In 1965, Bob Dylan plugged in his guitar, turned on to an electric sound and tuned out the chiding and disgust of fans who felt he had abandoned folk music. With "Maggie's Farm" Dylan broke with what many considered an unwritten contract forged among artists including Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie and other poets who put politically conscious poetry to music. At Newport he shouted back at hecklers who called him Judas; Dylan later proclaimed that he no longer considered himself an anti-war, singularly motivated musician and sought instead to represent only himself and his music.
Though it seems as though so many have accepted the idea that what we see, hear and experience in the media is an integral part of how we act, rarely are particular musicians touted as anything but a negative impact on society at large. Thus Marilyn Manson is responsible for asocial behavior, NWA is to blame for violence against the police, and a host of pop musicians are the propagators of heroin chic. Few musical movements "represent" anything, for the sheer volume of commercial production in any one genre tends to render the offhand or nonchalant stereotype misinformed or misplaced.
Yet there are some musical categories which tend to be associated with a constructed definition; artists, journalists and others who are so inclined often invoke an ideology, a generalized message or an essentialized doctrine. Folk music, which may be said to have stemmed from labor and anti-war movements, is an example of such a phenomenon, as is a transatlantic punk movement of the late '70s--bands such as the Clash, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Television and the Sex Pistols. Both of these groupings arose organically through an interaction between music makers and music listeners; yet both also have lost this political consciousness as a consolidated movement. Who could defend the entire genre of folk or punk rock in light of the immense diversity of contemporary artistry? Green Day and Ani Difranco could be either included in or excluded from their respective taxonomies, but a more intuitive solution is to disregard the taxonomy itself.
Hip hop music may be undergoing just such a transformation. In truth, hip hop has certainly had constitutive elements: emceeing, deejaying, breakdancing and grafitti art. Yet as a movement, hip hop has traversed more than 20 years since a particular voiceless community became local cultural creators. At the end of the '90s the industry of hip hop is a multi-billion dollar venture, one that reaches countless individuals in communites all over the place through a diversity of media. The stereotype of an East/West coast dichotomy is not only misplaced, it is further subverted by the fact that there is a hip hop following in Germany, Japan and worldwide. In the words of Dimitri Leger, the deputy editor of The Source Magazine, what began as a black-on-black conversation "is now a black-on-world conversation." This amplification and expansion of an ever-growing hip hop culture seems to emphasize the timeliness of a reassesment of core values and a forum discussion regarding what hip hop is signifying.
The NextLevel Hip Hop Conference, which took place Friday and Saturday of last week, was precisely the oppurtunity for a gathering to focus on many aspects of hip hop. Co-organized by Candice Hoyes '99 and Erika Fullwood '99, it offered a rare gathering of music insiders and outsiders to discuss a multiplicity of topics all surrounding a musical genre. The interaction among panelists and audience members was astoundingly high; on this level the conference was nothing but a sucess. More than 300 participants took part in the conference. With a powerful publicity campaign, the NextLevel seems especially relevent in regards to the local turnout of curious individuals.
The afternoon consisted of four "Rap Sessions" or panel discussions and a keynote speech by KRS- The question of definition is one of the many topics that both kept this past Saturday afternoon's conference envigorating and problematic. Considerations had both a temporal and an essential feel: can overproduced music still retain an artistic impetus, what is hip hop without dancing, is there an establishment to battle against, do women have a greater place in the future of the music making? Many of these issues challenged the traditional fourpart definition of hip hop--and seem to demand some sort of line drawing. It is for this reason that discussions attempting to further define hip-hop for the current burgeoning and outwardly-branching musical movement appear to answer the wrong questions. One can be true to hip hop (exclude those who don't), or the definition of hip hop itself can expand. But to essentialize what to everyone but a purist is such a multi-faceted phenomenon, seems to forget a vast audience and sell hip hop short. KRS-One challenged everyone in the room to proclaim, "I am hip hop" and to become the expression. For KRS-One, there are so many aspects of the cultural movement, the perpetuation may simply be the emphatic: I am hip hop. To excel in the industry, to perform well, to be critical--all are challenges to the gloomy view of hip hop's future. KRS-One has collaborated with Puffy, he has performed with Zoch de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine, he encourages material and commercial success as well. He begins I Got Next with the lines "it's not a novelty, you can love your neighbor, without loving poverty." But can hip hop exist as a new institution which plays by the rules of capitalism? Rather than draw rhetorical lines in the sand, much of all the "rap sessions" highlighted agency in the industry. yet, in a capitalist system, agency really rests on consumers--music won't sell that the masses won't purchase. To consider this one aspect of an amplification of audience is to consider how the musical genre may be subject to a dilution of substance through absorption by this very capitalist culture. To be anti-establishment, one needs an establishment. The music industry and American culture "discovers" the margins and transforms the avant garde into a marketable product. There must be a reconciliation between preserving core values and expanding one's marketablity. The danger is whether hip hop can still be a critique of culture, or whether it will be consumed by culture. In fact it may be both. Talib Kweli in "Manifesto" asks, "all the real MC's can meet me outside, so we can decide how we gonna change the tide." Black Star certainly acknowledge the challenge of hip hop--elsewhere, Kweli rhymes "an A&R told me that I use too many catchphrases, true I'm trying to catch all my people in all different stages, all different phases..." Like modernism in art, the definitional question may depend on who you ask. If saturation of a market leads artists to abandon the genre, comercial hip hop may be at odds with itself. When punk rock broke big with fluffy nuggets that received popular recognition, some mourned the loss of the political punk. Others proclaimed a new genre to exploit, an upbeat gleeful energy. But whether or not the movement had died rested on the definition of the movement. The NextLevel conference highlighted this question able future of hip hop culture.
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Victor Victoria
