by Khari Gzifa
A frequent topic lately, at least in hip hop circles, has been the idea of "culture vulture-ism" and the overt revamping of the popular hip hop image into a less melanin dominated one. While I definitely have an opinion that I have shared in some impromptu roundtables, I think the greater issue is being missed. To illustrate my argument please allow me to divert this conversation into a brief socio-economic lesson. I promise, I will return to my point.
In the 1970s a critical threshold in American business was passed with barely a word mentioned or notice taken. In that decade, GMAC (the financing arm of manufacturing giant General Motors, and basically a bank) for the first time surpassed GM itself in profit-making. When big business saw that it was more profitable to loan money to buy cars than to make and sell those cars, there was a seismic shift in our business models. In the interest of keeping it brief, things like NAFTA, the birth of the world’s most ridiculous CEO-to-Employee pay ratio and most importantly CONSOLIDATION are all direct results of that change. Consolidation is what has been happening all over American business for the last 4 decades; from the Ma Bell and public utilities breakups (which were supposedly done to INCREASE competition, lol), to the wipeout of neighborhood hardware and mom and pop general stores by the likes of Home Depot and Walmart. The new model is very few choices in all of your goods and services. No place is this rule more obvious than in public or terrestrial radio. As a result of that same consolidation trend, behemoths like Clear Channel are now able to completely dominate the marketplace. They are able to present their viewpoint everywhere at once, and only their viewpoint. By establishing that role in media they were able to change radio from its previous role of conduit or a highway through which ideas and art were transmitted between creator and consumer, into a new role as tastemaker and grand arbiter of what is appealing/popular and what ain’t! Now songs had to "cater to radio", images had to fit into a known value and the public needed to be TOLD what to like. See, that’s the only way the banksters, the bean counting counterfeiters that are the real force behind the huge multinational corporations and the crime enabling legislation that created this situation, know how to do business. It’s their ONLY model!
So all this brings me back to where we are now. The reason hip hop is lightening up is because it needs to accomplish two tasks for this group; a) it needs to sell to as wide a base as possible and that includes not just the majority culture but the originators too, and it needs to include the lions share within both those groups and, b) they need to sell other images, lifestyles, products, etc. to you through the music and to do this they need the least threatening/most broadly accepted images out there; the majority culture (read, white people). Remember, these labels are doing 360 deals exclusively for a reason. The money ain't there in music like it used to be and those same reverberations go through radio as well.
So that is our backdrop, that is what needs to be understood before going into any conversation about whether the culture is being exploited and appropriated, in my opinion. But with that said my answer is definitively and emphatically, yes. This is what is happening without question. But that’s not all that’s happening. We the listening audience have the ability to change this reality. I could go on and on about how people like Robin Thicke and Iggy Azalea represent what I believe are some of the most brazen attempts to redefine a culture as has been done many times in the past, but to me that would be dwelling on the negative and I try to lead by example so I’m gonna focus on the positive instead. As the homie Stic from dead prez would say, I’m trying to stay "Zen'd up" so I have a few things I would like to offer as alternatives for the readers at OnStage.
First, don’t listen to the radio! Nowadays it seems like everybody has a smartphone or tablet or something. Get an app like TuneIn or something and find a station that plays what you wanna hear. Personally, I’m on Rapstation Radio hard, I mean they have a good mix of shows and play all kinds of interesting stuff, just in segues and intros... I strongly suggest it. But there are hundreds of others to choose from.
We can support artists at their shows and at retail. Did you know that Talib Kweli did a somewhat unprecedented thing for his latest effort, Gravitas? He sold it directly to his fans from his website (in a partnership with Javotti Media). Did you support him in his vision to take back control of the "conduit” by keeping the middle man out? There are far too many others to mention as far as independent artists but I hope that more people will start to seek them out. There is literally a gold mine out there just waiting to be heard, and supported.
We can subscribe to all of these various artist’s YouTube accounts for as long as they may have those, (according to reports that window is closing). Set up a Livestream account, or better yet subscribe to OnStage and set the trend by sheer numbers. We can power the renaissance of the types of music and radio we want to hear just by participation; listening and calling in to shows, supporting the businesses that advertise on these stations, supporting the artists that are played, etc. Its up to us to take back the reins and ultimately guide the ship for the future of the type of music we wanna hear, and to a larger extent, the type of media we wanna have, but I'm gonna save that for a later conversation.
I hope we are up for the challenge, I am very optimistic about where we can take this if we take the time to care.