For the most part this chapter of the book was discussing how rap music is made, where it came from/how those roots are still used, how it differs from Western music and where it is going, and relates this all to society and how the music shows the society. And that is interesting and all but the article just seemed very repetitive, over the entire chapter it just seemed to reinstate what was said in the beginning, taking a lot away from it, which I think is kind of ironic being that one of the point he talked about was how repetition is so important in this music. But, besides that there was a good amount of interesting thing to compare and discuss. Mostly the relation of what Tricia Rose is saying in this compared to what Dick Hebdige said in his book about subculture.
Obviously there are going to be similarities because rap itself is a subculture and Hebdige was discussing the whole idea of subcultures in general. Though, Hebdige talked about how the punk scene, along with other subcultures, are present because of their coexistence with the dominant accepted culture, how one needs to exist for the other to, I feel Rose was pointing out the differences between rap and the dominant music world more than comparing them. Constantly bring up the differences between African and Western music she was describing how the two were varied so much from each other. Of course saying these things means that the subculture only existed because of the stray from the dominant, but it feels like she was trying to make them more of a distant “Other” in the rap world, where as Hebdige thought of his subcultures as part of the community. Also how Hebdige discusses the commoditization of the Other, and the subcultures, Rose also bring up the points of selling the rap music to the mass-culture, and turning it into a commodity itself.
A lot of the chapter also discusses technology in the rap world and the idea of ownership, and I think how different this article would have been if it was written more currently, in 2007 instead of 1994. I mean, she write “Today, rap is big business, With multimillion record sales by such rap artists as MC Hammer, Tone Loc, NWA, Public Enemy, and Vanilla Ice.” So, we know she isn’t talking about the modern technology and modern rap/music world, which makes it hard to think about her points, though they are logical it’s just so different today that it seem irrelevant. In modern day music is traded so fast and used so much that the copyrighting and use has been too hard to keep up with. Look at Girl Talk’s CD NightRipper, it has over 160 illegally used samples from any song to reach the Top 40 charts in the last 20-25 years, and he is selling it for $10 on his website. It’s a very different when the music world is so fluid now and the record companies can’t keep up with the copyright infringements. The book made solid points, but it’s hard to take them to heart when she wrote about something that has changed so drastically since the time she wrote it 13 years ago, to a point where the two times are almost unrecognizable as the same argument. When 50 Cent makes over $1 billion on a single record sale, and has his own videogame, and vitamin water one could realize that rap is very situated and accepted and is so much in the technology world that it’d be hard to separate the two.
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3 comments:
I agree with your comment about the article being a bit outdated. I felt the same way, music seems to be changing more rapidly now than ever before. For example the invention of the Ipod changed completely how we listen to music because now downloading seems more of a reality because of it. The combination of portability and the ability to hold not cds but many files of music is lethal. I think it would have been quite a different article if it were written today.
Just to follow up on what Kendra said, it is a fact that rap music is more popular that rock music in today's top forty radio standings. The dominant youth music culture both white and black have fully embraced rap music as a legitimate music form. Not to be to cliche but the future dominant culture of American will have grown up listening to Jay-z and will have to find a new form of music to not accept.
I just find it funny that in the early years of rap music and hip-hop, america refused to accept it, even when will smith won the first award for best artist they wouldn't show it on tv. It just shows how far we've come, and how fickle the world can be. I think that though hip-hop musicseems to be taking over the world, it would be flawed to say that it's going to stay like this. People change and so do there interests, and the moment someone comes out with another form of musicthat they can recycle into pandomonium, rap music will be a thing of the past.
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