• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 626 0

of what’s happened between white and black music in the past fifty years is that white people took the part that applied to them,” says Dave Marsh. “There is, obviously, a much less and equally accurate version of that story. I think Eminem has destroyed that framework and I think it’s going to be a problem for black people and white people now. If you want to see some of the results of it, go listen to that second Nelly album, Nellyville. The vision he’s talking about ain’t got nothing to do with being black. There’s no identity politics whatsoever and there really isn’t anybody who is terribly popular in hip-hop right now that does have that angle going on. Public Enemy [was] a very intelligent version of it, but I don’t even think Chuck D is running the identity side of it anymore. Because it is over.”

In hip-hop, the most successful artists of the last few years, from Nelly to Nas to Jay-Z, have not overtly or exclusively flown the flag of black consciousness that once defined hip-hop identity. Nas comes closest, particularly with the single “I Can,” from God’s Son (2002), an empowerment call to young black fans that includes a verse about the earliest origins of slavery. “The Nas song ‘I Can’ is so sort of classic KRS-One,” Farai Chideya says. “It’s really cute and has a great social message. But it’s been, what, like ten years since a song like that came out? I’m not saying that every song should be that, and I’m not saying that hip-hop can’t still be angry and complicated, but I’m pretty sure that there’s a market bias against songs like that, songs you actually could play for an eight-year-old.”

But Nas is the exception to the norm, and although he’s a far superior lyricist, he’s not as hot of a seller as Nelly, who has sold about thirteen million copies of his two albums. Nelly’s 2002 album, Nellyville, is, as Marsh asserts, an album with values traditionally associated with white America. On the title track, “Nellyville,” the St. Louis rapper envisions a bling-bling version of what sounds like a post–World War II suburb, complete with paperboys doing their rounds in Range Rovers and half a million dollars given to every newborn. It is a rap redefinition of the white American dream: a house, marriage, and a community without crime, poverty, or strife in which to raise children, complete with a sunny sky above. Nelly filters this image through hip-hop aesthetics, but the only reference to the history of black Americans comes in his recasting of reparations from “forty acres and a mule” to “forty acres and a pool.” When Nelly appeared in a 2002 “Got Milk?” print-ad campaign, it was true symbiosis: He is the first black musician to be in such an ad, joining the ranks of everyone from the Backstreet Boys, the Dixie Chicks, Steven Tyler, Alex and Eddie Van Halen, Britney Spears, Tony Bennett, Hanson, Elton John, Billy Ray Cyrus, and other artists deemed appropriate to hawk dairy. Nelly’s take is clearly connecting with fans; his single “Hot in Herre” hit the top of more Billboard charts, from pop to R&B, than any other song in 2002, while his album ranked second for overall sales with 4.8 million, second only to The Eminem Show’s 7.5 million.

Eminem, more than Nelly or any other pop culture artist at the moment, personifies American society’s present racial awareness, one no longer based solely on skin color. This trend is easy to see in music, and representative of the greater change. Today it isn’t unusual to see an Asian MC lead an alternative rock band, as in Linkin Park, or a mixed-race guitar player be one of the best in the business, as is Tom Morello of Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine, or a band where a dazzling range of traits come together, as in P.O.D., a group of dreadlocked rap-rockers, including three Hispanics and one black Born Again Christian. So too are racial “norms” open for reinterpretation. “Today, race is performative,” says Farai Chideya. “You can be a white guy who acts black; you can be a black guy who acts white; you can be a Chinese person who acts Latino. To a great degree, Eminem