Almost all white hip-hop artists have made records I enjoyed, and sometimes even loved—Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” comes to mind, “Intergalactic,” by the Beastie Boys, as well as earlier cuts by them, and I dig Roth’s new “Lark on My Go-Kart.” Yet I’ve rarely found any white rapper’s work gripping enough on its own terms to merit more than a few listens. (An exception may be Muslim albino rapper Brother Ali’s The Undisputed Truth, which I thought uniquely compelling.)
This could have something to do with deficiencies I often perceive in these artists’ work, or styles—the varied shortcomings of “blue-eyed soul”—though probably not mostly. More, I’m guessing, it has to do with the framework hip-hop holds in my thinking; the reasons why I think it’s here—on Earth—and what I think it’s supposed to be doing. That is, what it should be doing for Black people—producing justice—and what I think it’s supposed to be doing for white people—creating an irresistable, utterly compelling set of reasons for them to produce justice on behalf of non-white people.
That is, from a certain angle, there’s just a shade of difference between white people rapping and white people telling nigger jokes. (I know that this framework, though immediately clear to a certain number of Black people, if only on a gut level, isn’t obvious to others, and is completely offensive to many white people.
While I agree that a large portion of the material produced by white rappers fails to be compelling in the scope of the art of hip hop at its essence - ie: as a voice of the voiceless, and an ongoing social commentary/oral history of neglected communities - I do have to disagree with the part where there is a kinship between white folks being a part of hip hop and white folks telling racially derisive jokes.
The hip hop tradition, while belonging predominantly to African American culture, is still an art form that blossoms from the empowerment of minority groups over that which oppresses them, and those minorities aren't strictly defined by race alone. Those lines can be drawn across economic, social or any number of other boundary lines. I would go so far as to argue that hip hop's origins as a strictly black art form are just as much a media construct as what Allen is arguing against from the other side.
Hip Hop has meant different things to different people, and to say that it is African American forever first and foremost denies the contributions of countless other groups responsible for its development and exploration - Hispanics (Cypress Hill, Kid Frost), Asians (Jeff Chang, DJ Muro) and even white folks (Rick Rubin, The Beastie Boys). And that's just looking at the racial component. While the majority of the most important artists making hip hop music have most certainly been black, the graffiti, breakdancing and DJing scenes are far more diverse racially, and represent just as significant a role in the development of hip hop culture as a whole, beyond just the scope of the music industry beast it has become.
There are poor folks of all shapes, sizes and colors searching for access to creative empowerment through hip hop. There have been, and hopefully always will be. And while I completely agree with Allen that Asher Roth is meaningless to the true power of hip hop's potential - that he is really just a token white boy in media-approved blackface, helping some white folks enjoy rap music without feeling like they're holding something that doesn't belong to them - I don't think that should serve as an indictment of all white people, or a discounting of hip hop both past and present as a truly multi-cultural art form.
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