Wednesday, March 24
"Despite the relatively apolitical nature of their work, groups like The Roots and A Tribe Called Quest are hastily branded 'conscious' or 'political' because of their avant-garde music and aesthetics. On the contrary, the political critiques and philanthropy of 'mainstream' artists like Jay-Z or Ice Cube are often overlooked or dismissed. Within this superficial framework, hip-hop political consciousness is reduced to a thin politics of fashion and speech that privileges bourgeois bohemianism over engaged social critique and concrete action."--Marc Lamont Hill, in Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic.
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rappers are-becoming/became political because "conscious" ones made it fashionable? The fact that "political" is equated with "conscious" is ripe for explanation. Googling "ice cube philanthropy" was a fun trip, though, thanks for that.
I might be wrong, but I think Hill's point is more about the way that people read rappers' actions, and divide rappers into subgroups, than it is about the actions themselves.
His chapter is mostly an argument for Nas-as-black-public-intellectual, which I must say I don't find as persuasive as the stuff about how hip-hop is read by the larger culture.
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His chapter is mostly an argument for Nas-as-black-public-intellectual, which I must say I don't find as persuasive as the stuff about how hip-hop is read by the larger culture.
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