The Day Hip Hop Changed Forever

In December of 1995 a good friend of mine told me about this mix tape he received from some guy, that knew some guy that knew who knows some intern at Columbia. Columbia had an imprint called Ruffhouse records. RuffHouse was home to Hip Hop icon Schooly D, also on the label was critically acclaimed underground group the Fugees. So I am listening to this mix tape that was known to be 6 degrees of separation removed from both Kevin Bacon and Chris Schwartz Label Head of Ruffhouse. On this mix tape was the rough cut of a song called Fugee-La. That album went on to sell 18 Million albums worldwide.

The following February, President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It was the first bill signed in cyberspace and the first bill signed at the Library of Congress. On this Day Hip Hop changed forever. The bill that President Clinton signed obliterated the last line of defense against the legal monopolization of the telecommunications industry. In a nut shell, there would be no more separation of geographical lines or the prohibition of cable companies owning television stations or companies owning both AM frequency and FM frequency radio stations. Clear Channel, Viacom and Disney were free to rein capitalistic terror on the industries they were once a part of, but would now control completely.

Clear Channel is a subsidiary of CC Media Holdings; the company was taken public in 2008 by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, Inc. Why is this important and how does this affect Hip Hop? Well, on Clear Channels way to going public and the really big bucks, Clear Channel did two things; First they ruled the outdoor media advertising world and secondly they became the largest owner of full-power AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations and twelve radio channels on XM Satellite Radio, also they are the largest pure-play radio station owner and operator in the country. What that means is that on Feb. 8, 1996 Hip Hop fans all over the world lost choice.

Along with Viacom (owners of MTV and BET) and Disney (Owners of ESPN), Clear Channel hijacked popular culture and along with it Hip Hop. Hip Hop culture was virtually lost and in its place Rap music was lauded as a consumable item fit for commercial sale. McDonalds was now free to inject a brown face happily dancing to the beat of his own drum. Subway could now use imagery once thought too far out of the mainstream and Snoop Dogg was no longer a murder investigation suspect, but everyone’s favorite smoked out O.G. Hip Hop was changing and with it big money was at stake! Clear Channel could record it and market it, Viacom would film and broadcast it, and Disney through ESPN could sell it as part of its sports culture. The perfect marriage! No more pesky East Coast vs. West Coast battles; no more unsavory album and magazine cover art; gone were the days of anti-establishment, revolutionary individuals and groups. Hip Hop through its new purveyors and owners would achieve hominy.

The new millennium would see more of the same. No longer would Hip Hop suffer through geographical boundaries and dialectal entanglements. There would be a new Hip Hop, one in which a kid in Oakland could have as his favorite artist, a Southern rapper who was from a hood the kid never heard of before; downloading the rapper’s album on iTunes. Record sales would be replaced, in importance, with ring tone downloads and ring back buys; concerts have become the only place that artists are available and of course there is a company to handle that for every artist as well-Live Nation. So, the kid from Oakland got the same product as the Kid from Cleveland, Georgia or NYC. Choice was lost on the radio, in physical cd purchases, and now at the venue level were groups of like artist are bundled for consumption and local artist are relegated to opening acts or even worse, pre-opening acts.To many this seemed like the best thing for Hip Hop, if not Rap music; one stop shop and everyone deserved their place in the industry. Everyone would let everyone else “do them” and that meant artists no longer needed to fight for Hip Hop’s hierarchy; it would be pre-determined by Clear Channel and set in motion by Viacom, then blended into night sports highlights by Disney via ESPN.

The only problem with this new world order is that Hip Hop was never meant to be a spectator sport; never meant to be a passionless vehicle rode to the riches. Hip Hop as founded in the parks of NYC, in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn and put on display in the clubs of Manhattan, was a contact sport. Hip Hop was started as a contact sport combining dance, djing and emceeing along with Graffiti art performed by combatants who battled with grit for the glory of becoming legendary in their hood. Wherever that hood might be; it was the local connection and feel that made Hip Hop spread to Japan and Australia; that had Chinese kids break dancing in Tiananmen Square as the tanks rolled past. This feel is what made the King of Popular Culture himself (Michael Jackson) integrate the battle stomps, moves and war cries of Hip Hop into his own performance fabric. Homogenizing Hip Hop was not like white washing Jazz or even Blues; it was akin to bleaching Gospel. You could not change Hip Hop’s DNA without destroying its cultural relevance.

What Clear Channel and the like did was not change Hip Hop; they effectively killed it! Without dancing, djing and graffiti, we no longer have what is intrinsically known as Hip Hop. What we are left with is a hybrid form of Rap music where the entrance fee is only a hot YouTube post or the number of followers you have on Twitter. What do we make of this? Well if fans of Hip Hop would like to see it not go the way of both the Dodo Bird and Disco music, we fight! We fight to keep our arts just that and not consumable items ready to be ditched at the sign of something shiny and new. What we do is not accept mediocrity as staple pillars of the culture. Hip Hop can and should be amebic, it should change and mutate and give us thrills as new hybrids merge into the larger fabric. We should not fight to keep Hip Hop old and stale, but vibrant in its new expressions of itself. Most important for the “hood” we should fight to keep the genre as viable financial instrument for us by us and not simply a tool we hand to someone else to shape our future.