Are White Rappers Racist?

Hip-hop culture has become one of the most popular forms of music and pop-culture in the past twenty-five years. In fact, it has emerged as mainstream culture from its erstwhile existence in the margins[i]. The mainstreaming of hip-hop culture has meant that predominantly black music culture has been appropriated by white youth and musicians[ii]. Is the appropriation of rap music and hip-hop culture by white artists a sign of implicit racism? Here I speak specifically in relation to the 2014 Grammy Awards results.

Beginning in 1970s New York, hip-hop was the means for black youth to express their struggles with racism, poverty, and other forms of oppression that made them disadvantaged in society. It was a conscious act of dissent that had themes, lyrics, music that reflected the culture of the black communities. However, it became mainstream in the 1980s with a show on MTV showcasing hip-hop music and rap. In the 1990s, hip-hop also became popular in Europe. This is what constitutes the 'Cultural appropriation' of hip-hop. Cultural appropriation is the process by which a cultural product from a different culture is adopted, performed, and transformed. It is not so that white rap and hip-hop artists ‘want to be black’ but that they want to be associated with those qualities associated with blackness which make blackness cool[iii]. 

The cultural appropriation of hip-hop is not problematic in itself, but the past of the art-form is done away when performed by white musicians. Racism in contemporary society acts through ideology as well as practice. The different ways in which hip-hop culture has been moulded to mainstream popular culture has had certain racist outcomes—though it may not be detrimental in itself or in its intent.

The extremely famous rapper Iggy Azalea was accused of making racist remarks in her song “D.R.U.G.S” (2012) in which she called herself a ‘runaway slave master’. Not only this, in the recent Grammy award nominations (2014), Iggy Azalea, a white rap-artist, was presented with four nominations and Macklemore, a white hip-hop artist, won the award for best rap record of the year. This is not the first time that a white artist has won in this category. In fact, Eminem, a white rap and hip-hop artist is the best-selling hip-hop artist of all time. Further, there were no nominations for any person of colour in the top categories: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist. Racist practices are racist not because of their racist intentionality but in terms of their effects[iv]. Perhaps, the practice of rewarding only white rap artists in such categories has had racist effects. As Azalea Banks, a black-rap artist said in an interview, ‘the message to white kids..is, ‘You’re great. You’re amazing. You can do whatever you put your mind to.’ And it says to black kids, ‘You don’t have s***. You don’t own s***, not even the s*** you created yourself’”. Despite the profanity, Banks makes an important point about white privilege in the music industry.

It would be relevant to mention here that though few black artists won awards in 2014 Grammys, for instance— Beyoncé won multiple awards including Album of the Year. However, she represents a very commodified, objectified, racialised‘black beauty’ [v].

While there is nothing inherently bad about cultural appropriation of hip-hop culture,  when white artists use the very same medium in racist ways (as Iggy Azalea did), or when white hip-hop artists clearly enjoy the privilege that their skin colour provides them, such practices do have racist effects. So what about here in India? Is Honey Singh racist? Some would argue he is definitely sexist and misogynistic but does his cultural appropriation create problems for black rappers? Not really, but for women, sure! 

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[i] Androutsopoulos and Scholz 2003 p.463

[ii] Rodriquez 2006 p.646.

[iii]Perry 2002, cited in Androutsopoulos and Scholz 2003, p.649.

[iv] Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992 p. 13

[v] Gilroy 2000 p.21-22

References:

“Beyoncé.” 2015. The GRAMMYs. Accessed January 9. http://www.grammy.com/artist/beyonce.

“Grammy Awards: Is Iggy Azalea This Year’s Macklemore & Ryan Lewis?” 2015. EntertainmentWise. Accessed January 9. http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/162890/Grammy-Nominations-2015-Why-The-Backlash-Against-Iggy-Azalea.

“The GRAMMY Awards.” 2015. The GRAMMYs. Accessed January 9. http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards.

Androutsopoulos, J. & Scholz, A. 2003 “Spaghetti Funk: Appropriations of Hip-Hop Culture and Rap Music in Europe”, Popular Music and Society, 26:4, 463-479, [online] Accessed January 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300776032000144922

Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N. 1992 “The Concept of ‘race’ and the Racialization of Social Divisions” in Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-racist Struggle.  London: Routledge, pp. 1- 20.

Chang, Jeff. 2015. “Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea and Hip-Hop’s Appropriation Problem.” The Guardian. Accessed January 10. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/24/iggy-azalea-azealia-banks-hip-hop-appropriation-problem.

Freeman, Hadley. 2013. “Miley Cyrus’s Twerking Routine Was Cultural Appropriation at Its Worst.” The Guardian, August 27 2014, sec. Accessed on January 9. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/27/miley-cyrus-twerking-cultural-appropriation.

Gilroy, P. 2000. “The crisis of Race and raciology” in Between Camps (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 11-54

Ramirez, E. 2014. “Why Iggy Azalea Will Win the Best Rap Album Grammy: Op-Ed.” Text. Billboard. December 5 2014. Accessed on January 9. http://www.billboard.com/articles/events/grammys-2015/6363746/iggy-azalea-best-rap-album-grammys.

Rodriquez, Jason. 2006. “Color-Blind Ideology and the Cultural Appropriation of Hip-Hop” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. Volume 35 Number 6 December 2006. Accessed on January 9. http://www.sagepub.com/newman7study/articles/Rodriquez.pdf

Wilson, Carl. 2014. “White People Win the Grammys.” Slate Magazine. January 27 2014. Accessed on January 9. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2014/01/_2014_grammy_winners_daft_punk_macklemore_and_other_white_people_triumph.html.