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  Publish Date: August 15, 2006
  Author Website: S. Craig Watkins
  Publisher: Beacon Press

S. Craig Watkins “Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement” Book Review
I sat down with some friends last night and, for the first time in months, watched some rap music videos, managing to catch BET’s Rap City and 106 & Park, among others. I looked around as everyone bobbed their heads in enjoyment while checking out the current playlist, myself included. Shoot . just because I write for Hip-Hop Linguistics, a website dedicated to underground, misunderstood and non-commercial hip-hop, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the radio bumps or club bangers like everyone else.

As the videos came one after another, I started to notice a few trends. First, everybody is doing this snap dance, or some variation of the dance, in every video played. You know, that dance where everybody leans to one side and snaps in unison to the beat. Second, all the videos have relatively the same theme, talking about rims and women and stuff as usual. Third, all the directors are Hype Williams wannabees. Not only do they use his same techniques, camera angles and visions to make their videos, but the videos also contain hundreds of half-naked women shaking what is now apparently referred to as “laffy taffy.” Every video, whether BET or MTV, was almost exactly the same. I even got to the point where it seemed like I was just watching one video with twenty or so different segments.

Since I never watch music videos or even turn on the local “hip-hop stations” on the radio, this was a little bit of a culture shock for me. Although I was far from surprised, I honestly had no idea that this type of hip-hop was all the stations would play, and it opened up my eyes to the realities of hip-hop’s understanding within American pop culture. Many times, I can’t seem to understand why people consistently hold the same views about hip-hop. But after watching just a couple hours of rap videos, I could see why everyone views this bling materialistic hip-hop as authoritative. After all, that’s obviously all they show on TV or play on the radio.

Unique Experience in Hip-Hop
The entire experience made me think about the latest hip-hop book I have read, S. Craig Watkins‘ “Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement.” Like most hip-hop scholarship and historical study, including wonderful experiences written by Bakari Kitwana, Imani Jones, Michael Eric Dyson and others, Watkins’ account of the history of hip-hop was quite different than mine. If I were to write my hip-hop book, it would definitely focus on several different events within the history of the hip-hop movement that have helped to define my experience within the culture.

However, what is great about such accounts is that they show the existence of unique experience in hip-hop. It amazes me that Watkins and I can seemingly feel the exact same way about the possibilities of hip-hop and the drastically important role it has played in our lives despite the fact that we both have come to these conclusions based on quite different paths through the world of hip-hop. Hip-hop is so broad and inclusive that it would be impossible to define it in one particular way, or explain it using a specified framework or list of topics, events or experiences. The world of academia’s involvement in hip-hop scholarship is beginning to demonstrate the multiple understandings of hip-hop culture.

Unfortunately, this area of hip-hop intellectualism and scholarship is starting to show itself as one of the few aspects of the culture of hip-hop that understands this. Record companies think that bling hip-hop is the only type of hip-hop music worth packaging and marketing to America’s pop culture audience, as if there was no market at all for reality and societal importance in hip-hop. MTV and BET think that people will stop watching their videos if they play something different or unique, as if their playlists somehow represented the entire hip-hop generation. And radio thinks that people will change stations if they don’t play the same five or ten songs over and over and over, as if our people are so closed-minded that they will not accept change or innovation within their music.

The Matters of Hip-Hop
What is truly dynamic about Watkins’ “Hip Hop Matters” is that it recognizes not only the constantly extending sphere of hip-hop influence in American popular culture, but it also acknowledges that various unique and different experiences with and understandings of hip-hop culture will be an effect of this widening sphere of influence. If the money makers and corporations within popular culture would make an attempt to understand this, they might see that bling snap-dance hip-hop is not the only type of music people want to listen to, and is far from representative of an entire widespread culture.

Hip-hop does matter: In American popular culture; in American social theory and progression; in American and world politics. And Watkins’ excellent combination of facts, statistics and historical analyses is yet another personal account that can be used to understand this. Everything he talks about in this book is relevant not only to the historical understanding of hip-hop culture, but also to the understanding of the culture’s effects on society, politics and reality in America. Unfortunately, the majority of people in this country would rather watch a video than read a book, and are likely to continue to ignore the fact that multiple realms of hip-hop influence exist within our society.

So again, TURN OFF THE TV AND READ!! You just might learn something. Damn, how many times I gotta say it? For those of you who are too lazy to read a 200-plus page book, I have summarized the contents of “Hip Hop Matters” below.

Prologue – Hip Hop Matters
The prologue talked about the meeting between Ja Rule and Minister Farrakhan which was held in part to address Ja’s beef with 50 Cent. Watkins claims the interview helped to surface examples of both what hip-hop loves and hates about itself, and demonstrated many of the issues circulating through the world of hip-hop, including race, politics, history, violence and generational gaps. Here, the author defines hip-hop as a cultural movement committed to defying the cultural and political mainstream, but whose biggest battle is the one it is having with itself.

“Over the course of its career hip hop has developed a notorious and even self-perpetuating reputation as a spectacular cultural movement committed to defying the cultural and political mainstream. But as the borders of the hip-hop nation continue to expand, its biggest and most important battle is shaping up to be the one it is having with itself. Behind the explosive record sales, trendsetting cachet, and burgeoning economy is an intense struggle for the soul of the hip-hop movement. There has never been a consensus within hip hop about its purpose, identity, or destiny. In fact, the most robust debates about hip hop have always taken place within the movement. Hip hop has and continues to be its most potent critic and courageous champion.”

“In addition to being a pop culture force, hip hop’s widening sphere of influence has shouldered it with the burden of being a genuine political force. Gone are the discussions about whether hip hop matters; they have been replaced instead by the key issues of who and what kinds of values will define how hip hop matters. The struggle for hip hop is real, and it is being played out across a remarkably rich and varied terrain – in pop culture, old and new media, colleges and universities, in prisons, through the conduit of community activism, in suburbia, among youth, and through the political minefields of race and gender.”

Introduction – Back in the Day
In the introduction, Watkins summarizes the origins of the hip-hop movement, defining it as a cultural underworld consisting of inner city and underclass youth bustling with energy and innovation. He then tells the history of Sugar Hill Records, especially the events and decisions that led to hip-hop’s first pop hit, “Rapper’s Delight.” Watkins also talks about the beginnings of hip-hop’s seemingly inevitable political promise, including Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” which indicated that socially conscious rap music did exist in the marketplace, and Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation and the group’s belief in the political potency of hip-hop music and culture. The chapter then traces the beginnings of turntablism, praising Flash and his contemporaries for imposing their creative will on landscape with very few resources or opportunities.

Part One – Pop Culture and the Struggle for Hip Hop

Chapter 1 – Remixing American Pop
Chapter 1 investigates America’s pop music industry and its methods of collecting data, a system of research that eventually led to the development of SoundScan’s information technology designed to track music sales with more precision. In his account, Watkins traces the evolution of SoundScan and the Billboard charts, and how this evolution created a radical revision of our country’s notion of pop music as the new data consistently proved rap’s rapidly increasing pop status. The chapter then goes on to show how these changes in popular music sales data impacted the indie music scene, leading to the quick rise of such labels as Interscope and Death Row, specifically following the progress of Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, Jimmy Iovine and Tim Field.

Chapter 2 – A Great Year in Hip Hop
Chapter 2 discussed 1997’s publishing wars in hip-hop, a conflict between hip-hop magazines the Source and XXL fought over recognition of the best journalistic representatives of hip-hop music and culture. Watkins focuses in large part on the recreation of Esquire magazine’s 1958 “A Great Day in Harlem” photo by XXL. In his analysis, “Great Day in Harlem ‘98″ signified the degree to which the hip-hop movement was beginning to come to terms with its own rise and widening influence. The chapter goes on to discuss hip-hop’s great gains in the mainstream spotlight in 1998, and follows its pop culture breakthrough in that year with six different hip-hop artists climbing to number one on the Billboard charts.

Chapter 3 – Fear of a White Planet
Chapter 3 discussed hip-hop’s ability to defy the racial and class boundaries that shape life in America, pointing specifically to Eminem and his beef with the Source magazine as a visible symbol of the struggle for hip-hop. In this chapter, Watkins demonstrates the anxiety within hip-hop regarding the degree to which white-controlled corporations and white consumers have become the dominant force in the hip-hop movement. Watkins also contemplates the attraction of white youths to ghetto narratives and gangster rap artists such as N.W.A., and whether or not this fascination reflects the declining significance of race or just a more complex expression of racism.

Chapter 4 – The Digital Underground
Chapter 4 investigates the correlation between hip-hop and the Internet, bringing forward issues such as file sharing and piracy. Following the journey of Public Enemy and, more specifically, Chuck D, Watkins traces the debate over file sharing and Napster, and presents the point of views of both those who are concerned about who should control copyrighted works and those who feel that the media giants’ ownership of intellectual property allows them to dominate the media airwaves. Watkins goes on to recount the history of Public Enemy and their dealings with Russell Simmons’ and Rick Rubin’s Def Jam Records, as well as Chuck’s development of Web-based music initiatives created to enforce the idea that hip-hop should have a strong Internet presence. The chapter ends while examining the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which Watkins claims hastened the rise of corporate rap by helping to create new rules the governed big radio, including pay-for-play, testing, call-outs and corporate-controlled playlists.

Part Two – Politics and the Struggle for Hip Hop

Chapter 5 – Move the Crowd
Chapter 5 discusses some of hip-hop’s early attempts to create a political voice, including Russell Simmons’ involvement in New York’s negotiation over the repeal of the Nelson Rockefeller drug statutes and various political endeavors of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN). In this chapter, Watkins critiques the positives and negatives of such campaigns while entertaining the debate about how the hip-hop movement can gain a sense of responsibility and commitment to its diverse youth-based constituency. Watkins concludes that a hip-hop political agenda needs to be more strategically focused and requires people willing to do the messy work that emphasizes substantive change over publicity-seeking media events.

Chapter 6 – Young Voices in the Hood
Chapter 6 examines San Francisco Bay Area hip-hop and its success in becoming one of the liveliest political scenes in hip-hop, specifically the movement’s involvement in various California issues, mainly the state’s embrace of “tough on crime” politics. In this chapter, Watkins discusses California’s Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act of 1998, commonly referred to as Proposition 21, which approved measures making California by far the nation’s toughest state on juvenile offenders. He also speaks in length about the California Youth Authority (CYA) and its failures in reforming and improving the lives of youth offenders. Watkins then goes on to provide a handful very interesting statistics on America’s drastically-increasing prison populations, especially in regards to black and Latino youth, as well as women.

Chapter 7 – “Our Future . Right Here, Right Now!”
Chapter 7 gives a detailed account of the Detroit mayoral race between “hip-hop mayor” Kwame Kilpatrick and Gil Hill. The campaign was set as old verses new, or civil rights generation verses hip-hop generation, and studying the campaign points out many of the issues pertinent to such a political race. Watkins then goes on to discuss another related race, Newark’s political battle between younger candidate Corey Booker and older candidate Sharpe James, a campaign which demonstrated what Watkins believes may be the future direction of urban politics guided by the hip-hop generation. The examination of these respective campaigns not only illustrates the different agendas and approaches to politics pushed by the hip-hop generation, but also a good example of the future of urban politics. Watkins concludes that the hip-hop generation is inheriting a political moment based in the post-9/11 world in which the issues confronting urban America are no longer on the nation’s radar.

Chapter 8 – “We Love Hip Hop, But Does Hip Hop Love Us?”
Chapter 8 investigates the wrongful treatment of women within the world of hip-hop by pointing to examples such as Fish ‘N’ Grits magazine, Snoop Dogg’s commercial sex videos and other example of hip-hop pornography. In this chapter, Watkins examines the pre- and post- Hype Williams periods in hip-hop music videos. This led him inevitably to Nelly’s “Tip Drill” video, and the backlash it received from women, media, colleges and universities all over the nation. Watkins then gives another set of great statistics on the changing sexual world of teenagers, specifically how hip-hop’s distorted images of black sexuality produce adverse outcomes for black girls. In his opinion, this is best seen through the case of R. Kelly’s child molestation charges, during which Kelly was effectively portrayed as the victim while the young girl’s experiences were virtually ignored.

Chapter 9 – Artificial Intelligence?
Chapter 9 discusses the existence of hip-hop intellectuals, and questions whether or not hip-hop can exist as an educational medium outside of its pop cultural craze. In this chapter, Watkins points to several examples of hip-hop’s intellectual potential being questioned, including the Berklee College of Music’s debate over whether or not to offer a turntablism class, Harvard’s establishment of the Hiphop Archive, and the rapidly rising world of hip-hop literature and its reluctant acceptance by major publishing companies. Watkins then talks about the rising class of hip-hop scholars, and raises important questions as to the resistance offered by both America’s intellectual institutions and their own urban communities.

Epilogue – Bigger Than Hip Hop
The epilogue discusses both the successes and failures of hip-hop as a social and political movement, specifically recalling P. Diddy’s “Vote or Die” campaign and the actual effects young voters had on the 2004 presidential election. In conclusion, Watkins states that the struggle for hip-hop, as a major influence in America’s pop cultural, political, and intellectual life, has only begun.

“The purists in the movement believe that in the midst of a commercial explosion hip hop has lost its edge, its spirit of innovation, and its capacity for inspiration. But this view assumes that hip hop has only one destiny, only one true historic course. As the voices, people, and places that define hip hop grow more diverse, the movement continues to develop many different identities and interests. Despite a fascinating history and undeniable influence in America’s pop cultural, political, and intellectual life, the struggle for hip hop, amazingly, has only just begun.”