The Politics Of Hip Hop

Essay by Rick Johnson

Every generation seeks to leave a legacy of hopefulness, progress, and inspiration. As Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, “Each generation must discover their mission and either fulfill or defy it.” Music has always been a useful mechanism for people to voice the concerns of their hearts. As Bob Dylan represented a voice for the counter culture of the 1960’s, hip hop music has been the voice of our generation since the eighties. It is the new soapbox, podium, and arena for these philosopher kings in Fubu to holler about the concerns of their communities. As Public Enemy’s Chuck D once said, “Hip hop is the black CNN.” From jazz to gospel to blues, African Americans have always sought to express and share their feelings of their position in America.

James Weldon Johnson once wrote, “American musicians, instead of investigating rag-time, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word… Whatever new thing the people like is pooh-poohed; whatever is popular is spoken of as not worth the while.” Hip hop has also been influential in profound ways within the last few decades, yet like rag-time has been ignored.

Hip hop has become a music Americans can share as Eminem declared in his song “Mosh:” “All you can see is a sea of people some white and some black, don’t matter what color, all that matters we gathered together.”

Many critics of hip hop often talked about its glorification of drugs, sex, and violence. Yet, as Outkast says, “we missed a lot of church, so the music is our confessional.” However, the same way that jazz is not simply about flat fives, ninths or sharp eleven’s, hip hop is not simply about the dark sides of the African American experience. As Nas declared on his album God’s Son in his song “I Can” telling black children, “Smart boys turn to men and do whatever they wish. You don’t have to be gangstas. Read more, learn more, change the globe. Ghetto children, do your thing. Hold your head up, little man, you’re a king.”

In the words of hip hop intellectual Michael Eric Dyson, “It is the job of the organic intellectual to know more than traditional intellectuals do.”

He adds that it was just as crucial that the “organic intellectual cannot absolve himself or herself from the responsibility of transmitting those ideas, knowledge, through the intellectual function, to those who do not belong, professionally, in the intellectual class.”