Struggle
For The Right To "Rock":
Racism, Corporate Liberalism, Cultural Hegemony & Black Music
A.S.
Van Dorston
May 1990
Cold war America can be characterized as the time
when the center turned on the extremes. Liberals and conservatives made common
cause against leftists and rightists. It was the liberals who compromised most
in becoming natural allies with the giant corporations on Wall Street. They
were the corporate liberals, as characterized by Peter Biskind in Seeing Is
Believing.
The fifties were an exceptionally good time for
corporate liberals. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal saved capitalism, labor,
"with an assist from the witch-hunt, had traded in its vision of a
socialist future for a car, a television, and a house in Levittown," and
rock and roll was already being tamed (Biskind, 15).
A corporate liberal believes a stable society is
based on inclusion, not exclusion. They were happy to include rock and roll
into the canon of popular culture. As long as anything with competing
ideologies subscribed to the ground rules of the center and, as Biskind said,
" submitted to the discipline of compromise," they would be included
into stable society. The first step of compromise for rock and roll was to call
it "rock and roll" instead of rhythm and blues, to camouflage the
music's black roots (Biskind, 18).
The corporate liberals responsible for such
compromise, according to Nelson George, in his book ”The Death of Rhythm &
Blues•, were mostly white music industry people. For George, the businesspeople
and record companies are where the story lies; the story of an illness in black
music; the story of the systematic, sometimes unintentional strangulation of
black music by cultural hegemony (George, xv).
Although there is rarely any sort of masterplan, the
effect of a hegemonic culture is ultimately the ensemble of material and
cultural practices that reinforce the belief systems embraced by the power
elite, as to so firmly entrench it that it is seen as the all-encompassing
truth, instead of merely one version of the truth. Cultural hegemony is a
belief system that is largely an unrecognized, covert form of power. By
absorbing and co-opting competing ideas, it ingratiates the powerless,
suggesting that their beliefs will be realized. Yet despite its concessions,
responses, porous, cooptive, dialectical and dynamic properties, there are
always groups on the margins who recognize it as such, so there is always some
repression of dissent among marginalized classes and races. Political and
social dissent in cultural expression has frequently been expressed with music.
As a result it is music that has often been subverted or suppressed, which can
be documented in a sort of unholy trinity of racism, corporate liberalism and
cultural hegemony within the music industry. It has been a difficult struggle
for those with counter hegemonic agendas, because no one group is fully
responsible. The captains of industry do not have total hegemonic control over
black culture. As the "road to Hell was paved with good intentions,"
many corporate liberals in the business sincerely meant no harm to blacks and
their music. Nelson George recognizes this at the same time finding it
problematic to solidly identify the other factors in the seemingly losing
battle of saving black culture and rhythm & blues from "death."
An early form of subversion that carries on through
today is the practice of "borrowing," or anglicizing black music.
Ever since whites first recognized African-American folk music, it has been
borrowed in order to facilitate the success of white performers like the
Christy Minstrels with black skin makeup, or "refined" by
European-trained black composers like Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Edmond Dad to
fit the narrow spectrum of white music.
From Duke Ellington's and Count Basie's swing to the
black pioneers of ragtime, blues and jazz, the record businesses owned by white
men stifled their deserved financial success while whites made more money from
manufactured Tin Pan Alley tunes. Even by the late 1930s, brilliant artists
like Besse Smith, Robert Johnson, Big Joe Turner, John Lee Hooker and Tampa Red
were unknown to everyone who did not have access to the handful of
"race" record stores in segregated neighborhoods, and the few radio
stations that played any sort of "race" music.
Black music of any form might not have gotten any
acceptance in the industry at all if it wasn't for the postwar dance craze, a
time when the "misery of war increased America's desire to be
entertained" (George, 23). Louis Jordan, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and
Louis Armstrong, saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Thelonious Monk, all
big-band refugees, took advantage of the prosperity with bebop, a musician's
music of "daredevil improvisations" that earned respect for jazz.
Bebop and jazz vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington
and Sarah Vaughan earned nearly as much respect, which was inversely proportional
to their income.
The fact that they had any income at all was due to
the new proliferation of independent labels. Since Large, nationally
distributed companies such as Decca, Victor and Capitol dropped support for
former big band members, twenty-eight independent labels appeared between 1942
and 1952 to pick up the slack. While the majors were wondering what the hell
the new music was (MGM called it "ebony," Decca and Capitol called it
"sepia"), the independents were promoting smoking rhythm and blues
singles like "Good Rockin' Tonight" and "All She Wants to Do Is
Rock" by Wynonie Harris in 1948 to 1949.
From The Ravens' "Bye Bye Baby Blues," John
Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" and "Crawling Kingsnake," to
Amos Milbrun's "Chicken Shack Boogie," there were no equivalents on
the major labels, and no airplay on major radio stations.
The reluctance of stations to play rhythm and blues,
and the failure of the majors to sign the black musicians is rooted not only in
the industry's conservative treatment of new music, but also its cultural
hegemony. Much of the words in rhythm and blues, in the tradition of the blues,
eloquently express black peoples' discontent with economic injustices pressed
upon them. Perhaps white industry leaders saw that there is often a sense of
righteous anger that would serve as a powerful unifying force for oppressed
minorities if it were to be disseminated throughout the airwaves of America.
By the time artists like Sonny Boy Williamson, Fats
Domino, B.B. King, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry grew roots from the R & B
seeds with help from the independents, the baby-boom generation began to grow
into a highly influential group of consumers, giving the major industry
incentive to capitalize on a junk teenage culture and abandon any elitist ideals
of sophistication in music. White America was beginning to recognize the
marketability of R & B. In fact, most of the indies were owned by whites,
many of them Jewish. "Blacks weren't the only people kept out of the
American business mainstream by discrimination," wrote George. Unwelcome
on Wall Street, many Jewish businessmen turned to black music, where there were
fewer barriers to entrepreneurship. With only a couple exceptions, the
overwhelming majority of black-oriented stations were also white-owned (George,
28).
The steps toward commodifying R&B for mass
consumption would also be the beginning of the end for black music, a blow
against that intangible "something" that Nelson George claims eventually died in black culture. Yet most
white label and radio station owners were not out to kill black music. In the
corporate liberal tradition, they aimed to help R&B and black culture the
only way they knew how; commercial success. But in the process of striving for
such success, even the independent industry lost its innocence. Corruption was
the result of underpaid R & B labels trying to get airplay for underpaid
black artists by paying underpaid black deejays to play their records. "In
the rhythm & blues world," said George, "payola was a common as
tacking posters to telephone poles to announce upcoming shows" (George,
29).
While payola would eventually become a tool major
labels use to control the playlist of pop radio, spending small labels off the
air, in the fifties it helped keep the black deejays out of poverty, having no
contracts, no health insurance, and little opportunity for promotion into
management. It was a benevolent hustle that would eventually hurt the
participants in the R&B world, like Alan Freed. The successful business
based on payola enabled him to flaunt his power and rebellious rock attitude,
making him a target of a reactionary backlash among white authorities. A white
district attorney used the payola to convict him one two counts of commercial
bribery and blackball him from radio. The IRS finished off the financially and
spiritually broken man by claiming he owned $37,920 on unreported income of
$56,652, and he died of uremia the next year (George, 91).
Freed's black slang and flamboyant delivery was soon
cleaned up, with white jocks perfecting the pronunciation and selling Coke and
Clearasil to white teens. But the honest, down-to-earth sounds of R&B did
not produce a good format for advertisements aimed toward the new, large
generation of white suburban baby-boomer teenyboppers, especially when racist,
white, middle class parents did not approve of their children listening to
black R&B. So they called it rock & roll and white men like Elvis
Presley, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Louis got to become rich and
famous. Many songs written and performed by blacks were covered by faceless
whites that put them on the charts.
In the fifties, major label corporations knew that
white culture would reign supreme, because teenland codified heroes who more
closely resembled them, or what they wanted to be, as the only fitting rock
& rollers. For the baby-boomers, rock and roll would eventually become, by
1965, "white music made by white people with the occasional black
old-timer thrown in" (George, 93). Steeped in R & B roots, white
musicians like Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the
Kinks, the Who and Led Zeppelin became the true celebrities of rock & roll.
In the meantime, R&B became "soul,"
"a word which would in its day rival `rock & roll' for social currency
and commercial exploitation" (George, 93). A couple savvy independents
would, however, make a significant jump in popularizing (real) black music.
Stax and Motown took nearly opposite approaches toward making soul music a
success. Stax in Memphis took the traditional independent approach of aiming at
R&B fans more than the pop market, putting out records with "some of
the most unencumbered soul-shouting ever recorded," such as Rufus Thomas
and Otis Redding. Motown in Detroit was "secretive, rigidly hierarchical, totally
committed to reaching white audiences" (George, 86).
While Motown was black-owned, it was a perfect
example of corporate liberalism, committed to assimilation to the white market
with a Wall St. mentality of measuring its meaning of existence through profit.
It is in the same corporate liberal spirit of compromise that James Brown
performed on television to keep angry blacks off the streets after Martin
Luther King was murdered. He never happened to mention in whose interests it
was to keep angry blacks off the streets.
It was a constant struggle in the soul movement in
determining the pros and cons of integration. It was Motown that began to chip
away at the racial segregation in record stores and radio, hitting the top ten
singles success with the Supremes in 1964. The Temptations and the Four Tops
were soon to follow, prompting Motown to adopt the nickname "Hitsville,
U.S.A."
Stax took pride in the fact that it did not
compromise its production values while still becoming moderately successful.
But what appeared to be a renaissance in soul and R&B lasted only a short
time, to be smothered under the rolls of fat protruding from the majors. Like
Atlantic, Stax became a part of corporate America. "Few observers at the
time foresaw the negative impact these distribution shifts would have on the
music and the institutions that made up the R&B world," as Stax fell
into a black hole of corporate entanglements with CBS (George, 142). With CBS
giving Stax $.80 less per record than they were supposed to get, it made it
harder for Stax to repay loans to the Memphis bank. By 1973, Stax was involved
in lawsuits by CBS and the Union Planters National Bank, as well as an IRS
investigation and "all manner of character assassination" (George,
142).
Harassment of people by departments of the federal
government such as the IRS was a common practice of institutional racism; one
of the more overt forms of keeping the cultural hegemony in big business. The
IRS investigation and harassment must not have been too overt, however. If Stax
executive Al Bell felt his political stance played any role in his, and Stax's
demise, he never said so directly. An experiment in sponsorship of social
action and grass-roots activity, to be politically progressive as it was
profitable, was a failure. By 1976, Stax closed its doors. Meanwhile,
Philadelphia International Records, a new power in R&B, "was working
with CBS with frightening efficiency" (George, 142).
Like good cold war corporate liberals, Philly
International learned how to work within a corporate system. As chief commodity
of CBS's black music department, it profited handsomely. The message in the
music seemed to be that assimilation worked, "especially for a
nationalistic capitalist who could write hit songs" (George, 146).
The failure of blacks to mix political organizing
with business became evident with the history of the National Association for
Radio Announcers (NARA) and its members weren't oblivious of the civil-rights
movement and the changes it brought to the fabric of black life. They gave
money; they have lip service. But their internal will for collective effort was
weak. Business as usual was good for many; others feared reprisals from white
bosses if they got too political.
(George, 113)
It became evident that they had more than white
bosses to fear. After adding television to its name (NATRA), the group tried to
make a failing college in Delaware a site for its own school of broadcast
science. The violence that followed its announcement made NATRA leader Del
Shields think "certain people in the broadcast and TV industry" did
not want to see black deejays gain the kind of responsibility and power they
were talking about.
It sounded like Shields thought some kind of Big
Brother was watching -- "and he may not have been wrong" (George,
114). In addition to anonymous attacks throughout the fundraising efforts,
months before the 1968 NATRA convention, three men beat Shields to the ground,
and were never caught. Soon after, more NATRA people were beaten in Miami. Many
members pulled out and the potential school evaporated, leaving behind a group
of unorganized and unfocused black deejays. With the eventual commercialization
of the rest of the black radio stations came the demise of deejay
personalities. In its place was standardization; a format "that refined
pop radio into a synthetic consistency that station owners loved and old-line
deejays hated" (George, 115).
Commercial radio and labels went on to market new
forms of candy-coated pop soul and disco in the seventies. The reason why black
audiences consumed such crap and rejected its R&B roots was partially the
revival of 1950s electric blues among the white rock audience and baby-boomers
in college. The blues had been a part of the R&B world, but which like rock
& roll and straight doo wop, had been forsaken for soul. The revival of
B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf did not reach the older black fans
because they were not comfortable with middle class white teens and college
students and was not exposed to advertising in underground press and
progressive radio. "To blacks who still valued the blues, it seemed these
cultural heroes had been kidnapped by the younger brothers and sisters of the
folks who'd led Chuck Berry astray" (George, 107). Nelson George suggested
that young blacks at the time abandoned the blues because none of the new blues
was worthwhile. With the exception of Eric Clapton and maybe Johnny Winter, no
white blues guitarist has produced a body of work in any way comparable to that
of the black giants. Blacks create and then move on. Whites document and then
recycle. In the history of popular music, these truths are self-evident.
(George, 108)
Strong words as they are, they can be documented
further with the genius creativeness of Jimi Hendrix, in reclaiming rock &
roll as his own. Yet such words do not explain why blacks put Hendrix in the
same category of white blues revivalists. Only the trend in crossover music in
major labels would reveal what was missing in the R&B world. The outside
force that helped destroy R&B, "pulling the music from its roots and
eroding the connections made with White America in the 1960s was disco" --
the early harbingers of which were Kool and the Gang, Ohio Players and KC &
the Sunshine Band -- "a sound of mindless repetition and lyrical idiocy
that, with few exceptions, overwhelmed R&B" (George, 153).
The commercially successful Philadelphia
International Records eventually drowned in cliché‚as with help from a series
of incredibly insipid records by The Ritchie Family and the Salsoul Orchestra.
At the same time, a blacker music truer to its James Brown roots was enjoying
great popularity in the South and the Midwest in the form of funk bands. Yet
they rarely got on radio playlists. It was "too raw and unsophisticated,
and one thing dear to the hearts of disco fans, was a feeling of
pseudosophistication" (George, 154).
By then a few black musicians were again fueled by
frustration and disgust at racism and chose to take the unsophisticated path.
They let their hair grow into "afros" to accentuate their pride in
their blackness, and revealed a political thrust within their communities in
the struggle for integration. Some even preferred to do without integration as
long as they could have justice. As a younger, more radical generation became
involved in black pride and black power, the sentiment was hinted that
mainstream white culture was not worth integrating into. White culture included
rock & roll, which was stolen from them in the first place. While blacks
largely would not claim it their own, there was a small minority who
appreciated Jimi Hendrix's, and even more so, George Clinton's projects.
Forming the independent Westbound label in the late
sixties in Detroit, by then the home of the Black Panther Party, Clinton began
releasing Funkadelic and Parliament records. Funkadelic synthesized a brilliant
hybrid of blues, R&B, soul, funk, and rock & roll ranging from
psychedelic Jimi Hendrix licks to Led Zeppelin's heavy metal, complete with
cocky, humorous lyrics sometimes inspired by the radicalism of black politics
in Detroit. Parliament took a slightly more traditional approach by using a
horn section. Their success lead to a whole aggregation of bands like Bootsy's
Rubber Band, The Horny Horns, Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet, all under the
chaotically creative leadership of George (Dr. Funkenstein) Clinton. The whole
P-Funk concept, with its brilliant musicianship, radical politics, humor,
parody and use of slang, was a musically amusing way of thumbing one's nose at
what Clinton dubbed "The Placebo Syndrome," aka funkless black music
(George, 156). While Warner Brothers signed Funkadelic in August 1975, the
band's popularity was unable to swallow up the "Placebo Syndrome" of
disco.
Disco, combined with the crossover consciousness of
the majors, created music for the new breed of mainstream black radio. Black
stations across the country turned into disco radio with black artists playing
beige music. Downplaying their blackness in order to compete for the
advertising dollars, they dropped the word black, and when even beige wasn't
good enough, the stations used "urban contemporary." George Clinton's
bands were not marketed and allowed to succeed because they were too black. "
. . . too black. The phrase echoed with the sound of self-hate. Too black. A
retreat from the beauty of blackness. Too black. The sound of the death of
R&B" (George, 160).
With black music turning beige, white artists tapping
into black rhythms in disco and corporations using black radio as a launching
pad, another attempt toward organizing was born in September 1978 in La Costa,
California. The Black Music Association was formed "to preserve, protect,
and perpetuate" black music. But in the face of big-time corporate payola,
the BMA was impotent.
In the meantime, commercial assimilation was making
black music downright anemic. Blacks were increasingly putting their black
pride out to pasture and denouncing their ethnicity. Bryant Gumbel, host of the
Today Show said, "I have become colorless. I have clear speech and
non-ethnic characteristics" (George, 173). One of the first entertainers
to achieve mass popularity using this mindset was Michael Jackson who said he
had denounced the unnecessary "ethnic stuff" in order to get on the
top 40. Like Gumbel, Jackson used cosmetic surgery to turn himself into a
commercial, anglicized product for mass consumption. Despite his cosmetic
surgery and tiresome claims to "universality," ”Off the Wall• sold 9
million copies. As MTV's visual format grew popular as fast as nose jobs, more
entertainers followed suit, with Lionel Richie acting whiter than ever, and
Prince lying about having a white mother and surrounding himself with white and
mulatto leading women in his shows and movies. To these people, beige wasn't
even white enough.
In the early 80s, with "apartheid oriented
radio" (AOR to some) and the equally segregated MTV, it looked like the
forces of racism (or white supremacy), corporate liberalism and cultural
hegemony had come to a successful conclusion. But then there was rap. When the
Sugar Hill Gang came from a black owned New Jersey label with "Rapper's
Delight," industry pros, including blacks, ignored it. "It just goes
to show you that by 1980, being black didn't necessarily mean you know a damn
thing about what was happening in black neighborhoods" (George, 169).
While Motown, the last original black indie was
giving in to MCA, kids in Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens were learning
the innovative rhythms and verbal dexterity of D.J. Hollywood, Kurtis Blow,
Eddie Cheeba, D.J. Lovebug Star-ski, Junebug Star-ski, Grandmaster Flash &
the Furious Five, and Whodini. While rap scared the hell out of the major label
reps (Mercury released Kurtis Blow's safe novelty record "Christmas
Rappin'"), more independent labels like Tommy Boy, Profile, Def Jam and
Sleeping Bag appeared to pick up the slack. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious
Five finally graduated from the Sugar Hill label in 1984, signing to Elektra.
Some of the best rap companies kept afloat by signing distribution deals; Def
Jam with Columbia, First Priority with Atlantic, Tommy Boy with WB, and Jive
with RCA.
But this time the majors didn't seem to have
anglicization on their agendas. Producers Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin,
Run-DMC, L.L. Cool J., Public Enemy, the Fat Boys and Whodini all seemed happy
with their labels, "showing no signs of the dreaded crossover
fixation" (George, 194). Predictably, the white Beastie Boys were the ones
to popularize rap in a mainstream breakthrough. Yet Hall & Oats of rap they
are not. Unlike the Bee Gees, the Beastie Boys grew up in black culture in New
York, have a black manager, and started on an indie label. They were blacker
than Michael Jackson never wanted to be. Beastie MCA said "Rock & roll
was started by Chuck Berry, but it's Elvis who is called the King. So it's not
so surprising that it took the Beastie Boys to popularize rap. That's typical
of America" (George, 194).
Not so typical is the fact that rap and hip-hop
artists are still relatively at peace with corporate America. Rather than
becoming diluted, the messages of Public Enemy, KRS-One and Boogie Down
Productions and Eric B. & Rakim are becoming even more overtly radical. The
closest dangers right now to losing their voices is the commodification of
their postmodernist special effects, decontextualizing their raps, reducing
them to surface sounds featured in hip dance clubs. Another is the rising
assault of censorship, epitomized by the current record bans of 2 Live Crew. The
racism of the classic American double standard can best be illustrated by the
recent controversies surrounding the white heavy metal band Guns N' Roses and
Public Enemy. While racist and sexist sentiments revealed by Axl Rose in a
”Rolling Stone• interview prompted their label to defend the band's right to
free speech, the anti-semitic comments from a member of Public Enemy prompted
Columbia to drop them like a hot potato.
In the September issue of ”Spin• magazine
guest-edited by Spike Lee, Chuck D. of Public Enemy best predicts the possible
future for himself and other like-minded rappers. expects: Continued attempts
to label Public Enemy as "racist," "anti-Semitic,"
"misogynist," "homophobic," etc., thus confusing and
diluting its message . . . continued and increased attacks from certain police,
business, and other groups. This will make it more difficult for the band to
tour or travel, as it did for Paul Robeson in the 50s, thus limiting their
influence, exposure, marketability, and ability to earn a living . . .
continued support from CBS and Def Jam Records, with an eventual sharp
fall-off, as well as attempts by certain people in the business of selling
records to make PE's music and videos more palatable to white compact-disc
buyers . . . expect more writers attempting to make the point that PE is
"full of contradictions." Also, that "they are destroying
themselves," and that Chuck D is "not that smart," "not
that tough," "not that sure of himself," "not that
etc." . . . increased public criticism as the message becomes more
difficult for some to swallow; i.e., Afrocentric . . . more fan mail,
especially from the Eastern bloc and U.S. prisons. Thanks . . . increased law
enforcement agency assisted monitoring, harassment, incarceration, and murder of
black people who talk about black people uniting under Blackness.
(”Spin•, 68)
With corporate liberalism's slippery tradition of
disguising, denying, or attacking the idea of naked, unconcealed power, it
would be difficult to completely outguess them. Since "the Reds" and
Nazis are no longer useful bad guys, the drug war hysteria has now chosen poor
blacks as the target. Chuck D. is acutely aware of their slipperiness;
"stuff like that makes me think of what they mean when they say that a
black person is better off dealing with a Klansman than a liberal."
Another potential, albeit less radical, savior of
black music is the Black Rock Coalition, a New York organization devoted to
combating racial stereotypes in the music business. It was formed in Fall, 1985
by Living Colour musician Vernon Reid, ”Village Voice• writer and ”Black
Culture• editor Greg Tate, and a couple dozen bands and musicians who were told
they weren't "black enough" to fit the industry's established
black-music molds -- glitzy synthetic sex kittens peddling sweet nothings over
vanilla funk and bedroom-bounce arrangements (Luther Vandross, Gregory Abbott,
Whitey Houston, Milli Vanilla), inoffensive gushy love balladeers and copycat
rappers. They wanted to reclaim "the right to rock." The Black Rock
Coalition finally picked up where Jimi Hendrix and George Clinton & friends
left off. They proved that "black experience" is not a uniform
genetic code; that black Americans don't fit into neat racial packages; that
their music doesn't have to just make other blacks vegetate and forget their
problems.
Soul-funk-punk Fishbone, rasta-hardcore Bad Brains
and surf-metal 24-7 Spyz have become wellªknown for their genre-breaking,
without the use of uniformly nude women wiggling their hips in the background.
But it is Reid's own Living Colour, in it's shamelessly unimaginative, nearly
note-for-note plagiarism of white hard rockers Van Halen, who present the most
problematic aspect of the BRC. In their relentless drive towards platinum
sales, white marketing (including the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour), many
wonder if they haven't forgotten to pull along other BRC members without losing
their innovative, artistic credentials. The BRC is in danger of creating a
category as rigid as the ones they wanted to break out of.
It is not enough that the BRC hold regular meetings
discussing racism and economic inequalities that structure debate on music, and
infiltrate arenas with the oh-so-subversive Living Colour. After five years the
BRC has little to show in alternative methods to recording and promoting black
musicians who don't keep within the accepted formats, or ways to combat white
dominance of high-priced, high-powered, high-profile synthesizer technology the
way rap has. Even after beating out thousands of groups from around the world,
Minneapolis rock-reggae band Ipso Facto has no label to show for its supposed
success. Perhaps more racially integrated bands would confound enough
categories to be successful, like the briefly successful 2-Tone movement in Britain
which was based on early skinhead support of soul, ska, reggae, oi! and punk.
Although the future of black music is uncertain, it
has nevertheless continued to survive the corporate liberal alliance of black
culture and big business. Racism is as strong as ever in the music industry,
the religious right and censorship interest groups, but is being identified and
discussed in brutally honest terms under the leadership of politicized rappers
like Chuck D. The "common sense" held by the cultural hegemony of
white corporate America is becoming a little less common, providing some hope
for the future of black culture and rock & roll.
