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"Dub"
Monitor of Hip Hop Culture In Mainstream Media
Volume One, Issue One
07.01.94
-=> Editor's Note <=-
The Dub Project complies and makes available this monitor of hip hop culture
in the mainstream media. The goal of this guide is to increase the visibility
of the hip hop community worldwide. While this guide is an not an exhaustive
resource, it is a useful compendium of many resources and can be a helpful
reference for a true hip hopper surfing cyberspace. This resource contains
articles from other sources for analysis and discussion.
The Dub Project is now involved in building a place for hip hop within the
emerging information infrastructure. If you are interested in becoming a
member of the Dub Project, which is involved in the creation of this extensive
public-access hip hop database, please inform us.
R.O. King,
Director of the Dub Project.
rawlson.king@ablelink.org
-=> Contents <=-
Ruling on Rap Song, High Court Frees Parody From Copyright Law
And The Winner Is...Not The Real Hip-Hop That We Know
The Last Days Of Rap
Jeru The Damaja Interview
-=> Ruling on Rap Song, High Court Frees Parody From Copyright Law <=-
By Linda Greenhouse
Special To The New York Times
March 7, 1994
* Inset states: A 'fair use' case has ramifications: Mad Magazine take note *
WASHINGTON, March 7 - The Supreme Court, carving out a safety zone for parody
with the constraints of Federal copyright law, today unanimously overturned a
lower court's judgement that the rap group 2 Live Crew had infringed the
copyright on the rock classic "Oh, Pretty Woman" by recording its own rap
version of the Roy Orbison original.
The Justices ruled that 2 Live Crew was entitled to a trial to show that its
bawdy recasting of the 1964 song was a "fair use" of the original, exempt from
a copyright infringement claim.
A Federal appeals court ruled in 1992 that 2 Live Crew's "blatantly commercial
purpose" in recording its version, which the group described as a parody of
the original, deprived it of all protection under the copyright law.
What Constitutes 'Fair Use'?
That broad ruling alarmed many who make a living through parody and made the
case an important test of the doctrine of fair use, which is the one exception
in Federal copyright law to copyright owners' exclusive right to control their
works. Under the doctrine, a portion of a copyright work may be used without
permission "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching,
scholarship or research."
There is no explicit mention of parody in the law, however. The Supreme Court
had never addressed the issue, although lower courts have considered numerous
song parodies in the context of fair use. One appeals court gave fair use
protection to a parody of "When Sunny Get Blue" called "When Sonny Sniffs
Glue." Another court deemed a Mad Magazine parody of Irving Berlin's "A
Pretty Girl is Like a Melody," entitled "Louella Schwartz Describes Her
Malady," to be fair use.
Writing for the Court today, Justice David H. Souter said that "like less
ostensibly humorous forms of criticism," parody "can provide social benefit by
shedding light on an earlier work, and, in the process, creating a new one."
As such, he said, parody was entitled to consideration as fair use on the same
terms as other commentary.
While noting that "we might not assign a high rank" to the element of parody
in the 2 Live Crew song, Justice Souter accepted the group's assertion that
the song, "Pretty Women," included on a 1989 album, "As Clean as They Wanna
Be," was intended as parody.
The original version, written by Roy Orbison and William Dees and copyrighted
by Acuff-Rose Music Inc., was a upbeat tale of a man who sees, longs for and
eventually captures the attention of a women as she walks down the street. In
the 2 Live Crew version, the pretty women of the first verse becomes "big
hairy woman," "bald headed woman" and "two timin' woman."
The Court's opinion printed both versions, with Justice Souter commenting on
the rap group's: "The later words can be taken as a comment on the naivete of
the original of an earlier day, as a rejection of its sentiment that ignores
the ugliness of street life and the debasement that it signifies."
The humour of parody, Justice Souter said, "necessarily spring from
recognizable allusion to its object through distorted imitation." He said
that because parody's "art lies in the tension between a known original and
its parodic twin," a parody has to be able to use enough of the original to be
recognizable to the audience.
He said that woks like parody, which take the original and effect a creative
transformation, "lie at the heart of the fair use doctrine's guarantee of
breathing space within the confines of copyright."
Justice Souter stressed that courts must make a case-by-case determination of
whether a parody, or any other form of borrowing copyright material, qualifies
as fair use.
While the copyright law lists "commercial purpose" as one element in the fair
use determination, the appeals court in this case mistakenly treated 2 Live
Crew's profit motive as the only element, Justice Souter said. Noting that
the concept of fair use comes from English common law and dates back
centuries, he quoted Samuel Johnson's admonition that "no man but a blockhead
ever wrote, except for money" as evidence that commercial writing should not
be stripped automatically of fair use protection.
Group Asked Permission
2 Live Crew had requested permission to record its version of the song, which
Acuff-Rose denied. On its album, the group gave credit for "Pretty Women" to
Roy Orbison, William Dees and Acuff-Rose. After Acuff-Rose sued for copyright
infringement, the Federal District Court in Nashville ruled for 2 Live Crew, a
ruling that was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit, in Cincinnati.
The opinion today, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, No. 92-1292, was not a final
victory for 2 Live Crew. Justice Souter said the group had to persuade the
lower courts of two elements essential to the fair use defense: that it had
not taken any more of the original that necessary to make the point of the
parody, and that the parody had not harmed the market for the original song or
the potential market for the original song or the potential market for the
original versions that Acuff-Rose may license.
While joining the opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote a separate,
concurring opinion in which he expressed doubt that 2 Live Crew's song was a
"legitimate parody" as opposed to a "commercial take-off."
The Court received "friends of the court" briefs on 2 Live Crew's behalf from
Mad Magazine, the Harvard Lampoon and the political satirist Mark Russell.
The Capitol Steps, a musical group here that performs topical political
parodies, sent the Justices a cassette tape on which the group performs a
musical history of parody in America dating to the Revolution.
Acuff-Rose was supported by many briefs, including those from the Songwriters'
Guild, the entertainer Michael Jackson, who owns the rights to many of the
Beatles' song, and the estates of a number of renowned composers, including
Leonard Bernstein and George and Ira Gershwin.
-=> And The Winner Is...Not The Real Hip-Hop That We Know <=-
by Michael L. Sapps
From The Art Form
Why do the majority of Black people always feel that they have to measure up
to white standards? Similarly, why do a lot of rappers dream of winning the
prestigious (Yeah right!) Grammy award? Is it because it's the end-all-be-all
award in the music industry today, I don't think so. If you ask any person
who knows what's really up, they are aware that this is the recipients
acceptance to the powers-that-be society. It usually gives the winner a
license to put whatever type of bullshit out on the market that they want.
In other words the performers music will never be the same unless the street
is truly in their heart and we all know what fat ends can do to one's heart.
To those who know what's really up, the Grammy don't mean a damn thing.
What really matters is that your community gives you the props that you
deserve. It is the respect of your peers and homies that really matters.
To most that win the Grammy it is a representation to them that they have
finally made it. But you know what? When one thinks that they have made
it, they really haven't. Every performer should know that once they think
that they have made it, it really means that they have lost their edge and
are prone to failure. One would have to wonder if the artists stop to think
about who's nominating them for the Grammy in the rap category. Basically,
it's the same people who are nominating the other categories and they are
probably rich, white, know-nothing-about-hip-hop, biased, probably racist,
looking for their new nigga people. People who rejected hip-hop as long as
they could, deeming it as a fad. Making it out to be something that was
going to fade into the same black hole that 70's disco music and 80's break
dancing disappeared into. However, hip-hop hasn't disappeared yet, and you
know what, hip-hop is a force to be dealt with now and as long as there is
music playing on the airwaves.
Now, back to the artists themselves. Getting that big pay day may mean that
the money will start to roll in, which is good for the artist, but there is
a flip side to every coin. In the music industry large contracts sometime
equate to a level or state of selling out, whether it be in the music,
lifestyle, friendships, or beliefs. In most instances it is the music which
suffers, ultimately the change in the music affects the fans, who are the
people that make the hip-hop artist all that in the first place. Because of
this selling out of new artist and old artist alike, one could say that
hip-hop is in a state of emergency, even though hip-hop has never seen days
as prosperous as this in the past. It is also in a state of emergency
because of the fact that some artists, while stretching their artistic
creativity, are forgetting about what put them on the map in the first place.
What they've forgotten about is the booming old school beats that used to
rock BLS and KISS in New York, the old Power 99 in Philly, and similar
stations that could be found around the country. The beats that were rocking
the radio stations mentioned previously were the same beats that used to rock
the parks in New York as the posses used juice from the overhead lamplights
to carry out their battling with hyped-up, hip-hop lyrics as their only
weapons. That's the stuff that made rap what it is today, not the
prestigious Grammy. Grammys don't make the beats any better. In the past
this so called recognition has made the beats and lyrics wack, bugged out and
strictly booty. If you don't think so, think about the artists who have won
the Grammy in the past for the rap category, a few of them have slipped
haven't they? More importantly, many of them should not have been nominated
in the first place because the nominees were not true representatives of real
hip-hop that tine hip-hop junkies have become addicted to over the years.
If we, the hip-hop community, need to have the awards, the rewards, the
recognition, and the props, then let it come from you, the hip-hop community.
Instead of complaining about your lack of recognition, respect and
representation in the Grammy ceremonies the collective hip-hop community
should start it's own awards ceremony. That's right, start your own ceremony
where the nominees are elected and awarded by designated representatives of
the hip-hop community. The representatives could be rappers (Legit rappers
that have a track record). They could be deejays from radio stations that
bust real hip-hop rhymes and lyrics. They could be from publications that
write about the hip-hop scene, or the nominees could be nominated and awarded
by the sector of the public that listens to the real hip-hop.
Now, we've already established the fact that we need our own hip-hop awards
ceremonies. We know there are people who could nominate and pick the
recipients of the awards. Now, the next logical thing to do is to pick a
name for the award. But before we address the name issue, did you know that
the black actors in Hollywood have their own awards ceremonies? Yeah, that's
right, the black actors have decided to give the recognition and respect to
their own, just like the hip-hop community should do. However, there is one
crucial mistake that we would hope the hip-hop community would not make like
the black actors have made. You wonder what that is don't you? Well it's
the fact that the black actors decided to call their award the Black Oscar
Award, named after silent film maker Oscar Micheaux.
That's right, the black actors initiated their own awards ceremony because
the committees of the Oscars, Cannes Film Festival and other institutions
like them did not recognize the contributions that black actors and
film-makers have made to the motion picture industry. So why would the Black
actors name their award after the Oscar which is a representation of
virtually every entity which snubbed the black actors and film makers in the
first place. Whatever the reason is, it was kind of stupid to do, wasn't it?
The black actors and film makers could have easily called it the Micheaux,
which would have alleviated any confusion with their counterpart's Oscar
award. It seems as if they compromised themselves by associating their
award with the standard of the original Oscar. It's almost as if they took
one step forward only to take two steps backwards. That one step forward and
two steps backwards could have easily been three steps in the positive
direction. How could they have done that you ask? They could have named the
award after someone who epitomizes what being a black actor or film maker is
all about.
Not that Oscar Micheaux does not epitomize those characteristics. He was the
first black man to direct movies in the silent film era. He was a pioneer.
The award could have easily been named after Paul Robeson, a great, actor,
scholar, political activist and just a plain, descent human being. A man
who represented an all around role model for all people of African and
non-African descent. More importantly, by naming the award after Robeson
there would be no association made with other institutions. Having their own
awards ceremony is a good thing, but black film makers and actors should feel
confident that they can stand on their own merit as artists.
Naming their award after Oscar Micheals was not a bad act. Associating their
award with the standards and notoriety of the original Oscar award was a foul
act. We, as African-Americans have to set new standards and go above and
beyond the standards which have been set for us in the past.
It's been said that there are two things that one can do when one observes
someone else. One can either learn what to do or what not to do. Hip-hop
community you know what not to do, and that would be naming your award the
Black Grammy.
If any name is picked it should be the name of someone who has made a
positive impact on the hip-hop beats, rhymes, and lyrics that you are putting
on CD, wax, and cassette. You could call it the Bambatta, after Afrika
Bambatta, leader of the Zulu nation and one of the few godfathers of hip-hop
as we know it. It could be called the Clinton, after George Clinton, the
great one who helped to define what Funk is all about. But what it should
really be called is the JB after James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. The
man's music that has influenced everyone, in the hip-hop community in some
way, shape, form or fashion. As the Hip-hop community, you have just been
given a few suggestions for a name for your award. Point blank, just name
the award after someone or something that gives props to the real hip-hop
community. If you name it after someone or something the expresses our proud
African heritage you will not go wrong.
Today we live in a problem oriented society, however brothers and sisters you
have just been handed a solution to the problem of getting the props that you
rightfully deserve. Just Do It.
-=> The Last Days Of Rap <=-
By David Samuels
The New Republic
November 16, 1991
* Inset states: The way in which rap has been consumed and popularized speaks
not of cross-cultural understanding, musical or otherwise, but of a voyeurism
and a tolerance of racism *
SOUNDSCAN, a computerized scanning system, changed Billboard magazine's method
of counting record sales in the United States this summer. Replacing a
haphazard system that relied on big-city record stores, it instead measured
the number of records by scanning the bar codes at chain-store cash registers
across the nation. Within weeks the number of computed record sales leapt, as
demographics shifted from minority-focused urban centres to white, suburban,
middle-class malls.
And so it was that America awoke on June 22, 1991, to find that its favourite
record was not "Out of Time", by aging college-boy rockers R.E.M., but
"Niggaz4life", a musical celebration of gang rape and other violence by N.W.A.
(or Niggers With Attitude), a rap group from a Los Angeles ghetto whose
records had never before risen above No. 27 on the Billboard charts.
From "Niggaz4life" to "Boyz N the Hood", young black men committing acts of
violence were available this summer in a wide variety of entertainment
formats. Of these none in more popular than rap. And none had received quite
the level of critical attention and concern.
Writers on the left have long viewed rap as the heartbeat of urban America --
its authors, in Arthur Kempton's words, "the pre-eminent young dramaturgists
in the clamorous theatre of the street. On the right, this assumption has
been shared, but greeted with predictable disdain.
Neither side of the debate has been prepared, however, to confront what the
entertainment industry's receipts from this summer proved beyond doubt:
Although rap is still proportionally more popular among blacks, its primary
audience is white and lives in the suburbs. And the history of rap's
degeneration from insurgent black-street music to mainstream pop points to
another dispiriting conclusion: that the more rappers were packaged as violent
black criminals, the bigger their white audiences became.
If the racial makeup of rap's audience has been largely misunderstood, so have
the origins of its authors. Since the early 1980s, a tightly knit group of
mostly young, middle-class, black New Yorkers, in close concert with white
record producers, executives and publicists, has been making rap music for an
audience that industry executives concede is primarily composed of white
suburban males.
Rap's appeal to whites rested in its evocation of an age-old image of
blackness: a foreign, sexually charged and criminal underworld against which
the norms of white society are defined and, by extension, through which they
may be defied. It was the truth of this latter proposition that rap would
test in its journey into the mainstream.
"Hip-hop," the music behind the lyrics, which are "rapped," is a form of sonic
bricolage with roots in "toasting," a style of making music by speaking over
records. Toasting first took hold in Jamaica in the mid-1960s, a response,
legend has it, to the limited availability of expensive Western instruments
and the concurrent proliferation of cheap R & B instrumental singles.
Cool DJ Herc, a Jamaican who settled in the South Bronx, is widely credited
with having brought toasting to New York City. Rap spread quickly through New
York's poor black neighbourhoods in the mid- and late 1970s.
Although much is made of rap as a kind of urban streetgeist, early rap had a
more basic function: dance music. The first rap record to make it big was
"Rapper's Delight," released in 1979 by the Sugar Hill Gang. Its first 30
seconds were indistinguishable from the disco records of the day: light
guitars, high-hat drumming and hand-claps over a deep funk bass line.
Like disco music and jumpsuits, the social commentaries of early rappers like
Grandmaster Flash and Mellie Mel were for the most part transparent attempts
to sell records to white by any means necessary. Songs like "White Lines"
(with its anti-drug theme) and "The Message" (about ghetto life) had the
desired effect, drawing fulsome praise from white rock critics raised on the
protest ballads of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs. The reaction on the street was
less favourable.
It was not until 1984 that rap broke through to a mass white audience. The
first group to do this was Run-DMC. Bill Adler, a former rock critic and
rap's best-known publicist, explains: "They were the first group that came on
stage as if they had just come off the street corner. But unlike the first
generation of rappers, they were solidly middle class. Both of Run's parents
were college-educated. DMC was a good Catholic school kid, a mama's boy.
Neither of them was deprived and neither of them ever ran with a gang, but on
stage they became the biggest, baddest, streetest guys in the world."
Rap's new mass audience was in large part the brainchild of Rick Rubin, a
Jewish punk rocker from suburban Long Island who produced the music behind
many of rap's biggest acts. Like many New Yorkers his age, Mr. Rubin grew up
listening to "Mr. Magic's Rap Attack," a rap radio show. In 1983, at the age
of 19, Mr. Rubin founded Def Jam Records in his New York University dorm room.
The appearance of white groups in a black musical form has historically
prefigured the mainstreaming of the form, the growth of the white audience and
the resulting dominance of white performers. With rap, however, this process
took an unexpected turn: White demand indeed began to determine the direction
of the genre, but what it wanted was music more defiantly black. The result
was Public Enemy, produced and marketed by Mr. Rubin.
Public Enemy's now familiar melange of polemic and dance music was formed not
on inner-city streets but in the suburban Long Island towns in which the
group's members grew up. The children of successful black middle-class
professionals, they gave voice to the feeling that, despite progress toward
equality, blacks still did not quite belong in white America. They complained
of unequal treatment by the police, of never quite overcoming the colour of
their skin: "We were suburban college kids doing what we were supposed to do,
but were always made to feel like something else," explains Bill Stephney, the
groups's executive producer.
Public Enemy's abrasive and highly politicized style made it a fast favourite
of the white avant-garde, which like the English punk-rock band The Clash 10
years before. Public Enemy's music was faster, harder and more abrasive than
the rap of the day, music that moved behind the vocals like a full-scale band.
But the root of Public Enemy's success was a highly charged theatre of race in
which white listeners became guilty eavesdroppers on the putative private
conversation of the inner city. Public Enemy's member Chuck D denounced his
enemies (the media, some radio stations), proclaimed himself "Public Enemy No.
1" and, flanked onstage by black-clad security guards from the Nation of
Islam, praised Louis Farrakhan, the Nation's leader. Flavour Flaw, Chuck's
homeboy sidekick, parodied street style: over-size sunglasses, baseball cap
cocked to one side, a clock the size of a silver plate draped around his neck,
going off on wild verbal riffs that often meant nothing at all.
The closer rap moved to the white mainstream, the more it became like rock 'n'
roll, a celebration of posturing over rhythm. The back catalogues of such
artists as James Brown and George Clinton were relentlessly plundered for
catch hooks, then overlaid with dance beats and social commentary.
At the very heart of rap is its aural cartoons. "Whites have always liked
black music," says Hank Shocklee. "That part is hardly new. The difference
with rap was that the imagery of black artists, for the first time, reached
the level of black music. The sheer number of words in a rap song allows for
the creation of full characters impossible in R&B. Rappers become like
superheroes; Captain America or the Fantastic Four."
By 1988 the conscious manipulation of racial stereotypes had become rap's
leading edge, a trend best exemplified by the rise of stardom of Schooly D, a
Philadelphia rapper on the Jive label who sold more than 500,000 records with
little mainstream notice.
It was not that the media had never heard of Schooly D: white critics and
fans, for the first time, were simply at a loss for words. His voice, fierce
and deeply textured, could alone frighten listeners. He used it as a rhythmic
device that made no concessions to pop-song form, talking evenly about smoking
crack and using women for sex, proclaiming his blackness, accusing other
rappers of not being black enough.
What Schooly D meant by blackness was abundantly clear: Schooly D was a
misogynist and a thug. If listening to Public Enemy was like eavesdropping on
a conversation, Schooly D was like getting mugged. This, aficionados agreed,
was what they had been waiting for: a rapper from whom you would flee in
abject terror if you saw him walking toward you late at night.
It remained for N.W.A., a more convention group, to adapt Schooly D's
stylistic advance for the mass white market with its first album-length
release, Straight Out of Compton, in 1989. The much-quoted rap from that
album was the target of an FBI warning to police departments across the
country and a constant presence at certain college parties, white and black,
with its songs that spoke of trading oral sex for crack and shooting strangers
for fun. After that release, N.W.A.'s lead rapper and chief lyricist, Ice
Cube, left the group. Billing himself as "the nigger you love to hate," Ice
Cube released a solo album, "Amerikkka's Most Wanted," which gleefully pushed
the limits of rap's ability to give offence.
Ice Cube took his act to the big screen this summer in "Boyz N the Hood",
drawing rave reviews for his portrayal of a young black drug dealer who life
of crime leads him to an untimely end. The crime-don't-pay message, an
inheritance from the grade-B gangster film, is the stock-in-trade of another
L.A. rapper-turned-actor, Ice T of "New Jack City" fame, a favourite of
socially conscious rock critics. Tacking unhappy endings onto glorifications
of drug dealing and gang warfare, Ice-T offers all the thrills of the form
while alleviating any guilt listeners may have felt about enjoying drive-by
shootings along with their popcorn.
With "Yo! MTV Raps," rap became for the first time music of choice in the
white suburbs of middle America. From the beginning, says Doug Herzog, MTV's
vice-president for programming, the show's audience was primarily white, male,
suburban and between the ages of 16 and 24, a demographic profile that Yo!'s
success help set in stone. For its daytime audience, MTV spawned an ethnic
rainbow of well-scrubbed pop rappers from MC Hammer to Vanilla Ice to Gerardo,
a Hispanic actor turned rap star. For Yo! itself, rap became more overtly
politicized as it expanded its audience. Sound bites from the speeches of
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King became de rigueur introductions to formulaic
assaults on white America mixed with hymns to gang violence and crude sexual
caricature.
Holding such polyglot together is what Village Voice critic Nelson George has
labelled "ghettocentrism," a style-driven cult of blackness defined by crude
stereotypes. P.R. releases, like a recent one for Los Angeles rapper DJ Quik,
take special care to mention artist's police records, often enhanced to
provide extra street credibility. When Def Jam star Slick Rick was arrested
for attempted homicide, Def Jam incorporated the arrest into its publicity
campaign for Slick Rick's new album, bartering exclusive rights to the story
to Vanity Fair in exchange for the promise of a lengthy profile.
Muslim groups such as Brand Nubian proclaim their hatred for white devils,
especially those who plot to poison black babies. That Brand Nubian believes
the things said on its records is unlikely: The group seems to get along quite
well with its white Jewish publicist, Beth Jacobson of Electra Records.
Anti-white and, in this case, anti-Semitic, rhymes are a shorthand way of
defining one's opposition to the mainstream. Racism is reduced ti fashion, by
the rappers who use it and by the white audiences to whom such images appeal.
What's significant here are not so much the intentions of artist and audience
as a dynamic in which anti-Semitic slurs and black criminality correspond to
"authenticity," and "authenticity" sells records.
The selling of this authenticity to a young white audience is the stock-in-
trade of The Source, a full-colour monthly magazine devoted exclusively to rap
music, founded by Jon Shecter while still an undergraduate at Havard. Mr.
Shecter is what is known in the rap business as a Young Black Teen-ager. He
wears a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, like Spike Lee, and a Source T-shirt.
An upper-middle-class white, Mr. Shecter has come in for his share of
criticism.
In part because of young white like him, rap's influence in the black
community continues to decline. Says Bill Stephney: "Kids in my neighbourhood
pump dancehall reggae on their systems all night long, because that's where
the rhythm is...People complain about how white kids stole black culture. The
truth of the matter is that no one can steal a culture."
Whatever its continuing significance in the realm of racial politics, rap's
hour as innovative popular music has come and gone. Rap forfeited whatever
claim it may have had to particularity by acquiring a mainstream white
audience who tastes increasingly determined the nature of the form. What
whites wanted was not music, but black music, which was a result stopped
really being either.
White fascination with rap sprang from a particular kind of cultural tourism
pioneered by the Jazz Age novelist Carl Van Vechten, whose 1926 best seller
"Nigger Heaven" imagined a masculine, criminal, yet friendly black ghetto
world that functioned, for Mr. Van Vechten and for his readers, as a refuge
from white middle-class boredom.
The moral inversion of racist stereotypes as entertainment has lost whatever
transformative power it may arguable have had 50 years ago. MC Serch of 3rd
Bass, a white rap traditionalist with short-cropped hair and thick-rimmed
Buddy Holly glasses, formed his style in the uptown hip-hop clubs like the
L.Q. in the early 1980s. "Ten or 11 years ago," he remarks, "when I was
wearing my permanent-press Lee's with a beige campus shirt and matching Adidas
sneakers, kids I went to school were called me a 'wigger', 'black wanna-be,'
all kind of racist names. Now those same kids are driving Jeeps with MCM
leather interiors and pumping Public Enemy."
The ways in which rap has been consumed and popularized speak not of cross-
cultural understanding, musical or otherwise, but of a voyeurism and tolerance
of racism in which black and white are both complicit. "Both the rappers and
their fans affect and commodify their own visions of street culture," argues
Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, "like buying Navajo blankets at a
reservation road-stop. A lot of what you see in rap is the guilt of the black
middle class about its economic success, its inability to put forth a culture
of its own. Instead they do the worst possible thing, falling back on
fantasies of street life. In turn, white college students with impeccable
gender credentials buy nasty sex lyrics under the cover of getting at some
kind of authentic black experience."
Mr. Gates goes on to make the more worrying point: "What is potentially very
dangerous about this is the feeling that by buying records they have made some
kind of valid social commitment." Where the assimilation of black street
culture by whites once required a degree of human contact between races, the
street is now available at the flick of a cable channel -- to black and white
alike.
People want to consume and they want to consume easy," Hank Shocklee says. "if
you're a suburban white kid and you want to find out what life is like for a
black city teen-ager, you buy a record by N.W.A. It's like going to an
amusement park and getting a roller-coaster ride. Records are safe, they're
controlled fear, and you always have the choice of turning it off. That why
nobody ever takes a train up to 125th Street and gets out and starts walking
around. Because then you're not in control any more; it a whole other ball
game."
This kind of consumption -- of racist stereotypes, of brutality toward women
or even uplifting tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King -- is of a particularly
corrupting kind. The values it instills find their ultimate expression in the
case with which we watch young black men killing each other: in movies, on
records and on the streets of cities and towns across the country.
-=> Jeru The Damaja Interview <=-
From Tribe Magazine, taken on January 15 after the Toronto pre-album show.
Tribe. Were does the name Jeru come from?
Jeru. It is a name based on ancient European prophets, but in the future
I will be changing my last name to Jeru Neberther (Lord of all worlds)
Tribe. Have you always lived in Brooklyn and how long have you been
rhymin'?
Jeru. I've been rhyming for 15 years and I was born, raised and have been
living in Brooklyn all my life.
Tribe. Tell me about the production of "Come Clean"
Jeru. There's not much to tell. When Premier and I came up with the beat,
we looked at each other like two people who have just fallen in love.
We knew it was the hit.
Tribe. What is the whole Dirty Rotten Scoundrel ideology?
Jeru. It is about me. If people tell me their business, I don't get in-
volved. I stay on the down low and mind my own, which makes me a
Dirty Rotten Scoundrel. Also Little Dap and Group Home are part of
the Dirty Rotten Scoundrel crew.
Tribe. When did you know you were going to rhyme for a living?
Jeru. My mother told me when I was young I wasn't like any other kid. At
two years old, I knew I was going to make lots of money and be
famous.
Tribe. What do you intend to do with the money you've made?
Jeru. I intend to give it back to my community.
Tribe. What are you're views on gangsta rap?
Jeru. I like Snoop and other gangsta rappers as long as it's real...I hate
fake gangsta rap.
Tribe. What should we expect from the album?
Jeru. I can't tell you what to expect, you just have to listen to it for
yourself.
Tribe. What would like to see for Hip-Hop in '94?
Jeru. I'd like to see the rise of Jeru and the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels crew.
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