"Here we go (here we go), here we go (here we go). Did we miss the show?" - Doug E. Fresh, The Show
The Big Payback: The History of The Business of Hip-Hop by Dan Charnas (New American Library, 2010). In Album Five (the book is broken down in albums and sides rather than chapters and sections), I was reminded of what hip-hop meant to me in junior high and high school. I don't remember feeling like I didn't have access to hip-hop. Perhaps because I had young parents and had spent time in several parts of the country by that time. Or maybe I just thought the ways that I had access to hip hop—from receiving my first rap record, Doug E. Fresh's The Show when I was 7 or 8 and realizing that the B side, La Di Da Di, had bad words on it so I had to turn the volume down on my Cookie Monster record player to listening to Eazy E and Beastie Boys cassettes with my 7th grade friend (who was Jewish) in his house while his mom worked—was the way you were supposed to hear it. Hip Hop was for behind closed doors or getting the, mostly, sanitized versions on one hour video shows on MTV and BET (and soon on pay per video station The Box). I listened to KDAY occasionally (with its poor signal) but when Power 106 started playing hip-hop regularly and announced proudly it was where hip-hop lives...well, it laid plain what I knew inherently to be true: this music and culture had power. And it was only just scratching the surface.
What I didn't know, however, was how impactful it was as a business. I guess I've never really understood that. I've always thought of hip-hop as culturally powerful. I was a member of Urban Art Family in college because we were going to change the world through the four elements mixed with some civic and social sensibilities. Even as I grew up a true West Coast head with N.W.A. and Ice Cube tapes filling my walkman, I was always more Poor Righteous Teachers, Dead Prez, and Native Tongue than the freaky tales of pimpin' and hustlin' common in Cali. This is the world of Jeff Chang's Can't Stop, Won't Stop (which I let somebody borrow a few years ago and has now disappeared. I'll need to download it on the ol' eReader) and that book fit like a glove. Informative and invigorating, sure, but familiar. His history of hip-hop were stories that, even if I didn't know the specifics, I had felt and mostly lived through.
Charnas's book, however, is about what's going on behind the scenes. About the people who figured out how to make the culture viable and sustainable in the only ways that matter in America, by making sure the paper stacked up. Every story was a revelation, from the racism and the prejudices of the music business that the rise of rap succeeded in chipping away at to the transformation of radio and the rise of the young street hustler to CEO (without losing much of himself in the process).
We often get cynical about hip-hop today and what it means and what it's about but the truth is that it still serves to change everything it touches. Whether it's the clothing industry or television and movies or the biggest brands in the world like Coca-Cola or advertising and marketing, it matters. Hip-hop is power. Just ask yourself if you think our current President would be there without hip-hop? No?
One of the people who came to see Bernard off was a fellow student who had come on a few occasions to see Bernard’s speeches and protests, and hung out with Bernard in the student center at Harkness Commons. He was a well-known guy around campus himself but unlike Bernard, he didn’t find his fame from rabble-rousing. He was a stellar student, the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. And he arrived just in time to see his buddy Bernard being blindfolded and placed in front of a piñata.
The managing editor of The Source, stick in hand, took a first swing at his uncharted future—something to do with hip-hop, multiracial partnerships, and social change.
What James Bernard couldn’t see was his friend Barack Obama in front of him, smiling.
From hanging out with the founders of The Source to being the most important person in the world. Perhaps the real big payback is that we've got a funky president.
Highly highly highly recommended.
