Close to the Edge (26 page)

As many of hip hop's pioneers, both in the US and across the globe, moved into other fields such as acting, filmmaking, theater, performance art, and community-based arts work, members of the new generation who were attracted to hip hop were mostly white. The interest from the music industry in exploiting the potential of local hip hop cultures led to a narrowing of the diversity of the culture. In Australia the vibrant early hip hop scene involving women, immigrants, and Aboriginals did not translate into commercial success for these groups. The Australian music industry promoted mostly white male rap groups as so-called Aussie rap. 1200 Techniques, the first Australian rap group to score a major label deal in ten years, was all white. The Hilltop Hoods, Reason, TZU, and The Herd—other groups to clinch record deals or have tracks on major compilations, get radio airplay, and inhabit the stages of Australian hip hop festivals—were also all-male, all-white groups, with what was deemed “crossover potential” by the record industry.

Poor black and working-class immigrant youth didn't have the resources to sustain their participation in hip hop over a long period of time. To make money as a rapper or b-boy requires some investment, which poor kids didn't have. Middle-class kids could more easily afford the samplers, turntables, spray paint, and records required for deejaying, producing, and graffiti. In places like Chicago, this included some middle-class black artists like Kanye West, whose English professor mother paid for studio time, bought his equipment, and tried to persuade him to finish his college degree despite his being pursued by record companies. As hip hop became mainstream, it also became more acceptable to white parents, who helped fund independent album releases, dance classes, or tours. Middle-class rappers also had more access to various kinds of cultural capital to support their work. In the summer of 2010 I received an email from a white middle-class rapper from Sydney who was applying for a Skills and Arts Development grant from the Australian Arts Council to pay for a trip to New York City. Doing hip hop was becoming less about a way of life and more about a professional career track.

Along with this, there was also a change in hip hop audiences. Fewer people participated in the elements of b-boying, rap, deejaying, and emceeing, and more people were attending rap concerts as consumers. Mike Treese experienced this for the first time when opening for a white rap group before a mostly white audience in Minneapolis in 2006: “Every show we always say, ‘Where the hip hop people at? Make some noise! Where the b-boys at? Where the graffiti writers, DJs, and MCs at? Make some noise!' But all we heard were crickets. It was the first time I ever did a hip hop show where there weren't any hip hop people there. It was a dope responsive crowd who gave it up to us as the openers, but there was no breakers opening up a circle, no MCs cyphering.”

One of the new paths to success for artists in an era of prepackaged formats was reality TV. In 2006 Treese was approached to be a contestant on
The (White) Rapper Show
on VH1, wherein twelve rappers would live in a rundown South Bronx tenement and compete for the title of “great white emcee,” along with a cash prize of $100,000. Treese turned it down. “You can't just take your art anywhere,” he said, explaining his decision to me. “I don't want to get a deal because of a gimmicky TV show. I want it to be ‘cause I'm good at it.” Although being recognized for his skills was his goal, Treese started to question whether it would ever pay the bills: “Part of me knows that the dream was just to be dope, and that's it. So maybe my mind focused on that too much and I wasn't able to see the fortune and fame part. Or maybe the dream just didn't last long enough.”

But even if the dream didn't last, the rage never diminished. The poor black youth who had created hip hop out of the tools of their everyday environment turned their creative energies toward other paths. Twenty-five years after b-boying had emerged in the South Bronx, a new form known as “krumping” took root on the streets of South Central LA. Emerging from the style of “clowning” developed by the party entertainer Tommy the Clown, krumping was a highly energetic dance with violent, frenetic, and fast thrusting movements. At its height of popularity in 2005, krumping counted about eighty crews throughout LA's ghetto neighborhoods. Krumpers were dubbed “the children of Rodney King,” as their wildly flailing limbs echoed the movements of the brutal beating that defined their generation.

As my journey came to an end, I asked myself, what were the deeper personal reasons for my search for a global hip hop generation? It dawned on me that my search for a global movement was also a search for a perfect place, a search for belonging, a search for home. Growing up, I never felt that Australia was my home. I was always looked on as an outsider. I never felt that I belonged there—or anywhere. My travels showed me that there is no perfect place but that through community we can build a home. That is what hip hoppers were doing—they were building communities for themselves where they belonged.

As for me—for now I have settled in New York City, a place that is not perfect by any means but where an Indian-Australian-Portuguese gringa like me can be at home.

Notes

INTRODUCTION: THE MAKING
OF A HIP HOP GLOBE

1.
Derek Pardue, “Hip Hop as Pedagogy: A Look into ‘Heaven' and ‘Soul' in Sao Paulo, Brazil,”
Anthropological Quarterly
80: 3, 2007, 673-709.

2.
Paul Gilroy,
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.
London: Verso, 1993.

3.
George Lipsitz,
Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Post-modernism, and the Poetics of Place.
New York: Verso, 1994, 27.

4.
James Spady, H. Samy Alim, and Samir Meghelli,
The Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness.
Philadelphia: Black History Museum Press, 2006.

5.
Jeff Chang,
Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.
New York: Picador, 2005, 179.

6.
Ibid.

7.
Bakari Kitwana,
The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture.
New York: Basic Civitas, 2002.

8.
Chang,
Can't Stop
, 2.

9.
Ibid., 183.

10.
Ibid., 192.

11.
Ibid., 228.

12.
Jeff Chang, “It's a Hip-Hop World,”
Foreign Policy
163, 2007, 62.

13.
Ian Condry, “A History of Japanese Hip-Hop: Street Dance, Club Scene, Pop Market,” in Tony Mitchell, ed.,
Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA.
Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001, 232.

14.
Jesse Weaver Shipley, “Aesthetic of the Entrepreneur: Afro-Cosmopolitan Rap and Moral Circulation in Accra, Ghana,”
Anthropological Quarterly
82: 3, 2009, 644. Du Bois moved to Ghana toward the end of his life.

15.
Sujatha Fernandes,
Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006.

16.
Halifu Osumare,
The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 85.

17.
George Yúdice,
The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

18.
Eric K. Arnold, “From Azeem to Zion-I: The Evolution of Global Consciousness in Bay Area Hip Hop,” in Dipannita Basu, Sidney Lemelle, and Robin Kelley, eds.,
The Vinyl Ain't Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture.
London: Pluto, 2006, 79.

19.
André J. M. Prévos, “Two Decades of Rap in France: Emergence, Developments, Prospects,” in Alain-Philippe Durand, ed.,
Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World.
Toronto: Scarecrow, 2005, 9.

20.
Dalton Higgins,
Hip Hop World.
Toronto: Groundwork Books, 2009, 34.

21.
Ian Condry,
Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006.

22.
Yvonne Bynoe, “Getting Real about Global Hip Hop,”
Georgetown University Journal of International Affairs
3: 1, 2002, 77-84.

23.
Condry,
Hip-Hop Japan
, 33.

24.
Sohail Daulatzai, “War at 33%: Hip Hop, the Language of the Unheard, and the Afro-Asian Atlantic,” in Basu, Lemelle, and Kelley,
Vinyl Ain't Final
, 100-16.

25.
Anthony Kwame Harrison,
Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.

26.
S. Craig Watkins,
Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement.
Boston: Beacon, 2005,138.

27.
Chang,
Can't Stop
, 443.

28.
Chang, “It's a Hip-Hop World,” 64. Quite unexpectedly, even Cuban state radio features artists like Eminem while subjecting local acts to excessive scrutiny for obscenities before allocating them airtime.

29.
Angela Steele, “Zai Beijing: A Cultural Study of Hip Hop,” Undergraduate thesis, Stanford University, formerly posted at
stanford.edu
(accessed December 2008).

30.
James McBride, “Hip Hop Planet,”
National Geographic
, April 2007, 114.

31.
Watkins,
Hip Hop Matters
, 96-7.

32.
Wire MC, interview by Tony Mitchell and Nick Keys of
Local Noise
, May 31, 2006, Sydney,
localnoise.net.au
(accessed January 2008).

33.
Nirit Ben-Ari, “From the South Bronx to Israel: Rap Music and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” PhD diss., City University of New York, 2010.

34.
Watkins,
Hip Hop Matters.

35.
Harrison,
Hip Hop Underground.

36.
Prévos, “Two Decades,” 15.

37.
Fernandes,
Cuba Represent
, 91.

38.
Chang,
Can't Stop
, 449.

39.
Patrick Neate,
Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet.
New York: Riverhead Books, 2003, 117.

40.
South African rapper Emile of Black Noise, interview by Cristina Verán, cited in Chang,
Can't Stop
, 451.

41.
The rapper Common also goes by the name Common Sense.

42.
Vanessa Díaz and Larissa Díaz, dirs.,
Cuban HipHop: Desde el Principio.
Riverside, Calif., 2006.

43.
Sunana Maira, “'We Ain't Missing': Palestinian Hip Hop: A Transnational Youth Movement,”
CR: The New Centennial Review
8: 2, 2008, 161-92.

44.
John Hutnyk, “The Nation Question: Fundamental and the Deathening Silence,” in Basu, Lemelle, and Kelley,
Vinyl Ain't Final
, 125.

45.
Justin Schell, “For Liberian-born Rapper Blade Brown Hip-Hop a Revolutionary Tool,”
World HipHop Market
, July 3, 2008,
worldhiphopmarket.com/blog/?p=1273
(accessed December 2008).

46.
Ariel Fernández, Conference on “Hip Hop Cubano: A Showcase of Cuban Hip Hop, Culture, and Contemporary Art,” Program in Africana Studies, Lehigh University, April 2008.

CHAPTER 1: MADE IN HAVANA CITY

1.
Vanessa Díaz and Larissa Díaz, dirs.,
Cuban HipHop: Desde el Principio.
Riverside, Calif., 2006.

2.
Tricia Rose,
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.
Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1994.

3.
Imani Perry,
Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 17.

4.
In Cuba,
white
generally refers to a Cuban of European ancestry and ranges from those with blue eyes and fair skin to the more swarthy creoles. It is sometimes also used by light-skinned people of mixed-race background who wish to pass as white.

CHAPTER 2: DOWN AND UNDERGROUND
IN CHI-TOWN

1.
Anthony Kwame Harrison,
Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009, 29.

2.
William Upski Wimsatt,
Bomb the Suburbs.
New York: Soft Skull Press, 1994, 83.

3.
Ibid., 107.

4.
Ibid., 109.

5.
Ibid.

6.
The Maxwell Street Market on the Near West Side used to be the site of a bustling open-air market where street musicians performed blues and gospel, and street vendors sold a range of items, from car parts to household appliances. In 1994 the markets were shut down by the city in collusion with the University of Illinois at Chicago, who wanted to expand their campus into the area.

7.
See Arnold R. Hirsch,
Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago
, 1940-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

8.
S. Craig Watkins,
Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement.
Boston: Beacon, 2005, 91.

9.
Kevin Beacham, “The Chicago Hip Hop Story,”
galapagos4.com
,
galapagos4.com/wp262/?page_id=89
(accessed December 17, 2010).

10.
Wimsatt,
Bomb the Suburbs
, 125.

11.
Wimsatt and Greg Kot, “Why Chicago Artists Have Been Outcasts of the Hip-hop World,”
Chicago Tribune
, January 24, 1993.

12.
Ibid.

13.
Nona Gaye is the daughter of the soul singer Marvin Gaye.

14.
Michael Schultz, dir.,
Cooley High
, Chicago, Ill. 1975.

15.
Harrison,
Hip Hop Underground
, 131.

16.
DJ Rekha, “An Ear to the Streets and a Vibe in the Basement,” in Ajay Nair and Murali Balaji, eds.,
Desi Rap: Hip-Hop and South Asian America.
Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2008, 164.

CHAPTER 3: BLACKFULLA BLACKFULLA

1.
George Lipsitz,
Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Post-modernism, and the Poetics of Place.
New York: Verso, 1994, 142.

2.
Throughout this chapter, indigenous Australian group names will be used.
Koori
refers to indigenous people from what is today known as New South Wales and Victoria, and
Murri
refers to those from the region of modern-day Queensland. The
Wiradjuri
people are from the area of Central New South Wales.

3.
Jock Collins, Greg Noble, Scott Poynting, and Paul Tabar,
Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime: Youth Ethnicity and Crime.
Sydney: Pluto, 2000, 109.

4.
“Hip Hopera,”
Life Matters
, ABC Radio National, October 1995.

5.
The term
wog
was an ethnic slur originally applied to Greek and Italian immigrants in Australia but later used against those of Middle Eastern descent like Lebanese and Palestinians.

6.
Yvonne Bynoe, “Getting Real about Global Hip Hop,”
George-town University Journal of International Affairs
3: 1, 2002, 77-84.

7.
George Morgan,
Unsettled Places: Aboriginal People and Urbanization in New South Wales.
South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2006, 60.

CHAPTER 4: IN THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF

1.
Kenneth Roberts, “Social Polarization and the Populist Resurgence in Venezuela,” in Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger, eds.,
Venezuelan Politics in the Chavez Era: Class, Polarization and Conflict.
Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Riener, 2003, 59-60.

2.
Ana Mariá Sanjuán, “Democracy, Citizenship, and Violence in Venezuela,” in Susana Rotker, ed.,
Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America.
New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002, 87.

3.
Yolanda Salas, “Morir para Vivir: La (In)Certidumbre del Espacio (In)Civilizado,” in Daniel Mato, ed.,
Estudios Latinoamericanos sobre Cultura y Transformaciones Sociales en Tiempos de Globalizacion II.
Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2001, 244.

4.
Eithne Quinn,
Nuthin' but a “G” Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, 22.

5.
Imani Perry,
Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 20.

6.
Quinn,
Nuthin' but a “G” Thang
, 113.

7.
Francisco Ferrandiz, “Malandros, Maria Lionza, and Masculinity in a Venezuelan Shantytown,” in Matthew Gutman, ed.,
Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003, 116.

8.
Classic gangsta rap had its heyday from about 1988 to 1996 and involved artists predominantly from the West Coast and Southwest of the United States.

9.
Robin Kelley, “Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles,” in William Eric Perkins, ed.
Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap and Hip Hop Culture
, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996, 137.

EPILOGUE. GLOBAL RAGE: OVER THE EDGE

1.
Susan Swarbrick, “A Boy, a Thief and a Martyr,”
The Herald
, February 28, 2004.

2.
Quoted in Robin Kelley, “Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles,” in William Eric Perkins, ed.
Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap and Hip Hop Culture
, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996, 118.

3.
George Lipsitz,
Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Post-modernism, and the Poetics of Place.
New York: Verso, 1994,63.

4.
Anthony Kwame Harrison,
Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009, 166.

5.
Margaux Joffe, “Reshaping the Revolution through Rhyme: A Literary Analysis of Cuban Hip-Hop in the ‘Special Period.'” Working Paper no. 3, Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Paper Series in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Duke University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Durham, N.C, 2005, 22.

6.
“Ali or Eli,” catalog for multimedia exhibition by Khaled Sabsabi, October 14-November 13, 2005. New South Wales, Australia: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and Campbell-town Arts Centre, 9.