As The Stars Of Hip-Hop’s Golden Age Approach Their Golden Years, Some Confront Questions About Whether Old Blood Can Make New Music

Andre 3000, who’s 49 years old, has worried that his ‘old blood’ wouldn’t jibe with rap culture. Per Ole Hagen/Redferns via Getty Images

BY A. D. CARSON

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HIP-HOP

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

It’s always awkward telling people what I do for a living. I’m a rapper. I also work as a professor of hip-hop.

I work at the intersection of artmaking and academic research. I write music as part of a greater effort to challenge antiquated ideas about learning, teaching and expertise.

But I assume the awkwardness in conversations about work is related to stereotypes of hip-hop culture. Among many, one of those assumptions is that hip-hop is only made for and by young people.

It’s no surprise that ageism exists in and about hip-hop culture; in the U.S., ageism is everywhere. But I would argue that ageism in hip-hop is especially strong because the first generation of rappers is only now reaching their golden years.

New rap categories

In August 2024, music producer 9th Wonder proposed a new “Adult Contemporary” category for rap music. A month prior, 52-year-old Common and 54-year-old producer Pete Rock had released “The Auditorium, Vol. 1.”

In response to 9th Wonder, legendary hip-hop artist Q-Tip warned on the social platform X that hip-hop fans might be turned off by a category with “adult” in the name. He suggested “Traditional Hip-Hop” instead, arguing that the music should all appear in “one pot,” lest it turn off younger listeners.

Whether it’s called Adult Contemporary or Traditional Hip-Hop, several hip-hop legends have recently released new music that could fit into this category. In July 2024, the legendary lyricist Rakim, who’s 56 years old, released “G.O.D.’S NETWORK (REB7RTH),” his first album in 15 years. Two months later, 54-year-old MC Lyte released “1 of 1,” her ninth studio album, and 56-year-old LL Cool J released “The Force,” his 14th studio album and his first in 11 years.

Growing pains

Since hip-hop emerged as a cultural force more than 50 years ago, people still seem to pigeonhole rap as music made by and for young people.

And it’s true that in hip-hop’s early days, teenagers were at the forefront of the fledgling movement.

A 1973 back-to-school party organized by a 15-year-old girl from the Bronx named Cindy Campbell is often credited with birthing hip-hop. Grand Wizzard Theodore was just 12 years old when he invented record scratching in 1977. The hip-hop careers of artists like Roxanne Shanté, Run-DMC and Ice Cube all began when they were teens.

Being closely intertwined with the perception of youth culture isn’t necessarily a good thing. It can compel critics to treat the music and its practitioners less seriously.

Rappers, no matter their age, can be dismissed or treated as childish or immature.

Call it growing pains: Unlike, say, classical or country, 50 years is a blip in the history of music. And for much of that time, critics regarded hip-hop as a passing fad. Then it was seen as an emergent subculture.

It’s only been a category at the Grammys since 1989, and only recently has it been recognized as a commercial and cultural force with a global reach.

Nowadays, equating hip-hop with youth culture confines it to an arena it has long outgrown.

Imposter syndrome grows

Nonetheless, as rappers age, some can seem uncomfortable about participating in a form that can be so easily dismissed.

In 2015, filmmaker Paul Iannacchino Jr. released a documentary, “Adult Rappers,” about working-class rap artists.

All the people interviewed for the film rap professionally but aren’t famous. They are mostly men. Most of them admit that they sidestep questions about what they do for a living. One unshakable takeaway is the embarrassment about their age.

Even famous rappers aren’t immune to this feeling. Before his move to instrumental flute music, André 3000, one of the greatest rappers of all time, lamented becoming the old rapper still making music beyond his prime.

“I remember, at like 25, saying, ‘I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rapper,’” he told The New York Times in 2014. “I’m 39 now, and I’m still standing by that. I’m such a fan that I don’t want to infiltrate it with old blood.”

André 3000 has been a gifted lyricist for decades, and remains so. If he feels this way, I can imagine that many other artists might feel that, at a certain age, they don’t belong to the culture anymore.

Or the culture no longer belongs to them.

Forever young?

Despite the fact that audiences have aged alongside the artists, it can still feel like there’s pressure to stay tapped in to youth culture, lest they create music that, to quote André 3000 more recently, lacks “fresh ingredients.”

This might encourage some aging artists to attempt to maintain a youthful sheen that will resonate with young audiences. Think of it as a pop culture version of Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

In the novel, a man sells his soul for youth. Rather than physically aging, a painting of him ages instead, taking on the physical signs of his transgressions and pleasures.

It’s still easy to think of hip-hop as confined to a frame that bears all the marks of youthful longings, rebellion and sins: juvenile vitality, sprightly beauty and vigorous hedonism.

The expectations lead audiences to assume all artists have similar youthful aims and concerns. They can also lead artists to perform like they’re young and write about the concerns they had as youngsters, despite their respective ages. The hip-hop artists who can’t or choose not to pretend to be “forever young” are expected to “evolve” into moguls, actors, podcasters or reality TV personalities.

Of course, those assumptions only end up limiting what artists of all ages can accomplish.

Rappers at whatever level of celebrity you observe, famous and not famous, continue to create while embracing the inevitability of age. Nas, whose debut album, “Illmatic,” was released in 1994, has had an outstanding run of albums in the 2020s.

Jay-Z’s “4:44” showcased the rapper’s changing sensibilities that have seemingly evolved as he has aged.

North Carolina duo Little Brother’s entire catalog displays awareness of the absurdity of avoiding adulthood – outstandingly so, I might add, on their 2019 album, “May the Lord Watch.”

Even emerging rappers like Conway the Machine and 7xvethegenius seem to be able to balance burgeoning careers without caving to youth-obsessed pretenses.

Creating new, cleverly named musical categories to sidestep biases against aging probably won’t solve the issue. In hip-hop, as in so many American industries, ageism isn’t going away.

For that reason, my embrace of being an adult rapper will probably continue to make for awkward introductions.

But I’d rather have that conversation than pretend I’m something I’m not.

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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Accused Of Sexual Misconduct By 120 People, Attorney Says

Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee holds a news conference at his office announcing that he's representing 120 accusers who have come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Sean "Diddy" Combs, the Hip Hop mogul who is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, Tuesday October 1, 2024, in Houston (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

By JUAN A. LOZANO

HOUSTON (AP) — An attorney said Tuesday he is representing 120 accusers who have come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Houston attorney Tony Buzbee said he expects lawsuits to be filed within the next month, with most expected to be filed in New York and Los Angeles. Buzbee described the victims as 60 males and 60 females, and that 25 were minors at the time of the alleged misconduct. One individual alleged he was 9 years old when he was abused, Buzbee said. The allegations cover a period from 1991 to this year.

“This type of sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation should never happen in the United States or anywhere else. This should have never been allowed to go on for so long. This conduct has created a mass of individuals who are injured, scared and scarred,” Buzbee said at a news conference.

Following the announcement of the accusations in Texas, an attorney for Combs said the performer “cannot address every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus.”

“That said, Mr. Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors,” attorney Erica Wolff said in a statement. “He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court, where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation.”

Buzbee said more than 3,280 individuals contacted his firm and alleged they were victimized by Combs and that after vetting the allegations, his firm decided to represent 120 people. Other cases are still being reviewed. He said some of his clients have spoken with the FBI.

The individuals that Buzbee’s firm is representing are from more than 25 states, with the majority from California, New York, Georgia and Florida.

The abuse that’s being alleged took place mostly at parties held in New York, California and Florida where individuals were given drinks that were laced with drugs, Buzbee said.

Some of the alleged conduct took place at auditions where “many times, especially young people, people wanting to break into the industry were coerced into this type of conduct in the promise of being made a star,” Buzbee said.

Combs, 54, has been locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since pleading not guilty Sept. 17 to federal charges that he used his “power and prestige” to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers in events dubbed “Freak Offs.”

Other alleged victims have already filed lawsuits against Combs that include allegations of sexual assault.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. His attorney said he is innocent and will fight to clear his name.

Combs is one of the best-known music executives, producers and performers across hip-hop, having won three Grammys and worked with artists such as Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, Usher, Lil Kim, Faith Evans and 112. He founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, the influential fashion line Sean John, a vodka brand and the Revolt TV network. He sold off his stake in the latter company in June of this year.

Buzbee has also represented women who accused NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault and misconduct.

Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

Ben Shapiro’s Hip-Hop Hypocrisy And White Male Grievance Lands Him On Top Of Pop Music Charts For A Brief Moment

BY A.D. CARSON

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HIP-HOP

UN IVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Over the past decade, conservative commentator and podcaster Ben Shapiro has made a living telling his followers that rap isn’t music.

If anyone thinks so, Shapiro tweeted in 2012, “you’re stupid.”

Shapiro explained his reasoning during a 2019 interview:

“In my view, and in the view of my music theorist father who went to music school, there are three elements to music,” Shapiro said. “There is harmony, there is melody and there is rhythm. Rap only fulfills one of these, the rhythm section.”

As a result, Shapiro concluded, rap is “basically spoken rhythm.”

“It’s not actually a form of music,” he said. “It’s a form of rhythmic speaking.”

Leave it to Shapiro, then, to drop a “rhythmic speaking” song filled with white grievance during the early days of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign.

Teaming up with Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald, Shapiro released “Facts” in January 2024. Given today’s bitter partisan divide and extremist culture wars, it comes as no surprise that Shapiro’s track quickly found a devoted following. But his racist, anti-rap rap lyrics ultimately repeat the same tired charges right-wing politicians have used against hip-hop since its birth over 50 years ago.

Pop goes racism

My father isn’t a music theorist. But as a scholar who earned a Ph.D. by writing a rap album and continues to release rap music about race and American society as my academic work, I knew a hit song filled with racist diatribes like “Facts” was bound to happen.

It’s not the first time blatant racism has propelled an artist to the top of music charts.

In July 2023, Jason Aldean, a white country singer, released a video for “Try That In A Small Town” that was criticized for promoting racial violence. That song shot up to No. 1.

In November 2023, a video of country singer Morgan Wallen, who is also white, surfaced and went viral. In the video, he is captured saying, “take care of this p— a– n—.” While Wallen was roundly condemned and apologized for his racist and sexist language, his music has also topped the charts.

But to simply call MacDonald and Shapiro’s “Facts” racist would be too quick a dismissal of all that is at play.

By performing over a popular-sounding trap-style beat, Shapiro and MacDonald might lead listeners to overlook their heavy reliance on Black vernacular speech, which toes the line between minstrelsy and abject cultural appropriation.

Because it’s delivered in the form of a conventional rap song, a listener might even be convinced that the racism and sexism the artists are performing are expectations, and Shapiro and McDonald are just doing what all rappers do.

It’s a clever gambit. It’s “rapwashing” racism so audiences don’t perceive the obvious intent.

Early in the song, MacDonald tries out a melodic delivery, rap-singing:

“This ain’t rap. This ain’t money, cars, and clothes. We won’t turn your sons into thugs or your daughters into h—.”

The song goes further:

“Claim that I’m racist. Yeah, alright. I’m not ashamed because I’m white. If every Caucasian’s a bigot, I guess every Muslim’s a terrorist. Every liberal is right.”

For a brief moment, during the last week of January, the song hit No. 1 on the iTunes U.S. chart, which gave Shapiro the audacity, and the apparent receipts, to call himself the “#1 rapper in America.”

White male grievance

It’s not surprising that such a large swath of music consumers would find “Facts” entertaining.

Eminem, a white rapper, might be a case study. In the early 2000s, he achieved great success in part because of the way he gave voice to the repressed rage of certain segments of “White America.”

But since the presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016, that rage felt all across white America has been politicized and commercialized to such a degree that I believe hip-hop listeners have heard enough of white grievance.

It also seems white artists like Eminem took notice.

In his 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards freestyle cypher, Eminem went to great lengths to distance himself from the actions of his fans who seemed to be politically aligned with Trump and the alt-right.

Eminem’s freestyle affected his popularity badly enough that he later backtracked his remarks and apologized to his Trump-loving fans on a song called “The Ringer” on his 2018 album “Kamikaze.”

Hip-hop capitalism

From its start more than 50 years ago, hip-hop has never been singularly focused on mainstream measures of success such as Grammy nominations and awards, music industry chart rankings or sold-out concerts. Nor have its cultural practitioners and producers been gender or race exclusive.

In fact, before rap became an international multibillion dollar industry, early rappers were wary of the mainstream music industry, and many believed it would negatively affect the integrity of the music and culture.

But even early rappers were forced to find a complicated balance between culture and capitalism.

For instance, in the late 1990s, Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, and Talib Kweli released their first album, “Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star.”

The critically acclaimed project was filled with lyrics focused on Black consciousness, the perils of mainstream hip-hop and a kind of Pan-Africanism.

Their label, Rawkus Records, was known for recording and signing several underground rap acts including Eminem, Pharoahe Monch and Common.

But Rawkus was just as much a part of the music industry as any other record label.

It was co-founded and financially backed by James Murdoch, a son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The label was eventually bought by Murdoch’s News Corp.

Over the past five decades, rap music and hip-hop culture has come to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

For Bey, though, the question goes beyond the money or popularity.

“Where’s the message that I can use?” he asked during a 2024 interview.

I would love to believe that racist, sexist, white male grievance rap isn’t where the zeitgeist is in America.

But Ben Shapiro and his conservative followers are betting that it is – at least for a brief moment.

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Last living Suspect In 1996 Drive-By Shooting Of Tupac Shakur Indicted In Las Vegas On Murder Charge

This booking photo provided by the Las Vegas Police Department shows Duane "Keffe D." Davis, Friday, September 29, 2023 in Las Vegas...(Las Vegas Police Department via AP) 

BY RIO YAMAT AND KEN RITTER

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A man who prosecutors say ordered the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur was arrested and charged with murder Friday in a long-awaited breakthrough in one of hip-hop’s most enduring mysteries.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis has long been known to investigators as one of four suspects identified early in the investigation. He isn’t the accused gunman but was described as the group’s ringleader by authorities Friday at a news conference and in court. In Nevada you can be charged with a crime, including murder, if you help someone commit the crime.

“Duane Davis was the shot caller for this group of individuals that committed this crime,” said Las Vegas police homicide Lt. Jason Johansson, “and he orchestrated the plan that was carried out.”

Davis himself has admitted in interviews and in his 2019 tell-all memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he provided the gun used in the drive-by shooting.

Authorities said Friday that Davis’ own public comments revived the investigation.

Davis, now 60, was arrested early Friday while on a walk near his home on the outskirts of Las Vegas, hours before prosecutors announced in court that a Nevada grand jury had indicted the self-described “gangster” on one count of murder with a deadly weapon. He is due in court next week.

The grand jury also voted to add a sentencing enhancement to the murder charge for gang activity that could add up to 20 additional years if he’s convicted.

Hundreds of pages of transcripts released Friday provide a view into the first month of grand jury proceedings, which began in late July with testimony from former associates of Davis, friends of Shakur and a slate of retired police officers involved in the case early on. Their testimony painted a picture for the jurors of a deep, escalating rift between Shakur’s music label Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records, which had ties to Davis and represented Shakur’s rap rival, Biggie Smalls.

“It started the whole West Coast/East Coast” rivalry that primarily defined the hip-hop scene during the mid-1990s, one of Davis’ former associates testified.

The first-ever arrest in the case came after Las Vegas police in mid-July raided Davis’ home in the nearby city of Henderson for items they described at the time as “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur.”

Davis denied an interview request Friday from jail, and court records don’t list an attorney who can comment on his behalf. Phone and text messages to Davis and his wife on Friday and in the months since the July 17 search weren’t returned.

In a statement Friday, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, the rapper’s sister, described the arrest as a victory.

“This is no doubt a pivotal moment. The silence of the past 27 years surrounding this case has spoken loudly in our community,” she said. “It’s important to me that the world, the country, the justice system, and our people acknowledge the gravity of the passing of this man, my brother, my mother’s son, my father’s son.”

On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was in a BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight. They were waiting at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire erupted.

Shakur was shot multiple times and died a week later at the age of 25.

Davis, in his memoir, said he was in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and had slipped a gun into the back seat, from where he said the shots were fired.

He implicated his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, saying he was one of two people in the backseat. Anderson, a known rival of Shakur, had been involved in a casino brawl with the rapper shortly before the shooting.

“Little did anyone know that this incident right here would ultimately lead to the retaliatory shooting and death of Tupac Shakur,” said Johansson, the police lieutenant.

Anderson died two years later. He denied any involvement in Shakur’s death.

Emails seeking comment from two lawyers who have previously represented Knight were not immediately returned. Knight was grazed by a bullet fragment in the shooting but had only minor injuries. He is serving a 28-year prison sentence in California for an unrelated voluntary manslaughter charge.

On the night of July 17, Las Vegas police quietly surrounded the home where Davis lives with his wife, Paula Clemons. Police lapel video obtained by The Associated Press showed SWAT officers detaining a man and his wife outside the home lit up by a swirl of red and blue lights after announcing their presence on a bullhorn. The couple’s faces are blurred in the videos.

Police reported collecting multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs” and a copy of Davis’ memoir.

Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police detective who spent years investigating the Shakur killing and wrote a book about it, said he’s not surprised by Davis’ arrest.

“He put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy,” Kading said, adding that Davis himself gave Las Vegas police “the ammunition and leverage to move forward.”

Kading said he had also anticipated the murder charge, because Davis’ public comments showed the crime was premeditated.

“All the other direct conspirators or participants are all dead,” Kading said. “Keefe D is the last man standing among the individuals that conspired to kill Tupac.”

The rapper’s death came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.

Associated Press writer Andrew Dalton contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

Hip-hop On Trial: When Can A Rapper’s Lyrics Be Used As Evidence In A Criminal Case?

BY TAIFHA NATALEE ALEXANDER

When police arrested Nevada rapper Kenjuan McDaniel on a murder charge in August 2023, they cited a music video he posted on YouTube that they say includes details of a 2021 killing that had not been made public.

McDaniel, who uses the social media handle TheBiggestFinn4800, had previously been considered a person of interest in the case. His lyrics included: “Parked the car / double back on feet / the smartest way to slide / drove in / double lock yo man / make sure you get yo bod’.”

As a critical race theory scholar who researches systems of oppression, I know McDaniel’s case is not unique. Lawyers have used rappers’ lyrics as evidence in criminal cases since shortly after the rise of gangsta rap in the late 1980s.

Rap lyrics were introduced as evidence in criminal cases against San Francisco Bay Area rapper Andre “Mac Dre” Hicks in 1992, Snoop Dogg in 1996, McKinley “Mac” Phipps, Jr. in 2000, Lil Boosie in 2012, Drakeo the Ruler in 2016, 6ix9ine in 2019 and Young Thug in 2022.

In fact, researchers at the University of Richmond documented at least 500 cases from 2009 to 2019 where rap lyrics were introduced as evidence in criminal trials.

Rap lyrics as criminal evidence

Both federal and state courts have established rules that require the use of a balancing test to determine whether to exclude evidence.

If prosecutors can show that a rapper’s lyrics establish motive, intent or identity related to an alleged crime, then most judges will allow for the evidence to be used.

Judges are expected to balance whether the proof outweighs any prejudicial value – or tendency to unfairly or improperly influence the jury. For example, under this balancing test, a defendant rapper’s lyrics should be excluded if the lyrics will do more to poison the jury against the defendant than to establish their connection to a specific crime.

But case law regarding using rap lyrics as evidence of a crime can vary from state to state, and judge to judge.

In 2014, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the introduction of a defendant rapper’s lyrics should not have been admitted into evidence, because the lyrics were general in nature and did not demonstrate motive or intent. Instead, the court found, the lyrics served to activate particular biases the jury had against rap and, as a result, the defendant rapper.

In 2020, the Maryland Court of Appeals decided that a defendant rapper’s lyrics – despite also lacking specific details related to the alleged crime – could be admitted as evidence. According to the judge, the lyrics intended to intimidate witnesses prior to the trial. To be clear, the defendant rapper recorded the lyrics from a detention center 10 months after the alleged murder he was being held for, and three weeks before his trial. Essentially, the court focused more on the timing of the lyrics in relationship to the trial and a completely new alleged crime, not the commission of the crime the rapper was being held for, or the substance of his recorded lyrics.

Criminalizing Black artists

Using rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases is problematic not only because it can deny a defendant a fair trial, but also because many lyrics are creative, metaphorical works that have double meanings or are based on fictional experiences.

In 1991, federal prosecutors demonstrated that a defendant rapper knowingly possessed and intended to distribute drugs that he was carrying in two suitcases upon his arrest. During the trial, the defendant rapper claimed he was not aware of the contents of the suitcase. Prosecutors introduced the defendant rapper’s notebook, which included the following lyrics: “Key for key. Pound for pound. I’m the biggest dope dealer and I serve all over town … ”

During the trial, prosecutors submitted evidence to demonstrate that the word “key” was common slang used in cocaine trafficking to refer to kilogram. In this instance, the defendant rapper’s lyrics were accepted as autobiographical, and not metaphorical. They qualified as one of the only pieces of evidence to establish criminality.

While there have been hundreds of cases in the past 30 years brought against defendant rappers to use their rap lyrics as evidence of a crime, similar charges have not been brought against creatives in other genres at the same rate. Some scholars have suggested that this difference in treatment is, in part, a result of rap lyrics oftentimes being excluded from certain First Amendment protections.

As a result, allowing a rap artist’s lyrics to be used as evidence of a crime risks weaponizing an art form dominated by Black and other people of color. As it is, Black Americans are already incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate as white Americans.

Protecting artistic expression

In recent years, lawmakers in California and New York have sought to limit the use of rap lyrics in evidence of criminality.

California passed a bill in September 2022 that would ban lyrics from being cited in court cases unless prosecutors can illustrate that the words are directly relevant to the case in question and won’t “inject racial bias into the proceedings.” The New York bill was introduced in January 2023 and aims to leverage statewide free speech protections to ensure criminal defendants are tried based on evidence and not on their artistic works. That bill is currently stalled.

In July 2022, Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia introduced the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, or RAP Act. The federal legislation aims to limit the admissibility of artistic expression as evidence.

Since most state evidence law is based on federal rules of evidence, the RAP Act could create a new standard in most states for limitation of rap lyrics as evidence of a crime. However, it has been awaiting review in the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Case for caution

English jurist William Blackstone asserted in the 1760s that “all presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously: for the law holds, that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

I believe admitting rap lyrics as evidence violates constitutional free speech considerations – especially considering the lyrics may be fictitious. The probability of prejudice against defendants who are rappers in any scenario, unfortunately, in 2023 is still too high. Prohibiting the use of lyrics can help ensure that not “one innocent suffer.”

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Hip-Hop At 50: 7 Essential Listens To Celebrate Rap’s Widespread Influence

THE SUGARHILL GANG

BY HOWARD MANLY, JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIM, MATT WILLIAMS, MOLLY JACKSON AND NICK LEHR

On the evening of Aug. 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc attended a block party in the South Bronx. Armed with two record players and a mixer, he created an extended percussive break while others rhymed over the beats. Hip-hop was born.

Well, that’s the origin story, although pinpointing the birth of a genre is never going to be an exact science. What is undeniable, though, is that in the 50 years since that event, hip-hop has evolved, grown and influenced nearly every aspect of modern U.S. culture – from dance, theater and literature to visual arts and fashion.

But at the heart will always be the music. Leading up to the landmark anniversary, The Conversation reached out to hip-hop academics – it is a scholarly pursuit, too – to help provide context on how the genre has transformed modern culture, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Below is a selection of the resulting articles, introduced by a key track featured in their writing.

1. ‘Rapper’s Delight’ – The Sugarhill Gang

No history of hip-hop would be complete without this 1979 track by The Sugarhill Gang. But along with being an old-school classic, it also kick-started hip-hop’s global expansion.

As Eric Charry, a music professor at Wesleyan University, explained, within months of its being released, versions of “Rapper’s Delight” were being recorded in Brazil, Jamaica, Germany and the Netherlands. Within a year or so, the song’s DNA had spread to Japan and Nigeria.

“It marked the beginning of the globalization of rap music and the broader hip-hop culture in which it is embedded, which includes deejaying, break-dancing and graffiti-tagging,” Charry wrote. But this global spread created what Charry described as a paradox: “The Black American urban culture that birthed rap and hip-hop makes up its very fabric. But so does the core idea of representing one’s own experience and place.”

This led to questions of authenticity that global rappers have contended with ever since, with some digging into their own local culture to square the circle.

2. ‘Planet Rock’ – Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force

Despite building on samples and influences from the past, hip-hop as a genre has always pointed forward – as this 1981 track from Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force exemplifies. “Planet rock” also forms part of a tradition in which rappers lean on Afrofuturism – a mix of science fiction, politics and liberating fantasy – to “inform their lyrics and their look,” as Roy Whitaker, a scholar of Africana philosophy of religions at San Diego State University, explained.

“Hip-hop artists influenced by Afrofuturism have long been aware that American society made many Black, Indigenous and other people of color feel different – less than human, or even like aliens – and expressed this through their art. And like socially conscious hip-hop, Afrofuturism has always had a political element,” Whitaker wrote, noting the influence that Afrofuturism pioneers such as musicians Sun Ra and George Clinton and science fiction novelist Octavia Butler had on rap artists from Public Enemy and OutKast to Kendrick Lamar.

“All in all, Afrofuturism counsels marginalized peoples to reassess past wounds and present injustices, while reassuring them that there are possible futures where they can feel they belong,” Whitaker concluded.

3. ‘Stan’ – Eminem, featuring Elton John

OK, this is a live performance from the 2001 Grammy Awards show and not a recorded track – though Eminem did release a version of “Stan” featuring British singer Dido a year earlier. But it was a pivotal moment in rap history: Eminem dueting with pop royalty Elton John underscored how hip-hop by the beginning of the 21st century had been accepted by the mainstream music industry.

Moreover, it came at a time when Eminem was deemed deeply controversial because of his use of anti-gay slurs in his tracks. Yet here he was being embraced – both figuratively and physically – by one of the world’s most famous openly gay men. The moment forms part of the hip-hop’s evolution on LGTBQ issues that University of Richmond sociologist Matthew Oware detailed in his article.

He noted that rappers are now having discussions over LGBTQ+ issues and apologizing for hateful speech in their earlier lyrics.

As rap music hits its 50th anniversary, “it is increasingly embracing challenges to – and debates about – homophobia,” Oware wrote. “That is, hip-hop has evolved to the point where anti-gay rhetoric invites condemnation from members of the culture. It is still present in some rap lyrics – as indeed is true of all genres, from pop to country – but hip-hop is changing because of more progressive cultural views and greater LGBTQ+ representation.”

4. ‘You Came Up’ – Big Pun

While hip-hop’s origins lie in Black American communities, Latino culture is also deeply woven into its story: from pioneers like Kid Frost and Big Pun to Bad Bunny, one of the most-streamed artists making music today.

The genre was “my first love,” wrote Alejandro Nava, a religious studies professor at the University of Arizona. “Hip-hop had its finger on the pulse of Black and brown lives on the frayed edges of the Americas, lives like my father’s and his father’s before him.”

Big Pun, for example – raised in the South Bronx by his Puerto Rican family – alerted the world that “Latins goin’ platinum was destined to come.” Big Pun’s rhymes “spilled off his tongue in torrents of alliteration and assonance, rarely pausing to take a breath or gulp, as if he didn’t require as much oxygen as other humans,” Nava recalled.

From coast to coast, young Latinos “embraced hip-hop as an ingenious instrument of self-expression,” asserting their place in American culture – and often calling for social change.

5. ‘That’s what the Black woman is like’ – Arianna Puello

Back in the day, as they still do now, rappers talked about their experiences on the margins of American society. Those social messages connected with Black and immigrant youths throughout Europe who themselves were searching for identity in countries where discrimination remains entrenched.

As a scholar of European studies and identity politics, Armin Langer wrote that modern-day European rappers, particularly Arianna Puello, Black M and Eko Fresh, are challenging outdated European views of citizenship and reshaping public debate on racial and ethnic identity.

Throughout her career, for example, Puello has used her music to confront the racism that she has faced as a Black female migrant in Spain.

In this 2003 track, “Así es la negra,” or “That’s what the Black woman is like,” tells the “ignorant racist,” “You’re going to have to put up with me, If I am born again I want to be what I am now, of the same race, same sex and condition.”

“As migration from African, Caribbean and Middle Eastern countries to Europe continues to increase and European societies discuss questions of identity belonging, it’s my belief that hip-hop will continue to make significant contributions to ongoing public policy debates,” Langer wrote.

6. ‘Move the Crowd’ – Eric B. and Rakim

Of all the elements of hip-hop – which include deejaying, rapping, graffiti-writing and break-dancing – one that seems to get the least attention is the one referred to as hip-hop’s fifth element: “knowledge of self.”

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, expounded on the significance of the phrase. She argued that it became “hip-hop’s consciousness, emphasizing an awareness of injustice and the imperative to address it through both personal and social transformation.”

One of the first rappers to use the phrase in lyrics was Rakim, who mentioned it in his 1987 song “Move the Crowd.” The song is a track on the “Paid in Full” album, which Rolling Stone once listed as No. 61 on its “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”

7. ‘LOUD’ – Wawa’s World

In 2005, U.S. rapper Warren “Wawa” Snipe coined the term “dip hop” to describe a burgeoning form of rap music in the Deaf community.

West Virginia University ethnomusicologist Katelyn Best has been following dip hop artists for over a decade. In that time, she’s witnessed dip hop artists achieve mainstream success – including Wawa, whose 2020 song “LOUD” became a top 20 dance track on iTunes.

Dip hop is unique, Best wrote, because “rappers lay down rhymes in sign languages and craft music informed by their experiences within the Deaf community.”

At the same time, the subgenre embodies hip-hop’s broader legacy: speaking – or signing – about experiences of marginalization, while shaking up preexisting notions of what can be considered music.

There is no one way to perform dip hop. Some artists speak and sign simultaneously so their music can be understood by hearing audiences, too. Others collaborate with interpreters, or prerecord vocal tracks that play in the background while they rap in sign language.

“Dip hop, like many styles of music, comes to life through live performance,” Best wrote. “Artists move across the stage with their hands flying through the air as audiences pulse to the rhythm of the blasting bass beat.”

“In the spirit of hip-hop,” Best added, “dip hop rebels both musically and socially against cultural norms, breaking the mold and expanding possibilities for musical artistry.”

READ ORIGINAL ESSAY HERE

Hip-Hop And Health – Why So Many Rap Artists Die Young

BY A. D. CARSON

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HIP-HOP

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

The song “Be Healthy” from the 2000 album by hip-hop duo dead prez, “Let’s Get Free,” is a rare rap anthem dedicated to diet, exercise and temperance:

“They say you are what you eat, so I strive to eat healthy / My goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy / ‘Cause true wealth come from good health and wise ways / We got to start taking better care of ourselves”

In what’s widely recognized as hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, an unfortunate reality is that several of its pioneering artists aren’t here to celebrate. The number of rappers who never live to see much more than 50 years themselves is astounding.

Rappers and rap fans can’t help but take notice that their peers and favorite rappers are dying young. Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul, 53, passed away in February 2023 after a battle with congestive heart failure. Gangsta Boo, hailed as the “Queen of Memphis” and known for her work with Three 6 Mafia, died at the age of 43 of a drug overdose in January 2023. Takeoff, a member of the Atlanta trio Migos, was killed in November 2022. He was 28 years old.

Rapper Jim Jones has claimed that rap is the most dangerous profession due to rappers being violently killed so frequently. Similarly, rapper Fat Joe believes rappers are an endangered species. In the 2022 song “On Faux Nem,” Lupe Fiasco put it more succinctly: “Rappers die too much.”

As a rapper, a fan of hip-hop’s art and artists, and a professor of hip-hop, I agree with Lupe Fiasco: Rappers die too much. Whether it’s from gun violence, heart disease, cancer, self-harm or drugs, the number of rappers whose lives have ended prematurely is alarming.
The (un)exceptional spectacle of American gun violence

Stories of rappers who die violently are well known. News media are quick to report on violence in hip-hop to support their view that the music and the people who make it are exceptionally violent. Violence, death and conflict attract attention. Pair any of those with racial stereotyping and scapegoating and it’s easy to see why the murders of hip-hop stars such as Nipsey Hussle, the Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur and countless other artists garner so much attention.

Though they were all taken by the very American plague of gun violence, news and historical accounts often amplify the spectacle of violent Black death, even when they claim to honor those who are killed.

I’ve written extensively about the trend of scapegoating rappers. It is also the topic addressed in the song “ANKH” from my forthcoming mixtap/e/ssay, “V: ILLICIT”:

“He died by the gun but they blamed the music. / They said, ‘What he said was evidence.’ And used it. …/ No compassion for the life torn apart when the bullets hit him, / cause he talked about the block in his art, so he’s not a victim. / Cameraman said, ‘They don’t value life too much.’ / He reported here before. Even twice some months. / Somewhere in his mid-twenties was his deadline (dying). / ‘Another N— Killed Here’ was the headline (crying).”

An awful byproduct of this culture of consuming carnage is that the kinds of violent gun tragedies people are experiencing all across the U.S. are being spotlighted in hip-hop and used as excuses to criminalize and pathologize certain people and the music they enjoy, the art they create, the neighborhoods they live in or the places they grew up.

Another heartbreaking consequence is that some rappers only gain wide popularity and realize financial success after they’ve died. Deceased rappers are an unfortunately abundant commodity. Juice WRLD and Pop Smoke are prime examples: They both sold four to five times as much music after their deaths than when they were alive.

Along with being alarmed by these tragedies, it’s important to examine the conditions that affect mortality and attempt to get to the actual causes rather than scapegoating a musical form.

Deadly diseases

While violence brings about headlines, guns are not the only cause for concern. Diseases – many of them preventable – are also a factor.

Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes and renal disease are among the top 10 causes of death among Black men and Hispanic men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It makes sense that these causes also prominently figure in the deaths of hip-hop artists.

Gone before retirement

Rapper and producer J-Dilla (32), rappers Big Moe (33), Black the Ripper (32) from the U.K., Lord Infamous (40), KMG the Illustrator (43 from Above the Law, DMX (50), Big T (52), Tweedy Bird Loc (52), Black Rob (52) and Big Pun (28) all died from heart attacks. Heavy D (44) experienced a pulmonary embolism that led to his death. Prince Markie Dee (52) of the Fat Boys passed away from congestive heart failure. Craig Mack (47) died from heart failure. And Brax (21) died from cardiac arrhythmia.

Phife Dawg (45) of A Tribe Called Quest, Tim Dog (46) and Biz Markie (57) all passed away from complications related to diabetes.

Guru (48) of Gangstarr, Bushwick Bill (52) of the Geto Boys, Hurricane G (52) and Kangol Kid (55) died from cancer. DJ K Slay passed away at 55 from what was described as COVID-19 complications.

Eazy-E died of AIDS at 30.

Nate Dogg’s death at 41 was attributed to a stroke.

Pimp C’s death at 33 was attributed to sleep apnea and an overdose of cough syrup. Lexii Alijai (21), Chynna (25), and Shock G (57) all reportedly died of accidental drug overdose.

Ms. Melodie passed away in her sleep at the age of 43. Big Pokey collapsed onstage and passed away at 48. Ecstasy of Whodini died at 56.

A renewed focus on health

Unfortunately, this list of tragic lives halted from ages 21 to 57 is not a comprehensive account of all the rappers who have passed away well before the age of retirement.

The occasion of celebrating 50 years of hip-hop provides a moment to reflect and honor some of the artists who contributed to the culture and are not here to celebrate this golden anniversary. It’s also, perhaps, an opportunity to consider some of the outcomes of systemic barriers to health and wellness, such as access to affordable health care, varied dietary options and mental wellness resources.

Given the number of rappers and other prominent hip-hop artists who have died young, ultimately it may come down to seriously taking heed to dead prez’s instructions from “Be Healthy”: “We got to start taking better care of ourselves.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock At 40: The Album That Foretold Today’s Anything-Goes Pop

BY ALEXIS PETRIDIS

The 1983 LP introduced a generation to hip-hop and mashed up style – but by not crediting Black musicians, it was also cultural appropriation. Producer Trevor Horn recalls its creation.

The story of what may be the most groundbreaking and prescient album of its era begins with a mystery: what on earth did a major record label think they were doing giving Malcolm McLaren £100,000 to make a solo album in the early 80s? Having opened the Sex boutique with Vivian Westwood in the mid-70s and managed the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls, he had both a reputation as a nonpareil troublemaker and no actual experience of making music himself, unless you counted the version of the old Max Bygraves song You Need Hands that he sang in The Great Rock’n’ Roll Swindle, his preposterous cinematic rewriting of the Pistols’ story; and the handful of lyrics he’d written for Bow Wow Wow, the band he was currently supposed to be managing, but in whom he’d completely lost interest.

In 1981, he had pitched Steve Weltman of RCA some intriguing, if confused, ideas: Appalachian square dances, the South American and Caribbean music he’d discovered on a scholarly 1958 album called The Dances of the World’s Peoples (Vol 3), while browsing the record library at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, plus something about a club he had visited in New York where people span on their heads while listening to “DJs who use record players like instruments … moving the needle manually backwards and forwards”, which he kept insisting was the new punk rock. When Weltman went to Charisma Records in 1982 – best known for being home to Genesis – he signed McLaren without the latter having done a note of music. But ideas are one thing, and discernible musical talent is another entirely. And McLaren was completely deficient in the latter.


“He told me he could sing,” sighed producer Trevor Horn when I interviewed him last year. Horn was drafted in to oversee the project, presumably as some kind of vague insurance policy for the label’s money. “Gary Langan, who engineered the album, still has the tape of the first time Malcolm sang in the studio. I say: ‘Oh my God, he sounds like Jimmy Clitheroe on acid.’ Then I say to Gary, ‘You can forget your bonus this year.’ There were some South African musicians in the studio with us, and one of them, a lady who did the Zulu war cry at the start of the track Buffalo Gals, came up to me and whispered in my ear: ‘Malcolm can’t sing.’ I was trying to explain to him when he should come in but he didn’t know what a bar was. I told him it was four beats. He said: ‘I don’t know anything about that.’”

The sessions for what became McLaren’s debut album, 1983’s Duck Rock, were pandemonium. McLaren had Horn and his team recording Peruvian pipe players, Colombian marching bands, Dominican wedding musicians playing merengue, country session musicians whom Horn recalled “doing huge lines of coke” in the studio and a family band from a remote location in rural Tennessee who, as McLaren’s biographer Paul Gorman put it, “appeared under-nourished and had pronounced strabismuses” (types of squint). Johannesburg’s legendary vocal trio the Mahotella Queens recorded with a group of west African priests devoted to Lucumi beliefs, who stripped to their waists and played drums unceasingly for several hours. In the process, McLaren dragged them from London to the Appalachian mountains, Soweto and New York.


Horn was hugely impressed with what McLaren showed him in NYC. It turned out the stuff about people spinning on their heads and manually moving turntable needles wasn’t a flight of fancy: McLaren had stumbled across the nascent hip-hop scene, befriending Afrika Bambaataa, breakdancers the Rock Steady Crew and the World’s Famous Supreme Team, a duo who ran a find-the-lady card scam on the streets and used the proceeds to fund a hip-hop radio show. In apartheid South Africa, they attempted to cope with the curfew that meant Black musicians either had to sleep in the studio or sneak into Horn and co’s hotel rooms.

The whole thing seemed like a huge adventure: McLaren frequently funded his ideas with the aid of a suitcase filled with cash. Nevertheless, Horn still tried to quit on the grounds that he didn’t think McLaren had a clue what he was doing. “I thought: how are we going to make this work? But he talked me out of it. Malcolm could be very persuasive.”

So Horn and his team persevered, coaxing McLaren through endless vocal takes and comping the best bits together, vetoing some of his more outlandish ideas. (At one point, he wanted to make a hip-hop track about ET, a sensation at US cinemas.) They used nascent sampling technology to weave this disparate music into something coherent: a kaleidoscopic musical collage in which hip-hop collided with square dances, off-air recordings of the World’s Famous Supreme Team were accompanied by Venezuelan joropo music, McLaren bellowed about the Sex Pistols over infectious South African jive and the Mahotella Queens hymned the New York skipping game double dutch, another current McLaren obsession.

As the album turns 40 – an event commemorated with a lavish reissue, complete with a second album of outtakes – Duck Rock feels incredibly ahead of its time. Its sleeve is decorated with designs by Keith Haring, whose work is an immediately recognisable pop cultural fixture today, but was almost unknown in 1982 unless you were keeping a very close eye on the New York street art scene. McLaren’s vocals are definitely an acquired taste – either weirdly energising or just plain annoying – but Duck Rock undeniably seemed to predict the way people consume pop music in the 21st century. Leaping wildly between genres, it sounds like the unboundaried mish-mash of musical styles from different continents and cultures that can constitute a pop fan’s diet in the era of streaming, when rappers, South American pop stars, Korean boybands and Nigerian Afrobeats performers all co-exist in the singles chart.

Certainly, it was too ahead of its time for McLaren’s record label, who responded to its proposed, chaotic lead single Buffalo Gals – effectively Duck Rock in miniature – by announcing it was “not music”, refusing to release it and preparing legal proceedings against McLaren, claiming he was in breach of his contractual obligation “to deliver music of acceptable commercial value”. He responded by sneaking a tape of the track on to London’s Capital Radio, where its sheer novelty value ensured that the station was inundated with inquiries: it really didn’t sound like anything else, including the handful of rap tracks that had already been hits in the UK. It was released and became a hit, which meant its video, recorded on the hoof on the streets of New York, was shown on Top of the Pops: an event that deserves to be ranked alongside David Bowie’s 1972 appearance performing Starman for cultural impact.

Buffalo Gals certainly wasn’t the first rap record to feature on the show but the video was the first glimpse Britain got of hip-hop culture: breakdancing, DJing, graffiti artists at work. The Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow had previously appeared on TOTP dressed smart – Blow wore a suit, one of the Sugarhill Gang wore a cardigan – so the video also represented Britain’s first sighting of hip-hop style. McLaren studded the video with models wearing clothes from his and Vivienne Westwood’s autumn/winter 1982-83 collection, available at his latest boutique, Nostalgia of Mud, but to teenage eyes at least, they didn’t look remotely as striking as the Rock Steady Crew in their Kangol hats, tracksuits and Adidas Superstars. The “Buffalo” look McLaren and Westwood were pushing at the time proved hugely impactful in fashion world, but the clothes that Britain’s streets copied were those worn by the breakdancers.

I remember the mayhem in the school playground the day after the video was shown – it turned out that spinning on your head and doing the worm was nowhere near as easy as the Rock Steady Crew made it look – but that was just a daft short-term effect. More telling is the story related by XL Recordings’ boss Richard Russell in his autobiography Liberation Through Hearing: after encountering Buffalo Gals, he started buying hip-hop records in earnest. In the US, the record was an underground phenomenon rather than a hit. MTV declined to show the video: in a pre-Thriller world, it featured too many Black faces for the channel to countenance. But it still made an impact on musicians ranging from jazz legend Herbie Hancock – who recorded his 1983 hit Rockit in response – to the Beastie Boys, who abandoned hardcore punk and recorded their first rap single Cookie Puss, a kind of smart-ass New York parody of Buffalo Gals.

Moreover, the influence of Duck Rock seems an eternal presence in pop. A rough estimate suggests the album has been sampled on around 400 tracks, by Eminem, Drake, Dr Dre, J Cole, Missy Elliott, De La Soul, Pharrell Williams, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, J Dilla and Madlib among umpteen others. And that’s just hip-hop: elsewhere, borrowing from Duck Rock is the thread that links Lana Del Rey to Linkin Park, the KLF to Alicia Keyes and Erykah Badu to – dear God – B*witched. For all the grief its recording caused him, Trevor Horn suggested it was the most important record he ever made: “I got more from that one album with Malcolm than from working with any other artist.” Most of his Duck Rock team would reassemble themselves as groundbreaking dance act Art of Noise, signed to Horn’s legendary 80s avant-pop label ZTT. “Did Duck Rock feed into ZTT? Are you kidding me?” he told me last year. “Enormously. It exposed me to a different world.”

And yet, Duck Rock seldom gets a mention when greatest albums lists are compiled, rarely warrants a feature in the heritage rock magazines: until the release of the new 40th anniversary edition, it had languished out of print for most of the last 30 years. Perhaps it’s overshadowed by McLaren’s earlier culture-altering achievement as manager of the Sex Pistols. Or perhaps it’s got something to do with a shadow that follows Duck Rock around. Several of the album’s tracks borrowed heavily from music already written by African artists. Double Dutch basically is Puleng, a 1977 single by South African mbaqanga band the Boyoyo Boys; Jive My Baby is audibly based on the Mahotella Queens track Jive Mabone. Not that you’d know that from the album’s songwriting credits, which say it was written by McLaren and Horn. And while Horn’s team of producers and musicians – and the World’s Famous Supreme Team – are credited for their musical contributions, no African musicians were named on the sleeve.

It didn’t pass without notice in 1983. A review by the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau questioned the morality of doing this. McLaren’s label mate Peter Gabriel buttonholed him at a party and attempted to convince him to do the decent thing, which, if nothing else, shows a charming faith in McLaren’s ability to listen to reason about anything: McLaren brushed him off. A subsequent legal case by the music publishers of Puleng was settled out of court: the credits remained unaltered. In his defence, Horn suggested that some musicians on the album were paid over the odds for their contributions – “they screwed us” – and the album had a ripple effect, raising awareness of the music it used: Duck Food, a 1986 compilation of mbaqanga released by Earthworks International, even came in a sleeve featuring McLaren on the cover, despite him not being involved. Nevertheless, you can argue for hours about the exact definition of what constitutes cultural appropriation, but when a European artist steals from African and South American musicians and claims it as their own, without crediting them, that’s definitely cultural appropriation of the most glaring and inarguable kind.

It was Keith Haring who suggested that “perhaps it wouldn’t be a Malcolm McLaren project if it didn’t have a distinctly queasy underside” – if it wasn’t, to use a modern term, problematic. This is, after all, a man who claimed he had tampered with evidence relating to Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious’s murder charge. A man who said of the incident in which Vicious threw a glass at the Damned, blinding a girl in one eye, “there are far worse things that happen for far worse causes”; who attempted to promote Bow Wow Wow by selling their music attached to a magazine called Chicken, which featured underage teenagers in various states of undress. Being problematic – as in doing things that were genuinely difficult to square with any standard sense of right or wrong – was par for the course.

There is a quote in Paul Gorman’s excellent biography The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren where McLaren talks about using people as a painter uses oils. Another McLaren aphorism runs “Let me tell you, great art, or any real idea, has never worried about running a few people over. You never worry about it, because the idea is more important.” Whether that’s a reasonable way to conduct yourself is a very moot point. What’s inarguable is that the idea of Duck Rock was a very good one that continues to ring through pop half a century later.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

As the global musical phenomenon turns 50, a hip-hop professor explains what the word ‘dope’ means to him

BY A. D. CARSON

After I finished my Ph.D. in 2017, several newspaper reporters wrote about the job I’d accepted at the University of Virginia as an assistant professor of hip-hop.

“A.D. Carson just scored, arguably, the dopest job ever,” one journalist wrote.

The writer may not have meant it the way I read it, but the terminology was significant to me. Hip-hop’s early luminaries transformed the word’s original meanings, using it as a synonym for cool. In the 50 years since, it endures as an expression of respect and praise – and illegal substances.

In that context, dope has everything to do with my work.

In the year I graduated from college, one of my best friends was sent to federal prison for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. He served nearly a decade and has been back in prison several times since.

But before he went to prison, he helped me finish school by paying off my tuition.

In a very real way, dope has as much to do with me finishing my studies and becoming a professor as it does with him serving time in a federal prison.

Academic dope

For my Ph.D. dissertation in Rhetorics, Communications, and Information Design, I wrote a rap album titled “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.” A peer-reviewed, mastered version of the album is due out this summer from University of Michigan Press.

Part of my reasoning for writing it that way involved my ideas about dope. I want to question who gets to determine who and what are dope and whether any university can produce expertise on the people who created hip-hop.

While I was initially met with considerable resistance for my work at Clemson, the university eventually became supportive and touted “a dissertation with a beat.”

Clemson is not the only school to recognize hip-hop as dope.

In the 50 years since its start at a back-to-school party in the South Bronx, hip-hop, the culture and its art forms have come a long way to a place of relative prominence in educational institutions.

Since 2013, Harvard University has housed the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute and the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship that funds scholars and artists who demonstrate “exceptional scholarship and creativity in the arts in connection with Hiphop.”

UCLA announced an ambitious Hip Hop Initiative to kick off the golden anniversary. The initiative includes artist residencies, community engagement programs, a book series and a digital archive project.

Perhaps my receiving tenure and promotion at the University of Virginia is part of the school’s attempt to help codify the existence of hip-hop scholarship.

When I write about “dope,” I’m thinking of Black people like drugs to which the U.S. is addicted.

Dope is a frame to help clarify the attempts, throughout American history, at outlawing and legalizing the presence of Black people and Black culture. As dope, Black people are America’s constant ailment and cure.

To me, dope is an aspiration and a methodology to acknowledge and resist America’s steady surveillance, scrutiny and criminalization of Blackness.

By this definition, dope is not only what we are, it’s also who we want to be and how we demonstrate our being.

Dope is about what we can make with what we are given.

Dope is a product of conditions created by America. It is also a product that helped create America.

Whenever Blackness has been seen as lucrative, businesses like record companies and institutions like colleges and universities have sought to capitalize. To remove the negative stigmas associated with dope, these institutions cast themselves in roles similar to a pharmacy.

Even though I don’t believe academia has the power or authority to bestow hip-hop credibility, a question remains – does having a Ph.D and producing rap music as peer-reviewed publications change my dopeness in some way?

Legalizing dope

Though I earned a Ph.D by rapping, my own relationship to hip-hop in academic institutions remains fraught.

Part of the problem was noted in 2014 by Michelle Alexander, a legal scholar and author of “The New Jim Crow,” when she talked about her concerns about the legalization of marijuana in different U.S. states.

“In many ways the imagery doesn’t sit right,” she said. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses … after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”

I feel the same way about dopeness in academia. Since hip-hop has emerged as a global phenomenon largely embraced by many of the “academically trained” music scholars who initially rejected it, how will those scholars and their schools now make way for the people they have historically excluded?

This is why that quote about me “scoring, arguably, the dopest job ever” has stuck with me.

I wonder if it’s fair to call what I do a form of legalized dope.

America’s dope-dealing history

In the late 1990s, I saw how fast hip-hop had become inescapable across the U.S., even in the small Midwestern town of Decatur, Illinois, where I grew up with my friend who is now serving federal prison time.

He and I have remained in contact. Among the things we discuss is how unlikely it is that I would be able to do what I do without his doing what he did.

Given the economic realities faced by people after leaving prison, we both know there are limitations to his opportunities if we choose to see our successes as shared accomplishments.

Depending on how dope is interpreted, prisons and universities serve as probable destinations for people who make their living with it. It has kept him in prison roughly the same amount of time as it has kept me in graduate school and in my profession.

This present reality has historical significance for how I think of dope, and what it means for people to have their existence authorized or legalized, and America’s relationship to Black people.

Many of the buildings at Clemson were built in the late 1880s using “laborers convicted of mostly petty crimes” that the state of South Carolina leased to the university.

Similarly, the University of Virginia was built by renting enslaved laborers. The University also is required by state law to purchase office furniture from a state-owned company that depends on imprisoned people for labor. The people who make the furniture are paid very little to do so.

The people in the federal prison where my friend who helped me pay for college is now housed work for paltry wages making towels and shirts for the U.S. Army.

Even with all of the time and distance between our pasts and present, our paths are still inextricably intertwined – along with all those others on or near the seemingly transient line that divides “legal” and “illegal” dope.

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Newsom Signs Bill To Limit Use Of Hip-Hop Lyrics In Criminal Trials

THE HILL

Gavin Newsom

BY JARED GANS

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill Friday to limit the use of hip-hop lyrics as evidence in criminal trials amid multiple high-profile cases of lyrics being used against rappers who have been arrested.

The law, which Newson signed alongside rappers, record producers and record industry executives who were present virtually, is the first in the country to ensure someone’s “creative expression” is not used to “introduce stereotypes or active bias” against a defendant or be used as evidence in a trial against them.

It also requires courts to determine if song lyrics are admissible as evidence and whether content should be linked to an alleged crime.

This comes after Atlanta-based rappers Young Thug and Gunna were among two dozen people arrested earlier this year on charges of racketeering. The indictments against them reference lyrics from their hip-hop songs, and prosecutors allege Young Thug formed a street gang and promoted it through his music.

The legislation passed without opposition in the state Senate and state Assembly in August.

The law states that rap lyrics and other forms of creative expression can only create circumstantial evidence of motive or intent behind an alleged crime and introducing them into evidence creates a significant risk of unfair prejudice against a defendant.