The Collective Memory of Gangsta Rap and Its Effect on the Black Community
According to the book Black Demons: The Media’s Depiction of the African American Male Criminal Stereotype by Dennis Rome, “African American men are most typically seen as criminals, athletes, sports commentators, or entertainers; African American women are shown in domestic or sexual roles or as sex objects” (Rome 6). After reading that statement, one may ask why that is that the case? Since the 1980s, the images that hip-hop and rap artists have created through the media have been solely based on gang violence, sex, drugs, and nonconformity. A sub-genre of rap that has played a large role in creating this negative perception is gangsta rap, which was popularized by the West Coast. In the book Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Sould of a Movement, S. Craig Watkins described gangsta rap as, “the unfiltered voice of a generation of angry and alienated young black men who inhabited America’s abandoned ghettos” (Watkins 45). The qualities that the genre encompasses have tarnished the public’s collective memory of gangsta rap. Rap artists have represented themselves through media outlets such as film and music, as poor and non-confinable thugs from the ghetto. This collective memory has also led to the stereotypes of how African Americans are perceived today.
In Barbie Zelizer’s article, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, The Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory, she talks about the collective memory of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the role that the media played in shaping the public’s collective memory of the event. In the piece Zelizer writes that, “Collective memory reflects a group’s codified knowledge over time about what is important, preferred, and appropriate” (Zelizer 3). Basically what this is saying is that collective memory is the public’s gathered knowledge of an event. The information, which the community gathers and considers when interpreting an experience, is based on importance. The most prominent scenes of an incident are what shape how it is collectively remembered. The influential happenings that occur during events are the details that the community will remember most vividly. This is what has happened to the Hip-Hop and Rap movement. Rather than being acknowledged for its roles in activism and self-awareness, this musical genre has been overshadowed by the controversies that it has created. These controversies range from overt sexuality, to drug and alcohol references, to usage of profanities, to style of clothing, to the promotion of violence. Although these controversies are still brought to our attention today, the uproar that they caused was much more prominent in the 1980s. The artists who attracted the most of this unwanted exposure were gangsta rappers.
Known as a “founding father of Gangsta Rap” (Bynoe “Ice-T”), Ice-T played a major role in shaping the collective memory of this controversial musical genre. Born Tracey Marrow in Newark, New Jersey Ice-T became very involved in the rap scene when he was living in California with his aunt. By the time he was in high school he was already affiliated with a street gang. After discovering his passion for rap Ice-T signed to Sire Records in 1987 and his debut album was Rhyme Pays, which went gold. His sophomore album The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech … Just Watch What You Say was released in 1989 and talked about the government censoring media. Ice-T’s most controversial album of his career was Body Count. It included the single “Cop Killer”, which glorified an individual who killed a cop. When this song was released politicians and law officials were outraged and went after the rapper with the threat of lawsuits if he did not clean up his material. This publicity caused for the split between Ice-T and his record label at the time, Warner Brothers Records. (Bynoe “Ice-T”)
N.W.A. was another gangsta rap group that played a part in negatively shaping the collective memory of rap music and the African American community. Also known as Niggaz With Attitude, N.W.A. was made up of a group of high school dropouts including Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, Antoine “DJ Yella” Carraby, O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson, Eric “Eazy E” Wright, Mik “The D.O.C.” Lezan, and Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson. This West Coast group was from Compton, California and they made hardcore rap the controversial phenomena that it was. N.W.A. prided themselves in being “truth-telling street reporters” (Watkins 46). Their image mainly focused on the fact that they were violent thugs who had no respect for authority. In 1987 they released their first album N.W.A. and the Posse. Their lyrics made street life and violence sound cool and targeted racist police officers, which obviously had a negative influence on the teens who wanted to emulate their music. In 1988 their second album Straight Outta Compton was released and included the controversial hit “Fuck tha Police,” which the Federal Bureau of Investigations ended up reprimanding the group and its record label for after its release. Due to the graphically explicit lyrics of the album the media was afraid to give it airtime and opted not to. (Bynoe “N.W.A.”)
When communities look back on the careers of gangsta rap groups such as this one, the negative aspects of rap culture become noticeable. In his book, Dennis Rome talks about how N.W.A.’s records and videos did nothing to help promote positive lifestyles for African American youths. Jeff Liles is also quoted saying that, “the members of N.W.A. were merely anti-social role players and their music was prostitution on a number of levels. It sold out the urban African-American public as people who justified violent crime as a reasonable mean to an end” (Liles qtd. in Rome 106). Guns, sex, money, and drugs were the basis for most of the rap songs that were released during that era. Even today most rap songs that are released relate to one of those four categories. I am sure that parents at the time did not want their children to listen to one of those records. These lyrics exemplified what not to do in society, parents did not want their children to be exposed to that material and get the wrong idea of what was acceptable and unacceptable. All of these negative characteristics displayed by the rap genre are what many groups used to cultivate their collective memory of the lifestyle, which in result is why the genre had such a negative reputation in the eyes of authority figures.
A third gangsta rap group that aided in creating the “unruly thugs” stigma that described the artists of the genre was Public Enemy. Members Carlton “Chuck D” Douglas Ridenhour, William “Flava Flav” Jonathon Drayton Jr., Norman “Terminator X” Lee Rogers, and Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin met in New York and started the group in 1982. Their raps were some of the most controversial of the 1980s because their lyrics were extremely provocative and anti-Semitic. Although controversial they did also have songs with influential lyrics that focused on self-awareness and activism. This is the first time that people had seen rap music being used for a positive cause, which is definitely something that helped the genre to survive through all of the public scrutiny that it received. Although with these positive contributions that PE made to the public’s collective memory of gangsta rap, they also made negative ones. The group received a lot of slack for their song “Fight the Power.” It made allegations of Elvis Presley and John Wayne being racist. The American public did not appreciate the group mocking two of the country’s most well-known icons. (Bynoe “Public Enemy”) The group hit an all-time PR low when Professor Griff, a member of the group, stated in an interview that, “Jews were responsible for the majority of the wickedness that goes on across the globe” (Bynoe “Public Enemy”).
As a result of these “gangsta” artists, people viewed rappers as disrespectful and uneducated thugs who ran around breaking the law. In Richard D. Barnet and Larry L. Burriss’ book Controversies of the Music Industry, Stanley Crouch is quoted saying, “I dislike the side of rap that encourages violence over trivia, theft, drive-by shootings, misogyny, the side of rap that give young women the impression that in order to rebel, they should become sluts. These thing have has a very destructive influence on our society” (Crouch, quoted in Gibb, 2000)” (Barnet and Burriss 155). This is what many citizens of the nation’s communities also thought about the new gangsta rap movement. The American public viewed gangsta rappers as poison to the country’s youth. They promoted corrupt morals and lives of crime. With more and more rappers replicating that image, soon all African American males were characterized as that stereotype. As defined by Dennis Rome a stereotype is “an exaggerated belief, image or distorted truth about a person or group—a generalization that allows for little or no individual differences or social variation. Stereotypes are based on images in mass media, or on reputations passed on by parents, peers, and many other members of society” (Rome 19). This shows that the media is what shapes a culture’s collective memory of an event and also creates stereotypes of different cultures. The stereotypes that our culture has acquired are based off of how the media has presented specific individuals to appear through its broadcasts, whether the image has been provoked or not. In other words stereotypes and collective memory go hand in hand.
Not only has the collective memory of rappers of the music world influenced how African Americans are viewed by the public, but film has also played an immense role. While researching this concept I went to YouTube and watched the film Boyz n the Hood. It was directed and written by John Singleton and was released in 1991. The film stars many well-known actors and actresses such as Angela Bassett, Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Regina King. (IMDb)
The movie did a great job showing the reality of inner city life and gang violence. The movie revolved around the lives of three boys Tre, Doughboy, and Ricky. The audience got to watch them grow up in South Central Los Angeles, which was corrupted by gangs, and saw all of the hardships that they were forced to deal with and the paths that they chose to take in order to solve them. The movie starts with a young Tre getting into an altercation with one of his classmates. Prior to this incident Tre made an agreement with his mother that he would learn how to control his temper or else he would have to go live with his father. When his mother found out that he had been suspended from school for three days she decided that he had to go and move in with his father, Furious Styles, who lived in a rough neighborhood. While Tre was living at his house, Furious mainly focused on teaching him how to be a man and how to be responsible for his own actions. In the neighborhood Tre met two friends named Doughboy and Ricky. Doughboy’s mother was not very supportive when it came to his needs. In one scene for example, Doughboy’s mother scolded him and said things such as “You are going to be just like your father! You will never amount to anything!” Ricky on the other hand was definitely favored by the mother. His goal was to play football. The movie then fast forwards to seven years later and the boys were completely changed. Doughboy was just returning home from jail and he had a few new friends that he hung out with on his own who were also gang affiliated. Ricky wanted to do something with his life, was the all-star player on his high school football team, and was looking to be recruited to play football for USC. Tre was also still in school and had a girlfriend. One night when they all went out together to grab something to eat they got into an altercation with the Crips, a gang in the neighborhood. The Climax of the movie was when that same group Crips chased down Ricky and Tre a few days later and shot Ricky dead a few days before he was to find out that he was going to be recruited by USC. He had a bright future with no limits, which was cut short by gang violence.
I found that the movie supported two aspects of this argument. First it bluntly showed the negative aspects of the thug lifestyle. Throughout the movie as the boys grew up, Ice Cube’s character Doughboy became wrapped up in the gang scene. He became entangled in alcohol, violence, and drugs. I thought that it was very ironic that Ice Cube was cast as the street thug in the movie since he had been part of the hardcore gangsta rap group N.W.A. a few years prior. Scenes that I found interesting were the scenes when the little boy asked all of the kids if they wanted to see his gun that his brother had given him and also the scene when the boys were playing football and saw the dead body in the bushes. Both of these events seemed to be completely normal to them and part of their daily routine. I found that to be very dysfunctional, nevertheless these types of scenes are the ones that the public would expect to see based off our collective memory of gangs and city kids.
It was the scene when Tre got out of the car when Doughboy and his friends were going to try and find the Crips so that they could kill them that I was most surprised to see. This is an aspect of inner city life that the public does not see. Our collective memory of gang violence is that it results in retaliation and more death; based off of the lyrics and images that we see broadcasted to these groups through the media by rappers. In most situations gang violence does result in death and we continue to see these situations occur in inner city communities over and over again. Since these actions and reactions keep being reiterated to us our culture becomes accustomed to them, thus they become part of our collective memory of the “gangsta” lifestyle. I thought it was smart for the director to put that scene into the movie to show that not everyone who grows up in that type of community grows up to live a life of crime. Tre’s character symbolized the cycle of violence being broken. He accomplished this by accepting that it was not fair that he had to lose someone to gang violence, but also knowing that he did not have to participate in continuing the deadly cycle. He could make a change and stop the hate by walking away like the bigger man. He also thought about his future and did not want to give it all up for something so ridiculous. Although Doughboy’s character still went after and killed the Crips, showing the young African American community that it was okay to say no to violence had a positive influence on it. There is no evidence showing that this movie specifically stopped black kids from joining gangs, but I am sure it made some of them think about the consequences first and that is all the public can really ask for. This movie also opened the eyes of sheltered people who had only knowledge of the black community based on what they had seen in movies or heard on TV, which helped to alter some of their collective memories now that they had more knowledge. Based on which angle you interpret the movie from it has both positive and negative influences on the public’s collective memory of the “gangsta” image.
Artists who had tried to use the genre of gangsta rap to broadcast positive messages to its audience had been overlooked by the public. This is because the media was excessively flooded with negative coverage that pointed out the flaws of artists, like N.W.A. and Ice-T, who were causing controversy. Overtime all of the artists of this genre were generalized as being unruly. Before I had started gathering my research for this essay I had already heard of groups such as N.W.A. and Public Enemy and was aware of their street thug reputations. A group that I did not previously know about, but saw come up in my research was the group Zulu Nation. This group was started by Kevin “Afrika Bambaataa” Donovan. He wanted to create a rap group that would make the public aware of the struggles that blacks were being faced with. According to the book Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement, Zulu Nation was intended to bring “unity, anti-violence, and self-help to the streets in an effort to recruit what he called ‘warriors for the community’” (Watkins 23). Zulu Nation was credited with being one of the first rap groups to have brought a system of positive reformation into the black community. Even though the group’s motives were noble they were still discriminated against by the public because of its already preconceived notion of gangsta rappers. Although Zulu Nation supported anti-violence, members of the community thought that there was a high chance that the group would become violent in the future due to the reputations of other black artists in the genre. The way that the media showed news to the public manipulated the way that people interpreted gangsta rap. Rather than focusing on how Zulu Nation was trying to help make the ghettos a more enjoyable place to live, the media focused on gang violence and the explicitly hateful lyrics of gangsta rappers. This altered the way that the public interpreted the messages projected by the genre for the worse.
The image that gangsta rappers have chosen to represent them in the media has had an effect on the public’s collective memory of the genre. Rappers have worn baggy clothes and have put on a “violent street thug” front since the beginning. Due to this they have created the stereotypical image that our culture envisions an urban African American male from the city to be. Rather than focusing on the positive influences made by the hip hop and rap community, the media would rather focus on the controversies that it created. This is because in our society people are more concerned with the negative aspects of our culture, whether it is for entertainment purpose or just self preference. Scandal and sex sells. Gangsta rappers in the 1980s did not do much to help break the negative stereotype that stigmatized the genre either. Although a few rappers tried to use rap as an outlet of activism, most continued to fuel the fire by abusing their freedom of speech causing the whole African American community to look like a bunch a hoodlums. From this negative press is where the public’s collective memory and the stereotype of gangsta rap were created.
Works Cited
Barnet, Richard D., and Larry L. Burriss. Controversies of the Music Industry. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. Print.
Bynoe, Yvonne. “Ice-T (or Ice T) [Tracy Morrow].” Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Pop Culture Universe. Greenwood Publishing Group. 8 Dec 2009. <http://pop.greenwood.com/document.aspx?id=GR3058-4249>.
Bynoe, Yvonne. “N.W.A..” Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Pop Culture Universe. Greenwood Publishing Group. 8 Dec 2009. <http://pop.greenwood.com/document.aspx?id=GR3058-4358>.
Bynoe, Yvonne. “Public Enemy (aka PE).” Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Pop Culture Universe. Greenwood Publishing Group. 8 Dec 2009. <http://pop.greenwood.com/document.aspx?id=GR3058-4377>.
IMDb. “Boyz n the Hood (1991).” The Internet Movie Database. Amazon.com. Web. 08 Dec. 2009. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101507/>.
Lipsitz, George. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1990. Print.
Rome, Dennis. Black Demons: The Media’s Depiction of the African American Male Criminal Stereotype. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2004. Print.
Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston: Beacon, 2005. Print.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szgHB–teJo (Boyz n the Hood Part 1)
*this video was posted by youngti00; he broke the movie up into 11 parts and they are all posted
Zelizer, Barbie. Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, The Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993. Print.