Authenticity and Cultural Production - Group Two

Eminem and Dr. Dre - “Guilty Conscience”

From the readings that we have been doing, many of the authors illustrated what is not authenticity rather than what it is. “Guilty Conscience” serves as a great example of authenticity because it displays distinctive characteristics of its own that is different from many mainstream rap song. As you will all see, this particular rap song does not simply display anti-Semitic slurs and black criminality. Instead it illustrates three common scenarios that can happen to any ethnic group. In addition, if you listen careful, you will acknowledge that Dr. Dre is the “good” conscience, whereas Eminem is the “bad”. In one of the readings, David Samuel reveals that black rappers from the mainstream have been packaged as violent black criminals in order to appeal to their white audiences. It is interesting to see that the role of the black and white man’s role is reverse in this rap song. In the song, there is a type of negotiation going on. The characters are struggling to determine whether or not to do violence. In the first two scenarios, the character is convinced to not do violence. However, in the end of the cheating wife a scenario, Dr. Dre somehow is convinced by Eminem into this guy killing his wife for cheating.

Moreover, this illustrates the paths that two rappers have been taking in their career. Each individual rapper takes a particular path when producing their songs. For example, Eminem has been noted to rap about beating his wife and the kind of struggles he has when he was a kid. On the other hand, Dr. Dre was the member of the N.W.A. All of these were illustrated in the song.

Jurassic 5 - What's Golden

1. Starting with social-psychological. We keep hearing “true to the game” and representing basically who they are. We also see a variety of urban settings, an illustration of true to the game (cornfield, bus, dark alley).

2. Here, we see nearly the majority of the people in the video is black. Notice the DJ is white. We often here “white boy shouldn’t rap because rap is black” but it’s interesting to see the DJ is white in the video.

3. Hip hop clubs in the video demonstrate the underground aspect of authenticity. It’s considered fake when it’s on the radio and MTV (commercial). Well, this video has often been link to MTV. Here, we see some contradictions.

4. When we talk about gender, rap and hip-hop has always been linked to being “manly” or hard. As discussed in class, being a “pimp” is part of the authenticity. Looking at the video, we see the tough guy act along with the girls being around. Also, we see the artists singing around the alleys (dangerous place) and being comfortable with the hood. Part of the manly and hard aspect of authenticity. Also, we hear “chains, rings, and dreadlocks” in the song. All to aim at male audiences.

5. This is an easy one. As mentioned, the alleys, the bus, hip hop clubs, and basically the “street.”

6. Obviously we notice the artists know where they’re from (hip hop community and blackness community). They understood the history of their ancestors’ past or do they?

The video focuses on band members dancing in a hip-hop club. The message is that fame hasn’t changed the artist’s lifestyle and that they’re still “true” to “true” hip hop. What interesting to point out is that toward the end of video, some people have shown forgotten about the settings that they grew up into. Feel free to disagree with me. (Anh Doan)

Big Pun- Dream Shatterer (5^th element remix)

Big Pun is relevant to Latino cultural production, because he was the first Latino solo Rap artist to have a platinum record. Pun’s music creates a strong production of Latino/Puerto Rican culture, since it is one of the only representations of complex, multisyllabic rapping delivered in perfect rhythm by a Latino man. Pun makes note of this in this song with the line

“I’m the first Latin rapper to baffle ya skull

I mastered the flow niggas be swearin’ I’m blacker than coal”

Notice that Pun acknowledges that the public assumes a highly talented rapper must be black.

He adds a Latino cultural flair to his first verse, reminiscent of Mellow Man Ace and Kid Frost (That’s The Joint p. 100-101) with the line

“It’s Big Pun the one and only son of Tony

Montana you ain’t promised manana in the rotten manzana”

The use of Spanish interwoven into rap allows Latino rappers to give their community a sense of ownership over their music. (Pesach Perlin)

OutKast “Mainstream” on ATLiens (1996)

Lyrics link: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/outkast/mainstream.html

[Song link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CgBhCmYo9s

As S. Craig Watkins discusses in “Black You and the Ironies of Capitalism,” we can understand cultural products as skills or practices or ideologies that aid a person in navigating the world. The collective ownership/authorship of cultural objects/skills creates a sense of community with all who share them. These cultural objects/skills in turn become tools with which a person understands their world, how they fit in it, and assist in the construction of their identity (Watkins 557).

Watkins talks about popular culture as a site of political struggle. He describes complex systems of power exchange, resistance, subversion, dominance, coercion between the two loosely defined poles of containment and resistance – hegemony and a challenge to the social structure. This negotiation of power takes place on news stations, talk shows, in films, music, magazines, etc. He discusses how these “poles” of resistance and containment can be further complicated when considering the effect of the exchange of monetary capital for cultural objects/skills/performances.

With Watkins’ understanding of this negotiation of power and his understanding of cultural production, we can see that “Mainstream” by OutKast can serve as an example of a cultural product that furthers a political position as well as providing a tool for understanding life in the inner city.

This song came out in a time of “moral panic,” one week after President Bill Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. As Watkins describes, the 1980s and 90s were times in which very negative imagery of Latin and black youth and families of the inner cities of the United States were described as a “fiscal and moral strain on national resources” (564). The first verse effectively establishes a setting with strong imagery of a struggling community and the vocalist who, within nine lines, describes a regression from contemplations of revolutionary action, of empowerment and freedom to living day-to-day and an understanding of “overcoming” which is solely an individual struggle to adapt and to pull oneself up by the bootstraps: “one day is what I live for \ ain't thinking about no hope no more \ I got my boots I kick it till I get with \ Adapt and overcome, oh hum hum.” The track certainly discusses the different ways people of the urban ghetto try to gain access to power and these people’s life chances. Though the lyrics certainly place a value judgment on the methods taken in order to access power and discuss the class betrayal that can take place.

The second verse seems to be about the exact negotiation of power that Watkins talks about – between resistance and confinement. The vocalist describes black hip hop artists selling out and he continues this idea of a loss of integrity leading to a downfall: “They swan divin’ … be rhymin' catching the day when the recipe calls for black” but with the “wrong ingredients.” The vocalist describes this as a sacrifice: “so I'm gonna sing just like them to get where they at \ I'll even break my by back to touch their rim if I gotta.” Clearly, this narrative illustrates the attempt to commercialize hip hop and increase black youth’s “commercial viability,” but the artist is not allowed any direction in this, he/she is simply an ingredient to widen the end product’s marketability. At the very end of the song, Big Boi says “my partners call me Big Boi and my \ first name is not Steven \ in the mainstream.” This perhaps indicates the detached or impersonal nature of the mainstream, like he has lost a piece of his identity – his given name. But also it seems that, in being able to construct his own identity within the mainstream, he is empowered.

Throughout the track, the lyrics deal with issues of respectability and morality that revises the hegemonic ideology. The last verse lets us know what “it’s all about:” family and friends and enjoying yourself. The song certainly provides a framework for understanding the highly racialized and classed structures of power that leave the people of the inner city particularly vulnerable. There are certainly moments when the vocalist seems to imagine another way of thinking about the situation at hand. In the second verse, he says “you just receive the steel \ but then it might get ugly cause trust me niggas do feel \ the way that I felt when I wrote this, but we must stay in focus \ we kings and queens up in this thing, get rid of all them jokers \ face down, face down, face down.” This seems to imply that the victims of the power structure do have some agency in the production of their culture, and have the ability to empower themselves with the tools the structure provides. (Christina Platenkamp)

Brother D - How we gonna make the black nation rise?

This song fit well into authenticity because the content is entirely social commentary, no appeal to commercial interest, music for the sake of the community, music for the sake of the music: “This is not my ego soup, I sat down and thought and I wrote this verse in the interest of the group.” In addition, it reaffirms the black community through the struggles of black communities. This song gives the example of Indians struggles similarly to the black communities. Also it comments on street credibility. The song noted how US white industry has tried to taken away from the hip hop industry. As the professor has mentioned, during the time period that this song was produced, many of the rap songs were party rap. What is significant about this song is that it promotes black nationalism while other rap song are producing party rap.

In terms of cultural production, the song tells Black people to stop “socializing” and “Educate Educate Organize!” As well, it mentions Klu Klux Klan, Black People Getting murdered, “They killin us in the streets, while we pay more for food that’s cheap.” The song title itself sends a clear message. How we going to make the black nation rise? Clearly, the black community is trying to strengthen a sense of national unity. In order to socialize and to educate is for the “destiny” of the national group. The group needs to understand their future and destiny by learning their past (including not where hip hop is originated, but also its past struggles).