Review of Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is a film created and directed by Byron Hurt, ex-quarterback turned gender and sexuality activist and educator at Northeastern University. A longtime fan of hip hop music, Hurt decided that this film was a critical step in his investigation of hip hop music and its values and the stereotypes that it promotes. Hurt takes his time with the film, collecting interesting interviews from artists such as Mos Def, Chuck D, Jadakiss, Fat Joe and many other interesting members of the hip hop community. The overwhelming sentiments from most involved, revolve around the fact that there has been a great shift in hip hop music and its values, which the former president of Def Jam records, Carmen Ashhurst says is a direct correlation of the biggest record companies buying up all the labels in order to create a different kind of music and it resulted in “the shift from Fight the Power to Gin and Juice”. Ashhurst and Hurt along with the other people who were part of the film make it clear that good, meaningful rap music is still being made all over however it will never sell and it won’t get them famous. This idea is seen in action in film when Hurt goes to the Hip Hop Power Summit and talks to one of the aspiring artists, who does a short rap about societal problems but them comments that that kind of thing does not sell and that is why he can’t talk about those kinds of things in his music and instead focuses on being hard, killing people, drugs, bitches, etc.

"if their ass is showin', we gonna slap it!"

I found it very interesting in the film to hear what some younger, white folks had to say about rap music and its messages. One female interviewee takes the time to explain that she likes rap music because she comes from a primarily white, suburban community and the music gives her and people like her a chance to look into a community that they might not normally ever get to see. The problem here is that, like Oz and other programs that promote unrealistic representations of society’s core issues, this music is not exactly exhibiting the real problems and everyday life that black men (and women) are exposed do on a daily basis.

I also thought that the discussion about hip hop music and its homoerotic tendencies was excellent. I thought that Tim’m West did an excellent job explaining where homoeroticism can be seen in mainstream rap music and also explaining the way that these images conflict with the primarily homophobic mindsets of rap musicians and avid fans. The discussion about the use of “me and my boy” or just “my boys” in general and its relation to homoeroticism was also intriguing. It is very interesting to think about the very strong homophobic tendencies in rap music and culture but also the complete disrespect and disregard for women in any way other than sexualizing them, and yet the deepest connection is with one’s “boys”.

In conclusion, I thought that is film was valuable and helped to explain the fact that “Hip hop is completely subservient to white power structure”. I thought about the way that we are educated in college to do the right thing, to be better than we could have ever imagined ourselves being and then post-graduation we are working for the systems that we have spent 4 years learning about the problems within them but yet don’t know how to change them and don’t possess the tools needed. There are metaphorical similarities between white and black cultures in this respect. Obviously it is different in that for a great deal of white men they learn about the power structures that exist in society and the inevitable power that they possess and instead of being able to apply that knowledge and make change they play into the structure (for many reasons) and end up working their way from the bottom to the top and forgetting about all the systemic problems that they learned about in college. For black men, they know that there are huge problems in rap music and most of them do not really hold the values that they are singing about, but yet they play into the system because they don’t believe that there is a real way to change it. They know that they either need to play the game or be labeled a “pussy, chump, etc. As Hurt points out “REAL MEN are lacking in the representation of black men…a real black man stands up for when something is wrong”. This conclusion is true not only for black men but for white men as well—and women too!—it seems that we are just generally lacking real people.

" BET is the cancer of black manhood,  it one dimentionalized us…made us a one trick image"