Its a Hip-Hop World

Rap music has long been considered a form of resistance against authority.
Boosted by the commercialization of the music industry, that message has
proven its appeal to youth all around the world. Now, from Shanghai to Nairobi
to So Paulo, hip-hop is evolving into a truly global art of communication.
By Jeff Chang, October 12, 2009, Foreign Policy Magazine

Inside the steaming walls of a nightclub in the heart of one of

the worlds most dynamic cities, you can hear the sounds of the
future. Hundreds of people gyrate rhythmically as a DJ spins hot
beats. On stage, a pair of rappers face off, microphones in hand,
trading verses of improvised rhyme. They look like typical hiphop artists, dressed in baggy pants and baseball caps. But listen
closely and you notice something unusual: Theyre performing in
Chinese. One rapper spits out words in a distinctive Beijing
accent, scolding the other for not speaking proper Mandarin. His
opponent from Hong Kong snaps back to the beat in a trilingual
torrent of Cantonese, English, and Mandarin, dissing the Beijing
rapper for not representing the people. The crowd goes wild,
raucously voicing delight and dismay.
This annual rap battle, called the Iron Mic, isnt taking place in
New York or Los Angeles, but in Shanghai
Hip-hop culture has become one of the most far-reaching arts
movements of the past three decades. The best artists share a
desire to break down boundaries between "high" and "low" art
to make urgent, truth-telling work that reflects the lives, loves,
histories, hopes, and fears of their generation. Hip-hop is about
rebellion, yes, but its also about transformation.
Today, the message of hip-hop is even transcending borders.
From xi ha in China to "hip-life" in Ghana, hip-hop is a lingua
franca that binds young people all around the world, all while
giving them the chance to alter it with their own national flavor.
But one thing about hip-hop has remained consistent across
cultures: a vital progressive agenda that challenges the status

quo. Thousands of organizers from Cape Town to Paris use hiphop in their communities to address environmental justice,
policing and prisons, media justice, and education. In
Gothenburg, Sweden, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
incorporate graffiti and dance to engage disaffected immigrant
and working-class youths.
Hip-hop is also a serious business. More than 59 million rap
albums were sold in the United States alone last year. Of all the
rappers out there, mogul and renaissance man Shawn Carter,
better known as Jay-Z, is the most successful example of the
growing power of hip-hop. When he took over Universal Records
Def Jam unit in 2004, Jay-Z was put in charge of a billion-dollar
business. Jay-Zs own albums have sold 33 million copies
worldwide. He runs popular nightclubs in New York and Atlantic
City with plans to open more next year in Las Vegas, Tokyo,
and Macao. The former drug dealer who grew up in poverty in
the housing projects of Brooklyn is now worth an estimated $500
million.
With its humble origins, no one could have foreseen the global
phenomenon that hip-hop would become. In 1973, two
Jamaican-American immigrant teenagers decided to throw a
back-to-school party. Cindy Campbell and her brother Clive,
better known in the neighborhood as DJ Kool Herc, organized
the dance in the recreation room of their government-subsidized
apartment building at the now famous address of 1520 Sedgwick
Avenue. They had exquisite timing. After years of gang violence,
teens in the area were growing weary and looking for a new way
to express themselves. "When I went to [the] party, it was like
stepping into another universe. The vibe was so strong," says
Tony Tone, a gang member who later became part of the
pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers. The Campbells
Bronx parties became so popular they soon had to move them
outdoors to a nearby park. Crowds flocked to them. Instead of
getting into trouble on the streets, teens now had a place to
expend their pent-up energy. "Hip-hop saved a lot of lives,"
recalls Tone.
Less than a decade after the Campbells famous party, hip-hop
began to seep outside the United States. In 1982, Afrika

Bambaataa and his group Soulsonic Force released a single

called "Planet Rock," which borrowed musical motifs from
German electropop, British rock, and African-American disco rap.
They blended the elements together, offering hip-hop as a new
vision for global harmony. The record stormed the charts
worldwide. That same year, Bambaataa led New Yorks leading
rappers, dancers, artists, and DJs on the first hip-hop tour
outside the United States. Bambaataa saw such visits as a key
way to expand Universal Zulu Nation and to espouse what he
considered the core values of hip-hop: peace, unity, love, and
having fun. Everywhere he went, he planted the seeds for the
hip-hop movement in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
France, in particular, caught the hip-hop virus. In the 1990s, MC
Solaar became the first non-American rap superstar. Solaar was
born in Senegal to parents from Chad, and discovered Zulu
Nation and the music of Afrika Bambaataa as a young teenager
in Paris. His multicultural background appealed to youths
throughout the Francophone world, which quickly developed into
the largest non-English-speaking rap market.
The emerging popularity of cable and satellite television
throughout the world in the late 1980s further spread the seeds
of hip-hop. In 1988, MTV debuted an experimental pilot program
in the United States called Yo! MTV Raps, which aired hip-hop
videos once a week in an after-hours slot. Soon, the show grew
so popular it was broadcast six days a week. African-American
and Latino urban style was instantly accessible to millions of
youths, and not just in the United States. Yo! MTV Raps became
one of the networks first globally televised shows.
As hip-hop grows ever more popular, it becomes squeezed in the
uneasy space between commercial and economic globalization
from above and borderless, cultural grassroots globalization from
below. Commercial rap made in the United States with its
ethic of "get rich or die tryin" is displacing local rappers and
musicians on the radio and television airwaves in Africa, Asia,
the Caribbean, and South America, while serving as the
soundtrack for aggressive, youth-oriented consumer goods
marketing.

This rampant commercialism is often at odds with hip-hops

outsider ethos. In Kenya, for instance, two differing visions
one as a resistance culture oriented toward social justice, the
other as a popular culture focused on commodity capitalism
may be increasingly headed toward a reckoning. For some
Kenyans, hip-hop has allowed a new generation of postcolonial
Africans to speak out. Young Kenyan rappers lyrics in sheng,
a creolized language that includes English, Swahili, and Kikuyu
words tackle the themes of joblessness, poverty, and the
older generations failures.
Indeed, young artists are building communities that actively
support the development of cultural politics unique to the
continent. One Kenyan NGO, Words and Pictures, has been
traveling to Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania to
promote networking among local hip-hop pioneers. The recent
arrival of MTV Base Africa may accelerate these trends. The
network was launched in South Africa at the beginning of 2005
with a playlist that was roughly one third African. Since then, the
proportion of artists from the continent has risen, and the
network says it hopes to reach 50 percent African programming
in the next year. But on the radio, hip-hop from overseas is
increasingly becoming the norm. Stations such as Britains
Capital FM and locally owned KISS FM sell advertising to
multinational corporations like Motorola and Nokia. They prefer
to program American artists such as 50 Cent because such rap
helps corporations sell consumer goods. But local rappers,
whose music critiques government and poverty, dub American
rap, ironically, "white-boy oppressor music," even though the
artists are predominantly African American.
Nairobi native Michael Wanguhu, who created the documentary
film Hip-Hop Colony, says this kind of cultural homogenization
and commercial sponsorship are becoming major worries. "Its
creating opportunities where there were none before," he says,
"but theres no room for music that is enlightened and empowers
people." Still, he is bullish on hip-hops expansion.
"Hip-hop in Africa is like the new Pan-Africanism," he says. "Its
diffusing all the borders we have and creating new organizations
and expanding that whole market."