Part II: When they call you a rapper
The New York Times used rap music in its criminal framing of Michael Brown (the young Black man killed by a police officer in Ferguson, MO, in 2014). According to the Times, Brown was “no angel” and “he had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar.” Brown’s foray into rapping is sandwiched in between his “dabbling in drugs and alcohol” and getting into a “scuffle” with a neighbor. Willie McCoy, who was shot 55 times by police officers in Vallejo in 2019, was described as “an aspiring rapper,” as was Eric Reason (who worked in construction) and was shot by an off-duty officer during that same year in Vallejo. Rarely were these young men described as poets, musicians, or songwriters. A. D. Carson writes:
I can’t help but suspect the word ‘rapper’ is doing a peculiar kind of work in the descriptions of the deaths of Willie McCoy and Eric Reason and so many other living rappers who will never be described by ‘poetry’ or as ‘poets,’ as people now so generously do on my behalf to justify my life and my art and my work as worthy, as valuable, as mattering as much as others. So maybe there’s something valuable, some incredible importance in interrogating these descriptions, and on whose terms they’re deployed, and how they help us remember ... or forget.[1]
Calling someone a rapper is an illocutionary act: the act of naming does something to the named. In this case, the act connects the named to a contemporary manifestation of the “Black Brute” stereotype--the mainstream rapper. It becomes what Michael Omi and Howard Winant call a “code word,” a “subtextual signifier of race,” like “welfare queen” was in the 1980s, or “superpredator” was in the 1990s, or “illegal alien” or “thug” in the more recent past. It allows us to talk about race without appearing to talk about race, and thus absolves us of having to engage in race-based decision-making.[2]
Rap music is fundamentally Black music, and it is unique among popular musics of the last century in the ways that it has withstood efforts to be culturally appropriated by white America.[3] While the public faces of contemporary mainstream rap music are predominantly Black men (and, increasingly, women), the stereotypical image of a rapper has emerged as a result of the desires of White America.[4] To rap is to sound Black, and to call someone a rapper is to racialize them as Black, and to activate the prejudices associated with the stereotype of a mainstream rapper.
In Prosecuting Gang Cases (2004) Alan Jackson endorses the practice of using lyrics at trial. In a section titled “Will the Real Defendant Please Stand Up?” he writes:
Perhaps the most crucial element of a successful prosecution is introducing the jury to the real defendant. Invariably, by the time the jury sees the defendant at trial, his hair has grown out to a normal length, his clothes are nicely tailored, and he will have taken on the aura of an altar boy. But the real defendant is a criminal wearing a do-rag and throwing a gang sign. Gang evidence can take a prosecutor a long way toward introducing the jury to that person. Through photographs, letters, notes, and even music lyrics, prosecutors can invade and exploit the defendant’s true personality. Gang investigators should focus on these items of evidence during search warrants and arrests. (15-16; emphasis added)
It is easy to infer that Jackson is referring to rap music because of his racially coded language: he reinforces links among music lyrics, gang membership, and criminal behavior. He further implies that lyrics can provide a factual, accurate account of the artist’s lived experiences.
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[1] Carson, A. D. Rap and Storytellingly Invention: A Craft Chap. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.14. Pp. 8-9.
[2] Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation [CITE] On “thug,” see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5004736/
[3] Among those who make the case for rap music as Black music are Jelani Cobb and Imani Perry [CITE]. There is certainly white involvement in all aspects of the genre, from artists to industry insiders, but the public faces of rap are almost entirely Black. bell hooks and others argue that rap has long served the interests of white America: this is a point to which I will return later.
[4] See, for example, Bakari Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip Hop