I've Lost Track of Weeks: Commercialization in Hip-hop

Imani Perry makes several excellent points throughout Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop, but one of her most perceptive arguments occurs at the very end of the book, in the concluding chapter “Bling Bling... And Going Pop: Consumerism and Co-Optation in Hip Hop.” Perry addresses what she calls “the moral panic” within the genre, a fear of musical decline that is “created by anxieties about mass production and capitalism and the threat to quality among avid listeners, or hip hop heads” (192). Many contemporary rappers, the most popular of which adorn themselves in expensive jewelry and designer labels and brag about their bank accounts, are no longer concerned with making quality music. Some critics worry that as time passes, hip-hop will continue in a downward spiral, with underground artists overshadowed by and unable to compete with commercialized, generic, “pop-y” hip-hop.

In exploring this dilemma, Perry articulates one of the most problematic contradictions in hip-hop: “How can the aesthetic requirements of and an allegiance to the hip hop community withstand the necessary aspiration of popular artists to have commercial success and make a name for themselves in music? How are the artists to attain mass appeal without sacrificing their cultural or ideological foundations?” (193) Indeed, sacrificing these foundations is one of the heaviest critiques leveled at hip-hop artists. Perry, however, makes some allowances for the natural, extremely American tendency to strive toward wealth and success. She seems to argue that perhaps we are too harsh in condemning commercially successful artists; as she explains it, commercialization is a reflection of American culture in general rather than hip-hop in particular.

Perry writes that “Perhaps the critic should just appreciate the achievements of young black people with global popular culture in their hands and understand that hip hop will never simply embrace one set of progressive politics… Even if we recognize that hip hop has the potential to revolutionize, it also has the potential to suffer co-optation. It constitutes a community too flexible and too fluid to imagine that it might have one sort of political or social influence” (197). Rather than condemning hip-hop as a dying art, Perry believes that it will continue to flourish and evolve through underground outlets, and that critics’ expectations unfairly demonize the desire for financial and popular success. At its best, she writes, hip-hop is local music; as long as artists continue to produce locally, the form will survive.