Memo - Nov. 2 - The Political Economy of Hip Hop Our readings this week offer two critical perspectives on hip-hop, which has had greater cultural and economic impact than any other musical form in the past quarter-century. For most student, as Jim Cullen notes in his introduction to ch. 10, hip-hop has more to do with what's going on right now than it does about history, but that is all the more reason to try to understand it in historical perspective. The chapter centers on an excerpt from Tricia Rose's Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, which is particularly concerned with the tension between black creativity and the cultural and economic system in which that creativity its expressed. Although it was published in 1994 (a long time ago, in the hip-hop world), the issues of authenticity, exploitation, sexism, and political empowerment are still unresolved today. (Rose is a professor at New York University.) The second reading is an essay called "Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: 'Gangsta Rap' and Post-Industrial Los Angeles" by the scholar and activist Robin Kelley, now a professor at Columbia University, from a colletion of his titled Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class.  It focuses on the politics and culture of West Coast gangsta rap, in the early 1990s. Fans of gangsta rap have championed its intense beats and hardcore realism, while others have criticized it as sexist and homophobic and have argued that it celebrates and promotes violence. Kelley's essay seeks to penetrate beyond buzzwords and shouting matches to understand the relationship between the music, the culture it grew out of, and the political and economic dynamics of South Central L.A. The essay was written at a particularly revealing moment in this respect: in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, sparked by the acquittal of four L.A. policeman in the beating of Rodney King, which a bystander had videotaped. Fifty to sixty people were killed in the riots, which stretched on for six days. The rest of the nation looked on in shock and horror. Here are some examples of the music that Kelley writes about: NWA, "F*** tha Police" from Straight Outa Compton (1989) - here Ice T, "New Jack Hustler" from O.G. Original Gangster (1991) - here Please also read Theron Schlabach's Ten Commandments of Good Historical Writing" and the Yale Guide to Writing Prose. They are both short, and both will help you write more clearly and effectively. A few questions to consider: How have hip-hop artists negotiated the push-and-pull between creative autonomy and the requirements of the commercial marketplace? In the complex relationship of "artists" with "the business," what kinds of power does each have? Sometimes that line is not as distinct and firm as it seems. In what ways? Why? Why have videos been so important in hip-hop? In what ways did gangsta rap grow out of conditions and circumstances that are specific to Los Angeles? In what ways is it representative of more general, national issues? How has gangsta rap expressed critiqued not only life in the 'hood, but also life in modern Los Angeles more generally? What has gangsta rap had to say about the political and economic opportunities available to young African-American men? By recasting criminals as outlaws and crime--or some forms of crme, at least--as a form of rebellion, gangsta rap builds on a long tradition in African-American folk culture of the proud, lawless "badman," most famously depicted in 1970s blaxploitation movies like Shaft (and revived in Quentin Tarantino movies like Pulp Fiction). How was gangsta rap an extension of this tradition, and how was it different? What does the sexism and misogyny in gangsta rap have to do with tension over gender identities in South Central and comaprable inner city areas?