"This is Hip-Hop!": Authenticity Outside the Original Context

“This is Hip-Hop! You know what I mean? It’s what we do, man. So from Japan to Europe to South America, all over the country, Toronto, I mean everywhere that I’ve gone, I’ve seen Hip-Hop in its truest form in people that do not look like me. So, that just speaks to the phenomenon that Hip-Hop is, I think.”

- Asheru (Interview, 2005)

In seeking to redefine authenticity, it seems we have stumbled upon the idea of universal modes of expression in Hip-Hop.  As Mitchell points out, (regardless of its original meaning), the rhetoric of the term ‘hip-hop nation’ “has enabled [hiphoppas] in more remote parts of the world to express a sense of belonging to a global subculture of breaking, graffiti writing, rapping, and deejaying.” (Mitchell, 33).  Asheru (2005) and DJ Eurok (2005) echo this sentiment:

Asheru: Hip-Hop is a universal art form. You know, in the beginning, it was created by Black and Latino Americans, but now Hip-Hop is a worldwide phenomenon. There are people all over the world who record it, who appreciate it, who grew up on it, and anybody that grew up around the time I grew up, I’m born in ’74, so anybody from my time, White, Black, Asian, or otherwise, is gonna have a Hip-Hop influence in them.

DJ Eurok: I’ve had the opportunity to meet cats around the world, for whom Hip-Hop was what saved them. You know, Hip-Hop saved me. I was a fuck-up before Hip-Hop. It don’t matter whether you from Connecticut or Madagascar. If you find an expression through Hip-Hop, whether it’s dance or makin' beats.

Sagacity (2005) offers further insight, pointing out that Hip-Hop offers a means of expression that can be vital for any human being:

I think that we should always have events where cats are bboyin' and where a DJ is just tearin' down the turntables and where an emcee is just spittin' real skills. Let the poppers pop, the breakers break, ya know what I sayin'? Let cats tag on walls forever. Let’s stay true minded. Let’s do this thing because we really want to express ourselves. Because there’s somethin inside of you that, if you keep it inside, you’re just gonna die. That’s what Hip-Hop is.

So if Hip-Hop culture is ultimately about expression, as the previous sections suggest, then who can take any authenticity away from the deejays, breakers, bombers and emcees across the world, from all different backgrounds, who are doing just that?  B-girl Mia (2005) offers her perspective:

In terms of authenticity, race or class or background matters only for people who get caught up with categorization and those who don't understand what real Hip-Hop is.  If you live it, then you are inside of it.  Others are looking at you from the outside… If [an emcee] is dope, then they are dope regardless of race, background, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and whatever other factors people want to be concerned about. 

We see a similar response from Head-Roc (2005):

Hip-hop, jazz, blues – all art forms born out of people who are classically oppressed and who are given a deaf ear – give those people a voice; a solidarity… but it is an expression. It can go on any route and it does go on any route. There’s songs about oppression – cool. There’s songs about geeky shit – cool.  It’s about expression. You can use your voice – Hip-Hop lets a person speak how they want to.  You can be some poor muthafucka on a tin roof or in the Ivy League – Hip-Hop lets you express yourself. It’s an expression of how you feel.

Furthermore, perhaps Hip-Hop’s universal appeal affords it a profound ability to unite people of many different backgrounds.  DJ Kool Herc (2005)—considered the Godfather of Hip-Hop—explains:

I think hip-hop has bridged the culture gap. It brings white kids together with black kids, brown kids with yellow kids. They all have something in common that they love (DJ Kool Herc from Chang, 2005:xi).

As Saul Williams (2003) explains, this seems to be what Afrika Bambaataa intended to create when he formed Zulu Nation:

Hip-hop is American. That's what the 'Zulu Nation' and Afrika Bambaataa set out to be from the beginning. If you are listening to the lyrics of the Soul Sonic Force, [in] their first big hip-hop hit they laid the creed out there that it was beyond race and culture. Hip-Hop is extremely powerful, it transcends race... It's there for everyone to grow and learn from.

In fact, Head-Roc (2005) feels that this expansion of Hip-Hop is crucial to its survival:

Head-Roc: Hip hop expanding is so important.  They’re trying to kill hip hop.  Imagine if it didn’t get out of its origins. It’s providing people with another tool to express themselves. I can’t wait to get some hip-hop music from different countries and cultures around the world… The powers that be are in direct opposition to the rhythm.  I’m trying to get in touch with people who are in touch with the rhythm.  People are expressin' themselves in this great art form.

KRS-One is perhaps the most vocal and prominent proponent of Hip-Hop as a means to unite diverse peoples and to even improve individuals’ social conditions.  During a lecture at the Nine Elements Hip-Hop Summit in 2004, he gave a speech that illuminates the potential of Hip-Hop culture to provide an outlet for expression and to bring people of all backgrounds together.  In it, he describes the idea of “being Hiphop”: 

[O]ne of the greatest honors we can give to our ancestors is to create the Hip-Hop civilization.  One of the greatest gifts I can give back to Frederick Douglas, to Harriet Tubman, to Nat Turner, to Martin Luther King, to Kwame Tore, to Malcolm X, Abernathy, Marcus Garvey… to continue my African heritage, is to continue civilization building, nation building.  That’s what they were doing… This is just some of the thought process that I went through to arrive at ‘I am Hip-Hop.’  Because I now realize that it’s not about race in this twenty-first century… We are creating a new nation, a new civilization of people that is beyond race, beyond class, beyond religion… we don’t need to define ourselves based on all of that.  We are not disregarding our ancestors. We are not throwing away our history… What we are saying is with the freedom that our parents have given us, let’s create a nation with it… You look at Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech – when he says ‘the sons of former slaves will sit down with the sons of former slave owners at the table of brotherhood’—no where in the world do you see that, but in Hip-Hop.  Nowhere… In this world, Hip-Hop is the only international culture that unites all classes, all religions, all races, all ethnicities of people… As Hip-Hop, I’m not Black, White, none of it.  I’m Hip-Hop. I’m defined by my consciousness.

Ab-Original (2005) echoes this same existential ideology:

Ab-Original: It just means you have to respect it and understand that this is not somethin' that you could approach on a purely intellectual level or a purely experiential level. It’s somethin' that you just gotta be, respect and understand. And once you get the understanding, nobody’s gonna tell you ‘you got it wrong.’ Because it’s not a performance – it’s about existence.

Though this idea of universality has great potential for social benefit, it can also be problematic.  KRS-One (2002) describes a roundtable discussion held in 1987 by Bambaataa and how these ideas were controversial early on:

[Bambaataa] said there’s humanness in Hip-Hop, and how it shouldn’t remain a Black thing, a Latino thing—this was Bam; he caught a lot of flack for sayin' that—and Bam was always—from day one Zulu Nation was always about ‘c’mon! Everybody, c’mon in this! And it’s not about race and color – it’s about skill and ideology.’²⁶

It seems Bambaataa’s vision was controversial, in large part, because the social stratum of opportunity in the U.S. (and in the world) is not a level playing field.  Self-Suffice (2005) offers further insight:

Self-Suffice: When there is a prejudice against a black golfer, it usually means people just think the person can't do it or they don't deserve to be able to do it because of their race. But when there is a prejudice against a white rapper, it usually means people think the person can't do it not just because of their race, but also because they have had more access to language training, musical instruments, albums, resources, live shows, etc…whereas a black rapper may have had very few opportunities to even survive. So it's not just about talent, it's about ‘is your talent worth all the barriers that the black person had to overcome to display equal talent?’ So to the true talent lovers, like myself, talent is talent, and talent defines who it is and what it looks like. But when you look at why talent is talent, and how talent became talent, you see that some people will be more burdened in displaying their talent than others. Consequently, some people will discredit the talent of others because they feel someone's identity or struggle outweighs someone else's talent.

Interview Excerpt: Asheru

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Interview Excerpt: Sagacity

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Lecture Excerpt: KRS-One

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