Racism in American Pop Culture.

J. Cole (34) on the cover of GQ magazine

Post Malone, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Cardi B, Khalid and Travis Scott. Sound familiar? They are one of the most loved artists in the music industry today. despite than the fact that most of them are African American, what they share is this similarity; all of them are Hip-Hop artists that took over our pop culture.

First developed in the United States in the 1970s,  Hip-Hop bases its origin heavily on the African American background. Due to its heritage, the music genre did not get much attention from the public after its birth. In other words, Hip-Hop was nowhere near of becoming a pop culture. The sad truth is, the American music industry primarily consists of white people and give unfair opportunities to the other minorities.

Then how was Hip-Hop able to overcome these circumstances and dominate today's pop culture? Well, we should look into the history of Hip-Hop music. Ever since its birth in the 70s, Hip-Hop had been gaining its fanbase ever so slightly compared to other white dominating genres until the 80s. The music industry was even racially segregated to an extent that there were radio stations seperated for white music and African American music. But why is that a limiting factor? Because even today's American society, white people take up about 77% of the whole American population while African American people only take up about 13%. To put this into perspective, even if a Hip-Hop artist reached every single listener of the African American stations, he or she would have only been able to reach 1 out of 10 American people. Imagine how difficult it would have been for Hip-Hop artists to survive in this era.

However, due to its uniqueness and merits that makes Hip-Hop stand out from the crowd, white audiences started jumping on board in the 90s. And that is how the golden era of Hip-Hop had begun. Its diversity, ability to discuss various subject matters other than love, experimental sounds were more than enough to inspire the best Hip-Hop artists of the generation such as Biggie, 2 Pac and Nas. Hip-Hop finally gained recognition that it deserved from the majority racial group. So it seems like racial discrimination had diminished right? Nope. Cultural racism exists within our society at individual's unconscious level. As a result, many Hip-Hop artists were hired by mainstream record labels and used as nothing but mere clowns to satisfy new demands in the market for Hip-Hop music. This industrialization of Hip-Hop made it possible to become a part of pop culture. But in return, the core values and spirit of Hip-Hop were somewhat destroyed. After the death of 2Pac and Biggie, Hip-Hop was a lost ship without a captain. Ironically, the new captain to save Hip-Hop was not an African American artist but it was Eminem.

"Look around my (man) white people have snatched the sound." J. Cole raps in his song "Fire Squad". It is true that Eminem helped the Hip-Hop genre reach every corner of the planet Earth. But it is rather a sad truth. Eminem suffered to set a foot in the industry as a white rapper and targeted with reverse racism in the industry, everyone pointed a finger at Eminem for being a white rapper. But at the end of the day, he was able to achieve his tremendous success because of people's racial preference. Eminem represented what almost every white person affiliated with pop culture wanted to portray themselves as, a culturally diverse white person who can relate to African Americans. Not understanding the true roots of the music, white people accepted Hip-Hop the way they wanted and made it "pop". Other than Eminem, white rappers like Macklemore, G-Eazy and Iggy Azalea gained popularity by manipulating this unethical tendency of white audiences.

"Started from the bottom now we are here" as Drake raps in his single "Started from the bottom", Hip-Hop has come a long way from the very bottom to the very top of the music industry. This spirit is still persistent in the music. However, the ones that actually start from the bottom and get to the top are getting increasingly rare as they are still not treated equally. One might argue otherwise, that it has improved a lot for the minorities to prosper in the industry with the help of social media, and also that everybody gets equal chances and opportunities. However, the reality says that we've still got a long way to go as it is especially apparent if we take a look at the number of African American artists awarded at award shows each year compared to the whites. This society is still heavily ruled by white people in favor of white people.

I guess the point that I am trying to make in this blog post is that we all need to have some racial sensitivity so that we can distinguish wrongs and rights on our own. Do you tell yourself that you are not racist because you enjoy only a fraction of a culture which in return benefits you? Is your intention of listening to hip-Hop music just to fit in with the "Pop Culture" set by people around you so that you can earn that desired social status? All the while you act indifferently when you are faced with an African person in real life, for instance? Centuries after the abolishment of African slavery, our society is still bounded by prehistoric cultural racism. Enjoying Hip-Hop music is good but making Hip-Hop culture the pop culture and pretending to be part of it without having any knowledge of where it comes from or what it really is should not be the end of it.

Written by SeungMin Baik (1806188281)