The Success Of Rap Essay Research Paper

The Success Of Rap Essay, Research Paper

The Success of Rap:

Possible Only With African American and Caucasian Involvement.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of rap and hip-hop is created by African Americans, the success of this extremely popular type of music is directly linked to the involvement of white people in the industry. As ironic as it is, rap music is fueled by white consumers, and in all reality relies on them to sustain its profitability continue to expand. Where would rappers today be without seventy percent of their record sales, bought by white people. Those who at one point were rebelling against white people (the government, corporate America) through protest rap can give thanks directly to those oppressors (white people) in general for their success in the music industry. Furthermore, the cooperation between the beat makers and the rap star producers has allowed big record companies to benefit from this booming section of the recording industry.

Support by those you oppose. This can be seen as the basic summary of white consumption of rap and hip-hop, which really began to skyrocket with the group Public Enemy. An explanation for this great Caucasian support of early rap is rebellion. The buying of rap by white people, specifically teenagers, was and is seen as rebelling against parental figures and mainstream society (rap is becoming more mainstream so maybe this aspect doesn t hold true so much anymore). While being completely rebellious through buying and listening to rap, many probably did not realize that much of the music is anti-white. A friend of mine recently told me during a conversation we had about Public Enemy that, yeah, I was a huge PE fan, I listened to them all the time; but I cut down when I realized that they used extremely anti-white lyrics! This early protest rap did not contain much support of white America, but was supported by their teenage offspring. This rap seen through the eyes of white America back then can be seen (not necessarily accurately) in a spoof on protest rap in Howard Stern s movie Private Parts. Stern says, posing as a black weatherman, kill, kill, kill, the white man. This rap was more or less eaten up by those rebellious white teenagers to a certain extent, which tried to identify or feel sympathy for the rappers and rebel. Did they know that they were buying anti-white music (in such cases as Public Enemy). That didn t matter, more importantly: did they care that it was anti-white. No, they were excited about being rebellious and consequently listened and supported the music.

Specifically regarding the monetary aspect of making and selling rap, white people made rappers rich. As seen in a study briefly summarized in a book by Tricia Rose, blacks share albums and make copies of them instead of buying individual ones at the store. It is thought that black people have a higher pass-along rate of music and other mediums . It has been estimated that the sharing of the magazine The Source (a publication pertaining to rap and hip-hop with a predominantly black audience) resulted in seeing a pass-along rate of approximately 1 copy bought for 11-15 people that end up seeing the material. This estimation of pass-along rates supposedly holds true with sharing rap albums. If this theory of high pass-along rates for music has validity, then for as many as fifteen to twenty African-American listeners, only one album has actually been purchased. The low number of albums bought within this demographic group is most likely due to the availability and decreasing prices for recording machines to make bootleg copies of albums to sell in the ghettos. This affects rap groups ability to be successful on the sole support of the constituents of their communities: the ghettos. This creates a music form that cannot sustain itself only with its own people; there is the need for some outside influence in order for rap and hip-hop artists to be successful in the recording industry. Being successful meaning not only with having your music heard in a myriad of venues but also having the cash flow to continue a career and achieve the what most artists want to do: make more albums. This is where the upper classes, non rap-making people (white people) come into the picture.

Whites affect rap in a few ways: they are becoming a bigger part of rap s audience and the white-run record labels have cooperated to get rap labels under their penumbra. In general, whites influence record sales by buying more individual albums while sharing less. Additionally, they do not exchange bootlegs as much as blacks do. By purchasing more of their own official albums (not bootlegs), whites are relied upon for the profitability of a rap group. This group of consumers has proven to be necessary to the African-American music makers. Besides the consumer-end of the market, whites have given rappers national exposure in places they otherwise would not have been seen (or heard). Early on, successful rappers were under independent, smaller labels like Tommy Boy, Def Jam, and Profile. There were two major problems with these two systems (independent and big name labels): 1-independents couldn t get the national exposure that the big names had, they couldn t get on the shelves of the majority of CD/record stores; 2- the big name labels couldn t get in with the urban scene that was owned by the independents. Major labels realized t