Hip-hop these days is big business. This year both of the albums at the top of the sales charts are rap, hip-hop's most visible incarnation (Farber). And yet even as hip-hop is on the rise, its heart may be on the decline. The beginnings of the hip-hop movement were in the expression of a struggle. Black America was being oppressed, and hip-hop culture offered a means of escape that, if not always physical escape, could at least free its participants from a little of the strife they faced in daily life. As hip-hop has become more mainstream and marketable, this struggle has become less tightly braided with the art form it created. Hip-hop culture cannot exist apart from its inherent social consciousness. Though its music can be enjoyed anywhere in the world, hip-hop culture can only only exist in places that would preserve it as a platform for the expressions of the oppressed.
Hip-hop music originated as the voice of the American oppressed, largely black Americans confined to the urban ghettos. For these people hip-hop was a form of expression they had previously been denied. Hip-hop figure David Cook, better known as ``Davey D'', recalls the joy he felt when he first heard Grandmaster Flash in 1982. ``The first thing that ran through my head was at last someone was talking about the ghetto and providing a real life perspective'' (Cook 1). The realities of everyday life in these neighborhoods had previously gone unvocalized, and now there was a way for them to be aired. Hip-hop, through rap, provided a voice for the ghetto. It wasn't that people set out with the intention of making social statements; instead Cook says that ``Hip Hop in the beginning started out as a form of expression which was a reaction to economic, social, and political conditions'' (Cook 2). The issues facing black America were already very real before hip-hop made them visible.
The voicing of social concern through music echoed a rich African-American tradition. Black author and historian Franklin Rosemont, in the preface to a work on surrealism and Black music, says that ``American black music originated in the culture of the slaves who were systematically deprived of the more 'refined' instruments of human expression'' (Salaam 351). Slaves were forbidden to read or write, and musical instruments were denied them as well. In this void they developed their own method for expressing themselves. Instead of rich instrumentation, black music developed oral alternatives. Given nothing else, Rosemont notes that all of the energies the slaves had ``were necessarily concentrated in the naked word and the naked gesture'' (Salaam 351). For the slaves, this oral tradition was all they had. Kalamu ya Salaam, a poet, author, and founder of a Black writers workshop, says that ``Africans in the diaspora are probably the only modern people whose soul is expressed almost solely through our music'' (Salaam 353). Whereas other cultures have musical genres that can exist simply as music, the oral poetry of black America is dependent on listening and comprehending. In keeping with African-American musical tradition, rap was an artform that valued raw honesty. Salaam calls this rawness a ``philosophical attribute'' of black music. For him, ``This acceptance of rawness also means that no one is excluded because of social considerations. Raw accepts one at whatever level one exists'' (Salaam 356). Hip-hop culture welcomed any member to participate and make his voice heard.
Rap carried on the African-American oral tradition and reintroduced the importance of music with something to say. Salaam applauds rap not only for reintroducing ``the Afrocentric oral tradition as an artform,'' but also for its significance as an artform that values the relevance of ``saying something'' (Salaam 373). The roots of rap as a platform for rhetoric trace back several decades. Ernest Allen, Jr., associate chair of the University of Massachusetts' W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, attributes the beginnings of message rap to ``the black poetry movement of the sixties, its specific content traceable to the sociopolitical thought of African Americans from that period to the present'' (Allen, Jr. 161). Social consciousness was not a new concern when it was raised by rap; instead rap was another in a long line of African-American artforms that echoed the soul of black America.
Musical simplicity made rap especially accessible to the oppressed youth, whose low socioeconomic status would have prevented them from participating in other musical genres. Those who could never have afforded access to music lessons and expensive equipment were able to rap over a simple tape of beats. The same set of beats could provide the musical backdrop for any number of lyrical combinations, offering to anyone with a tape deck the ability to put a rhythm to their thoughts. And because it was rappers from these disadvantaged neighborhoods that flocked to the genre, rap resonated with urban youth. Allen, Jr. says that no matter where a particular rapper may come from, ``the social base of the rapper worldview is to be found among black urban youth - unemployed/underemployed, politically powerless'' (Allen, Jr. 162). These youth, and the issues they faced in everyday life, provided a backbone for hip-hop. According to Salaam, ``Regardless of what one thinks about the language of Rap, the reality is that Rap ... speaks directly to and for African American youth'' (Salaam 371). For youth who had been oppressed their entire lives, rap and hip-hop provided a mode of expression they could relate to. As the rap genre and hip-hop culture emerged, this grounding and simplicity provided focus and strength.
Despite the high profile of rap, it is only a single aspect of hip-hop culture. Though hip-hop culture is generally considered to have four physical aspects, these are not truly what makes hip-hop culture the thing that it is. Yvonne Bynoe, President of Urban Think Tank, writes that ``Anyone can be taught the technical aspects of deejaying, breakdancing, writing graffiti, and rhyming, or can mimic artists' dress or swagger,'' but that doesn't make him hip-hop. Instead, ``the central part of Hip Hop culture is the storytelling and the information it imparts about a specific group of people'' (Bynoe 77). Cook's similar views are rooted in real life experience:
Just because you did graffiti didn't make you Hip Hop. When I lived in white neighborhoods like Riverdale, you had white kids doing graffiti. I would see tags on the walls of buildings that read 'Niggers Suck' or 'Niggers Go Home'. That wasn't Hip Hop. In fact these kids didn't listen to early b-boy, GM Flash, or Bambaata tapes. They listened to Rock-N-Roll and had a healthy distain [sic] for Disco and any other form of Black music (Cook 3).
Hip-hop culture is the expression of a people's history. It resonates with people who share its background and its turmoil. According to Bynoe, ``Hip Hop culture, therefore, is not merely an entertainment vehicle, but an expression founded in history, common understanding and experience, and traditions'' (Bynoe 78). The common thread that unites American hip-hop is the oppression of black America, though this Blackness need not be entirely racial. In fact Salaam says that ``biological is the least important of the three elements of Blackness. Culture and consciousness are the critical elements'' (Salaam 352). Latinos are widely included in the black American culture. ``You can not deny the Africaness within Latinos.'' Cook writes, ``We live with each other. We share similar obstacles and have combatted oppresion [sic] together'' (Cook 1). This environment of conflict frames hip-hop culture.
It is this social consciousness that can most easily be lost as the products of hip-hop are exported beyond the borders of the United States. Foreign cultures experience the import of hip-hop music in very different ways. Ian Condry, Assistant Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the M.I.T., writes that ``although popular music styles travel on the winds of global capitalism, they ultimately burn or die out on local fuel'' (Condry 222). The fuel that determines whether hip-hop is understood internationally has to be an ability to understand its cultural foundations in the United States. France and Japan are both countries that have recently seen an explosion in hip-hop, yet the two have approached hip-hop culture in ways that are close to being polar opposites. The differences have centered around their different approaches to hip-hop culture versus hip-hop the media export.
France is the number two market for rap music and a country that understands hip-hop culture. To a large extent, this may be due to the similar socioeconomic hardships experienced by groups in the French population. Like the United States, France is home to large ghettos, known as banlieues. The late Andre J.M. Prevos, a French born academic and author of many scholarly articles on French hip-hop, notes that during the development of rap in France most rappers came from the banlieues around Paris (Prevos, Two Decades of Rap 11). Elsewhere he talks more of the economic conditions of these ghettos. Though the ethnic makeup of the French banlieue is far more diverse than that of the American ghetto, the problems the two contain are much the same. Prevos says that ``These suburban areas have come to symbolize the excesses in violence, drug consumption, social dislocation, and delinquency'' (Prevos, Hip-Hop, Rap, and Repression 1). These issues were the same ones rapped about in the hip-hop records that were just beginning to make their way across the Atlantic.
As French youth heard the American rap that had been imported into their country, they could understand the issues and struggles the music contained. French rappers picked up the social issues in American works and incorporated them into works of their own. Prevos says that
These rappers and hip-hop artists adopted most of the attitudes, repertoires, and musical and performance techniques exhibited by their U.S. and African American models. Like many black U.S. rappers, they saw themselves as natural commentators and observers of a seldom seen and largely ignored world where poverty, violence, and despair are prevalent (Prevos, Postcolonial Popular Music 50).
Despite how heavily they were influenced by American hip-hop artists, the French did not see rap as an American art that they were copying. Instead, rap was something they could relate with an make their own. In particular, the hardcore rap groups, who have found themselves often compared to American groups, consider their work to be their own. Prevos says that ``These groups do not see themselves as French representatives of the Californian 'gansta rap.' They instead consider their mission to be the denunciation of what they see as the social and economic exploitation of marginal groups and individuals'' (Prevos, Two Decades of Rap 9). Jean-Marie Jacono, a French music lecturer, writes that the members of hardcore group IAM ``see themselves as urban witnesses'' (Jacono 25). They are the voice of the banlieues, the only expression of an oppressed people.
Rap music and hip-hop fashion are also big in Japan, but there the evolution happened much differently. The Japanese have a history of embracing American fads, and for them the current obsession with blackness and hip-hop is largely the same as any other trend to come out of the United States. Japan is a homogeneous culture saturated with media, and so to a large extent the only image the Japanese get of black people is what they see in magazines and on television. Bynoe says that ``The 'Black' craze seems to have little to do with real black people, but instead with fetishized notions of characteristics Black people are presumed to possess'' (Bynoe 82). As black Americans started to gain media presence, their exposure in Japan flourished. Images of black athletes caused the Japanese to assume that ``being of African descent automatically ensures sports supremacy'' (Bynoe 82). When hip-hop began to make its way across the Pacific, first came breakdancing, then deejaying, and then finally rap music, which has since exploded into prominence in the Japanese marketplace. In the last decade the number of rap groups signed with Japanese record labels has gone from zero to more than thirty, and that number doesn't count the innumerable amateur groups (Prideaux). Yet the Japanese have been alien to hip-hop culture from the very beginning.
Since only a small percentage of the Japanese population spoke English, they didn't really understand what it was that American rap artists were saying. Condry says that ``In Japan the lyrical content of U.S. rap songs is to a large degree unappreciated, though the flow of the rappers voice is dissected and analyzed in quite fine detail'' (Condry 231). The problem is not that the words are unavailable to Japanese listeners - Condry says that translations are usually provided in album liners. Instead Japanese listeners largely don't care about subtleties in word choice and meaning. They are far more interested in the technical aspects of the music, like sample choice (Condry 232). Eric Prideaux, writing for Asia Week magazine, says that ``Listeners couldn't figure out African-American slang'' (Prideaux). Condry tells of a Japanese friend who ``was shocked to learn that 'We love smokin' that chronic' refers to marijuana'' (Condry 232). This friend of his didn't understand the culture that the music he enjoyed was coming from.
Since the Japanese don't understand hip-hop culture, they approach it the wrong way. For them, rap is something to be mastered. Prideaux cites a Japanese rapper who theorizes that perhaps early apprehension for rap was just uncertainty. ``Perhaps,'' Prideaux paraphrases, ``the most fundamental problem was that Japanese at first just weren't very good at this imported art form'' (Prideaux). They didn't understand it, so they attempted to recreate the external characteristics of hip-hop, and not the true culture. Prideaux also paraphrases the words of a hip-hop dance instructor. She tells them that ``The way to learn hip-hop ... is with your body, not your head'' (Prideaux). This advice falls at odds with Salaam's earlier praise of rap as a means of conveying a message.
The Japanese consider blackness as a part of hip-hop without understanding the significance that connection has. Some Japanese teens tan their skin, in order to appear black. Joe Wood, writing for the journal Transitions, went to Japan in order to investigate this unusual trend. He asked a young Japanese ``blackfacer'' why she made her skin look the way it did. ``Because it's cool,'' she replied (Wood 46). In the end, what making a trend of blackness does is to make African-American culture just another of the American media exports. Bynoe writes that ``While black youth are becoming more Westernized, most have no increased insight into the significance of the Black American experience to Hip Hop culture; for most Japanese, 'Hip Hop' is the symbol of American renegade chic'' (Bynoe 83). For the Japanese hip-hop is about the music, not about the culture. Prideaux quotes a Japanese ``'B-Boy' devotee'' he ran into at a nightclub as saying, ``No matter where you go in the world, no matter the race, there are people who listen to hip-hop. The music means peace and self-expression to me'' (Prideaux). Cook, however, has a different notion of what hip-hop music really meant in the streets:
Here we go with the non-violent myth of Hip Hop. The truth is, kids killed each other all the time during this time. Black on black crime was rampant ... Back in the days, Zulu Nation was a gang that was feared more than admired. They were more apt to stick you and cause mayhem than be socially active (Cook 5).
Without an understanding of where hip-hop came from, and its roots in black America, the Japanese have created their own version of hip-hop culture that's isolated from what it really was. Bynoe asks, ``If international artists are selectively taking parts of Hip Hop culture and reconfiguring them to fit their own histories and experiences, without understanding the framework in which these components developed, can these new cultural expressions still be called 'Hip Hop?''' (Bynoe 78). Clearly in the case of the Japanese the culture that they have developed is something new, something other than hip-hop. Their ``hip-hop culture'' is based on exported commodities, not shared experiences.
Elsewhere in Asia we find the ultimate example of the complete commodification of rap music. In an article for the New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal tells the story of a state-sponsored attempt to create a Chinese rap group. ``Here,'' she says, ``a campaign to create home-grown hip-hop performers is, like so much in China, the product of scientific planning, government intervention, expert input, and, of course, tests'' (Rosenthal 1). Months of preparation included round after round of tryouts, and culminated with extensive training in singing, dancing, and etiquette. Songs were written by hired composers and image consultants crafted the group's appearance. This scientific approach is a perfect example of the separation of the techniques of hip-hop from hip-hop culture. When the technique is used apart from the culture, the result isn't truly hip-hop.
Hip-hop culture has great potential as a vehicle for social change, but only when it is understood in the context of its history. The music itself will traverse international borders with ease, but only as music. Clearly in some cases the culture makes itself known globally as well. France is a perfect example of a country that can see the context of hip-hop culture and adapt it to its own needs. Other countries, such as Brazil, show the same characteristics of understanding hip-hop. Others, however, simply do not get it. Japan loves hip-hop music, hip-hop dance, hip-hop fashion, and even their notion of what it is to be black, but they don't know hip-hop culture. The culture is something that only those who understand the plight of black America can truly appreciate. Without that understanding, hip-hop is just another form of music, just another form of art, and just another fad.