ACADEMY OF MARXISM CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
ACADEMY OF MARXISM CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
ACADEMY OF MARXISM CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
Sam Berkson
Abstract
Responding to the BBC 4 documentary, The Hip Hop World News, the author examines a number of debates that the programme, narrated by Rodney P, a pioneer of British ra
From: Race & Class 2017 59 (2).
Editor: Wang Yi
p music, and a believer in the revolutionary potential of hip hop culture, throws up. For hip hop also has many reactionary elements and has become big business for the corporations and rap ‘stars’ involved in its production. Beyond just pointing to individual rappers who have been ‘conscious’ political voices, such as Public Enemy’s Chuck D, we are shown structures embedded in the origins and ‘elements’ of hip hop that continue to make it a ‘voice of the voiceless’. Some people, like Lord Jamar, who is interviewed on the documentary, have argued that hip hop as a black art form can only be performed by black artists, yet, as Rodney P points out, hip hop has been adopted everywhere to express and transmit the situations and struggles of marginalised and oppressed groups all over the globe.