Why authenticity and “keepin’ it real” is not solely the concern of hip hop artists

In Western contemporary society, authenticity dominates the social and cultural landscape, as suggested in declarations of ‘authentic’ cuisine and organic produce, to tourism, reality television programmes and music. The predominance of popular books published on the topic further point to an emphasis on authenticity in Western society.

Authenticity is increasingly mobilised to sell us commodities as indicated by Gilmore & Pine’s (2007) Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, while Potter warns us not to fall victim to authenticity branding in The Authenticity Hoax (Potter, 2011). The Power of Authenticity to Transform Your Life and Relationships (Robbins, 2009) and Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self (Breathnach, 2009) provide self-help guidance on how to live a more authentic life.

Ideas about authenticity can be seen to affect identity formation, group dynamics and consumption patterns. It is arguable that this preoccupation with authenticity has become more heightened in recent years because it has been called into question.

Of course, authenticity is not just a concern for rappers. The effects of capitalism, especially the neoliberal agenda that characterises modernity, push for unremitting individualism and demand “autonomous, self-motivating, responsibilised subjects” (Gill, 2010: 241). Ongoing macro-level processes such as migration and hybridisation, transnational social movements, accelerated dynamics of capital and consumption, and rapid technological change impact everyone in modern society (Beck, 2000).

These structural conditions have notable key themes of individualism, instability and insecurity, leading to increased alienation, holding profound implications for forms of sociality (Gill, 2010). As Gilbert (2010) notes, lack of community “is the most obvious failing of competitive market society”, driving people to seek belonging and security.

The concept of ‘struggle’ captures the experiences of rappers tackling these changes in society, in  addition to the contradictory feeling of both freedom and constraint.

In the face of a growing  consumerist and materialistic culture, the continuous flux of global flows, and mediated reality, a  sense of inauthenticity pervades, which potentially explains why authenticity has grown in  significance and meaning to people.

As such, it is arguable the UK hip hop scene represents society  at large, in that its members try to make sense of a confusing and changing world whilst  simultaneously trying to live out keeping it real. Negotiating authenticity can then be seen as a  universal concern.

 

Thoughts on Hip Hop Education in the UK

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to an incredible presentation by musician and teacher Francis Winston at an academic conference. His presentation (which incorporated a sax performance and rapping) was about the art of MCing being brought into music education.

Hip hop education is slowly gaining momentum in the UK, though is more established in the US. With particular individuals leading the movement such as @rapclassroom in London, as well as many others, it seems that hip hop might finally be receiving the attention it deserves and be utilised in a myriad of productive ways, and also perhaps be taken seriously as a ‘high’ art form.

However, following the interesting discussion that ensued from the presentation last week, is this something we actually want?

Although I think hip hop absolutely deserves recognition and validation as an incredible culture, where the various practices of rapping, DJing and so on require as much dedication as traditional instruments and singing, there is something about hip hop and its street origins and place in the cultural fabric of society that makes me wonder whether something of it will get lost if it is institutionalised.

I’m feeling quite torn about on the one hand being totally convinced of the positive impact of bringing rap into the classroom, yet on the other hand, concerned about the long-term implications of the co-option of hip hop by powerful elites.

The issues around hip hop education are extremely wide-ranging, challenging, even controversial. Simply defining what the term means is problematic e.g. bringing hip hop and education together; using a bit of hip hop in schools to reach a particular demographic; hip hop as its own pedagogy; or as Francis was arguing for yesterday, a form of music education specifically.

Whilst not aiming to answer any of these questions, I just thought I’d use this blog post as a way of thrashing out views for and against hip hop education as a hopefully productive means of wrestling with competing perspectives.

 

 

Arguments for

•  For a long time other forms of music like jazz have been seen as worthy of study in academia, so why not hip hop? It’s time to address the music imbalance.
•  If rap schools teach ‘knowledge’ (the widely held fifth element of hip hop), along with the music, then the history of the art form will be preserved and will bring wider social awareness.
•  Rappers enjoy an expansion in vocabulary and arguably a greater understanding and knowledge of life as they draw from their own experiences. The focus on the ‘real’ and putting oneself out there holds the potential for identity exploration and self-discovery.
• Hip hop can reach youth who don’t have access to music education, or can’t afford instruments, or those not interested in singing. It can thus bring about greater inclusion and less elitism.
•  The delivery of rap includes thinking about the diaphragm, inflection, intonation, phrasing, pitch, repetition, which is also what singers and wind musicians have to contend with.
•  If hip hop was afforded the same level of analysis and exposure as other musics, it would rightly be legitimised as a high art form.
•  It’s a creative way of overcoming marginalisation and dealing with constraints – whether that’s social, cultural, or economic. As the popular hip hop adage goes, “create something from nothing.”
•  Hip hop offers a way of challenging the boring, stuffy, and white focus of the curriculum. Hip hop is an oppositional music form so its counter-cultural and anti-establishment ethos can only be a good thing if brought into a educational setting for the constructive and insightful challenges it may pose.
•  It’s not just about hip hop as music or culture but a way of opening up dialogue about a plethora of issues – race, class, misogyny and gender, politics, commercialisation, globalisation etc.

Arguments against

•  If rap is ‘taught’ in schools, does it take away something of the essence of hip hop – that it is organic, largely autodidactic, and a street culture?
•  Due to hip hop’s association with the underprivileged because of it’s origins in the Bronx ghetto, it raises the question of who is ‘authorised’ to rap, and indeed teach it. Can anyone do it, or is it the preserve of the disenfranchised and disadvantaged?
•  If hip hop is taken up in schools all over the country, becomes institutionalised, and shifts to ‘high art’ as jazz has, then won’t this effect ‘street’ rap? Hip hop will have so many rappers and artists that will have ‘learnt’ the craft and perhaps not ‘felt’ and come to it naturally as others have. Making hip hop mainstream through widespread teaching seems to go against the anti-establishment value system and ideology of the culture.
• Hip hop provides an important forum/space for criticising and challenging the main cultural ideals in society, so teaching it and institutionalising it breaks down one of its most important values as a music.
•  There’s a question of power relations around the educated and privileged teaching hip hop to the underprivileged. In a school setting, the powerful elite could potentially be dictating what is and isn’t hip hop, or even become gatekeepers of what constitutes ‘good’ hip hop.
• There is a potential danger of hip hop becoming so embedded in the curriculum that is comes to be treated by some students as say the equivalent of maths – something they have to do and is an obligation. Students may unfortunately become preoccupied with grades and meeting top down standards, which is the antithesis of hip hop’s agenda of creativity and fun. Do we make it optional for those interested in it or a compulsory part of the curriculum?
•  There is a danger of reifying hip hop – i.e. turning it into a ‘thing’. Something that is concrete and fixed when hip hop is arguably a free-wheeling, evolving, shifting and growing organism undergoing change all the time according to the practitioners and site of activity.

Final thoughts 

The potential for hip hop education is diverse and multi-faceted, and as it’s in its nascent stages there is much room for discussion and debate about many of the issues listed above. Indeed, hip hop’s almost built-in self-critiquing component is what makes it such a progressive and appealing movement.

I guess one of the issues I thought about whilst writing the above is about the agenda of hip hop education – is it about hip hop getting the validation and legitimisation it so rightly deserves as ‘high culture’ (I feel strongly about this as I still find myself constantly having to justify my research area). But then that raises a slew of questions about why it needs legitimisation: From who? What does hip hop get from an elevated status? What does ‘high’ and ‘low’ art even mean in today’s world of remixed and hybrid culture?

Or, is hip hop education about reaching particular children, teenagers, even adults? Or about it being inclusive and an alternative form of engagement for those who aren’t catered for in the curriculum? Or simply a means of inspiring creativity and cultural production among young people?

I don’t have answers to any these questions but from writing this blog post, I’ve personally come to think that hip hop education done in a self-reflexive and self-critical way outweighs most, if not all, of the arguments against it. Holding the position that bringing rap into the classroom will impinge on hip hop’s street and anti-establishment values, or that it can’t be ‘taught’, has a problematic authenticity bias that suggests there is a ‘true’ or accepted way of doing hip hop, which I don’t believe is the case in our globalised, diverse and changing world.

 

The hashtag #HipHopEd on twitter is a useful starting point for those interested in following updates and information on hip hop education and keeping abreast of developments both in the UK and US.

Resources & Research on UK Hip Hop

I often get emails from people asking if I can point them in the direction of studies published, or information more generally, on UK hip hop. The problem is there is very little. However, in the interest of open access and sharing, I thought it would useful to collate the little information I have somewhere. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything. I will shortly be adding the link to my PhD thesis (which explores authenticity in the London hip hop scene) and hopefully the articles that follow on from that.

Published Research

• Bennett, A. (1999) Rappin’ on the Tyne: Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England – An ethnographic study. The Sociological Review, 47(1).

• Dedman, T. (2011). Agency in UK hip-hop and grime youth subcultures – peripherals and purists. Journal of Youth Studies, 14(5): 507-522.

• Hesmondhalgh, D. & Melville, C. (2001) ‘Breakbeat Culture’. In T. Mitchell (Ed) Global Noise: Rap and Hip-hop Outside the USA. Wesleyan University Press.
• Webb, P. (2007). Hip hop’s musicians and audiences in the local musical ‘milieu’. In P. Hodkinson and W. Deicke (Eds) Youth Subcultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes. Routledge.

• Wood, A. (2009). ‘Original London Style’: London Posse and the birth of British hip hop. Atlantic Studies, 6(2): 175-190.

Newspaper Articles

‘Beats, Rhymes and Grime’ – C. Melville (May, 2007). Rationalist Association.

‘Home Grown: British Hip Hop’ – A. Batey. (July 2003). The Times.

‘Hip-hop and it don’t stop: what does the future hold for Hip Hop Connection?’ – I. Burrell. (September 2008).  The Independent. 

‘Bang On! The regional sound of UK hip hop’ – S. Kelly (December 2010). The Guardian.

‘Hip Hop Comes of Age’ – A. Akwagyiram. (October, 2009) BBC.

‘Scene and heard: UK hip hop gets political‘. (April, 2010). K. Yates. The Guardian.

Documentaries 

The Pioneers of British Hip Hop Documentary 

Bad Meaning Good (1987)

Link Up TV presents UK Rap: The Story So Far (2013)

Summary of my PhD research – “Keepin’ It Real: Negotiating Authenticity in the London Hip Hop Scene”

This is currently the abstract for my (soon to be finished!) PhD thesis on authenticity in the London hip hop scene:

Despite growing academic attention on the highly valued ideal of authenticity in hip hop, little research has explored its particular role and significance in artists’ everyday lives, in the UK as elsewhere. Using London as a case study, I explore how authenticity is understood, embodied, practised, and negotiated, in other words ‘lived out’, by rappers in a place where the music did not originate.

The research explores not just what ‘being’ real entails in this distinctive context of cultural production, but also how London rappers go about ‘keeping’ it real, against a confusing and rapidly changing cultural, technological and socio-economic context. From hip hop’s inception, a sense of struggle has been a feature of the culture, as well as motivation for artists to make their music. My research indicates that in the dynamic context of the London hip hop scene, influenced by the complex interrelated effects of capitalism, globalization, migration and digitization, there has been a shift in just what artists are struggling against. The study reveals various responses and strategic approaches that rappers engage in to negotiate the struggles in contemporary society whilst seeking to live out authenticity in the scene. These include radical individualism, universal commonality, oppositionist positioning, explicit claims and media management.

Applying critical realism as an ‘under-labouring’ meta-theoretical foundation, in conjunction with ethnography, the study makes a contribution that moves beyond fixed and wholly socially constructed conceptualizations of authenticity. My research reveals that in the case of the London hip hop scene, authenticity is an emergent human property (re)-produced and managed through the negotiation of the myriad tensions and struggles that hip hop artists living in London encounter. The study suggests that the struggles negotiated by rappers have much wider implications for young people living out their lives in contemporary society.

Hip Hop in the UK History (1970s – 2012)

American hip hop was exported to the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the origins of hip hop in New York are extremely well documented, there is still no formal history or recording of the early scene in the UK apart from varying personal accounts of participants at the time. The Sugarhill Gang record ‘Rappers Delight’ reached number three in the UK singles chart in 1979, garnering listeners and fans. Hip hop also seeped into England through various other channels including national radio shows, local pirate stations and mixtapes from New York, as well as imported 12 inch vinyl from independent record labels (Webb, 2007). When the American hip hop films Wild Style (1983) and the graffiti documentary Beat Street (1984) reached Britain, the culture really germinated and became popular in underground music circles. Similarly to the US, the beginning of UK hip hop was largely based on live shows and parties, with little thought of what was evolving.

The historical, social and economic elements that produced hip hop, in addition to the multiple musical influences such as reggae, soul, blues, jazz, funk and spoken word, means that hip hop provided various malleable and hybrid forms of raw materials to work with, allowing transmission, absorption and transformation within very different sites (Wood, 2009). The cultural resources that hip hop offered were attractive to a new generation of diasporic youth who were seeking a sense of identity and representation. Many of the migrants who came to Britain had colonial ties or came through labour recruitment agreements and wanted to enjoy the post-war economic boom (Geddes, 2003). Hip hop grew and developed with the burgeoning multi-ethnic youthful population in London. The city offered various networks for making and distributing music both in formal ways such as the music industry, but also informally, through DIY channels such as pirate radio, home-made mix tapes and specialist record shops (Huq, 2007). From the beginning, hip hop in Britain was a cross-racial scene. Unlike cities like New York, various ethnic groups in London tended not to live in segregated neighbourhoods meaning there were opportunities for cultural exchange between white, Caribbean, African and Asian youth.

Initially, British hip hop was largely based on American models by enthusiastically importing African-American attitudes, style and music (Hesmondhalgh, 2001). A few acts emerged in London, mostly concentrated in multiracial and creative pockets of musical activity, such as Brixton, Ladbroke Grove and Peckham. Groups and artists to surface  in the mid 1980s include London Posse, the Cookie Crew and Monie Love, Sindecut, DJ Newtrament, and Ruthless Rap Assassins. British hip hop started out very much as ‘borrowed culture’, with British artists imitating their American counterparts, but it rapidly developed its own distinctive variations. Originally British artists mimicked American MCs in terms of the content of songs and even adopting American accents, greatly tarnishing their credibility. However, hip hop in the UK developed its own unique sound through artists inscribing their own meaning, musical influences and local sound into the music. Wood argues (2009) during the 1980s in British hip hop, there was a period of intense creativity and innovation that has rarely been documented, yet is central to positioning black British culture in the authenticity debate as opposed to simply mimicking American hip hop.

During the 1990s, hip hop in the UK developed distinct scenes nationally. Regional pockets of hip hop produced their own sound and style for example in the cities of Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds and Manchester. As hip hop grew in popularity, special music magazines were founded, radio stations were created and record labels were set up to cater for the burgeoning culture. Hip Hop Connection was the first major British hip hop magazine and the ‘Big Dada’ music label was set up by Will Ashton in 1997 to release hip hop records and still has popular UK artists on its roster today such as Roots Manuva. The 2000s saw a new generation of artists emerge including Jehst, Blade, Foreign Beggars, and the Mud Family. After the closing of Low Life Records by Braintax in 2008, many thought UK hip hop was on its way out. However, the scene has been enjoying a revival since High Focus Records was established in 2010. The label houses rappers such as Fliptrix, Jam Baxter and Dirty Dike who have been dominating the scene since. Newer artists such as Jam Baxter have been collaborating with UK hip hop veterans like Chester P, creating a bridge between the different eras of UK hip hop. Media tools like youtube and social networking sites are providing creative fertile ground for artists to get their music heard and are proving to be an indispensable resource in building up the scene once again.

Sampling in Hip Hop

Afrika Bambaataa’s most famous track ‘Planet Rock’ (1982) is a prime example of one of hip hop’s characteristic trademarks: sampling. In simplistic terms, the practice of sampling is the borrowing of music or sound byte in which a section of a recording is incorporated into another.

In ‘Planet Rock’, Bambaataa combined a variety of samples ranging from music by the German band Kraftwerk, music from film, to cuts from British band Babe Ruth over a Roland TR808 drum machine. Sampling has been widespread in hip hop circles since the 1980s and offers a way of acknowledging history and influences through the collage of black musical traditions such as jazz and gospel but also voices and beats from various popular and obscure sources (Dyson, 2004).

Potter argues sampling is an essential feature of hip hop: “the fundamental practice of hip hop is one of citation, of the relentless sampling of sonic and verbal archives” (1995: 53). Huq (2003: 150) explains the bricolage aesthetic of sampling as “participatory collective consumption” because of the shared recognisable fragments reassembled to compose the hybridized music.

Sampling serves as the epitome of remix culture in the age of digital media as sounds can be moved around, appropriated, overlapped or transfigured to create new sounds. Although something of the original sound is maintained, its meaning changes in every new context.

Why study hip hop?

When I tell people I study hip hop, I get varying different reactions. Some people think it’s super cool, others express great interest, and sadly there are others who scoff because they don’t regard it as a worthy or valid field of serious research. I never understand why this is. Perhaps it is because it is so contemporary, or simply because it doesn’t fall under the remit of ‘traditional’ disciplines or maybe even because research isn’t meant to be that much fun. In response to those more sceptical people regarding the merits of researching hip hop, I’ve decided to compile a list of reasons as to why it is important to study this cultural phenomenon. This list is by no means exhaustive so please feel free to add your own reasons as to why hip hop is worthy of study.

• Hip hop “has become an uncompromising prism for critique, social and political analysis and representation of marginalized and underrepresented communities throughout the world.” – Hip Hop Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, Harvard University
• Hip hop is a creative art form that diverse people use to express themselves.
• To address the moral panics associated with hip hop found in popular news sources such as glamorized violence, gangs, misogyny, and drugs.
• Hip hop can be, and is increasingly being, used as an educational tool in classrooms.
• Hip hop is used by young people of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds to construct both self and social identities.
• Hip hop offers a space for dialogue and uncovering issues of race and power.
• Hip hop  serves as a barometer of the contemporary social and cultural challenges facing ethnically diverse young people.
• Rap music offers social commentary and political awareness.
• Studying hip hop requires looking at myriad other disciplines and issues such as musicology, language, history, authenticity, business, economics, identity, race and gender to name a few.
• Hip hop “brings a community into being through performance and maps out real and imagined relations between people that speak to the realities of displacement, disillusion and despair created by the austerity economy of post-industrial capitalism.” – George Lipsitz
• Hip hop is so pervasive and ubiquitous that is is part of the fabric of culture and therefore is relevant to everyone so needs to be understood as most people are encountering it.
• Rap music is basically spoken word poetry and requires extensive vocabulary, rhyming, lyrical and language skills.
• Hip hop is an interrelated array of expressive practices – MCing, break-dancing, DJing and graffiti writing.
• There are many parallels between hip hop and the early stages of other African-American music such as blues and jazz as it is considered a ‘low’ or vernacular art form. However, in years to come it is highly likely to be a respected music genre like jazz.
• Rapping has enabled the articulation of oral stories that confront daily life on the streets.
• Hip hop epitomises creativity because it is concerned with being artistic, resourceful and innovative.
• Rap gives a voice to marginalised communities.
• Hip hip can be used as a form of empowerment – hip hop artists demonstrate creative skill and ability which they can learn to integrate into professional paid or unpaid work.
• To challenge media misrepresentations such as black youths as criminals.
• Rappers are modern day street poets.
• The culture reveals the dynamic, contemporary and important issues of our time.
• Examining hip hop culture is essential to understand the community’s ideas, values and knowledges.
• “Rap should be taken seriously…for its productive and healthy moments it should be promoted as a worthy form of artistic expression and culture projection, and as an enabling source of black juvenile and communal solidarity.” – Michael Eric Dyson

‘A Life Lived in Media’ published in Digital Humanities Quarterly

‘A Life Lived in Media‘, a collaborative project between Mark Deuze (professor at Indiana University), Peter Blank (BlankMediation in Chicago) and myself has just been published in the open-access journal Digital Humanities Quarterly. It was great fun working and writing together so it is wonderful to finally see our piece published and accessible to all.

Through the themes of media’s invisibility, creativity, selectivity, and sociability, we discuss the implications of a reality not lived with media but in media.

Abstract:

Research since the early years of the 21st century consistently shows that through the years more of our time gets spent using media, that being concurrently exposed to media has become a foundational feature of everyday life, and that consuming media for most people increasingly takes place alongside producing media. Contemporary media devices, what people do with them, and how all of this fits into the organization of our everyday life disrupt and unsettle well-established views of the role media play in society. Instead of continuing to wrestle with a distinction between media and society, this contribution proposes we begin our thinking with a view of life not lived with media, but in media. The media life perspective starts from the realization that the whole of the world and our lived experience in it are framed by, mitigated through, and made immediate by (immersive, integrated, ubiquitous and pervasive) media.