Paul Scott’s recent writing on Hip Hop gives me a different perspective on Hip Hop culture. He distinguishes between Hip Hop and “Blackness” and argues that it has become an alternative to Blackness, not a manifestation of African American culture.

Scott has published a series on Hip Hop lately. In his first installment, “Does Hip Hop Hate the Educated Rapper,” Scott argues that there has always been tension within the genre between consciousness-raising, on the one hand, and mindless diversion. He followed this with “Did Hip Hop Swgga Jack Black Culture?” where he argues that Hip Hop has created its own “race,” apart from Blackness, and that it has contributed to the destruction of African American culture. In his most recent post on this theme, “The Gentrification of Rap,” Scott argues that Hip Hop culture as been transformed, over the past 30 years, from an “authentic voice of the inner city” to a commercial monstrosity plagued by the twin evils of gangsta rap sensationalism and crossover ambiguity.

While I don’t agree with Scott’s assessment that black authenticity is synonymous with being Afrocentric and “pro-Black,” I find his description of many who embrace Hip Hop culture today as being “Hip Hop Hippies” very fitting. In many ways my perception of rap was formed during the early days when I could assume that an identity built around Hip Hop meant, by definition, that one had an elevated social and historical consciousness. It never occurred to me that someone could embrace the style of Hip Hop without embracing its content. The difference between the way I saw the culture and the way Scott seems to approach it is that I saw the variation within Hip Hip, including its potential for crossing over and becoming mainstream, as reflecting the variation of African American experiences. There was always room, in my understanding of Hip Hop, for Grandmaster Flash, Will Smith, Public Enemy, The Gheto Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, PM Dawn, Arrested Development, US3, and The Goodie Mob.

The notion of Hip Hop Hippies, as Scott uses the term, refers to those who embrace Hip Hop stylistically, but who don’t want to deal with issues of social, political and economic disparity. Being Hip Hop, from that standpoint, becomes a way for one to ingratiate oneself to the American mainstream stylistically, while avoiding even the acknowledgment that there are difficult race-related social and political questions that must still be wrestled with.

Darryl Pinckney, in his review of Toure’s “Who’s Afraid of Post Blackness,” in the New York Review of Books, sees Hip Hop as not only retaining its African American cultural roots, but as being a way that Black Americans can excel in mainstream institutions without losing their social and cultural bearings. Pinckney writes, “What (Hip Hop) told young black men was that success could be a kind of militancy and that it did not mean that you had to act white or give up any of your ‘Yo dawg, wassup?’ Black students took their rap soundtrack with them to Havard Law School.”

Where Scott sees an embrace of style while losing one’s substance, Pinckney sees the embrace of style that empowers the outsider to jump over hurdles on the way to becoming an insider.

If there is a lesson to be taken away from all of this I suppose it is that one should not confuse a fashion statement with a social or political stance. I know a woman at a coffee shop who couldn’t wrap her head around how it could be possible that the Barista, who sported Dread Locs, was also a registered Republican. While it is true that many cultural symbols and artifacts may have originated as protest statements, that doesn’t mean that they will carry the same meaning once they have been adopted by the mainstream.

Related Book of Interest: Black Racial Identity and Schooling

See also: Hip Hop is Not as Simple as You Think and How to Listen to Hip Hop

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What social and political statements do you associate with Hip Hop culture? What Hip Hop songs are part of the “soundtrack” of your life? How has Hip Hop been transformed by mainstream American culture and how has mainstream American culture been transformed by Hip Hop?

Also of interest: Rejecting Blackness to Embrace Hip Hop? What Color is Your Music?

C. Matthew Hawkins

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