<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/ball_hh_pt2.asp" eudora="autourl">
http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/ball_hh_pt2.asp<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Hip-Hop and the
Corporate Function of Colonization<br><br>
Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.<br><br>
Green Institute Communications Fellow<br><br>
<br><br>
Having
</font><a href="http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/ball_hh_pt1.asp">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>
elsewhere</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
looked at the function of mass media as primary mechanisms of the
maintenance of colony, recent events have again emerged requiring further
investigation into the function of corporate control over the cultural
expression of colonized populations. Though not specific to hip-hop
the example as explored through that most popular of cultural expressions
may help to make more clear the imperative of organization and political
struggle in 2007. Within the last few weeks alone we have seen
recent decisions and trends evolve demonstrating the intent and need
among those in power to further ensure that mass media will perform its
primary (only?) function of manipulating popular consciousness for the
purpose of manipulating behavior of the audience (victims).
These developments can only be understood in the context of a continuing
process of subjugation in which media play a primary role in suppressing
dissent.<br><br>
Most recently examples of this include the successful lobbying (legal
bribery) of congress by Time Warner to
</font>
<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/24/1446244">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>increase
postal rates for
magazines</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
making new or small magazines unable to start or compete for national
distribution. There are the continuing efforts of
</font>
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117826380984292046-search.html?KEYWORDS=EMI+Warner&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>EMI to sell
itself off</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> to
either Warner Music Group or the newest media trend of a private equity
firm. And then there was the
</font><a href="http://www.loc.gov/crb/">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>Copyright
Royalty Board</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
issuing its new policy of charging commercial and non-commercial
terrestrial and internet broadcasters per-song royalty fees which have
been estimated to mean that
</font>
<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1548251&mode=thread&tid=25">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>85%</a></u>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> of internet
broadcasters will fold unable to afford the cost of operation. This
decision, it must be noted, also affects my own beloved Washington, DC
Pacifica Radio affiliate WPFW whose song royalties fees, based on this
decision, will no longer be covered by the right-wing-led Corporation for
Public Broadcasting meaning further economic hardship for the
network. <br><br>
To this must be added the recent exposure of Interscope Records’
</font>
<a href="http://www.industryears.com/press.php?subaction=showfull&id=1177077899&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>“lyrics
committee,”</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> who
have determined that the recently released album from Young Buck would
not include a track called
</font><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59FN6qz9b30">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>Fuck tha
Police</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> due to
its “violent content.” These examples form a segment of what is the
need of those in power to maintain intellectual boundaries established
for their own protection. This elite uses the structure of
corporate governance to maintain this control in relative anonymity where
CEOs and commercial spokespeople become mere illusions masking their
position as modern-day colonial administrators. At times called the
petit-bourgeoisie, or even the Black bourgeoisie, they are simply that
group which, as administrators, administer to society that which limits
or confounds ranges of thought so as to keep people from stepping –
intellectually or literally – beyond acceptable parameters. In this
case these administrators become the intellectual equivalent of the guard
at the gate telling you beyond this line you may not cross, that is, not
without serious repercussion.<br><br>
Continued references to
</font>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Toward-African-Revolution-Fanon-Frantz/dp/0802130909/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/002-5368815-3065628?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178655530&sr=8-4">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>Frantz
Fanon</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>, too
often made with no equal reference or focus on what prompted his
brilliant analyses, ignore the fundamental colonizing process still
underway. This corporate-led lockdown of mass media and popular
culture is part of a long historical process to maintain “order” over
populations whose ability to produce and popularize a revolutionary
culture and, therefore, conscious behavior would mean the end of
established power. This threat, one that is and should be feared,
is mitigated by a corporate structure designed, as Fanon explained, to
<i>not</i> “destroy the culture of the colonized” but to instead allow
certain forms to be carefully selected for promotion and
popularity. This popularity then encourages perceptions of the
colonized that support their colonization and, in fact, encourage a
behavior among the colonized which produces self-inflicted wounds that
while in reality result from externally-based oppression are justified
via perception. Here, again, is how a Viacom-owned radio station
would broadcast Don Imus while also broadcasting the very hip-hop later
blamed for his remarks on BET, MTV, and here in Washington, DC on WPGC
95.5 FM, the city’s leading Black-targeted radio station. “We play
what the people want and produce” is their claim. Yet when DC-area
artists, such as Head-Roc, DJ EuRok, Pookanu, Asheru to name too few,
produce high quality hip-hop critical of our colonial status, police
brutality, impoverished schools, etc. or even make music that is just
fun-loving and brilliantly worded they are suppressed. Censorship
is political not linguistic. It’s not the “fuck” in Young Buck’s
Fuck da Police that was censored. <br><br>
The
sociology of a corporation demonstrates its function. Boards of
directors with interlocks that extend the influence of this tiny
collective, themselves selected by controlling holders of stock, elect
Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) who – as employees of those stockholders
– work at the bidding of their further removed and mostly anonymous
(certainly to us) bosses. What those bosses want is well beyond
money, which itself exists only to manage/manipulate the behavior of the
majority who have none, they want security and safety. Both require
a popular consciousness or “manufactured” opinion which supports this by
preventing even the idea of the righteous – even if forceful –
redistribution of wealth and service. This is why songs saying
“fuck the police” must be censored, attacked, omitted or demonized even
if, as is the case with Young Buck, a video may picture Huey Newton but
is actually more about an individual self-defense of selling dope than a
collective self-defense in the furtherance of revolutionary
intercommunalism or Black nationalism.<br><br>
Corporate lockdown of popular media is a political necessity and
scientific inevitability requiring further description of this process,
along with suggested avenues of resistance, which will be the focus of
subsequent columns. Our approach to the study of and response to
media must be akin to that of Huey P. Newton who said he “studied law to
become a better burglar.” <br><br>
<br><br>
<i>Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. 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
</font><a href="http://wblinc.org/">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>Words,
Beats and Life</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
and hosts Jazz & Justice Mondays 1-3p EST on DC's
</font><a href="http://wpfw.org/">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>WPFW</a></u>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> 89.3 FM Pacifica
Radio. Ball is also the founder and creator of FreeMix Radio: The
Original Mixtape Radio Show, a hip-hop mixtape committed to the practice
of underground emancipatory journalism. Ball is also a board member
of the International Association for Hip-Hop Education and a
Communications Fellow with the
</font><a href="http://www.greeninstitute.net/">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#800080"><u>Green
Institute</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
. He is currently working on his first book Hip-Hop as Mass Media:
The Mixtape and Emancipatory Journalism and can be found online at
</font><a href="http://voxunion.com/">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>
voxunion.com</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
.<br><br>
<br><br>
</i></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>