As cultures and subcultures continue to be heavily disseminated amongst mass media, the question of gatekeeping is frequently brought up in the name of protecting a groups authenticity. Simply, gatekeeping is the act of controlling or limiting access to something and in the online sphere where information and discourse is generally assumed to be public, it becomes contentious to attempt to withold someone from practicing something based solely on one interaction.
As we learned in AYA this week, hip-hop started as a modern iteration of preserving oral traditions in the African American community, sharing histories, and the present state of their surroundings. So much of its impact stemmed from it’s raw representation of the Black expereince, especially in New York, and the ways that it resisted commodification from external forces. The communal nature of street culture promoted a dynamic process of creation, necessitating participants to be active supporters of the music as well as authors of it. If one wasn’t creating songs, they could contribute to the scene through practicing dances or experimenting with fashion and other visual cultures associated with hip-hop at the time. Rappers like Nas, spoke on the power of spoken word and hip-hop in promoting youth activism in the Bay Area – “All I need is one mic to spread my voice to the whole world” – which attested to music’s attractive power to have widespread influence. While spreading revolutionary messages to a broader public seems ideal for social change, many argue that hip-hop has lost its true nature in the process.
The commodification of its visuals and appropriation of the “old” hip-hop experience has lead many critics to view newer hip-hop as diluted and no longer the radical catalyst that it was. The model of intensely reciprocal street performances and an interpersonal trade network of tapes faded away and the face of hip-hop was now large, impersonal stadium shows and lyrics on gaudy lifestyles.
Brand Nubian, a hip-hop group from New York that formed in the late 80’s was one of the pioneers in alternative hip-hop, influenced by the Black Nationalist Movement and Islam.
So what changed? Shouldn’t it be celebrated that artists who came from marginalized communities are now recognized for their talent? Or is it betraying the authentic, personal beginnings of hip-hop to push messages for the masses in spaces far away from where they started. In a way, by deferring to the wills of large record company, artists in general lose the agency that independently creating offered them, and consequently becoming apart of systems they rejected at the start. Since the product is now run through the filters of a corporation with the goal of selling to a mass of consumers, it could no longer serve to represent and act as a verbal shield for their community. Even then, it can be argued that these celebrities can be seen as role models for people that “made it” using their longtime traditions and that the “American Dream” really is possible for anyone. Still, the dilemma between stardom and community continues and as modes of communication fluctuate there will always be room for new artists to evolve the state of social change in media.
Communicating Change 