Revisiting The Black Rapper As "Pimp"

[brianold]

Timothy Brown
October 31, 2003

The black rapper as pimp has risen to the forefront of American culture. This phenomenon is receiving a lot of criticism from members of the black community who see it as another form of racial exploitation. We most certainly need to be concerned about the way these images continue to fashion our understanding of black masculinity. Unfortunately, in a culture driven by the fixation of the visual, the image loses its complexity and is reduced to a synecdoche. The pimp image is a particular representation of black masculinity that becomes representative of a whole sea of black men who historically have been portrayed as having a voracious sexual appetite.

The sign is reduced to a single narrative instead of a "sign" that is more like the nexus of a tangled history. What is hard to decipher is how the code or sign - black male identity mediated by the commodity - coheres to perpetuate stereotypes about black men and black women, without any recourse to understanding the complex conditions behind it. Commodities function as signs that have an obverse and a reverse. On the one hand, it takes you out of the world of street hustling; on the other, it brings you into a world of corporate hustling; and one can argue that there is a fine line separating the two. First, let me clarify my use of the "sign." A sign can be any form of representation; it can even be what Saussure called a "sound-image," a form of expression that prefigures a word, an image, or an object. In other words, the sign, a video or CD, emanates from the human voice and bodily gestures (that often signify sexual power); it also refers to the human body, a body that derives its value from a system of signification, namely, its social surroundings.

Initially, hip hop, as Tricia Rose noted in her book "Black Noise," was born out of the conditions of deindustrialization in which the lack of jobs and the lack of musical instruction in schools, gave way to the use of pre-recorded music as a new kind of instrument. This was possible because all one needed was a turntable and a way to record tapes. Turntable dexterity gradually began to incorporate the human voice, vocal samples that echoed our social realities. Under these conditions, a young black artist derived his reputation from the streets. Today, the resources of the street are still a useful way to commodify your way to success. What is going on in the streets of black working class neighborhoods? Why is this life style being used as a medium of artistic expression? Why is the basest lifestyle the most sought after commodity?

One must go deep beneath the sign, in order to understand how the phenomena of "rapper as pimp" has made its way back into the mainstream of American culture. First of all, one must recognize the harsh conditions that working class black people are forced to live under. In black neighborhoods, (or, in general, neighborhoods where people are economically impoverished), young black people must hustle in order to survive. In this climate, black folks are making "mad" use of their skills. Black men are carpet cleaners, plumbers, telephone repairers, electricians, cable installers, cooks, DJ's (the kind or workers that you will not find in the yellow pages if you know what I mean). Black working class women are still holding every job imaginable, including juggling a host of temp jobs, in order to take care of themselves, and their children. Unfortunately, in a society that has abandoned its social commitment to the social welfare of its citizens, black youth have turned to "hustlin'" in order to make a living. Although some have managed to utilize "respectable" skills in order to survive, some have simply relied on their biological resources in order to get paid: the human voice and the human body.

Unfortunately, whenever the voice and the body are turned to as resources for survival, they tend to follow a gender pattern in which the voice, associated with the authorial position of masculinity, is counter-posed to the body, the subordinate position of femininity. As, black working class women will turn to strip clubs and prostitution for their economic survival. Black men turn to their voices to command authority and respect (pimping and rapping). The degree to which each gender is empowered through these activities is largely linked to economic necessity and the limited conditions that compel one to exercise some degree of freedom and autonomy. Irrespective of this mind/body dualism, the voice and the body are seen as valuable assets. Artists like Beyonce and Jay-Z help to bridge the boundaries between mind and body, fantasy and reality because they appeal to working class blacks who depend on their primary resources, their bodies and their voices, to liberate themselves from the confines of their conditions.

Why does the market gravitate toward the basest element of our society? This question can be answered by understanding the laws of market culture. Market culture is essentially like crack. The idea is to get you hooked on a drug that satisfies you immediately; that can transport you to another world, a sometimes forbidden world, even the hidden recesses of your mind; and that can constantly keep you seeking another taste. It can allow you to cross borders, while immediately reestablishing them. In a sense, you desire what you abhor. Desire does not have its corollary in a material form, but if the object is "taboo," it might just be worth packaging. White women become curious about black male sexual prowess and white males identify with black male virility, etc. The commodity essentially denies you human worth because you invest your psychic and monetary resources in "things" for the sake of perpetuating a myth. You long for the fantasy but you abhor the reality it signifies. It therefore compels you to invest in a kind of "false consciousness," a belief that the imaginary is "real."

How did rapper as pimp become a vehicle for artistic expression? The success of the pimp image is linked to the success of gangsta rap. During the 80's, rappers made use of their musical talents and creative skills by giving explicit expression to their social realities. The old saying "the medium is the message" not only pertained to the power of the music, but to the life it represented; the two were interdependent. Gangsta rappers did not offer an answer to the social ills that plagued them; they merely said this is how it is, deal with it. Yet, there was some aesthetic value in gangsta rap.

As Robin D.G. Kelley noted in Race Rebels, the gangsta lifestyle was often employed as a resource for artistic and practical needs. For example the repetitive sound of gunfire was often used as a rhythmic, percussive devise; vocal improvisations enabled one to reinvent oneself under condition of limited opportunities; recordings opened up economic opportunities, under conditions of joblessness; and the music provided sources of pleasure and entertainment under repressed conditions. In the video titled, Straight from the Streets, a female gangsta rapper named April wears a hooded jacket, the kind used to conceal a "piece," while rapping to the sounds of sirens and bullets: "I'm a woman. Doesn't mean I'm a sucka." While the video explicitly reveals the violence of the streets, the sounds are converted into an aesthetic form with a pulsating beat. The commodity form is inherently paradoxical: sources of pleasure and economic gain are sought under conditions of violence.

The sign of rapper as pimp is controversial, precisely because it draws us once again to the paradox of representation. The pimp is a sign that
celebrates black male virility in a climate that seeks to emasculate black men. When two divergent forces converge in the form of a commodity for consumptive purposes, they generally signal a crisis in our society. That crisis is rooted in the black community and the dominant society. It's convenient to isolate the black male pimp image. Yet, as bell hooks noted in her critique of gangsta rap, models of masculinity are rooted in the dominant culture. America, for example, has a host of corporate pimps who rely on militarism to prostitute and debase others. Coincidentally, Americans have supported this global pimp culture because it is unable to find the solutions to its own impoverishment.

The successes of artists like 50 cent and Chingy are not merely representatives of black youth culture, and popular culture in general. They are signs that embody extreme polarities embedded in our society, poverty and wealth, racial and gender divisions, national and global borders, that converge to make our impoverishment a source of liberation and our liberation a source of impoverishment.

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