From this we can clearly see that the hip-hop culture and rap music itself were not created to add to tensions in inner-city areas through gang violence, but instead to take them away from such negative distractions in life and help the black community to channel their aggression and express their lives through various forms of hip-hop.
Theoretical Framework surrounding Mainstream Media and Rap/Hip-Hop.
Messages in rap music have also incorporated positive ideals promoting topics such as self-improvement. However, the media selectively exclude news frames that are truly positive when reporting on rap music. The prejudice reporting of events related to rap music is troubling as Hill has reasoned that the ‘mainstream media in a democratic post-industrial society assumingly represents the collective conscious of the society. Understanding this when the constructed ‘we’ is threatened by ‘otherness’ negative reporting is the logical outcome’ (1998, p.105). Therefore in our case, hip-hop has been historically misunderstood and the result being that hip-hop is labelled as ‘otherness’.
There is a great deal of media stereotyping related to rap music, hip hop culture and the economically deprived areas in which these art forms were born. Campbell explained,
“The commonsense selection process of news organisations often dictates coverage of ‘negative’ minority news, while ‘positive’ stories about progress and success in minority communities tend to be shelved due to what journalists consider a lack of newsworthiness” (1995, p. 30).
In other words, the general public would only be hearing the negative news on rap music and hip hop culture and the good news would not be considered worthy enough, thus causing negative stereotyping towards rap music and hip-hop culture. There may be a number of reasons that could explain the overrepresentation of negative news. Could it be that there is a lack of African Americans making the news? There are also very few black employees in editorial and managerial positions that make decisions about what is news and what is not. Campbell (1995) also reported that there is a dual negative stereotyping taking place in the media. On one hand, black people are characterised as what she calls the ‘savage sambo’, a characterisation that has remained constant as far back as the early vaudeville shows and films. The ‘savage sambo’ is generally reflected in the coverage of crimes. The other stereotype places African Americans in a ‘minstrel-show style’, which suggests that success is only acceptable in the entertainment arena. It is not threatening for African Americans to be successful rappers. This may seem positive, but Campbell reasoned that the coverage was so broad that it took the place of news coverage that could possibly paint a more accurate picture of American minorities.
Another more popular stereo type today is the image of black youth as prone to violence and crime. This is constantly being referenced to negative influences of
popular culture, often rap music and hip-hop culture. This is highly visible in electronic media, despite the fact that commercialized hip-hop is not representative of the entire genre (Mahiri et al 2003). This stereotype particularly emerged through the creation of ‘gangsta rap’. It is very common that there are moral panics surrounding popular music. ‘Gangsta rap’ with its ‘often violent and misogynistic overtones of its lyrics, has instilled a form of moral panic among the white middle classes’ (Bennett 2000, p. 135). There have also been attempts by white institutions such as the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Centre) to censor rap lyrics. Campbell (1995) reasoned that rap music itself is not solely responsible for transmitting negative representations of black youth culture. Print and television media have framed news pieces about rap music and hip-hop culture in a crime discourse. This crime discourse is the same in which African Americans in general were framed before rap music.
Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Article
To carry out a discourse analysis, we will be closely looking at a 2008 article from ‘The Sun’ newspaper (see Fig.1 in Appendix). This article focuses on the negative impacts and the violent lyrics of ‘grime music’, a hybrid genre created with the infusion of rap music and UK garage. I am particularly interested in how the article articulates the negative issues surrounding grime and rap music through the clever use of language.
‘Language forms a useful method of examining ideology. Sometimes ‘The Sun’s’ point of view is manifested very blatantly’ (Clark 1992, p. 208). For example take the headline of this article, ‘After 12 Hours of Gangsta Rap I Could Have Knifed
Someone’. For a lot of readers, the headline of an article will sell the story; the dominant message in the headline would be reflected on in the readers mind throughout the article. So referring to the headline in this article, straight away it conveys the message of gangsta rap making an impact on knife crime in Britain. The clever use of language in the headline has already summed up this particular newspaper’s ideology on rap music in one short blow. Not only does this headline portray ‘The Sun’s’ ideology but gives the newspaper the perfect opportunity to relate gangsta rap music with the more current moral panic related to knife crime and teenage murders.
Throughout the article itself, language has been used very carefully, intelligently and often subtly but on some occasions blatantly convey the message in the news story. Adebayo notes that,
“after listening to this hybrid of hip-hop and garage music, I wanted to kill someone. If I was an aggressive man the first person to step on my foot would probably have got ‘shanked’ – knifed – as is happening on the streets” (2008).
Again, the article has been referenced to knife crime but bluntly states that the reporter himself wanted to kill someone as a result of the music. This is then followed by an in-direct suggestion that this is what our children are listening to. If we viewed this article from the perception of the general public, would you want your children to be listening to this music after reading all the negative messages? Therefore it aids in the creation of panic amongst parent and straight culture. The more obvious negative representations are the use of such strong phrases such as ‘murder’ and ‘menace’ when articulating rap music. There are many topics that grime and rap music cover
besides violence but yet reporters do not want to cover those stories as they are, according to journalists, not newsworthy.
When taking a look at the history of black music, there has never been any lyrical content as violent or misogynistic as rap music. Adebayo uses this, by briefly going through the history of black music to reinforce the image of the more current genre, rap music, as being outrageous. ‘In the late eighties, LA group NWA brought ‘gangsta rap’ to the mainstream. Since then the easiest way to succeed in rap has been to talk about guns and killings’ (Adebayo 2008). What we need to take into account when reflecting on this quote is that, do rappers talk about such topics to gain commercial success, or is mainstream popularity gained from record labels deciding what should be popular? It’s the media that makes this music genre so popular, yet the media decides to represent rap music so negatively. When contrasting between rap music and popular black music from the past, Adebayo has for obvious reasons failed to point out that a lot of black music from the past had also been represented negatively. This is why creating a contrast between the past and the present works so effectively, as rap music will always appear to be increasingly negative when compared to popular black music from the past.
Although ‘The Sun’ tends to be blatant when putting its ideologies across in this article, ‘language is used to convey blame subtly, with the motivating value system only subliminally present’ (Clark 1992, p. 208). Adebayo has subtly hinted to his readers that it is solely the black community that are portraying violent messages through popular music. For example when Adebayo mentions a time when ‘black’
and ‘music’ together were not such dirty words (2008). This would subconsciously imply that the words ‘black’ and ‘music’ together are dirty words in this current day and age. To cover any chances of sounding racist ‘The Sun’ has included quotes from a senior black police officer.
To conclude the article, the 80’s era of popular black music which predominantly consisted of rap music was creatively labelled the ‘noughties’. This is shortly followed by the most extreme lyrics ‘The Sun’ could find from a UK grime artist Dizzee Rascal and his song ‘Jus’ A Rascal’. With the last lyric being, ‘we’re all waiting to blow ya brain’. This is a phrase that could possibly have a dual meaning in the context it’s written. Firstly the most obvious reason being it’s a violent rap lyric but more importantly, it could be stating that all rappers are waiting to blow your (the youth of today’s) brain.
The reason behind the formation of hip-hop culture and rap music has completely been miss-understood by the media, but rather miss-understood deliberately than accidentally. The moral panic about rap music’s often violent overtones has been created by the media when hip-hop culture broke into the mainstream and started to move towards the suburbs to predominantly white neighbourhoods from the inner-city. I believe there is tremendous potential for rap music to truly be a platform for social change; however the current state of media representation will only hinder its progress towards this level of influence.
Bibliography
Adebayo, D. (2008) After 12 Hours of Gangsta Rap I Could Have Knifed Someone. The Sun. Wednesday, 6th August 2008.
Bennett, A. (2000) Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. Hampshire, Macmillan Press Ltd.
Campbell, C. (1995) Race, Myth and the News. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.
Clark, K. (1992) The Linguistics of Blame: Representations of Women in The Sun’s Reporting of Crimes of Sexual Violence. In Toolan, M (eds.) Language Text and Context. London, Routledge.
Hill, P. (1999) Deconstructing the Hip Hop Hype: A critical analysis of the New York Times’ coverage of African American youth culture. In Winfield, B. and Sandra, D (eds.) Bleep!: Censoring Rock and Rap Music. Westport, Greenwood Press.
Lipsitz, G. (1994) Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place. London, Verso.
Mahiri, J. and Conner, E. (2003) Black Youth Violence Has a Bad Rap. Journal of Social Issues vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 121-140.