Hip Hop, Malcolm X, and Black Empowerment in Music

Hip Hop History and Culture

Hip hop began in the 1970s in New York, where emceeing took place at block parties and people like DJ Kool Herc made a name for themselves running a turntable and creating new sounds by manipulating the beats of records (BBC). One of the most common characteristics of emceeing was that the rhymes and lyrics tended to be confrontational and antagonistic toward authority, boastful, and sexually provocative. These were lyrics and rhymes designed to provoke a reaction from the audience. Hip hop artists who emerged from this scene tended to take a serious stance on social issues, however, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was no exception. As Jon Pareles points out, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five "proved that hip-hop was more than party music with their 1982 hit 'The Message,'" which catapulted them to the forefront of the genre with lyrics like: "It's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny / You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey" (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message"). This is the same kind of lyric that NWA would be rapping about a decade later on the opposite side of the country.

What those lyrics showed was that hip hop came from the streets and was about the real experiences of Black youth who saw the hypocrisy and despair of the American Dream—who saw the cruel oppression of modern American life in the faces of the homeless and the marginalized. These artists were rapping about the truth of the world they saw, and they were not attempting to candy-coat it or put a smiling face on it. They were rapping the truth as a way to free themselves from propaganda and lies, and from what Grandmaster Flash described as "double digit inflation." For them, hip hop was a way to take their passion, monetize it, and turn it into a way out of the ghetto—a way to rise out of the streets without relying on a school system that routinely let them down. Their education came from the school of hard knocks, as Grandmaster Flash, NWA, and Tupac all demonstrated. Best and Kellner define hip hop as a genre that focuses on the "experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions" (1). This paper argues that hip hop carried on the message of Malcolm X and became a musical torch that people of all races could carry in the face of their oppressors.

Malcolm X and the Politics of Black Consciousness

The need to recognize reality and know oneself was essentially the same kind of education that Malcolm X spoke about in his speeches: the exploitation of the Black community by white elites who sought to control and exclude them from "respectable" society had to be confronted if Black Americans ever wanted to call themselves truly free. As E. Michael Jones points out, the plan of the white elitist establishment was consistently to undermine Black culture and to use Black people for its own purposes, whether in experiments like the Tuskegee trials or simply as a population to be controlled. Jones makes it clear that the Black community was repeatedly targeted by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment: "On December 26, 1945…John D. Rockefeller III had made a contribution of $2500 to support PP's Harlem Project, which was 'to provide an example for other Negro populated communities' on how to reduce their numbers through the use of contraception…Again, in spite of the war and the bad name Hitler had given eugenics and the name change to evade association with it, Planned Parenthood was still talking the eugenic line" (Jones 288).

Malcolm X rejected this kind of treatment and continued to do so even after the Civil Rights Movement, which he viewed as a false victory—an attempt by the white establishment to get Black Americans to be quiet, sit down, and fall back in line. He saw that the real struggle was about culture, mind, and character, and that is why he was assassinated: he refused to back down. As William Julius Wilson points out, "African Americans still have the highest rates of concentrated poverty of all groups in the United States" (58). It is that sense of an unfinished fight—a war still to be waged—that has motivated hip hop artists to use their musical talents to express the sentiment of Malcolm X in their own words, ways, and styles.

As Fluker points out, "Rappers often point to Malcolm X's phrase, 'no sellout, no sellout, no sellout,' as the touchstone of a black cultural consciousness intent on preserving the authenticity of black cultural expressions, and as the basis for a true black nationalism" (100). It is this spirit of Black nationalism and Black pride that has motivated hip hop from the beginning. Even the block-party emceeing that gave birth to the genre can be read as an expression of that pride—though hip hop has since crossed cultural and racial borders, with artists like Macklemore and Eminem representing the genre just as prominently as many Black artists.

Tupac Shakur and Hip Hop as Prophecy

Tupac Shakur elevated the genre to a place that few had been able to sustain before him. Jake Brown states that "Tupac Shakur was a holy being—omnipotent in Hip Hop, the 'Black Jesus.' He spoke for his people in motion picture, lyrical scripture…in Tupac's second coming as hip hop's first prophet, he would raise a generation up on his shoulders and carry them to a promised land…his music was his generation's heaven…he spoke a universal language" (xv). The message Tupac communicated, however, was not fundamentally different from the message of Grandmaster Flash, who had pointed out that America was essentially a con job and that if one wanted to make it one had better get in on the con.

Tupac did not see the "con" in purely ironic terms. He saw it as young, smart street youth learning that hustling is an art, and that those who hustle are righteous in the eyes of God: "We don't part the Red Sea, but we walk through the 'hood without getting shot. We don't turn water to wine, but we turn dope fiends and dope heads into productive citizens of society. We turn words into money—what greater gift can there be? So I believe God blesses us, I believe God blesses those that hustle. Those that use their minds and those that are overall righteous" (Brown xxi). Tupac was conveying a positive message through hip hop and elevating the consciousness of those he encountered in the streets, those who knew him personally, and those who listened to his music. His style differed from that of more abrasive gangsta rap groups like NWA—but even NWA came from a similar place: one of honesty and anger, and a recognition that the way out lay in telling the truth.

Conclusion

Hip hop was about rejecting the status quo and asserting one's own take on things, borrowing what had come before and putting a new spin on it. It was also about lifting oneself up, and sometimes it was simply about being provocative and shocking. In the end, however, hip hop spoke to everyone who felt they needed a way out of a dull and oppressive world. It may have originated in Black experience, but Black, white, Asian, and all other audiences could soon identify with its message. Rooted in the spirit of Malcolm X and nurtured by the streets of New York, hip hop became—and remains—one of the most vital and far-reaching cultural movements of the modern era.