Not Fooling Anyone: White Rappers and The Elvis-like Ripping of Black Culture and Struggle
Last month the death of lil Peep shocked the world of many rap listeners and those who knew of him. Those who loved his music mourned him, upset at his untimely passing. Even myself, not being a fan of him, became heartbroken at the way his death affected those of my friends who were his fans. I even wrote a piece here at medium to pay respect to him and his fans, feeling their pain.
For the moment, anyhow.
That compassion quickly dissipated as some fans of his decided to take that time to quickly tell the Black community what they thought about us and those of us who regarded rap as a part of our culture.
Things like “Rap doesn’t belong to Black people!”, “We let y’all do rock and roll!” and “Fuck cultural appropriation, what does it matter?! White rappers respect the culture!” .
Skipping over the fact those same people who knew that those who used Lil Peep’s death as an opportunity to shame drug users were wrong didn’t have any problem being that same amount of opportunistic, using his death as a catalyst to denounce the Black community's ownership of rap, let’s go over some of those claims:
“Rap doesn’t belong to Black people”
First off, From the beginning rap has been made to discuss the issues lower-class Black people faced.
Songs like Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ and Kurtis Blow's ‘The Breaks’ and detailed heavily the struggle of underprivileged life for many Black people.
Also, let’s stop-right-fucking-there with the so called idea that Black people were “ allowed to play rock and roll. ” .
Rock’s biggest white act, Elvis Presley, took both songs and sound from Black acts and along with that he and other white artists took money and recognition of their work from Black artists. Record companies even supported this as to make the tunes more ‘listenable’ to a white audience. Many times without consent Black artists would find their songs, including the songs they wrote, given to white musicians without even receiving a dime or song credit.
This in itself can show the real issue with cultural appropriation.
Yes, there are white rappers who have actually lived the backgrounds and environments they rap about but many of them have not.
Which, speaking of backing by Black friends and artists:
Look, I don’t hate everyone who desires clout, what is clout but another term for recognition? I want it, you want it, my mama wants it, however your Black friends that jump to defend your blatant ripping of our culture usually either are extremely unrealizing of the damage that what you do can have to our culture or simply don’t care because they believe being in your good graces will get them somewhere in life and fuck the rest of the Black community as long as it happens.
That’s the shit that bugs me and it’s also one of many reasons why I eye roll at the assertion that because your friend says it's okay it relinquishes all bullshit from your actions. Fuck that.
Recently, In an interview with NewsOne , rapper Post Malone stated
“If you’re looking for lyrics, if you’re looking to cry, if you’re looking to think about life, don’t listen to hip-hop. There’s great hip-hop songs where they talk about life and they spit that real shit but right now there’s not a lot of people talking about real shit.”
“Whenever I want to cry, whenever I want to sit down and have a nice cry, I’ll listen to some Bob Dylan. Or whenever I’m trying to have a good time and stay in a positive mood, I listen to hip-hop. Because it’s fun. I think hip-hop is important because it brings people together in a beautiful, happy way.”
Skipping the fact of how dare he, Is this at all a shock that male Iggy Azalea would say such a thing? A man that has no problem switching on a ‘Blaccent’ depending on the song or interview and turning it off when he feels it unnecessary, a man that can talk about how hood his life has always been yet his home life in actuality was void of any kind of inner city living or hardship.
Rap has since it’s beginning had an abundance of songs by rap artists that speak on real life happenings and that continues on in present time.
Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Freedom’ as well As Kendrick Lamar’s solo song ‘Alright’ spoke on police brutality.
YG and Nipsey Hussle’s ‘Fuck Donald Trump’ was about, of course as the title says, keeping Donald Trump accountable for his actions.
Jay Z’s ‘The story of O Jay’ (where the above minstrel image comes from, used as an artistic tool to show abstractly the foolishness of uncle tom behavior) took to task those in the Black community who think that through distancing themselves from the Black community and Blackness as a whole that they can garner respect and their hearts desires from White supremacy.
How he bounced around from defending his own music to now insulting everyone else in the genre can only be regarded, as he puts it, from the mind of “a white boy with a lot of opinions” .
Yes, a lot of very white opinions.
White rapper’s appeal is the same as Elvis’s appeal:
Resell the abundance of Black culture without Black people, give the white kids at home something to sing and dance to without it being visibly negro.
Getting gang tats who hail from places you’ve never been,
using slang in the wrong context,
claiming you “lived a rough life in the hood” But you and those who knew you talk about your cushy life living in upper middle class suburbia in interviews,
supposed respect for the life style meanwhile galivanting with openly racist people,
you aren’t fooling anyone.
It’s corny.
