Deeper Than Hip-Hop: Who Controls Our Art?

By Roopa Singh , May 21, 2007

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A young artist-activist's analysis of Al Sharpton's May 3 March For Decency in Hip-Hop.

New York City--James Brown's birthday was May 3 (R.I.P.), and on that day Harlem-based Rev. Al Sharpton convened a protest march to advocate for standards of decency in hip-hop lyrics. The crowd of approximately 300, primarily African-American, overwhelmingly adult people gathered first at Sony Music headquarters and then marched their way across Manhattan to hit up offices of the "Big 4" music companies. Bullhorns raised, they railed at record execs who pitch rocks at artists but live in glass towers built to hold up hundreds of floors of greed that feed off our music, specifically in this case, hip-hop. Sharpton's march walked from Sony Music on Madison Ave. to Warner Music in Rockefeller Plaza, Universal Music off Eighth Ave., and ended with a rally outside of Time Warner in Columbus Circle.

In addition to organizing the march, Sharpton has been meeting in person with executives from Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. "These three companies, along with London-based EMI Group, account for close to 90 percent of U.S. music sales through traditional distribution channels," stated Jerry Goolsby, a professor of Music Industry Studies at Loyola University.

Rumor has it that the Big 4 have been quaking in their boots after the boiling outbreak of protests spilling onto the front doors of CBS and NBC in response to Don Imus' racist and misogynist comments about the Rutger's Women's Basketball team.

Why This Issue And Why Now?

The short-term answer to this question is Don Imus. Check out this quote from Don Imus' interview session May 9, 2007, with Al Sharpton on Sharpton's nationally syndicated radio show "Keep It Real."

IMUS: Why isn't there the same kind of outrage, let me ask you, in the black community when rappers and other people in the black community, athletes in the black community defame and demean black women?

SHARPTON: I am one of them that is outraged.

So it goes a little something like this: Al Sharpton interviews Don Imus after Imus puts himself and white people back on blast with his Rutger's comment. Sharpton puts out the call for the "decency in hip-hop lyrics" march post-Don Imus interview. In the interview, Imus indicates that if he had been a hip-hop artist talking about "nappy headed hos," he wouldn't have caught no flack, and its rumored (note: no record of this statement in the transcript of the interview) that he said he would have even had a hit hip-hop record. Wrong. He probably could have gotten a record, maybe, but not a top 40 hit. Dumb ass.

Anyway, Al Sharpton agrees with him, in the sense that Sharpton agrees to entertain Imus' prompt, and the dialogue shifts from the accountability of one white man to accountability of an industry that surrounds primarily black artists. Sharpton agrees that black people should be concerned about hateful speech in hip-hop lyrics and in an attempt to so to speak put his money where his mouth is, Sharpton soon after puts out a call for the convening of this march and protest around decency in hip-hop lyrics.

Decency in Hip-Hop

Does this issue sound familiar? It should, seems like every few years the issue of decency in hip-hop lyrics is regurgitated, agitated, another way to take a still status quo challenging art form to task. A stronger issue to mobilize around would sound more like: Stop Misogyny In Hip Hop Lyrics And In The Home. But at the Sharpton march, the focus was mainly on lyrics in songs (aka: less b's and h's and n's and blood and guns ...). I can get down with that, but not without noting that a hip-hop focused analysis for change should not exclude the deeper context of what's really going on by addressing these central questions: Who controls our art, and how do we want our art held?

Who Controls Our Art?

The framers of our Constitution and the First Amendment can either mean a lot to you or nothing at all. But, I'ma tell you, the intention behind the creation of this country in terms of free speech and media and art was to have a robust marketplace of ideas. Imagine a dope farmer's market on a sunny day, good smells, a quality system booming in the background, and informed people debating ideas through passionate convo, innovative dance, and hardcore poetry from off the dome. That's a glimpse of what the framers were thinking this democracy would need to keep itself alive and fueled. So we don't exactly have that. But somehow we as a society still rise up generation after generation to create innovative art and challenging discourse. The art form of Hip-hop is just one example of human triumph over lack.

Who Controls Hip-Hop?

Let's follow the money. Ask yourself, who else besides the record executives are feeding off hip-hop these days? Advertisers, a burgeoning group of hip-hop intellectuals, people who brand and sell hip-hop clothing and merchandise, and community workers-like Al Sharpton or your average youth-nonprofit-who-tap-hip-hop for better and for worse. Oh yeah, and hip-hop artists are making some change too. You ever heard that statistic, about how approximately 1 percent of the world's population commands around 95 percent of the world's wealth? The hip-hop version (I can hear it now): "This just in, approximately 22 people in hip-hop control 99.9 percent of all the money hip-hop has ever and will ever make. Though some argue that wealth cannot only be measured in dollars, we all know that when rent is due, rent is due. Back to you, Don."

The corporatization of hip-hop means that the folks with the most invested get to have the most control. But these days, the paid in the shade corporate vultures of hip-hop are getting even bolder in their attempts to control this particular art form. Media conglomerate Viacom recently used its dollar bill pull to discourage sexually suggestive dancing on hip-hop stages. Viacom abruptly dropped soul singer Akon from its ads and reneged on its sponsorship of Gwen Stefani's national tour, for which Akon was the opening act, all as a result of Akon being caught on tape grinding on a young woman in a club. The New York Times reported that, "The move by Verizon has sent a chill through the ranks of touring pop artists and agents, who are left scratching their heads over their vulnerability to such penalties."

When culture-vulture's are corporations with greed unending, do we still have the power to ask, 'Who controls our art and how do we want our art to be held?' I believe we do. It's our sovereign right to determine the course of our art. Plain 'n' simple. Al Sharpton, Russell Simmons, Sony, Verizon, and you, and I. We all have a responsibility to nurture the health of art forms in general and hip-hop specifically.

I'm a hip-hop head, and I want hip-hop held as the royalty she truly is, strength in multiple personalities, alive behind each willing face, mouth open, head grooving, feet fluid, tongue fisting, politically growing. Hip-hop is both a queen and a king because she exudes the confidence of a good teacher and the vulnerability of a still willing student. And this is all true of her today, of hip-hop then and now. I want artists in charge of how art is held. I want checks and balances on folks making money and power off hip-hop. I want the focus off individuals and individual issues. I want the focus on who controls our art and how do we want our art held.

Naxal is a frequent public speaker, performer and educator currently residing in the Bay Area while transitioning out to NYC. A South Asian lawyer and poet, Naxal is the kind of writer who "has an eye out for shit that cries out, passionately." (Andre Benjamin, Outkast) Flipping the news into poetry that we can feel is just one of the ways Naxal reinvigorates the word.