Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 66

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Popular Culture Review

I drink champagne, the hell with Coors.
What is ironic about this song is that while it attacks the
harassment that blacks face and the racism which views all blacks
as criminals, it also makes clear the wealth of these artists—wealth
that very few young blacks have. This can also be seen in"F— Tha
Police": "Fuckin' with me 'cause I'm a teenager/ With a little bit of
gold and a pager/ Searchin my car lookin' for the product/ Thinkin
every nigger is sellin' narcotics./ You'd rather see me in the p>en /
Than me and Lorenzo rollin' in a Benzo." Owning a "Benzo" and a
pager indicate selling drugs not just to police but also to listeners, so
while these songs attack police harassment, to some extent they also
affirm the role model of a drug dealer, contradicting the anti-dealer
message the music often tries to convey.
1 will return to contradictions to be found in the music; first, let me
discuss additional aspects of racism which rap attempts to expose.
One of these is the racism found in mass media. Racism in the media
is a primary topic of Public Enemy's lyrics, seen in "Welcome to the
Terrordome." Another song by Public Enemy, "Bum Hollywood Bum,"
which features guest rappers Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane, attacks
racism found in Hollywood movies: "Black women in this profession/
As for playin' a lawyer, out of the question/ For what they play Aunt
jemima is the perfect term/ Even if now she got a perm" These songs
are trying to replace the idea that the media is objective with the
idea that it is racially biased. Furthermore, since the view which
understands the media to be objective may to a large extent be
im plicit—the concept of "telling it like it is" excluding the
possibility of more than one way to tell something—this attack is
also an attempt to make implicit elements of a discourse explicit.^^
Yet another common anti-racism theme is the criticism of
American education which fails to teach an adequate history of
African-Americans. KRS-1 is probably best known for his attack on
education, referring to hinnself as "the teacher." In his song "You
Must Learn," he contends the failure of blacks in school is due to the
lack of education directed toward their heritage:
What do you mean when you say I'm rebellious?
Cause I don't accept everything you tellin' us?...
1 failed your class 'cause I ain't with your reasoning