reased focus on how a singer looks rather than how he or she sounds” and soon rappers and their music labels were crafting images to go along with the musical content. (Rose, 9)
Prior to the success of hip-hop on MTV, the genre’s music videos frequently “functioned as a snapshot in the lives of the artist,” and generally depicted the rapper hanging out in his neighborhood (generally “black urban inner-city locations”) with his or her “posse.” (Fitts, 221, Rose, 10) However, after the commercialization of hip-hop, the major labels had more control of the creative process and soon music videos became a “quasi-cinematic, sensationalized illustration of the persona of the artist” in order to appear more marketable to Top-40 demographics. (Rose, 13, Fitts, 221)
The generic, industrial standard of hip-hop videos of this modern era often display rappers “ego-stroking” by making glorious displays of wealth and power. (Fitts, 212) While watching a standard contemporary music video, one will often see scantily clad women parading around the rapper’s mansion, entertaining the rapper and his “posse.” One anonymous music video director has even stated that it has gotten to the point where “it’s all about the hot girls” and the social and political messages behind the lyrics have taken a back seat. (Fitts, 218) Violence and hyper-masculinity were once again major themes present in the videos produced by the major labels.
When given the choice to air a cutting edge music video or a generic one that makes use of these violent and sexist elements, record labels will generally use the latter for fear that the audiences would be unreceptive of deviations of formulaic rap music video. (Fitts, 224) Hip-hop appears to have gone away from the socially, culturally, and politically critical messages dealing with the plight of generally voiceless blacks to an expression of wealth, power, and hyper-masculinity. In an interview featured in Byron Hurt’s documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Mos Def commented on the presentation of rappers, stating that in the current rap and hip-hop culture, rappers have to assert themselves physically to seem powerful and worthy of respect; even he, as a self confessed bookworm, believes that rappers need people to know that they are not weak or docile. (Hurt, 2006)
It might seem odd that rappers would portray such stereotypical and possibly self-degrading image of themselves by continuing to write songs and make videos laced with violent, sexist, egotistical, and hyper-masculine lyrics, visuals, and overtones. However, as it turns out, rappers seems to have less of a choice than one would think. In Hurt’s documentary, young rappers were seen rapping about very violent and sexist topics with the aspirations of one day signing with a major label and becoming famous.
When these young artists were asked why they rap about such deplorable topics with arguably little social meaning, they responded that they would prefer to rap about more “righteous” things as the first rappers had done. (Hurt, 2006) These aspiring rappers insist that the reason for continuing producing “Gangsta Rap” over music with more social and culturally meaningful lyrics is that they firmly believe that the record industry only wants to see the image of tough black males. Marko Fitts, the author of “Drop It Like It’s Hot” laments that hip-hop has so abandoned the original social and political themes that the “historical mantra of ‘keepin’ it real” is only a “fragile prospect.” (Fitts, 224)Continued on Next Page »