machismo and urban music

7/31/2019 Machismo and Urban Music

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Machismo and urban music

Sex and stereotype for the price of 50 cent

Representation is, as we know, a key area in Media Studies atany level. One of the key aims of this area of study at A2 islearning to engage with postmodern ideas about identity andperformance in the media, which can then be applied throughthe course, to exam units and coursework alike. With this ismind, the phenomena of 50 Cent, aka Curtis Jackson, is aworthwhile case study, due partly to his popularity and partlydue to the extremity of his mediated persona.

50 is sexist, misogynistic, materialistic, arrogant and a

proponent of violence as a solution to the many problems hecomes across in the Ghetto. All in all he is a shocking rolemodel; this however has not deterred his many legions of fanswho lap up his records, computer game and recently releasedfilm Get Rich Or Die Tryin.

50s success is predicated on certain ideas about blacknessand the black male in particular. The difficulty is learning tosee beyond the supposed veracity of 50 Cents persona: asurvivor of the Ghetto, shot at nine times, a former crack

dealer who recounts his adventures in his songs. The thug lifehip-hop image is as much a construction as any; the simplenotion that 50 is somehow keepin it real is nave and ill-construed.

If youre an A2 student writing about Gangsta rap for yourcoursework after making a music video, you need to make aclose study of his texts and a careful analysis of them as mediaproducts, in order to be able to see beyond a glamorousintoxicating theatre of bling and into the socio-economic

reality of black America. Furthermore some understanding ofways in which the black American male has been representedover time would add credibility to any coursework piece thatfeatured Gangsta Rap. For this reason it would be worth yourwhile to have a look at the work of Michelle Wallace and otherauthors who have explored black conciousness.

The context: a divided nationFlash back to the summer of2005: Hurricane Katrina and the fracas in the Superbowl inNew Orleans. News reports after Hurricane Katrina hit New

Orleans revealed America as a country sharply dividedbetween the haves and have-nots the majority of the


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struggling poor left to fend for themselves in the city whereblacks and whites alike were forced to desperate measuressimply to stay alive after the havoc of the hurricane. Lootingwent on, some opportunistic, some out of desperation, as thesurvivors desperately tried to hold on in the decimated city.

The response of the authorities was famously indifferent andpunitive, once they did arrive. Protecting peoples privateproperty was the priority, rather than the lives of the victims.

The police did not hesitate to shoot dead those they thoughtwere taking advantage of the disaster to steal. The event wasa debacle and a sad indictment of the state of Americansociety. It was a harsh illustration of the extreme chasmbetween rich and poor in the richest country on the earth andthe lack of any kind of safety net to protect those who struggle

at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Given the reality of a country with inadequate health insuranceand social security, those who do claw their way from thebottom of the heap have about them an almost mythicalquality. They have triumphed out of a do or die situationwhere the meek certainly do not inherit the earth and thetough underdog who succeeds despite these odds is fabled, hisriches to be flaunted and celebrated. The way Gangsta Rapglorifies the trappings of wealth and the success of this

representation is a consequence of this extreme polarisation ofAmerican society, which has left more Afro-centric and lessovertly materialistic rappers such as Guru and the JungleBrothers on the margins.

50 Cents-worth of sex and stereotypes 50s image isovertly sexual, his torso revealed, his pelvis jutting archlyabove his low slung trousers a flamboyant display ofpotentially explosive testosterone. His good looks slay theladies (bitches and hoes) who drape themselves over him,

willing and able when ever he wants them; but, as he puts itshe wants to be wifey u uh not likely. This black male is thestereotypical commitment-phobe and hustler, the latest in along line of black outlaws, stretching back through Ice T toShaft and beyond.

This is an image that parts of the black community and otherssee as another form of racial exploitation; they ask how theycan hope to inculcate respect and self esteem in the youngwhen the apparent peak of a rap superstars achievement is to

sell his women. 50s pimping, as he tells it through his rapping,is really nothing more than a pastiche of certain motifs that


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crop up time and time again in the popular Americanimagination of the voracious sexuality of the black man, or thebuck as Michelle Wallace describes him (see below). Manyhowever still worry about how this image impacts on ournotion of black masculinity and contributes to the problems inour inner cities. Few see it as positive. Nameless facelesswomen drift through the Gangsta Rappers videos, batties inthe air, breasts served up for the audiences delectation; 50,the m*** f*** P I M P ringmaster surveys all he sees, a universeof Bentleys, Hummers, Cristal and Dom Perignon: a glossyunapologetic paean to consumerism and a perfect standard-bearer for the American Dream of prosperity.

Construction and controlOf course 50 Cents image is aconstruction; no-one would seriously try to confuse the stageperformance of most music stars with what goes on in theirprivate life. The hustling, pimping and hoeing are all part of acarefully controlled image designed to sell as many records aspossible, to excite, scare and enrage middle America, andmaybe just maybe to register with under-privileged blackkids (if they havent cottoned onto the whiff of a sell out).Ideally for the music industry, his fans give testimony to theirheros struggles in the Ghetto, and feed the mythology of hisauthenticity. They may dream of a better life through

succeeding at school and college, but when 50 talks of his pastlife as a hustler, its somehow forgotten that for most of thedowntrodden kids in urban America and elsewhere, the realitythat awaits is the mundane struggle of the working class; 50Cents prosperity is a by-product of his rapping and music, nothis criminality even if this is what has inspired his music. Theextreme theatricality of his image as a performer has becomeinseparable from Curtis Jackson the human being; it is as if apervasive racism inextricably entwines the posturing andmachismo of an artist like 50 Cent with the behaviour and

aspirations of young black men both in the States and indeedhere in the UK.

You need to show that you are able to separate therepresentation of Gangsta Rap, its conventions and its artistssuch as 50 Cent from real life crime. You need to be aware ofthe fact that although certain record bosses and music starsinvolved with Gangsta Rap have indeed been involved incriminality, this has been heavily mythologized, and is beingused to manufacture a postmodern (that is, a mediated and

constructed) authenticity in a world where so much recordedpopular music is more obviously cynically packaged and


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marketed (the product of shows like the X Factor, for example).

At A2, if you have chosen to work within the rap genre, youshould be wise to these machinations when you write up thecritical evaluation of your music video. 50 Cent is there to be

bought and sold, just like the women he scorns, but in his case,by the record, film and computer games industry. The realityof his past needs to be contextualised as another marketingtool rather than a badge of his street credentials.

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