Hip Hop and Theory

[H. Curtiss Leung]

Dennis writes of hip-hop:

> 
> It does indeed have ideological content. But that content lies in the
> musical text, not primarily in the vocal lyrics. To appreciate the
> radicality of the greatest hip hop, think of the degree to which global
> capitalism has saturated our living and working environments with sounds:
> car horns, traffic, computer chimes, beeping microwaves, car stereos,
> beepers, cellphones, ad technologicum. 

	Well...just to make myself clear -- I'm "old school" when it
comes to the use of the term "ideology."  I intend it to mean the objective
aspect of false consciousness.  So if hip-hop is a musical medium for
radical activity, it wouldn't be (or I wouldn't call it, if you prefer)
ideological.  Not trying to impose my vocabulary here, but just explaining
myself -- I'm too cranky to change.

> Practically every commodity has its
> own characteristic sound-technology nowadays; hip hop's answer to the vile
> commodification this implies (an unending, unceasing assault on the
> senses) is a kind of "re-appropriation of the appropriation". The musical
> commodity is annulled by the hip hop musical ecology. 

	Wouldn't it be the reverse -- hip-hop, in so far as it is a
form of spontaneous musical expression, is marked/injured by the commodity 
form's domination of music?  In other words: here are sound elements added 
to items produced for exchange -- and for reasons that only have to do with 
exchange -- which are then used in a music where they have -- at least! --
equal status with voice and language.  That music contains the speech
rhythms and vocabulary of a community and seeks to express that community's
culture and concerns -- but is justified _as music_ for the abstraction
(i.e., dilution) of these concrete elements?  Isn't this rather like 
saying: don't mind the politics, they're great musicians -- and great
musicians by the standards of European music (i.e., so-called
abstract music being superior to program music)?

	Of course, that's hip-hop considered as a musical/cultural
use-value.  As an exchange value...well, I won't repeat my previous
posting.

> Example: Cypress Hill's eponymous 1991 album, where there's 
> a track called "Real Estate" which is really a send-up of the entire home
> mortgage market of Los Angeles. Cypress Hill combines Spanglish lingo with
> high-tech samples, all set against a Latin-African-American drumbeat (the
> band itself is multiethnic and multilingual) and the patented
> 1980s-derived heavy bass line: the musical anticipation of the car-mobile
> 1992 L.A. uprising.  

	Finally, an example!  I'll listen to it with open ears and mind.

> 
> Ah, but it is indeed only occasional. Global capitalism contains within
> itself national monopoly capitalism (the auto industries), regional
> capitalism (the New York banks), urban and local capitalism, etc. -- to
> say nothing of the 3 billion human beings on this planet who labor under
> a kind of raw materials/petty agrarian capitalism. Every mode of
> capitalist production reproduces all these other contradictions with it:
> in fact, that's how the total system works -- the hegemonic mode, whatever
> it is, exploits all the other modes, totally. But this totality is a
> totality of antagonisms and conflicts, not of consensus. Das Ganze ist
> falsch.
>      

	Is that the German for "The whole is the false"?  Touche' -- but
doesn't each different mode of capitalism have as its ideology the
notion that it is a permanent, trans-cultural mode of production?  And
doesn't an individual's successful adaptation to capitalist production
require the concomittant false consciousness of such an ideology?  
In whatever form, at whatever stage, doesn't capitalism require the
subjective concession that history is over and -- gulp! -- the true
is the whole?

> There's an important political corollary here. Just think 
> of Ross Perot: basically a lumpen-rentier stuffed with T-bills,

	Just to pick nits: Perot is not a rentier but a scumbag 
who built EDS from what we'd now call out-sourcing contracts -- 
hardware/software packages at a fixed price -- with 
state agencies that administered Medicare or -caid, I think.  He was 
involved with government from the beginnings of his career, an 
insider who just wanted more attention.

> Sure, global capital has the last word, but that doesn't prevent
> other class fractions from trying to seize political market share now and
> then; and our subjectivities are no less heterogenous admixtures of
> present and past class struggles, antagonisms, conflicts etc.
> 

	Agreed...but let's not over-simplify things -- especially
not by saying "They're complex."

(BTW: I have questions/comments on your music and infosystems thoughts
but they might be better addressed off list...)
-- 
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Curtiss Leung                           Voice:     (212)267-7722 x3033
hleung@prolifics.com                    Facsimile: (212)608-6753 
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"Futility is ... hard to deal with" -- Patrick Bateman
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