reflection occurs through (1) the exploitation of the fear

of these figures extant in the black community (the artist personifies

the greatest threat in the hood); or (2) the provision of a narrative that

truly shows the source of those concerns; or (3) the provision of an ex-

ample for listeners of what not to become. The criticisms the gangster

image in hip hop faces resemble those directed at celebrated black nov-

elist Richard Wright. Charles Johnson writes that Wright’s writing con-

tained ‘‘a realism that gained its visceral power at the expense of portray-

ing positive cultural features in black life—in other words, much that

is affirmative and joyful in black culture is lost in the literary Lifeworld

of Richard Wright.’’69 Another critic, in describing The Outsider, writes, ‘‘Wright creates an almost superhuman (clearly Nietzschean) black hero

whose alienation and dread place him both outside of and yet very much

inside modern American, that is to say Western, civilization. In contrast

to (but recalling) Du Bois’ representation of double consciousness as a

horrifying burden in The Souls of Black Folk, Wright’s complex image of blackness as double vision is a source of strategic power, freedom and

knowledge.’’70

Added to the complex of factors is the dynamic that results from hip

hop becoming commercially successful in the mainstream. In the late

1980s and early 1990s, artists began appearing who personified gang-

sters without ever having experienced that lifestyle: record companies

manufactured gangsters for their sensational appeal. The co-optation of

hip hop by the mainstream therefore became associated with ‘‘fake gang-

sterism.’’ Gangsterism turned into a commercial tool, sold for its gore

like an action flick. Hip hop heads made efforts to weed out the com-

mercial gangsters from the ‘‘real’’ ones, and so rumors of the suburban

birthplaces and respectable middle-class childhoods of certain mcs sur-

faced as evidence of their inauthenticity, even though hip hop had been

a cross-class art form for years. In order to retain a sense of authen-

ticity and connectedness to black communities, and also for the glamour

provided by celebrity, various artists began to live out the narratives of

gangster lives.The list of hip hop artists arrested or imprisoned since be-

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coming celebrities is extremely long and includes Snoop Doggy Dogg,

Marion ‘‘Suge’’ Knight, Slick Rick, Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur, Queen

Latifah, Mystikal, Busta Rhymes, Shyne, and numerous others. Further,

it is no accident that as Public Enemy, a group pronouncing revolution-

ary ideology, became widely popular, the mainstream media began its

attacks on rap, criticizing anything from 2 Live Crew’s explicit sexuality

to violence and gangsterism.Virtually every hip hop artist mentioned in

the mainstream news suffered transmogrification into a gangster rap-

per, even if he or she came from a place that didn’t have gangs per se.

And, according to the news, ‘‘gangster rap’’ was bad. If that label did not

work for particular artists, they were togged as misogynists or sex fiends,

regardless of the context of the sexuality in the music. Black voices un-

tempered by institutions of white acceptability, and having the potential

to inspire protest or at least epistemological transformation, frightened

and disturbed, and were therefore demonized. And so in the 1990s,

when realism became self-conscious enough as to support the phrase

keeping it real, the practice of ghetto realism or thug realism facilitated the scapegoating of rap by both conservative and liberal voices.

But keeping it real encompasses more than knowing the seamier side

of life in the ghetto firsthand, even as violence and thuggishness have

become symbolic elements of the hood. Andrew Ross writes about the

art’s authenticity, ‘‘ ‘representing’ involves a demonstrated loyalty to the

storytelling genre itself. Genre justice, earned at the mic, determines

how respect is distributed, even to the non-gangsta hardcore. The rap-

per’s aim is to convince an audience that his ‘shit is real,’ but this is a

much more complex task than simply proving that the events he de-

scribed actually happened to him.’’71 Like any term describing a genre

or ideology, the phrase keeping it real has a range of interpretations. For some, it mainly means the rejection of sanitized Hollywood depictions

of life and of conscious efforts to cross over and become accepted by

white audiences. In this case, the phrase may or may not have anything

to do with the content of the rhyme itself, but it will definitely concern

itself with the artist’s perspective and the culturally based styles of com-

position. For others, the phrase refers to the retention of the artistry,

craft, and sense of community that hip hop has at its best, and the re-

jection of the production of simplistic pop rhymes. For still others, it

means telling a story of how life in the hood is, in any number of ways,

for good and bad. And for others again, it means, disappointingly a glo-

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rification of gunplay and the ills of the ghetto. I say disappointingly be-

cause regardless of the artistic merit of the work of a number of artists

who believe to keep it real by celebrating destruction, there is a cost that

results from the ideological force hip hop has with young people.

That does not mean to say that hip hop causes violence. Of the com-

plex web of elements in play in the lives of adolescents, it seems that

music would be rather low on the list of critical factors determining their

behavior or values. Yet regardless of where it stands on the list, the idea

that the music could cause a single act of violence or illegal activity is

far from compelling. The issue is not that hip hop causes violence or

whether hip hop causes violence.The United States has a violent culture

compounded by devastating health and wealth disparities. The issue is

that hip hop carries an ideological message about merit, human worth,

and excellence, and if that message glorifies that which ails the com-

munity without any internal critique, doesn’t it then become a politi-

cally objectionable ideology to be challenged by those seeking justice

and equity for black Americans? Clearly, many within the hip hop com-

munity believe the answer to that question to be yes, as many with a

preference for something more complex and profound, another kind

of real, attack the current notion of the Real as a jubilant and reckless

gangsterism.

Attention to the exegeses of realist tales reveals textual and subtextual

interpretations that may differ from straightforward gangster or hustler

realism.The literal exegesis of hip hop realism elucidates and interprets

the life personified or discussed in the given city or community. This

literal exegesis is centered around a specific space or identity and might

include regional references, as well as economic, cultural, institutional,

and social elements. The subtext often offers an allegorical explanation

that speaks to more universal crises, allegories either of black existence

in America as caught in the tension between being Othered and mar-

ginalized and having aspirations toward the American dream or, more

universal still, of a consciousness caught between selfishness and gen-

erosity, individualism and humanism. In Master P’s ‘‘Is There a Heaven

for a Gangster?’’ the literal exegesis is the moral crisis facing a gangster

who has wounded, killed, used, and abused others. The allegorical exe-

gesis comprises the description of guilt, the quest for salvation despite

sin, and the individual supplication to God for forgiveness.

Scarface, a Texas mc, specializes in a sort of descriptive realism. De-

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scriptive realism creates a world for the listener which includes the cars,

conflicts, and love of life in a given neighborhood, a veritable cinema

verité. Scarface often punctuates his descriptive realism with some ar-

gument about the conditions of the ghetto, or with musings about how

one should live within that context. Take this example from the song

‘‘Don’t Testify’’:

We got some niggas we been feudin’ with

Caught one of his homies with cheese and startin’ sangin’

Told the guy from interstate traffic and stuff

Offered him five of his k’s and it’s crackin’ him up

Now we dealin’ with this nigga who been talkin’ this shit

Worst thing is his real man runnin’ the brick

And all the workers on the block is kinda scared

To come workin’ cause 5-0 been here five times and not searchin’.72

The ultimate lesson of the song is that the ethics of illegal activity de-

mand silence about operations at risk of death: ‘‘You know the rules /

don’t get high on your own supply and don’t testify / You know the rules /

don’t testify / if you don’t you live if you do you die.’’73

Argumentative realism has as its purpose a critique of social con-

ditions through description. Most mcs engage in some sort of combi-

nation of descriptive and argumentative realism, being neither over-

whelmingly concerned with argument nor neglecting it. Within the

context of argumentative realism, one finds warnings about the dangers

of illegal activity or mistreatment of others or oneself, or warnings to

those entering the community without experience there. One also finds

arguments in support of movements for social justice, and, on the other

hand, justifications for illegal activity based on the limited options avail-

able to residents of industry-deprived urban centers.

Naturalism as a variation on realism appears when the allegorical exe-

gesis provided by the mc makes conflict universal and essential. Mobb

Deep, who I would call a naturalist group, refrain on one of their songs,

‘‘We livin’ this till the day that we die / survival of the fittest, only the

strong survive.’’74 And on another song, listeners hear, ‘‘As time goes

by / an eye for an eye / we in this together son / your beef is mine / as

long as the sunshine will light up the sky / we in this together son / your

beef is mine.’’75 The essential terms are taken from social Darwinism

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and Old Testament justice, respectively. The allegorical exegesis offers

a grim interpretation of life’s elements, but the literal exegesis proves

even grimmer: ‘‘There’s a war going on outside no one is safe from / you

could run but you can’t hide forever / from these streets that we done

took / you walkin’ with your head down scared to look / . . . / My part

of the town is similar to Vietnam.’’76 The group describes a war zone in

its community, and furthermore asserts itself as being ‘‘real’’ in terms

of having been involved in violent conflict and the criminal justice sys-

tem—as opposed to those who rhyme about it but do not really have

the experience to back it up. Another Mobb Deep rhyme revealing the

artists’ authenticity runs:

Sometimes I wish I had three different faces

I’m going to court in three places for three cases

One in Queens, Manhattan, one in Brooklyn

They way things is lookin’ Imma see Central bookings

’Cause facin’ three three-to-nines is mad time

After in concurrence for assault and two nines

I gotta maintain cause stress on the brain

Could lead to a motherfuckin’ suicide thing

Plus my probation, the ill violation

How the fuck did I get in this tight situation?77

The language of the criminal law enforcement system interspersed with

the anguished thoughts of a young man facing years in prison consti-

tutes realism par excellence. The song provides a moving and captivat-

ing narrative and, according to the artists, a truthful one. It is notable

that what has been chosen as the subject of the realist account is the very

real problem of black male involvement with the criminal justice sys-

tem.The speaker seeks to express his concerns and elicit a response and

identification with the seemingly deterministic conditions of the lives

of young black men. In an interlude between songs, one of the mem-

bers of Mobb Deep talks about his authentic experience in the streets

and critiques fake thugs, after which he has the following to say about

yet another brand of mc: ‘‘And oh yeah, to all them rap-ass niggas with

your half-ass rhymes / talkin’ ’bout how much you get high, how much

weed you smoke and that crazy space shit that don’t even make no

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sense / don’t ever speak to me when you see me / You know what I’m

sayin? / Word! Imma have to get on some ol’ high school shit and start

punchin’ niggas for livin / Yo, I’m finished what I had to say, y’all can

continue on.’’78

By disparaging ‘‘that crazy space shit that don’t even make no sense,’’

he offers a naturalist critique of the exploration of esoteric, romantic,

and otherworldly elements present in hip hop as something irrelevant,

something not responsive to material concerns of black neighborhoods.

But the kind of esoteric magical realism in hip hop is in fact a rather au-

thentic reflection of an Afrocentrist, mysticist subculture in black urban

centers. A brand of magical realism exists in hip hop in which the reali-

ties of daily life become interspersed with magical elements that, simi-

lar to metaphors, allow for the expression of depth or a sort of artistic

and spiritual power, and also enrich the texts with an alternative aes-

thetic. Digable Planets, a group that appeared in the early 1990s as a sort

of black alternative/Afrocentric Brooklyn trio, used insect identities and

stratospheric references as symbolism for their spiritualist politics:

Voodoo Eshu Benin

Gangster lean

Where I’m from

It’s interplanetary

My insects movements vary . . .

It’s hip

What’s hip

When hip is just the norm

When planets pledge allegiance to the funk in all its forms

The braids, the fades, the prints on all the shirts

My grandmother told my mother ‘‘it’s Africa at work.’’79

The first two lines tie African spiritual practices to the politics of the

body: the gangster lean, black coolness seen in daily life in Brooklyn

(voodoo being both a Haitian and Louisianian syncretic religion, Eshu

being an orisha deity symbolic of the crossroads in the Yoruba pan-

theon, which is syncretized with Christianity, other African religions,

and Native American religions). The populace represented as planets

gives a sense of infinite and grand possibility, since space is infinite, yet

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the reference to oneself as an insect marks a stance of great humility as

an individual in the world.

Magic realism was not limited to the heyday of short Nubian locks

and mellow ‘‘conscious’’ mcs of the early 1990s; it has taken on a variety

of forms. For example, Ice Cube’s rhymes, ‘‘Gangstas Fairytale’’ and

‘‘Gangstas Fairytale Too’’ both frame real-life interactions with fantastic

fairy tale characters in magic realist fashion. Although LL Cool J’s ‘‘My

Rhyme Ain’t Done’’ is similar in that it blends a fictional world with the

‘‘real,’’ it is different in that instead of placing fictional characters in a

real world context as Ice Cube does, LL places his real self in a fictional

world. And it becomes fantasy in the sense that fantasy, as Adorno says

in Aesthetic Theory, presents the nonempirical as if it were empirical.80

LL rhymes about his encounter with the 1950s sitcom characters from

the Honeymooners:

Ralph wanted me to bust a couple of rhymes

But I had my eyes on Alice’s behind

Norton came down right about that time

Lookin’ in the fridge so we could wine and dine

I said to myself I should give ’em a taste

So I pulled the microphone out my black briefcase

Said it ain’t Bob Hope or Barry Manilow

Then I borrowed Norton’s hat ’cause I forgot my Kangol

Ralph said I got a scheme, let me get to it, Norton my pal

I said yo don’t even do it, they were all Honeymooners and I met

everyone, that story is over but my rhyme ain’t done.81

LL metaphorically jumps into the television screen. He uses Ed Norton’s

signature cap as a replacement for his own signature terry-cloth Kangol,

and he anticipates the disastrous consequences of Ralph’s scheme, as

all of Ralph’s schemes would fall apart, consistently providing the audi-

ence with cringing amusement. This literary moment, then, is at once

magical realist and comedic. Comedy, like magic realism takes, on a

variety of manifestations in hip hop. Realism in hip hop, while fraught

with difficulties and contradictions, is important for its introduction of

contemporary social issues into American popular music with unprece-

dented consistency and for shifting attention from the love story to more

difficult questions of culture and identity.

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One of the things hip hop criticism should do, in addition to provid-

ing interesting and informative analyses of the art form, is to use the

creativity and ideology contained within the music to enrich the ways

we think about society and the ways we create contemporary theory.

The knowledge such criticism provides should not merely influence our

understanding of the art itself but also our intellectual processes in gen-

eral. Realism encourages a critique of the media and reflects the signifi-

cant realities of social inequality.

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