Objectify This

I just got back from NYC’s incarnation of the Rock the Bells Hip Hop Festival on Randall’s Island this weekend, where I was struck by the ways that the mainstream, commercial hip hop scene differs from the “underground” or “conscious” hip hop scene that I stood for hours in mud and pouring rain to dance to on Sunday.

In sharp contrast to so-called “indie” musicians who began as commerical unknowns and then signed to big labels, self-produced rappers like Atmosphere, Brother Ali, and my favorite feminist rapper Psalm One don’t bill themselves as independent even though their label, Rhymesayers, advertises its infant-size t-shirts with the slogan “Be independent from day one.”

For Psalm One and the Rhymesayers crew, which also includes big names such as MF DOOM and Rjd2 (albeit in his collaboration with Blue Print, which is kinda lame as his work goes, but that’s another blog), their music is about not “sweating the technique”: about being authentic, about bringing themselves to the party and making their audience dance to their music. The creation of this music is a political act because it reaffirms the individual identities of artists and the collective identity of “underground” hip hop, which is a reaction to hip hop music and to stereotypes of these primarily black communities where it originates.

From this perspective, all of the artists with talent, rather than financial backing, are political, because they play a unique role in our mass-produced culture both by offering an alternative to fake, industrial dreck and also by providing a model of agency and individual expression. One of my favorites is the eccentric MF DOOM, whose rhymes transcend the vocabulary of the average interdisciplinary university professor, as in Benzi Box:

Surely I jest, the best on a wireless
mic- not an eye test, yet I digress
But why stress, try an’ remember when
Maybe bit the tender skinnded babysitter Gwendolyn
The type ta hit and run and go tell a friend
Word to El Muerto’s cucaracha exoskeleton
He know, flow like inter-stellar wind
Tow a rat jinn by his toe and to hell again.

The stereotypes about hip hop, which might hold true for big-shot commercial artists like Snoop and Eminem who rap about bitches and gats, are applied universally to independent hip hop fans, even though they may be coming to see Erykah Badu croon about emotional baggage in her hit “Bag Lady” or Brother Ali exhult in his his self-acceptance in “Forest Whitaker.”

The misapplication of this stereotype is evident in the way that these shows are administered. Security measures are stricter when it comes to hip hop shows, and while I was expecting a pat-down search when I entered Rock the Bells, I had no idea that my umbrella was going to be confiscated, too. This sucked, considering that it was raining for nearly the entire 9 hour outdoor concert, but no matter, no one wants to see what happens when a hip hop fan gets armed.

It was the politics, not the music, that was the unifying theme of Rock the Bells, from Cypress Hill’s goofy-ass pro-marijuana stance to Sage Francis and Immortal Technique’s angry antigovernment rants. Despite the tagline “A World Class Hip Hop Platform,” unless Rage Against the Machine has recently been reclassified, it was not genre but content that decided who got to perform.

And despite the audience’s obvious familiarity with and affinity for the remix of Snoop anthem “Gin and Juice” (“Gz up, hoes down, while you motherfuckers bounce to this“) which preceded DOOM’s long-awaited performance, we were not there to see bikini clad go-go dancers or even, primarily, to hear about exploitative sex.

In fact, in the world of underground hip hop, the exceptions to this rule fall almost as frequently in favor of women as men. Brother Ali has a track called ‘Heads Down’ (“What separates the men from boys, masturbation from love making/Is making your woman really humm”), the CunninLynguists are self explanatory, Dead Prez has ‘Mind Sex’, Masta Ace has ‘Brooklyn Masala’, Psalm One has a ‘A Girl Named You’, Mos Def and Talib Kweli have ‘Brown Skin Lady’, Common has ‘The Light’; even early Outkast makes the connection between women’s liberation and black liberation, as in ‘ATLiens‘, when Andre 3000 raps,

Now, my oral illustration be like clitoral stimulation
to the female gender, ain’t nothin better
Let me know when it’s wet enough to enter
If not I’ll wait, because the future of the world depends on
whether not the child we raise gon’ have that nigga syndrome
Or will it know to beat the earth regardless of its skintone.

That’s right, the artists who penned “Hey Ya,” which tamely encourages clubgoers to “shake it like a polaroid picture” and “lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor,” actually used to get explicit about the clitoris and the connections between sexual equality and gender equality, and between gender equality and racial equality. And while I admit that they use the word ‘pimp’ in the chorus, it’s in reference to a meal of fish and grits, which is either ironic or nonsensical, and in neither sense a direct promotion of the objectification or sale of women.

Indeed, the objectification of women does not appear to correlate well with the desires of individual artists, who have community reputations or good relationships with their mothers, sisters, or lovers to think of, but rather with corporate greed. The answer, according to Brother Ali? Steal his new album (“The Undisputed Truth”) from Best Buy. Well, actually, that’s what he said to do if you don’t have the money to buy it. But either way, it’s about the message, not the money. Here’s Immortal Technique:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOjlDetGQIs]