| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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mass, worldwide audience. So, for our students, too, the beat of rap music is hypnotic.
The final major reason that white people like rap music, according to our students, was not surprising to us at all. It is the power of the beat. One female honors student admitted,
The beat is so embedded in our culture, say the students, that even if they don’t like it, they will hear it and respond in some way. Take a throbbing baseline, then add somber, or at least real, personal, life experiences, throw in lyrics cut to the bone with a sharp, gritty edge, and that, our students tell us, is what real rap consists of—the beat you can dance to and some good lyrics. Can the power of hip hop for white society simply be reduced to a beat, something that gives them a certain amount of instant authority or “street cred”?
We suggest that the popularity of hip hop and hip hop culture is almost infinitely more than that. It surfaced from the underground during a time of rapid social change, when society was redefining its notions of racial inequality within the context of color-blind ideology. Jeff Chang notes,