Jewish identity is complex: it comprises elements of ethnicity (Jewishness) and religion (Judaism). A number of prominent rap artists have been Jewish or have converted to Judaism, including the Beastie Boys, MC Serch, Drake, Shyne, Mac Miller, Remedy, and Asher Roth. Other members of the Jewish community have played important roles behind the scenes, like Rick Rubin and Lyor Cohen (both affiliated with Def Jam), and Jerry Heller (associated with Ruthless Records and N.W.A.).
The relationship between the black and Jewish communities has been both cooperative and confrontational. The Jewish community played an important role in establishing the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Prominent Jewish leaders lobbied Congress and mobilized their congregations during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. New Yorkers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman traveled to the South to assist with a voter registration drive, and were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan—along with James Chaney, a young black man from Mississippi—during the summer of 1964. The rise of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s put a strain on these relations. In 1991, riots broke out in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn when a motorcade transporting an esteemed rabbi struck and killed a young black child. A few years later, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, at the time a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, called Jews “bloodsuckers” in the course of a hate-filled tirade that also targeted whites and Christians. The speech ultimately resulted in his being condemned by both houses of Congress and dismissed from the Nation of Islam.
Shortly before the Crown Heights riots and Muhammad’s speech, anti-Semitic attitudes nearly brought about the end of Public Enemy. In a 1988 issue of Melody Maker magazine, Public Enemy’s Professor Griff remarked that “If the Palestinians took up arms, went into Israel and killed all the Jews, it’d be alright.” Jeff Chang notes that PE frontman Chuck D still cites this as the beginning of the group’s “meltdown.”[i] Subsequent comments by Griff put forth increasingly offensive and indefensible claims: he refused to wear gold chains during an interview because of Jewish support for apartheid in South Africa (“Is it a coincidence that the Jews run the jewelry business, and it’s named jew-erly?” he responded to David Mills, a reporter for the Washington Times). Even Chuck D at one point pushed back, saying “it’s all right to even be derogatory to Blacks. Just don’t be derogatory to most of the people in the business. Ninety percent of the business is operated by Jews, who started it.” Griff was suspended, reinstated, and ultimately fired from the group as a result of his views.[ii]
Griff’s views and Chuck D’s response highlight a tension between the black artists and the Jewish men who engage in the business side of the music industry. Jewish artists have historically been mediators of black culture: consider the work of Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Irving Berlin, or the Gershwins, who translated black music like jazz and ragtime into more acceptable European models, or the number of Jewish artists like Al Jolson who would perform in blackface. James Baldwin observes that the Jews were doing the “dirty work” of the Christians: they were the landlords and shopkeepers who were, in essence, the “face” of the white community in predominantly black neighborhoods. After considering the trauma inflicted on the black community (slavery and racism) and the Jewish community (the Holocaust and anti-Semitism), Baldwin goes so far as to say “The Jew, in America, is a white man.”[iii] Baldwin’s remark signifies a change in the way that members of the Jewish community were being viewed in America.
Part of Baldwin’s argument is that, while they were initially considered a separate race, Jews were ultimately able to assimilate into mainstream American culture in a way that African-Americans were not. “Jewish” became a marker of ethnicity, religion, or both, but many Jews in America—in particular, those of Eastern European heritage—identified and were identified as white. The conflation of Jewishness and whiteness privileges the experiences of Ashkenazi Jews such that in America, Jewishness has become synonymous with the experiences of Eastern European Jews. This conflation in turn marginalizes the experiences of Sephardic (of Spanish and Portuguese descent), Mizrahi (of Middle Eastern heritage), and various African Jewish communities. While many Jewish people in the United States benefit from white privilege, they are none the less subjected to anti-Semitism originating from both the political left and right: the left tend to view them as part of the “establishment,” while the right still marginalize them as non-white. Abroad, Ashkenazi Jews may or may not be recognized as white.
Loren Kajikawa reveals that one of the first rap songs on record was a parody titled “Take My Rap, Please,” by Steve Gordon and the Kosher Five. Released in 1979—roughly a month after “Rapper’s Delight”—Kajikawa claims that the record boasts a number of firsts: it is the first rap record by a white artist, the first rap parody, and the first to bring up issues of race and ethnicity.[iv] By juxtaposing Jewish cultural references with a disco track (recall that rap music at this time was closely associated with disco; see chapter 4), Kajikawa observes that the song shows how “from its very beginning as a commercial genre, [rap] could make identity audible.”[v] Indeed, many of the first Jewish rap artists were essentially novelty acts. 2 Live Jews, whose debut album was titled As Kosher As They Wanna Be (1990), and featured the single “Oy, It’s So Humid,” clearly parodied 2 Live Crew’s work, and it functions in the same way as “Take My Rap, Please,” by juxtaposing two apparently contradictory identities.
[i] Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), 283.
[ii] ibid., 282-92.
[iii] James Baldwin, “An Open Letter to the Born Again,” The Nation (September 29, 1979). Reprinted online July 23, 2014. https://www.thenation.com/article/open-letter-born-again/.
[iv] Loren Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 20.
[v] ibid., 20.