When the levee broke

Whom does hip-hop speak for in 2005?

By Oliver Wang

UP UNTIL AUGUST , 2005 was shaping up to be hip-hop's Year of Crack. To be sure, rap music has always had a love affair with cocaine – the 1983 hit "White Lines" was actually a pro-coke anthem before Melle Mel was forced to flip it as a "just say no" warning. The crack wars of the 1980s were retold in cinematic detail by mid-1990s rappers like the Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep. Most recently, 50 Cent and Clipse have based their personas on their past lives of flipping fish scale.

However, crack has undergone a transformation, something my colleague Hua Hsu first pointed out to me. Once the symbol of black despair and misery, crack has been rehabilitated: Kanye West now compares his songs to "Crack Music," while Juelz Santana boasts, "I Am Crack." Gone are the days of Ice Cube's "A Bird in the Hand" or Jay-Z's "D'Evils," where drug dealing was a necessary evil for survival: Hustling rocks has become an authenticity marker, badge of honor, ghetto chic. This is no more brilliantly (and perversely) seen than by how Atlanta's Young Jeezy sparked a national trend by designing a scowling snowman logo (snow = cocaine, get it?) that's been bootlegged in swap meets and banned in high schools. Crack goes Paul Frank.

To be sure, cocaine is a powerful metaphor for addiction, power, and wealth, but by boasting about mastering the crack game, rappers have largely elided how coke destroyed a quarter century of hard-won African American economic and social progress. Both CIA conspiracists and Freakanomics scholars can agree upon the fact that crack was like a cluster bomb, ravaging neighborhoods, tearing apart families, and filling cells and coffins. The grimmest irony of 2005 is that while rappers were celebrating a drug that devastated black communities, an actual black city was being washed away before our eyes.

From the margins

Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans and the even more horrific human disaster that followed should have been a clarion call to Americans everywhere. Even President George W. "What, Me Worry?" Bush was forced to concede that this nation's record on race and poverty has been abysmal. You would think hip-hop would have had much to say about this.

Whether or not you believe in the idea of the "golden era" of hip-hop and politics, it's undeniable that circa 1990, rap music was diverse enough that "Free Africa" anthems and anti-police polemics could sidle up alongside popular party jams, gangsta tales, and battle raps. Back then, hip-hop was speaking from the margins – everything seemed subversive. Fifteen years later, hip-hop has annexed the center, culturally and economically. With that kind of unparalleled access to the media and influence in the public sphere, you might have expected a chorus of outrage or calls to action. Instead, what you mostly heard was West's nervous, stumbling rebuke on NBC: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

In a sign of how far rappers have come financially, it was relatively easy for moguls like Sean "Diddy" Combs or Jay-Z to open their checkbooks and drop $1 million into relief efforts. But silken pockets also appear to come attached to a velvet gag: West remains the only high-profile artist to say anything critical about the racial and class dimensions of the Gulf Coast disaster. Notably, as the year's most powerful and visible rapper, 50 Cent chose to play house negro by publicly criticizing West and claiming that the Katrina disaster was a result of an "act of God" rather than government incompetence.

Much work to be done

To be sure, we shouldn't overlook the strong leadership role that Mississippi's David Banner has taken as both a vocal critic and grassroots mobilizer. NOLA's own Master P and Juvenile have also help lead relief efforts, and, yes, even the Snowman, Young Jeezy, has done his part, sharing his Atlanta estate with displaced families. Moreover, several artists, including the Legendary KO ("George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People") and Public Enemy ("Hell No, We Ain't All Right") rushed relevant songs to the Internet and mix tapes. Most importantly, thousands from the hip-hop generation are actively rebuilding NOLA and mounting resettlement efforts for survivors.

However, most hip-hop artists have been conspicuously mute on Katrina and a host of other social issues, ranging from the war in Iraq to rising inequality in health care, housing, and education. To be fair, it's harder than ever for critical voices to make it through a media filter that's only grown tighter with the consolidation of radio and television. Yet you can't hold the Clear Channels of the world purely responsible. Hip-hop's moral apathy has been a long-term affair; it just took the events of 2005 to put it all into stark relief. Was this inevitable once hip-hop muscled its way into the mainstream? How does one chant down Babylon when you've helped renovate it?

I would never want to write a eulogy for hip-hop, and I'm not trying to write one here. Still, I think what 2005 has demonstrated are the limits of hip-hop's potential for social relevancy – not to mention change. Perhaps hip-hop's success has made artists too complacent to rattle the machine they used to rage against, or maybe hip-hop simply is the machine now.

I'm heartened by the fact that, as apathetic as things look at the top, at the grassroots level, hip-hop is being used more and more as a unifying force by community organizers, most of whom don't need to rock a mic just to move a crowd. I don't doubt that hip-hop will continue to inspire people's imaginations around the globe and fuel their desire to create better worlds. I don't, however, maintain as much faith that the music will do that imagining for us. In this year, more than any other, I'm reminded of the closing verses to Mos Def's 1999 song, "Hip Hop": "Hip-hop will simply amaze you / Praise you / Pay you / Do whatever you say to / But black, it can't save you."

Oliver Wang's top 10

1. Kanye West, Late Registration (Roc-A-Fella)

2. Edan, Beauty and the Beat (Lewis)

3. Beanie Sigel, The B.Coming (Roc-A-Fella)

4. Quasimoto, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas (Stones Throw)

5. The Game, The Documentary (Aftermath/G Unit/Interscope)

6. Zion I, True and Livin' (LiveUp)

7. Young Jeezy, Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (Def Jam)

8. Atmosphere, You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having (Rhymesayers)

9. Juelz Santana, What the Game's Been Missing (Def Jam)

10. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Naturally (Daptone)