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<b><u>Hip-Hop, Mass Media and 21<sup>st</sup> Century
Colonization<br><br>
</u></b>
Jared
A. Ball, Ph.D, Communications Fellow<br><br>
<br><br>
Given the societal need and function of mass media and popular culture,
all that is
<img src="http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/images/upload/jared.ball.JPG" alt="[]">
popular is fraudulent. Popularity is in almost every case an
intentionally constructed fabrication of what it claims to
represent. Too few who comment on the lamentable condition of
today’s popular hip-hop seem to grasp this, the political nature of the
nation’s media system, nor the political function that system
serves. Hip-hop is often taken out of the existing context of
political struggle, repression, or the primacy of a
domestic/neo-colonialism in the service of which mass media play a (the?)
leading role. Media, often incorrectly defined by their
technologies, are the primary conduits of ideology or worldview and must
be seen as such. Therefore, their highly consolidated ownership and
content management structure (corporate interlocking boards of directors,
advertisers, stockholders, etc.) cannot be understood absent their
ability to disseminate a consciousness they themselves sanction and mass
produce. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrable than in
hip-hop.<br><br>
Like mass media and popular culture, hip-hop too is often removed from
its proper context as the cultural expression of a domestically-held
internal colony otherwise known as Black America. The colonialism
that prefigures its creation and subsequent popularity is too often
absent from popular discussion of hip-hop and as such leads to confused
analyses and a tremendous amount of inaction surrounding the issues
involved. I use the term colonialism simply to draw attention to
the systemic (i.e. intentional) maltreatment of a majority of those
considered “citizens,” and to the particular form that this maltreatment
takes regarding North America’s Black/African internal colony. By
this I mean that the basic tenets of a colonial relationship remain
intact for Black people in the United States. That is: 1) Black
people remain held in spatially distinct communities, neighborhoods,
projects, etc. where they, 2) form the basis of this country’s source of
cheap labor and, 3) raw materials – which include cultural expression
and, specifically, hip-hop. That is, held intentionally in poverty
so as to create conditions of desperation, Black people must then sell
their labor cheaply and/or be willing to conform themselves to the needs
and will of an elite in order to “succeed.” Hip-hop, like every
other cultural expression generated from this community, has over the
last twenty years been grafted to this structural need to systematically
produce what is conducive to this system’s survival. This is quite
natural and understandable and would only be confusing were this
<i>not</i> the case.<br><br>
The
pervasiveness of self/community-directed violence, misogyny, conspicuous
consumption, product placement promotion, and general lack of ingenuity
in popular hip-hop is the aforementioned specific systemic need produced
systematically via its media representative, in this case, the music
industry. Understood properly we would note that corporations are
themselves legal entities that give sanction and anonymity to those
involved in the process of protecting the ruling elite. Therefore,
their ability to sign (via contract), promote, disseminate, etc. the
cultural expression of the colonized allows them to determine the
direction or content in most popular hip-hop.<br><br>
The
tremendous amount of hip-hop created that does not suit this political
need, which again is primary, is simply omitted. And without this
current analysis, even our brightest thinkers ignorantly suggest, as did
Michael Eric Dyson recently on Paula Zahn’s CNN special on the subject,
that to be successful (i.e. “popular”) politically conscious artists need
“better beats.” This precludes the continuing power struggle which
necessitates both the maintenance of the Black colony, but also a
specific image of that colony to be imposed on the country and
world. In other words, there can be no popular representation of
the colonized that does not reflect a justification or omission of their
colonized status. It is the status of a neo-colony that needs
changing, not the beats used by those expressing a desire for something
different.<br><br>
Zbigniew Brzezinski, in defense of this system, explained this reality
quite clearly when writing in <i>The Grand Chessboard</i> (1997) that
what will separate the United States as an empire from those of the past
is this nation’s control over “international communication and popular
entertainment.” Media today are more pervasive, powerful, and
capable of the maintenance of colonialism than at any other time in world
history. This is the result of the intentional and concomitant rise
of both mass media technology and their consolidated ownership in the
hands of the world’s only true “minority” elite: white men.
Fewer people, almost all exclusively within the same self-identified
racial, class, and gendered interest group, have a greater ability today
than at any other time to produce a global consciousness conducive to
their interests. Hence my earlier statement about the inherent
fraudulence of popular culture. In a society where culture is used
as a primary component or mechanism of social control, that which becomes
“pop culture” is fraudulent in that it is forced, as Fanon has explained,
to “testify against” its creators and to serve those able to determine
its reach or societal penetration. Rarely is what we know of as “popular”
the initial intention of the culture or individual from which that
expression comes. Most often what is the final product is what is
decidedly different than what its creator initially set out to make and
is more than likely no longer in their own best interest.<br><br>
While
much of what is made popular in hip-hop glorifies the impoverished
conditions out of which the cultural expression emerges, little has
changed regarding those fundamental colonial conditions. In the
thirty years of hip-hop’s ascendance and its annual generation of
billions of dollars, the fundamental relationship between that population
and the greater society remains intact. Hip-hop’s popularity has
done nothing to improve Black America’s overall wealth, education,
health-care, or certainly rates of imprisonment. In fact, the
popularity of hip-hop is used to deny these conditions or explain them as
natural to the conditions of African America. It is not to the
<i>people</i> that these conditions are natural but, instead, to the
<i>condition </i>of being colonized. Popular media and, therefore,
hip-hop cannot be changed prior to a societal shift (revolution) in who
holds power and how that power is to be wielded.<br><br>
In future columns I will detail the historical shift in hip-hop, the
corporate/industrial mechanism, detailing how the final product is shaped
to these political needs and offer detailed strategies and current
movements/artists whose work is in assertive resistance to this
neocolonial condition. <br><br>
<br><br>
<b> <br><br>
Dr. Jared A. Ball is an assistant professor of communication studies at
Morgan State University. He is editor-at- large of the Journal of Hip-Hop
and Global Culture from Words, Beats and Life and hosts <i>Jazz &
Justice</i> Mondays 1-3p EST on DC's WPFW 89.3 FM Pacifica Radio. Ball is
also the founder and creator of <i>FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape
Radio Show</i>, a hip-hop mixtape committed to the practice of
underground emancipatory journalism. He is currently working on his first
book <i>Hip-Hop as Mass Media: The Mixtape and Emancipatory
Journalism</i> and can be found online at voxunion.com.<br><br>
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