Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [90]
A divergent grade of gangsta: Eminem in 2001.
“Hip-hop is so different now,” says André of OutKast, whose first record came out in 1994 when the duo were still in their late teens. “Rap is kind of dead to me because it is the mainstream now. People are still saying ‘We’re keeping it underground. We’re keeping it underground.’ But really, that’s bullshit. Because, shit, once they start putting rap songs in commercials and rap is outselling country music and all this type of shit, it’s not the same anymore. It’s a different type of white kid that listens to it now. It used to be kids listened to it for the same reason they liked punk—it was a rebellious thing your parents didn’t like. To those kids, it was cool to listen to N.W.A say ‘fuck the police.’ That was like your music while you’re skipping school and partying and drinking and shit like that. Rap was something those white kids discovered, it wasn’t just there in front of them. Now, it’s everywhere, it’s not a novelty to anybody.”
If anything, and perhaps fittingly, the materialistic vision of hip-hop at the early part of the new millennium is more an expression of “white” America than the music has ever been. As the first generation of hip-hop entrepreneurs—CEOs such as Puff Daddy, Russell Simmons, Jermaine Dupri, and Damon Dash—take their place as power players within the system of our society, from summering in the Hamptons with New York City’s upper class to establishing a hip-hop political lobby group (the Hip-Hop Action Summit Network), the leaders of the culture are living a life closer to the white American dream of luxury homes, expensive clothes, and upper-crust influence than to the street style that got them there. This current hip-hop aesthetic as it plays out in the music seems to be searching for a middle ground, pulled by roots in a lifestyle that success seems to necessitate leaving behind. Today, the most successful mainstream rappers and businessmen find a way to promote a black image without a true sense of identity politics—the opposite of what defined success for late-eighties groups such as Public Enemy. As he has through the history of hip-hop, Russell Simmons has set a wise, commercially viable example of the new hip-hop identity. Through his many ventures, from the Tony Award–winning Broadway show Def Poetry Jam to the HBO series Def Comedy Jam and from his clothing label, Phat Farm, to his wildly influential record label, Def Jam, Simmons espouses an all-inclusive philosophy. His take reflects the origins of hip-hop, in which races and musical styles mingled freely under the leadership of black DJs and MCs, but he wisely also adopts the attitude of all of America’s youth as hip-hop’s own.
“Kids of all colors, all over the world, instinctively seek to change the world,” Simmons said in his autobiography, Life and Def. “They usually have this desire because they don’t want to buy into the dominant values of the mainstream. Rappers want to change the world to suit their vision and to create a place for themselves in it. So kids can find a way into hip-hop by staying true to their instinct toward rebellion and change.” In his book and in interviews, Simmons places hip-hop into terms that the white mainstream can understand, drawing parallels to the Woodstock generation and the Baby Boomers’ faith in the power of music to change the world. Simmons is accepted because he does not equate hip-hop with black America, he equates it with youth, a stance more true every day. We live in a time when race identity politics, regardless of this country’s social conditions, are simply not popular and, in many ways, are no longer relevant. Hip-hop, a musical form that existed and thrived in spite of the system, even when it includes images as antiauthority as those of N.W.A, Ice-T, and Public Enemy, has become part of the system.
“The most benign version