IS HIP-HOP EVIL?

Thirty-year-old Thomas Chatterton Williams makes so many important arguments in his memoir/social critique, Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, and makes them so eloquently, that he should be familiar to us through spunky interviews on Oprah, Charlie Rose, and The Colbert Report. That his cool, icy analysis is, for some, too hot to handle might be one reason we don't hear more talk of him. Certainly, it would be very tricky to argue that his theme—the crisis with black youth—is not worth our attention.

Important or not, criticizing the culture of hip-hop is a quick way to get yourself slammed and even labeled as racist. But Williams comes honestly to his criticism. Unlike Bill Cosby—or me, for that matter—he grew up in a hip-hop neighborhood and experienced firsthand the lifestyle and thinking promulgated by it. Also, he actually loves the music. It's merely the genre's verbal messages—its over-the-top secular preaching—that he asks us to consider. The thesis of Losing My Cool is simply that by hyping up hip-hop to the exclusion of all else, you rob black youth (and all shades of youth) of the ability to experience other mindsets, other possibilities—other career choices.

Williams contends that thug-life fantasies are sold because they are profitable commodities—follow the money, follow the money—not because they capture the totality of the black experience. These fantasies distort reality in order to confuse children and get their money—in so doing, hip-hop is toying with heavy consequences. 

Williams's critique is melded with his story of growing up in a fairly tough New Jersey neighborhood. His progression beyond hip-hop was not merely an intellectual accomplishment but a personal one as well.

Thrilled by the piercing insights of Losing My Cool (which Penguin has just released in paperback), I couldn't resist throwing around some ideas from the book with the author. Below is our discussion.

—Marc Smirnoff

THE OXFORD AMERICAN: Please define "hip-hop culture," and tell us what you like about it.

THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS: Hip-hop culture is the way you reach for a bottle of water; it's the way you stand, how you walk, what you wear. It has a lot to do with how you speak. As I see it, it's a secular religion for which rap and hip-hop music and a lot of r&b these days provide the incessant soundtrack. Through this secular religion and culture, many of us are socialized into the world at large and we develop our ideas of what is real and authentic, interesting or irrelevant, important or trivial, accordingly. It's important to note that hip-hop culture is youth-driven and intensely adolescent by nature.

What I've always liked about hip-hop is the vividness of expression and inventiveness of the language. The wordplay that people like Black Thought or Redman excel at. I love the beats of a Dr. Dre, a DJ Premier or a Kanye West. When I was younger, of course, I loved the gaudy clothes. Now that I'm an adult, though, I think there is something truly disturbing about 25, 30, 35, 40-year-old men and women dressing by the standards and tastes of 15-year-olds. But when I was 15, that looked cool to me.

THE OA: If hip-hop is a "secular religion," what are its Top Commandments?

TCW: The number one commandment is that you have to be cool. This isn't a bad thing in itself. It all depends on how the group perceives and defines what is "cool." Way too often being cool is equivalent to being anti-intellectual, misogynistic, homophobic, hyper-materialistic, and even criminal.

What I dislike more than anything, though, is an idea that is often promoted through hip-hop music and culture, which is the idea of "keeping it real." Keeping it real often means, both implicitly and explicitly, that the degree to which one may be considered to be authentically black is the degree to which one can convincingly display some form of street credibility. I am extremely bothered by the self-hatred that hip-hop often emphasizes.

THE OA: Thomas, this is fascinating stuff and I want to make sure I completely understand your analysis. Are you saying that it is possible to be a black person and NOT "display some form of street credibility"? Isn't it written down somewhere that all black people must "display some form of street credibility"?

TCW: Yes, in the guidebook you get at birth that instructs you in how to be black it explicitly states that the possession and exposition of street credibility is obligatory. In all seriousness, though, as crazy as it seems, this really is a kind of unwritten stricture that informs the behavior and attitudes of far too many of us in the hip-hop generation. This is how you end up with kids like my classmate at Georgetown, a prep-school kid who was toting a gun. This is how you have the prep-school girl from Harlem, who made all the headlines and is facing jail time right now for running drugs.

THE OA: We all know about the misogyny that's inside of hip-hop, but let's please examine some other aspects of its content. What's wrong with preaching about materialism?

TCW: Nothing when done in moderation. The truth is that we all like and need material things. I like financial security, beautiful clothing, well-engineered vehicles, etc. When it comes to hip-hop, the problem is one of proportion. The material side of life has been so overemphasized, so glorified over the intangible, over the intellectual, over the spiritual, even over the artistic. This is a shame. This is why Jay-Z can say: "I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars" and his listeners, far from being offended, actually respect him all the more for it!

THE OA: How do you see "self-hatred" played out or conveyed in hip-hop?

TCW: Start with the way so many have been taught to define themselves and one another as niggas and bitches, thugs, goons, hustlers, pimps, dealers, gangstas, hoodlums, and move on from there. If you believe, as I do, that how you describe and present yourself has any correlation with how you feel about yourself, then it's hard not to see some self-hatred going on here.

Beyond that, if you think your life is worth a car or a chain, you don't have a full understanding of your own worth. And if you hate women—as hip-hop teaches so many of us to do—then you really hate yourself because women are the foundation of everything.

THE OA: Can you please tell us about some of the strongest reactions you've gotten to your book at public events? It seems to me that some people in the audience that I saw were getting testy at the Arkansas Literary Festival, which you recently attended.

TCW: Well, I often get a lot of pushback in Q&As from fans of the music or from people who think I am blaming the victim. In the case of the former, what I realize is we're usually talking about hip-hop in two different ways. They think I'm bashing a genre of music or an art form, and take exception. They might say something like, "Well, what about rock & roll, do you ever listen to those lyrics?" But I'm not critiquing hip-hop as a musical form. I think it has a lot of value by that measure. What I am talking about are the ideas and values the music and culture promote and distribute and—this is crucial—conflate with blackness. And it's my position that even if other forms of music and culture are equally destructive that does not mean that we cannot or should not have an honest discussion of the particular problems with hip-hop.

THE OA: Another clichéd response is: "Have you ever heard naughty blues lyrics?" And the answer is, Yes. But surely blues music was not central to the life of America's youth in the way that hip-hop culture is today—plus it's in the past, out of our reach. Is the current impact of hip-hop culture deeper than the impact of rock & roll (or blues) culture?

TCW: By my lights, the impact of hip-hop is far, far deeper than that of rock & roll or any other genre of music. Hip-hop really is the lingua franca of contemporary black—and increasingly, contemporary American—life.

Usually, with that second group of people, the ones who see me as blaming the victim, the problem is different. Someone might say, "Well, what if this culture does promote violence and anti-intellectualism? That's the world these kids have to live in, after all." Now, that may or may not be true, but I don't think it's an excuse. You don't get carte blanche because you were born into less than ideal circumstances. Being born into a bad situation and glorifying it are two very different things. And that is why I speak a lot about the horrific circumstances previous generations of blacks were born into and I contrast their representation of themselves with the hip-hop generation's representation of itself. There's a disingenuousness that borders on out-and-out lying in saying that a Jay-Z or a Notorious B.I.G. or a 50 Cent is simply "reporting" his reality. These guys all have sold poison to their own communities and are profiting off of glamorizing a lifestyle and worldview that is killing black America.

And, yes, we can't go back in time, we're stuck dealing with the present and trying to make the future better.

THE OA: The idea that all blacks are victims of "less than ideal circumstances" is, to me, very condescending—it negates the experiences of many honorable African Americans who lived or live in "less than ideal circumstances" and didn't choose the thug life or victimhood. Is it possible that the cliché of hip-hop as the "black CNN" is inaccurate?

TCW: Hip-hop as "Black People CNN" is the most ridiculous trope. And that's because black people like anyone else can just watch regular CNN. What I mean by that is that the ghetto (or harsh circumstances) is not the exclusive black reality, nor should it be assumed to be the normative setting for contemporary black life. That's not to say that this reality doesn't exist or doesn't deserve a voice, or that these less than ideal circumstances don't need to be addressed. They do. But the idea that hip-hop artists are merely "reporting" what's going on in their communities is wrong. Oftentimes, they're romanticizing the worst aspects of that reality. They're distorting that reality. They're editorializing. If anything, hip-hop is "Black People Fox News"!

THE OA: The powerful example of your father conveys that violence and anti-intellectualism are not the only possible environmental/societal options for black youths. Such examples prove simply that (some) hip-hoppers CHOOSE to act as if violence and anti-intellectualism are the main elements of black life. Then they hype it.

I'm mostly white and I don't live in a black neighborhood. I am, in fact, the opposite of an expert on black communities. So, Thomas, would you please tell me if there's more to black life than what is conveyed in a lot of hip-hop?

TCW: I operate off the premise that black life, like Chinese life or white life is, in fact, human life. Therefore, nothing human can be off limits to it. The truth is that hip-hop often fails to convey this truth.

THE OA: You also mentioned that white, young hip-hop fans tend to get testier than blacks about your criticism of hip-hop culture. Can you explain why this might be the case?

TCW: There's nothing like the fervency of the convert.

THE OA: Some white, thug-lovin', hip-hop hipsters seem to believe the only way whites can appreciate black life is through the prism of hip-hop. And if you don't like hip-hop, it can only mean one thing: you're racist. These dudes, of course, are ignoring all the spirit- and mind-work of people like Albert Murray, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, Louis Armstrong, Stanley Crouch, Juan Williams, et al. Bravehearts who happened to find non-hip-hop routes of not only expressing themselves but of excelling.

Sometimes I just wanna shout: All right, you doggone white hipster you, why merely taste-test hip-hop life from the fleetingness of a downtown party scene or your computer? If you're so down with and into street cred and thug life, why don't you actually move yourself and your wife and kiddies into the most downtrodden, thuggie part of an inner-city hood and live out a romanticized life there?

TCW: Well, that would kill the fantasy!

THE OA: I am ranting. Please let me catch my e-mail breath. [PAUSE] I can see why we should admire white hip-hoppers if their interest in black culture—if only, again, from a remove—but isn't their admiration easy and without risk?

TCW: Easy and without risk for sure, and often condescending. If there are elements of hip-hop music and culture that are dehumanizing to black people, then what does it mean for so many white people to like this so much? That's one of the things James Baldwin was getting at when he wrote "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in response to Norman Mailer's "The White Negro."

THE OA: Liberals seem to have a real fear of criticizing any aspect of black culture for fear of being labeled racist and because conservatives spend so much time being shrill about black culture. But are those good enough reasons for silence? Isn't there an element of condescension in this liberal fear? I mean, obviously no culture—black, white, or green—is perfect, so recognizing a culture's imperfections is nothing but being accurate. In any case, have you detected this white liberal fear of criticizing black culture and what is behind it?

TCW: Part of it has to do with the misguided compassion of political correctness. The unmeaning racism that is inherent in thinking that one group of people ought to be held to different (lower) standards than one would hold oneself or one's own children to. This is what George W. Bush called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." That was one of the only things he ever said that struck me as insightful.

This is also the reason many well-educated blacks are loath to criticize black street culture. And I can certainly understand the discomfort. But problems don't go away by pretending they don't exist.

THE OA: I agree; Bush's ghostwriter was definitely insightful, if not poetic, in that instance. Who are important critics of black culture that we should be listening to more and why? And by critics, I don't just mean people who find flaw with things, but people who are perceptive and honest....

TCW: I think many more young people should be paying attention to Stanley Crouch. He's a very penetrating thinker who has written about the black experience as well as anyone has. He connects the blackness to the larger American and human experience in ways that might surprise a generation raised to believe that Kanye West is a genius.

Byron Hurt made a very good and honest documentary called Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, which explored his own efforts to reconcile his love of the art form with the very real problems the culture poses.

I think we should all be reading and rereading Ralph Ellison's and James Baldwin's essays.

THE OA: Your book focuses on how you slowly but surely came around to sharing your father's overt love for reading and education in the face of a black community that at times was downright antagonist to those very same interests. How bad is the stigma against education and book-learning in black life?

TCW: Depending on where you grow up, I think it's either a problem or a huge problem. But even in the upper-middle classes, it's amazing the degree to which blacks buy into an idea that intellectual development is not cool. Now I know that is an American problem in general, but it is disproportionately a problem in black society. And that is why Barack Obama said we must "eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." It was incredible that the President had the bravery to address the issue, but he can't do it alone. Too many of our black academics—and white academics—today are content to spend their time making the case on television that rappers are really our modern day philosophers and bards. What I wish they would do instead is make the case that all of us should be reading more philosophy and literature.

THE OA: There is a lot of honesty in your book, including the dark moment that you tell honestly about when hitting your girlfriend. Discuss please why this was something of a watershed moment in your life.

TCW: The thing is that at the time it really wasn't a watershed moment for me. It was normal enough behavior in my immediate social circle. I had other friends who had done similar things. The saddest part perhaps is that many of the girls we knew half-expected and even respected that kind of masculine aggression from us. Still, it was a turning point for me because it was one of those moments where you think to yourself "this isn't me." I realized that I wasn't that real, and that was an important realization for me to come to. It was a delayed watershed moment, though, because it took several years for that realization to bear any fruit.  

THE OA: Was that the hardest truth you had to grapple with in your book?

TCW: The hardest truth to write about in the book was the racism my father encountered growing up in the ’40s and ’50s under segregation and before Civil Rights. I don't think many in my generation grasp how truly lucky we are.

THE OA: Any other way that hip-hop culture made you go against another principle that you now advocate?

TCW: The culture of keeping it real the hip-hop way made me hide my academic achievement from my peers. I did not want them to know that I had done well on my SATs. I did not want them to see the amount of time I spent studying. My girlfriend did not take the SATs and when I told her I got an 800 on a section, she asked me if that was good or not. Instead of trying to help her see the importance of it all or trying to lead my peers by example, I downplayed the value and importance of academic success in order to conform to what I believed they wanted me to be. Looking back, I wish I had had the courage to try to change their minds.

THE OA: Realistically, what can be done to decrease the influence of hip-hop culture on black youths and give them other things/options as well to think about?

TCW: I think there have to be a lot more black voices out there. There have to be many more narratives and images of blackness in the media. This is why I was so thrilled by the election of President Obama. That's a tremendous start. 

THE OA: Why should people care about your book?

TCW: Well, I hope people would care about the book because it deals with a universal human problem: the individual's struggle to create and define himself in the face of tremendous pressure to conform. Ultimately, this is not just a black problem or a hip-hop problem.