Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Paper
Mia Weisfeld
Professor Alexander Shashko
AfroAmerican 154
03/03/21
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Paper
The origins of hip hop come from a grandiose evolution of musical styles that were started and carried out by Black Americans. Hip hop and the many other art forms fostered by Black Americans stemmed from a necessity for belonging to an American culture that constantly ostracized them and then adapted their culture into trends for the mainstream white audience. The creators of hip hop envisioned an art form that wasn’t dictated or made to be exclusive by white audiences, but was created and carried out by Black people sharing the Black American experience. Their expectations came to fruition because of the evolution of sound system culture in the Bronx, the start of Def Jam Records, the authenticity of the hip hop groups, and the shift of hip hop from a form of escapism to a form of expression.
After gaining Independence, Jamaica adopted sound system culture, which was a public musical performance by a DJ using a mix board, large speakers, amplifiers, etc. These DJs, called selectors, created the dubplate, or records with the instrumental on one side and the vocals on the other, enabling selectors to lengthen the song to their liking. There was a shift when this art form reached the Bronx. DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican immigrant, had the innovative idea to shorten a track to the most exciting section of a song and repeat that section, so people could continually enjoy the highlight of the record. This became what is known as a breakbeat. Herc’s discovery of the breakbeat revolutionized the music industry and set the groundwork for the upcoming birth of hip hop. There are many elements that can be recognized from its Jamaican roots. Break dance battle, The Dozens, and freestyle battles can both be traced back to sound system clashes. All were used to settle gang issues instead of using violence. DJ’s, like Jamaican selectors, did the same crate digging for records and created a hierarchy over what obscure breakbeats they could find. It became increasingly popular for DJs to partner up with MCs to rhyme over these breakbeats. The song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang officially evolved MCing from a casual occurrence at a party to the pinnacle of the hip hop art form. As The Rap Yearbook states, this song, “…was the first true rap song, which is to say it was recorded by a group that billed itself as a rap group and sold as a song that presented itself as a rap song” (49). Instead of a song being an MC rapping to a DJ’s breakbeat, The Sugarhill Gang made rapping its own art form. This awoke the second hip hop movement and served as a prime example of the artistic innovation of Black artists without the interception or appropriation by white people.
The start of Def Jam records was an imperative stepping stone to the rise of hip hop in popular culture. In the mid 80s, there was not yet a market for hip hop; mainstream record labels just weren’t interested. Then, Russel Simmons and Rick Rubin began Def Jam Records. Def Jam introduced Run DMC, a group that introduced America to hip hop. “Hip hop was offering a much more radical, much more successful voluntary desegregation plan. ‘Rap reintegrated American culture,’” Chang says in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. Other groups had attempted to conform to social norms and the trends of their genres. Run DMC was a window into what life was like in the Bronx, which made them accessible to Black audiences in New York and around the world. At the end of the 80s, Def Jam’s commercialization of the genre at both a national and international level proved the success of hip hop and the vision that they had for an authentic Black art form that both spread awareness of social issues and still had musical appeal.
Hip Hop creators’ authenticity set them apart from any other genre on the market. Creatives like Russel Simmons, Rick Rubin, Public Enemy, and Run DMC fought against the appropriation of their works. Even going back to just the 1920s, Black culture was constantly appropriated by white people who wanted to enjoy Black artistry and culture without including Black people. This can be seen in the popularity of Black face. When watching the evolution of musical genres paired with the sociopolitical climate of the decades, it is easy to see that racism played a detrimental role in the division of white and Black people in music. During the transitional periods from gospel and blues all the way to disco, Black people were constantly denied the limelight, as well as the credit for the genres that they built, by the white radio hosts, record store owners, and music executives. When disco rose in popularity, Black artists tried to fit into mainstream disco by engaging in trends created by white people who monopolized the disco scene. In Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Chang cites a quote from music critic Frank Owen’s article that said, “…Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin were creating ‘the first Black music that hasn’t had to dress itself up in showbiz glamour and upwardly mobile mores in order to succeed.” When hip hop came about, it was revolutionary because Black artists were no longer trying to fit into the box of popular media. Rubin and Simmons saw an opportunity in the market and fought to make a name for themselves and Run DMC, among other artists who later signed to Def Jam. Building on this new innovation, it was MCs and producers like Eric B. & Rakim that made hip hop become more studio based instead of street performance based. The rise of sampling made breakbeats more accessible. This increased the popularity of recording studios and gave more opportunities to MCs because an artist was able to express more of an emotional range and didn’t have to have a strong voice to be an artist; Now, anybody could be an MC. This shift permanently changed the culture and commercialization of hip hop.
Hip hop began as a form of escapism, but with the change in the intent of the genre, the music reflected the everyday struggles of Black people in the Bronx. Reagan’s presidency from 1981-1989 was great for white people, but his approval rating for Black people was 12%. This was due to many factors including his denouncement of civil rights groups, dog whistle racism, alignment with the Southern Strategy, large taxation on the middle and lower class, and supply-side economics. Hip hop arose, at first, as a way to get away from the adversities that Black people dealt with in their everyday lives. The people of the Bronx would let loose instead of internalizing the gross negligence of the government towards the societal disadvantages they faced. The song “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash in 1982 transformed rap from a form of escapism to a way for Black people to relate to each other over the hardships they faced as a community. Chang shares how this was in response to Reaganonmics, which disproportionately affected marginalized communities. Grandmaster Flash brought politics into rap and helped to make way for more groups trying to incite change through music, like Public Enemy. According to The Rap Yearbook, Public Enemy is the greatest political rap group of all time. Their ability to voice the political, social, and societal concerns of Black people through songs like “Fight the Power”, which advocated for free speech and combatting unjust power dynamics, and “Bring the Noise”, which called out the effects of policing in areas where marginalized people lived.
By the end of the 1980s, Black creatives had changed the landscape of the music industry and broken glass ceilings with the success of the hip hop genre. The achievement and popularity of a genre that was authentically Black created a space for Black musicians in the white dominated music industry and finally allowed for Black voices to be heard.
