RACE AND HIP-HOP: A CLARIFICATION
Some of you (like...4 people?) might have caught a C-Span 2 broadcast of a panel I was on in Chicago from the other month. The panel was put together by author Bakari Kitwana (Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop) and it was slated to be a discussion about race and hip-hop, a topic that, as some of you may know, I've dialogued about in the past.
During the course of the panel, a question came up as to whether there was a changing audience for hip-hop, one that was divorced from the music/culture's roots in Blackness and I answered, yes, I did think that was happening and had been happening for a while. This next point is very important:
I used Aesop Rock - and then his label, Definitive Jux - as an example of this phenom in motion, where there is a sub-community of White rap fans who are largely divorced it seems - both culturally and spatially - from Black rap fans. However, in the spur of the moment, I fear that I may have been coming off like I was suggesting something like, "Def Jux makes rap for white kids."
This was not my intent.
Just to be clear, I do NOT think Def Jux makes hip-hop for white kids. I know one of their artists quite well on a personal level - Mr. Lif - and I know that he absolutely wants his music to be heard by as diverse an audience as possible and i have no doubt that his feelings are shared by other label-mates like Camu Tao, Murs, and El-P himself. This was a case, on my part, of being hasty with a public comment that I should have thought through more and articulated better.
I do stand by the suggestion that Def Jux is perceived that way. I hear conversations all the time by folks who see the label and especially artists like Aesop, as primarily appealing only to white audiences - whether true or not. And that perception has the power to become a self-fulfilling myth. It wasn't my intent to exacerbate that perception however (though one could say that even drawing attention to it has the end result of enforcing it).
I know me saying this won't likely change Def Jux fans' opinion of me or my comments but I felt it important to clear the air while I still could. (Note: this is why I hate being interviewed on the fly which is rather ironic since I interview other people all the time).
Conclusion: O-Dub thinks Def Jux makes music for the people (but he doesn't think "the people" share that same conclusion).
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