Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [59]
In the past thirty years, rock and roll has slowly faded away as the sound of teenage rebellion in America. Integrated into the system of mainstream culture by the aging Baby Boomers that drove its innovative 1960s phase, rock and roll has lost its outlaw edge; only rare talents such as Kurt Cobain or Radiohead stand out today. Cobain was someone as brilliant and broken as his music, while Radiohead channels anxieties into otherworldly rock opera. The majority of rock bands and rappers today, from Good Charlotte and P.O.D. to Ludacris and 50 Cent, act like rebels of society. From their dress to their lyrics, they stand apart from the norm. The only difference is that in hip-hop the stakes are typically higher, increasing the appeal to a voyeuristic audience. Where the average “misfit” rock band defies the jocks and cheerleaders and strives for a lifestyle apart from the nine-to-five world, a rapper defies the police, the government, and anyone else who stands in the way. Rap rebellion, even when a pose, is closer to reality, as many rappers are or once were outlaws. Many more rack up arrests once in the public eye, simultaneously fulfilling a stereotype and bolstering their bad reputation. Their rebellion is more believable, more celebrated, and to fans, more worthy of iconography. Many have prison records, gang affiliations, a history of drug dealing or connections to all of the above. Most rappers redefined the reality of their upbringing and succeeded when statistics show that they shouldn’t have. Rappers are the new icons of teenage disenfranchisement, and whether those teens are alienated by the suburbs or by selling drugs in the inner city, they all hear and feel the reality in the music.
Hip-hop is and always will be a culture of the African-American minority. But it has become an international language, a style that connects and defines the self-image of countless teenagers and that has been used to profit immense corporations. Chuck D once called rap “the black CNN.” Today, it’s more like a premium cable package, complete with QVC, five kinds of HBO, the Biography Network, NBA Season Pass, the Boxing Channel, and “Back-in-the Day” Television. It is closer to a cable corporation (plenty would say one owned by “the [white] Man”) with internships and jobs and platinum perks for its employees, but no guaranteed retirement plan. In the rap game, street graduates with the highest rhyme point average and style extracurriculars can land a corner office or prime cubicle. If they’ve got golden letters of recommendation and perform in the field, there’s a chance they might make partner. Like the legal profession, though, there are more rappers in (and out of) school than there are job openings available in the charts—those chart spots require a specific profile.
In thirty years, hip-hop has proven itself the most expansive, mutable music of the twentieth century. The style and rhythms of hip-hop have altered everything from rock to techno as easily as they have integrated styles as diverse as calypso and East Indian music. It’s as unsurprising that hip-hop’s elastic subversion has taken its place in the fabric of American culture as it is that the innovative self-improvement capitalism at its root has been converted into a moneymaker for American corporate capitalism.
The lower classes in America have spent the last ten years (1990 to 2000) in the worst economic straits since the Great Depression and are characterized by high divorce rates and/or nonexistent nuclear families. Hip-hop speaks to and for these classes, particularly kids, like the church, reflecting and explaining reality, offering a code by which to live and a sense of community within a community. At the same time, in the middle-class suburbs, teenagers of all races meet on hip-hop common ground to relieve the stress of growing up in a downsized American dream, rife with divorce, academic and peer pressure, and the teenage angst that blooms as surely as zits. People of all types suffer ills that are voiced in hip-hop, a music that articulates