ABSTRACT
Rap music, with its boastful rhymes and synthesizer-created claps and pops, has moved out of the inner cities and into the mainstream of popular culture. Mass media advertisers have recognized the value of using rap to sell their products, even though they do not always have a thorough understanding of the subculture from which it came. Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, and British Knights footwear company have all signed popular rap artists to promote their products. While there are a few rappers who have greatly benefited from this level of commercial success, others are concerned that as rap moves into the mainstream, they will not be given the appropriate credit and compensation. In his introduction to The Rap Attack, Tony Van Der Meer states the problem with the commercialization of rap music:
There is nothing wrong with one community learning the cultural forms produced by another, if it respects their specific shapes and meanings. There is something horribly wrong with a dominant community repeatedly co-opting the cultural forms of oppressed communities, stripping them of their vitality and form, the heritage of their creators and then popularizing them. The result is bleached Pepsi culture masquerading as the real thing. This is what threatens to dilute the real feeling and attitude of hip hop preventing its genuine forms the freedom to fully develop. The expression of Black people is transformed when it is repackaged without any evidence remaining of the Black historical experience. (1984, 4-5)
Black artists may have good reason for concern. Historically, blacks have not been able to reap the financial rewards from the musical forms that were uniquely theirs. The blues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk and rap are all musical styles that originated within the black community. In the 1950s and early 1960s, most major record producers were interested in promoting only white artists, such as Elvis Presley, to perform rock and roll music that had previously been recorded by black artists. The white performer was instrumental in promoting the acceptance of the musical style among mainstream audiences. According to Peterson and Berger, black rhythm and blues performers were most often the victims of the “cover tactic,” where major “white” companies would quickly record and market a version of a fast-selling song recorded by a smaller independent “black” company (162). The development and acceptance of rock and roll was in many ways similar to the development of rap in the late 1980s and the development of jazz in the 1920s. Some of
the first rap concerts, like some of the first rock and roll concerts, were plagued by riots, leading people to believe that this new music was corrupting today’s youth. These public reactions parallel the moralistic reaction against jazz in the 1920s. According to Peterson and Berger, this controversy indicates that the music was viewed as important and radically different from the music that preceded it (166).
