Topic: Refinitions


“Consumption figures so prominently in youth culture because that is the main arena that exists for young people’s autonomous action and, relatedly, because the category itself is a creation of the sales effort. Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the youth fetish in cultural politics discourse, though, is the premise that we should look to those who know the least about and have the least experience in the world for our salvation …

The climate thus created nurtures the nightmarishly absurdity in which rappers project themselves as political sages. Confused and depressingly ignorant performers such as KRS-One, Public Enemy, X-Clan, and Sister Souljah spew garbled compounds of half-truth, distortion, Afrocentric drivel, and crackerbarrel wisdom, as often as not shot through with reactionary prejudices, and claim pontifical authority on the basis of identity with the props of their stage and video performances. Interviews raise the disturbing possibility that many of these ‘raptivists,’ the purportedly authentic voices of politically astute youth, in their minds construe the scenes staged in their message videos as identical with actual political experience.”

Reed, Jr, Adolph. 1992. The Allure of Malcolm X and the Changing Character of Black Politics. In Malcolm X in our Own Image. Joe Wood, ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, p.228.


VERSUS


“By not acknowledging the deep visceral pleasures black youth derive from making and consuming culture, the stylistic and aesthetic conventions that render the form and performance more attractive than the message, these authors reduce expressive culture to a political text to be read like a less sophisticated version of The Nation or Radical America. But what counts more than the story is the ‘storytelling’—an emcee’s verbal facility on the mic, the creative and often hilarious use of puns, metaphors, similes, not to mention the ability to kick some serious slang (or what we might call linguistic inventiveness). As microphone fiend Rakim might put it, the function of Hip Hop is to ‘move the crowd.’ For all the implicit and explicit politics of rap lyrics, Hip Hop must be understood as a sonic force more than anything else.”

Kelley, Robin. 1997. Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!—Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America. Boston: Beacon Press, Pp.37-38.