When people call a thing urban, they are most often connecting that thing to the city. One might speak of urban problems, or urban clothing, referring to ills or fashion not shared by those outside of the metropolis. Historically the differences between the urban and the rural have been great. As America transitioned from a land of agriculture to one of industry, the city was the center of change. In cities one would find dense populations of life, manning the factories that were changing America's landscape. The city was new and full of adventurous men and women who had taken the risk of leaving their old lives and starting anew. ``Individuals and families gravitated to these places because life could truely be lived there. Given the abundant opportunities, life in the city was 'what you made it''' (Jeffries 157). Rural areas, on the other hand, were spread out and disconnected. The rural life had its established values and practices, with institutions that valued their continued existence. Today, however, these lines of differentiation are blurring and fading. In an editorial for one of his magazines, Keith Clinkscales, founding publisher of Vibe, redefined the traditional sense of urban, calling it more of a ``state of mind than an inner-city locale.'' In his perspective ``Urban'' is ``inclusive'' and ``a new name for a new way of life.'' These lives, he says, are built around the love of hip-hop and ``a weird generational mixture of cynicism and hope.''
Urban, as Clinkscales uses it, is not an adjective. Instead, his Urban is a noun. It's a place, though not a traditional place with geography and physicality. Murray Forman would call this a space, or a sort of sphere of shared circumstances or opinions. Forman says that space ``is foremost a social construct'' (4). Urban is a virtual space, something constantly created and redefined by those who inhabit it. The Urban, to borrow from Toure's description of the Hip-Hop Nation, has ``no precise date of origin, no physical land, no single chief'' (1). Those who inhabit the Urban also inhabit other spaces, both those physical and those similarly constructed. Hip-Hop music is the language of the Urban, acting as its missionaries and messengers. Hip-Hop and its meteoric rise to musical prominence has brought the Urban to places previously unable to connect to it. Forman tells how ``Hip-Hop culture was carried outward along both physical and technological pathways, disseminated more widely as its practices evolved away from the central central spaces of their origin'' (24). Mass media has allowed hip-hop, and through it the Urban, to reach ``dispersed and disparate audiences existing at a substantial distance from'' its origin (24).
This new Urban struggles to free itself from the binds of traditional power structures, creating what Friedman calls a horizontal society. Instead of classic top-down authoritarian command, this new structure is an environment where ``modern men and women are much freer to form relationships that are on a plane of equality (real or apparent) - relationships with peers, with like-minded people'' (Friedman 5). The Urban values authentic over authoritative. The gods of hip-hop culture are not political leaders, but those to whom the audience can connect and relate. RJ Smith says that ``The heroes of this music are broken males, contorted by choices beyond their control'' (39). Both Forman and Smith talk about how hip-hop is singular among musical genres in its connection with spatial icons. Hip-Hop lyrics are full of references to things with which the audience can, or would like to, relate. Even those lyrics dealing with the extravagant wealth of various artists connects to a population for whom that is their dream. They connect with the artist living out their fantasy. This grounded relationship to the music creates a greater opportunity for community. Smith tells a tale from the small-town midwest where a club DJ's musical selection created an unlikely bond -
Everyone starts singing along. Even the dancers look ready to hold up a lighter. A strip joint is a strange place to find a sliver of community, but all the same, Kid Rock and the boredom of Kokomo have conjured it out of a Saturday night (40).The bonds of traditional society have been lightened, freeing people to create the relationships and associations they truly want.
Not all people have responded positively to the changes brought about by the Urban and horizontal relationships. Hip-Hop is the language of today's youth, and as such is something those of older generations don't understand. This inter-age tension is in no way something new, however. Smith says that ``Making parents mad and recounting family tensions have always been a part of rock 'n' roll since Daddy took the T-Bird away'' (40). Today, as traditional rock has fizzled, hip-hop has come to fill the void as a way for youth to express their emotions. Hip-Hop ``lets people who feel unblessed by the economy express some righteous anger. It tells them that what's happening to their lives is not their fault'' (39). More than just emotion, hip-hop also thrives as an arena for social discourse. From its very beginnings hip-hop's lyrics have spoken out against injustice and the plight from which it rose. Forman calls hip-hop
a lightning rod for heated debates about ... social values, moral and ethical parameters, gender inequality, sexism or misogyny, class conflict, intergenerational dissonance, and the ongoing antagonisms of racial disharmony in America today (11-12).The Urban is a place where the voicing of societal concerns is accepted. It is ``a forum where ... the expression of powerful strains of both nihilism and optimism of a generation can be heard in multiple articulate modes'' (13). Here again is Clinkscales' ``weird generation mixture of cynicism and hope.'' Youth today see trouble all around them, but yet in the worst of it there is still some measure of positivism that knows an answer can be found.
The new Urban creates many positive results. The spread of global media allows the Urban to expose an entirely new audience to experiences that were previously unattainable. Likewise, technology has also enabled those not physically connected to the city to still participate in Hip-Hop and the Urban. In the old days, information flowed one-way: out of the city. LeRoi Jones, writing long ago about the first blues recordings, notes that ``The classic urban singers were recorded first, for obvious reasons; it was some years later before the country singers were recorded'' (101). Today's mobility means that Fred Durst can come from North Carolina, Eminem can come from Detroit, the Jurrasic 5 can come from L.A., and all can engage the same Urban audience. The spread of hip-hop culture and the Urban also effectively works to broaden their reach, creating more widely shared experiences and a greater ability for formerly disparate people to relate. Mass media links ``individuals and social groups across what were once, in earlier iterations, perceived as incommensurable cultural and spatial differences'' (31).
Yet, the explosion of the Urban worries some. Taking Urban out of the city could easily lead to the loss of the very creative environment that originally spawned it. Once the city has lost its differentiation, there's nothing left to keep it special. It is impossible to say whether the new Urban could sustain itself if it no longer had root in the city. Similarly, wide-spread homogenization of culture could easily disenfranchise those who created and guided the Urban's growth. Forman cautions
there is a danger that, in the midst of a global trend that threatens to erase territorial divisions and the boundaries on which national identities have been historically based, individually and groups will desperately seek to supplant this sense of loss and ``disorientation'' (33).This loss of division becomes even more real as the music instrustry further increases hip-hop's pervasiveness.
In the end, Clinkscale's Urban is very much a reality, whether anyone wants it to be or not. The economic factors that drive music desire to increase market whenever possible, and are therefore showering those outside the city with all manner of product and entertainment that make them feel that they have a connection to the Urban. As long as the city is still cool, there will always be those who want to be a part of it. Not all those who wish to are able, and therefore media and business will constantly strive to take the Urban to them. Urban will expand, the city will survive and adapt, and all this will happen very independently of how anyone chooses to try and define it.