Opium as Hip-hopiate

[Rustum Kozain]

Whoah there and sorry I get back onbly now - research and 
teaching and a house that is wilfully not cyber and all that.
I guess by now I may repeat things that have probably alreday been 
said in this little debate on hip hop.

Sure, hiphop is now a commodity, a pose, a style, a whatever. It's 
appropriation by big business leaves it with almost no integrity - 
that is, with little of the subcultural and political integrity it 
certainly had a few years ago, when it didn't win any awards, when 
radio stations wouldln't play it. etc. And, sure, there is a lot of 
rap that simply doesn't pass as progressive, let alone radical,
political culture.
    But there is rap that insists on a radical political 'message' 
and that does not compromise this by moving on to a bigger record 
company. And it's also fun. I don't have any up-to-date info on this, 
but De La Soul, for instance, is a rap act that - to some degree - 
resists massification, and who have tracks and skits that criticize 
macho gangster poses and the whole enrichment ethic of much rap - 
jeeps, heavy chains, cellphones, 'babes', etc etc. Analogous to this 
is LKJ from Britain, a dub poet who resisted contractual obligations 
from his reciord company, insisting that he's creativity couldn't be 
scheduled on a contract. He eventually openend his own studio and 
started recording and encouraging younger black musicians in Britain.
    No, this is not going to bring down the (capitalist) house, but 
it certainly is a progressive move.
    My reaction - theory as the opiate of intellectuals - was really 
a gibe, I guess, to suggest that historical criticism, certainly, 
should be aware of its own position within society and production. 
Academic publishing - the stuff we read - is big business, whether we 
like it or not. There certainly is a popchart of books IN ANY FIELD, 
and it changes all the time, rapidly, etc. Publishing companies are 
throwing books at us - well, selling them - and we can't keep up. The 
biblio-drowning syndrome is a measure of the extent to which our 
practices - as academics, intellectuals, thinkers - is part of a 
capitalist system, no matter how pure we'd like to keep our thought.
And, with apologies to activist-intellectuals, what we do - think and 
talk - is perhaps as sedative as listening to some rap. But I can 
tell you, when, as a black person, I have Public Enemy on my 
headphones, I can WALK through a redneck town with confidence. 
Perhaps that is also a drug, blinding me to potential danger, but 
it's a drug that gives me confidence. And what is a radical aesthetic 
if it's not empowering?

Rustum


Rustum Kozain
Department of English
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch, South Africa
email: kozain@beattie.uct.ac.za

                'I met History once, but he ain't recognise me'
                                    -Derek Walcott