As I prepare to step back from the mic, I look back at what I've said and where I am, and feel that familiar silence of performing in an empty room. One of the key elements to hip-hop is audience interaction and input, because whether the audience props or critiques, they let the speaker know whether his "shit is hitting" while he is freestyling rather than after he is off stage. Obviously, this academic medium does not allow for as much participation or response, but instead of using this "conclusion" for closure, I would like to use it to suggest room for future conversation.
Hip-hop is a loaded expression and perhaps some of my readers are still wondering why or what right a middle-class white female has getting (w)rapped up in its' webs. Rap music has an important significance for expressing inner-city African-American oppression. It is a powerful force for celebrating black cultural values and narrative and I hope no one has confused my work with a dismissal of hip-hop's cultural and social importance in black communities. But hip-hop is by no means isolated to these areas and just because it has a specific and significant meanings for those that it speaks to and for does not mean that they are the only ones that warrant study. As I have shown throughout this project, hip-hop has equally significant meanings for those outside of hip-hop's ideological space and body who are exposed to its ideologies. These youths' reception of hip-hop's form, content, body and logic are key to understanding the politics of reception and larger social and cultural relationships.
This project has attempted to begin this understanding in what are sure to prove two important arenas for these relationships: a third-world urban center and the Internet. Third-world cities are experiencing unprecedented population and Western media influxes. These generations of youth are going to soon make up the majority of the worlds' population and their relationships between Western and traditional cultural expressions are going to be key to the way they see the world. The Internet is an equally important space for future generations. It is becoming increasingly integrated into production, political and social relationships and is shaping how people relate to each other. Both of these places and spaces are the sites of significant identity formation and our identification with the "other." Thus, we can not afford to ignore their processes of meaning-making. We must attempt to understand the structures and factors that influence their struggle between ideologies because they are only going to become more important in the changing demographics and technologies.
Obviously, even with as focused a subject as hip-hop, my project has barely begun this exploration. I have avoided many crucial issues, the most obvious of which is gender and sexuality. These issues could more than constitute their own project and so instead of struggling to only touch on them, I have left them out in favor of having more time to work on my other foci. I am also aware that many of my observations and arguments share some important space with current work on ideas like hegemony, discourse, essentialism, and post-modernism. My limited exposure to these theoretical models and ideas and time constraints prevented me from applying some of my findings to these ongoing discussions. Hopefully these absences will provide others with areas for further exploration on how these dynamics fit with other studies.
I do hope, however, that this project has succeeded at beginning to describe some of the relationships between hip-hop's form, body and context and their disembodied and mediated signifiers of image, language, structure and style. By looking at capital and production logic, analyzing the use of language and violence and examining the way appropriators define and differentiate hip-hop's many images, I have attempted to show how and why people relate to hip-hop's ideological images and authenticity. Hip-hop is obviously a heterogeneous medium and expression and it has too much at stake to be confined to limiting definitions. These contentious and clashing ideologies and appropriations are equally complex and can not be reduced to a convenient conclusion. But by understanding these ideology struggles, I think we can learn to embrace these tensions for the ways they resist hegemonic oversimplification. Thus, I would like to end my turn at the mic by passing it back to kari orr:
When all the MC's are friends, and they just freestyle and don't battle, the skills decline. I can show you examples in my city, and I'm sure you can see it in your own... Peace, lack of conflict, leads to stagnation. And hip-hop is not beautiful. Let me flip it, hip-hop is not just beautiful. You can't characterize this culture with just one word. Especially using sweet mass marketing suburban friendly terms, that don't mean anything. I really could go on, but the floor is yours"(kari orr, 10/18/96)
Continue to Sources: Interviews, Internet Conversations, Discography and Bibliography