Hip Hop and Theory

[kenneth.mackendrick]

It seems to me that all expressive forms of "practice" are simultaneously 
experiements in theory and elements of theory itself.  Whether hip-hop, punk, 
world-beat, rave, blues, or folk.  All of these "categories" - whose boundaries are 
blurred for sure - reveal both an assimilation (in the overt promotion of the artistic 
idol, the buying and selling of CD's, the fetishizing merchandise, the reinforcement 
of comformity, the concert pilgrimage etc.) and a resistance to cultural tendences (a 
spur for critique, action, solidarity, desire, even reason).  The commodity functions 
dynamically as a source of potential revolutionary activity and as a source of 
domination.  In a very real way the music industry and its detractors, whether 
independent artists, media critics etc., retain an ambiguous character.

I very much appreciated the allusion to religion and hip-hop in a previous post - 
hip-hop as the opiate of the people.  Perhaps one of the things we need to examine 
here is how the conditions that create the need for the music industry and the angst 
riddled artists must be abolished in order to bring about a truly autonomous form of 
human art-reason-desire.  It seems to me that what has been found so offensive in 
music is precisely the point at which the music sparks brightest and is in its most 
revolutionary constellation (until, soonhereafter, it itself becomes cliche - the 
broken record).

"Your basic average superstar... is singing about justice, and peace, and love -
and I am glaring at the radio saying "That's what i was afraid of!"
Cause the system gives you just enough, to make you think that you see change
but they'll sing you right to sleep and screw you just the same."
ani difranco

ken "the revolution WILL NOT be digitalized"