Gangster Rap and Its Social Cost: Exploiting Hip Hop and Using Ra ...

content analyses of the music from this early period are considered. It is possible to distinguish gangster rap lyrics from hip hop lyrics; this work illustrates the difference between them and discusses the implications of the stages in the development of the music as a social and cultural movement.

Chapter 4 considers the development of rap music as a business from the standpoint of an aspiring rapper. The business exists as a pyramid of increasingly stringent contractual agreements that weed out artists. The progressive basis of selection reflects the values, worldview, and priorities of music corporation executives. Top performers are carefully selected based largely on their willingness to produce and propagate music that the corporate backers are willing to market. What becomes commercially successful rap is totally detached from communities’ and artists’ priorities and dominated by what can be marketed and sold. Gangster rap is a corporate formula and invention, and ironically hip hop becomes its closest and potentially its toughest competition. The so-called independent labels are, in fact, mediators whose role is to deflect attention from the real power in the business. They minimize corporate responsibility and legitimize gangster rap music as black music by black artists for black people—and whoever else wants to listen. The claim that gangster music is black music for black people is assessed in the second half of chapter 4. Several national surveys address audience size and characteristics by music preference, including hip hop and rap. They, along with industry data, shed some light on this issue, overcoming the data constraints of Soundscan.

Chapter 5 addresses one of the mysteries of gangster rap: Why is it so marketable to its largely white audience and a virtual cash-cow for corporate sponsors? If success stems from violence and profanity alone, heavy metal should sell equally as well, but it does not. What distinguishes gangster rap and makes it so attractive is its underlying minstrel imagery. Here again, numerous commentators have noted this but have not explored the point. Chapter 4 looks at 19th-century minstrel images and shows their parallel presentation in gangster rap lyrics. The use of nigger is essential