Capital in Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is inverse capitalism

Hip-hop is reverse colonialism

Hip-hop is the world of slaveholders made, sent into nigga-fide shock.

Hip-hop is the plunder down under, mackin' all others for pleasure.

Hip-hop is the black aesthetic by-product of the American dream machine, our culture of consumption, commodification, and subliminal seduction

Where George Clinton warned us about Madison Avenue urge overkill, the pimping of the pleasure principal, hip-hop embraces the pleasures of the pimping principal.

Hip-hop is the first musical movement in history where black people pimped themselves before the white boy did.

Hip-hop pimped the funk before the white boy and heavy metal too.

Hip-hop is the perverse logic of capitalism pursued by an artform.

Like capitalism, hip-hop converts raw soul into store-bought commodity.

Like capitalism, hip-hop has no morals, no conscience, and no ecological concern for the scavenged earth or scavenged American minds it will wreck in its pursuit of new markets.

(Tate, 1993: 18)

Even though some of his statements are obvious over-simplifications, by drawing out hip-hop's evasive and contradictory relationships to commodification and capitalism, Tate illustrates the complexity of hip-hop's ideological terrain. He plays with hip-hop's capitalist logic to show the tangled tensions between hip-hop's artform and its economic viability, describing both the sameness and the differences in hip-hop's commodified culture. I believe these complex issues of production and consumption are central to hip-hop's contextual body and ideological messages, and hope to show these connections by establishing the dialectic struggle between "raw soul" and the "pimping principle".

Rap music has been criticized by many for propagating what they see as the dominant capitalist logic of hyper-consumption. Its blatant materialism seems to glamorize America's hegemonic commodity culture which many see as counterproductive to its other resistive properties. Critics have invoked elements of Baudrillard's "hyperconformism," saying that some of hip-hop's lyrics and images uncritically adopt capitalist ideology (Marlowe, 1992: 222). Other writers have attempted to resolve this materialism by arguing that rappers are "caricaturing mainstream consumption" by exaggerating wealth status symbols with items like large gold chains and fake Guccis (Owens in Marlowe, 1992: 224). They argue that rappers' materialism mocks consumerism by inverting or redesigning traditional icons of "high" culture. Though this might have held some truth for rap culture in the 80's, it does not seem applicable today. The status symbols of today are no longer inversions or faux versions of upper-class wealth, but items with real monetary and social value. As E-40 and Too $hort rap in "Rapper's Ball":

I'm not a freestyler, don't rap for free main,

It's paystyle on mine, cuz I love money man

Landrover and Toyota, Lexuses

Six-hundred feet twelve, with them big old motor Mercedes

The rhymes and images of Lexus cars and Tommy Hilfilger designer clothes are about economic success and status, and if any are using them in an ironic critique of their value in our society, then their message seems to have been desperately lost in translation. However, just because rappers are appropriating these symbols of wealth does not necessarily mean they are blindly promoting a classist capitalist system. As I will show, this explanation oversimplifies many of hip-hop's complex dynamics and ignores many of rap's counter-hegemonic inversions of capitalist logic.

Although I do not think there is much value in looking for pure political agendas in complex cultural forms, the conflicting critics above do point out an important contradiction in hip-hop: respect is found in money, but authenticity lies in the lack of it. For alongside all of the new Jeeps, Rolex watches and wads of dead presidents, there is also a force that privileges the hardship associated with not having these status symbols. Hip-hop culture roots from the economically-devastated inner-city and though it has traveled far from its South Bronx birth, this location in poverty still is a real force in defining authenticity in rap music. Rappers repeatedly dismiss competitors by accusing them of more privileged positions and defend their realness by citing their previous money struggles:

Why do I call myself a nigga, you ask me?

I guess it's the way shit has to be.

Back when I was young, gettin' a job was murder.

Fuck flippin' burgers, 'cause I deserve a 9 to 5 I can be proud of,

that I can speak proud of, and to help a nigga get out of,

Yo! the concrete playground.

But most motherfuckers only want you to stay down,

but I'm a smart motherfucker, you see;

One of the best paid producers in the rap music industry.

Gettin' paid like a motherfucker,

A young brother who don't give a fuck about another...

In the meanwhile my pockets are gettin' fat,

Gettin' paid to say this shit here,

Makin' more in a week than a doctor makes in a year...

I get it from the underground poet,

I live it, I see it, and I write it, because I know it.

In "Niggaz 4 Life", NWA (Niggaz With Attitude) are asserting their connection to both the hardships of the street and their success in the studio. The repeated opening line "Why do I call myself a nigga, you ask me?" is answered as if the listener personally asked about rap's contradictory logic of both praising capitalism and referring to oneself as an historically-derogatory term while they simultaneously critique America's history of classism and racism. Their rap answers by explaining why and how an "underground poet" would invert the capitalist logic just as they invert the term "nigger" into empowerment. This also points out essentialist elements of this poverty = authenticity equation which connect blackness to the inner-city. Rappers are some of the most prominent voices in black culture to dismiss richer African-Americans as being "Oreos" or "Uncle Toms", and in doing so, propagate an ideology in which the more oppressed one is, the "blacker" he/she is. Within hip-hop, there are plenty of rappers that criticize both the glamorization of wealth and the reductionism of blackness to the inner-city, and even the rappers who use these ideas will critique this logic in their lyrics, but these authenticity dynamics still carry considerable weight in hip-hop hierarchies.

So how do these seemingly contradictory forces in hip-hop reconcile themselves? Clues to these conflicting views of money can be found by examining their different applications relative to American capitalist ideology. Simply put, the American Dream is taking what you have and making it big. This logic is evident in most rap lyrics, except with a twist. Since many inner-city blacks do not have economic capital to invest in any entrepreneurial ventures, they instead exploit what they do have: cultural capital. Rappers repeatedly talk about using their hip-hop talents to try to get a slice of Uncle Sam's pie, revealing both their economic aspirations and their nonmaterial means of achieving it. This emphasis on cultural capital is multi-faceted and is something I will return to throughout this paper; however there are several components that require explanation here.

For one, a rapper must have real skills and be supported by the larger hip-hop community. Unskilled commercial hits have no longevity, and thus no means for ongoing economic survival (i.e. MC Hammer recently declared bankruptcy). Lyrics constantly boast of having talent, not just money, indicating that one's success is the result of natural skills and cannot be lost in market moods. What is more, this cultural capital is not just an alternative to economic capital, but most often works in direct opposition to it. As I explained above, there is a widespread cultural perception of authenticity in poverty and those not born in it are under suspicion. Hip-hop's logic of cultural capital leading to economic capital privileges those born in the inner city because it benefits the unprivileged and excludes the otherwise advantaged.

Another aspect of hip-hop's relationship to capital is its exposure of these dynamics. In her deconstruction of a skit by Erik B and Rakim, Tricia Rose writes "this rap's acknowledgment of the recording studio juxtaposed against Rakim's rhyme about life on the street without money, demystifies technology and its production and highlights the reality of rap as a means of upward mobility for young blacks for whom meaningful jobs for meaningful pay are scarce" (Rose, 1994: 94). Eric B. and Rakim are not alone in exposing this logic. Many rappers' skits and lyrics reveal the value of both a cultural capital rooted in the street and an economic capital gained in the studio, and in doing so, insist on a counter-hegemonic logic that attentive listeners cannot ignore.

Hip-hop is constantly responding to itself, and recently, a variety of rappers have come out to criticize the materialism and/or the claims to poverty in others' lyrics and videos. These constant conversations may critique part of hip-hop's conflicting relationship to cultural and economic capital, but they rarely do they whole-heartedly subscribe to either one or the other. This tension stresses the importance of both the necessity and the pleasure of money while it simultaneously acknowledges and pays homage to hip-hop's birth in poverty. Thus, although I disagree with those who argue that rap's materialism mocks consumerism, I also think it is misleading to assume that it merely propagates dominant US capitalism. Hip-hop asserts an ideology that reflects aspects of good ol' American consumerism, but it also inverts the premise of capital into one that privileges inner-city blacks.

Capital in Nairobi

When I first arrived in Nairobi, I was struck by the number of teens who adorned gangsta rap T-shirts. Walking down Moi Avenue or strolling around a local club, I repeatedly found myself facing the menacing stares of rappers like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube on the backs of Nairobi youth. In continued observation and in talking with youth, I came to realize how these T-shirts fit with the larger tendency of Nairobi youth to think of hip-hop as more of a style than as a musical culture. In interviews, several youth asked questions about the availability and costs of hip-hop clothes in the States and in casual conversations, I had several non hip-hop fans tell me that rap fans were only into image and clothes (Ivanya 11/1/95 and Eric 10/29/95). Image and style are intimately tied with any popular culture, but the fact that they were so prominently associated with rap music intrigued me. In observing and interviewing, I came to realize that this image-orientation is shaped by many factors, including which youth listen to what kind of rap and how they have access to it. Through reviewing these aspects of Nairobi's appropriation, I hope to establish Nairobi youth's different relationship to capital, and what it means for their appropriation of hip-hop's ideology.

In looking through music stores and stands in Nairobi, an American foreigner can not help but be shocked at the cost of American R&B and hip-hop. I found that rap CDs cost an average of $35, with some like Tupac's "All Eye's On Me" going for as much as 2700 ksh-- $54. Rap magazines averaged $8, and though these costs were expensive by American standards (where CDs average $14), they were outrageous considering the lower standards of living in Nairobi. Of course, CDs and magazines are not the only forms of music and there are plenty of dubbed tapes available on the streets and along the alleys of the city center, but compared to the music stores, these sold predominately reggae tapes with a limited selection of rap artists. Once I noticed that rap music tended to be more accessible in more expensive forms, I began looking at the variety of music in public broadcasts like TV, radio, matatus (Nairobi's form of public transportation), and clubs. I noticed a few radio shows that played rap but the most prominent source of information seemed to be Jimi Gathu's one-hour weekly rap video show. This does not mean much in the US, but in Kenya, only the middle and upper class have TVs. This combined with my observation that the clubs in the wealthier parts of town tended to play more hip-hop lead me to believe that rap music was more accessible and popular among the more privileged Nairobi youth. Talks with these middle and upper class youth confirmed this correlation between wealth and rap music, indicating that rap fans are "more from the richer families because they can afford to buy the clothes and music because it is expensive" (Charles, 6/16).

This established, I began exploring which media youth used the most to learn about hip-hop. Most relied on a variety of sources, but Jimi Gathu's video show was the most mentioned resource. Several interviewees told me of a video library that has videos one can check out and some had friends who go to the States or Europe and bring back tapes of MTV or Rap City. From there, they said that most of the music heard in clubs and matatus are the pop hits that have already been established via videos and the radio. The fact that rap music is being initially spread primarily through the visual medium is not a new phenomenon for rap music. Because of fearful radio programmers, limited access to performing venues (Rose, 1994: 9) and little casual contact in non-urban areas, many youth across the US get rap first via videos. But due to the cost of music and limited radio play in Nairobi, music videos are virtually the only way youth can receive hip-hop. This makes the visual aesthetic of rappers almost inseparable from the musical aspect of the larger hip-hop culture.

What is more, many interviewees told me that rap did not get popular in Kenya until 1993, the same year Jimi Gathu's rap show began airing and Gangsta rap was popular in the US. Though there is evidence of some different types of rap artists entering the Nairobi music scene, gangsta rap remains rap's prominent popular image. Most youth cited West Coast gangsta rappers like the Lost Boyz, Dr. Dre, 2Pac, and Snoop Doggy Dogg as their favorite rappers and East Coast artists were all but unseen and unheard. This is important because gangsta rap tends to be more involved in the glamorization of materialistic goods and has more at stake in the authenticity of an inner-city gangster lifestyle because it lends their lyrics legitimacy.

Herein lies the influence of the visual medium from which most Nairobi youth learn about hip-hop. Although gangsta rap's lyrics have a dialectical relationship to wealth and their videos often show a rappers' regional roots, they also tend to focus on the economic success of the rapper and his or her material goods and status symbols. Videos repeatedly show locally known street spaces that reflect rappers' foundation in a street authenticity. But as the non-local appropriator watches the rapper drive through their neighborhood, they will recognize not the less-familiar street scene, but instead the universally-known car they are driving or the clothes they are wearing. The lyrical emphasis on cultural capital is easily lost in the power visual images of wealth and the verbal speed of the rappers, leaving many richer Nairobi youth with a relatively materialistic notion of rap music and hip-hop culture. Altogether, this points to a more image-oriented appropriation of hip-hop culture that emphasizes consuming hip-hop in the form of status symbols.

This visual, materialist focus of the Nairobi hip-hop image also seems to have the affect of disassociating many of the lyrical messages about poverty from parallel oppression in Nairobi's social system. In talking with youth about the lower classes in Nairobi, they repeatedly told me they were more into raggamuffin and reggae. I had guessed at this relationship after observing the larger availability of reggae and raggamuffin in cheap dubbed tapes, but several interviewees reasoning behind the affiliation surprised me. Several youth told me that less privileged Nairobians were into reggae because the music talked about the ghettos and because they were "ruff" and "do not dress up" (Ted 6/16). There was a noticeable aversion to interacting with groups of lower social status and none of the middle-class glamorization of poverty that I have seen in the States. The rappers' visual aesthetic is seen as contrary to the more familiar image of reggae's third world ghettos. Hence, the fact that American rappers were speaking from ghettos and about the oppression associated with such a marginalized position was either not heard or not related to any locally comparable phenomena. The idea of an authenticity rooted in American rapper's social and cultural oppression is unappropriated and connections between reggae's similarly counter-hegemonic lyrics are muted.

Although I believe that hip-hop in Nairobi is often appropriated on the basis of imagery, I do want to imply that Kenyan youth are mere consumers for its materialist ideology. Nairobi youths' relationship to hip-hop's capital dialectic is not that simplistic. In order to better understand their appropriation of hip-hop's idea of economic and cultural capital, authenticity and ideology, I will look at their larger music industry, economic opportunity and specific lyrical themes. One of the most important aspects to understand is that though rap fans in Nairobi are relatively well-off in their society, because of the lower standards of living and exorbitant import costs, they still have relatively little access to musical production equipment. The two turntables and a microphone that South Bronx teenagers used as a cheap alternative to formal instrumentation are all but unavailable to even the wealthiest Nairobi youth. Two of my interviewees took me to a local music shop where they stared at two samplers, that unlike all the other instruments in shop, stood caged up behind glass. The asking price was nearly 4 times what one would find in Europe, which they explained that even then was too expensive. Another rapper gave a beat-box performance with hip-hop's version of an air-guitar. He used a chair and two stools and scratched the pseudo-turntables as he made the corresponding verbal sounds, only to later resignately collapse on the chair and sigh, "if only they were real" (Ben 6/25) And even if one kid could afford it, his ability to profit from it would be limited because there are limited opportunities for local artists in Nairobi. There is no market in Nairobi for local acts because most youth who could afford to buy music would rather spend it on more status-associated Western artists and overseas markets tend to look to Africa only for more traditional musical forms.

What this means is that even if youth were to subscribe to hip-hop's logic of using cultural talent to make economic capital, there would be almost no way of putting it to use in the third world economy of the Kenyan music industry. Thus, when one looks at lyrics in Nairobi, though most of them follow American and Afro-diasporic themes of boasting, signifying and sex, there are also lyrics that instead of boasting about material gain, describe their lack of it. One competition regular described most of the lyrical content as "not having enough money to have fun and girls" (Josh 6/10). Although they are more than aware of the horrors of racism and violence in American life, the gangsta rapper's image of material excess glamorizes the opportunity in American capitalism. Nairobi youth appropriate the image of economic capital's glories but are unable to relate it to any local cultural potential. They do not locate or look for authenticity in poverty, but instead focus on monetary success, thus excluding both those that are most similarly oppressed in Nairobi and their own global marginalization.

Capital on the Internet

Where in Kenya I was constantly confronted by the commercial reproductions of gangsta rappers on T-shirts, on the Internet, not only do I not see my informants' appropriations of hip-hop fashion, but I also am unable to see the bodies that wear them. Because of this disembodiment on the Internet and the freedom of selective disclosure, it is impossible for me to give any precise demographic statistics of the Internet members. I do, however, think that accessibility to this evasive space allows for some basic assumptions about the newsgroup members socio-economic background. The Internet, though constantly spreading, is more accessible by people with economic capital and thus, although there are surely newsgroup members from the working class, the Internet newsgroups tend to be made up of people from more affluent socio-economic backgrounds.

Hence, similar to Kenyan hip-hop fans, alt.rap and rec.music.hip-hop are composed of relatively privileged youth. The expanse and nonphysical nature of cyberspace also makes these newsgroups more accessible to white and suburban hip-hop fans than most other forms of the hip-hop community. Through members' gradual disclosure, I've learned that there are many white and Asian members and although the black members play a central role in the newsgroups, they do not make up the majority of the members. Thus, we are again dealing with a population distant from the inner-city authenticity propagated by hip-hop. Again, I will explore their relationships to hip-hop's different perspectives on economic and cultural capital to see what their appropriation can reveal about cultural context, conflicting ideologies and presumed authenticity.

Why is it I ask my fellow headz , that we are letting our realest MC's, the peeps who represent hip-hop to the outside world, the 'outer rim' of the underground if you like, are crossing over. And nobody seems to be doing much about it. MC's are crossing over and still getting respect from our hip-hop nation. WHY? They're selling out. Magazines are crossing over. The SOURCE, once a landmark in the hip-hop culture, is now nothing but a commercialized mag catering to those who will pay the most money for advertising, and to the kids who know nothing of hip-hop and think TAG TEAM, 69 BOYS and Montel Jordon are hard! WHY? And WHY are we still buying it? Answer? The Almighty Dollar-- the root of all evil-- is out to destroy our nation. I want to see more peeps like Common Sense, ATCQ and so on keeping it real. WU gotta get back to their roots cause they're borderlining, they said C.R.E.A.M, (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) true, but that should be a warning, cause soon it's gonna be C.R.M (Cash Rules Me) (74204, 6/12/95).

Comments like this are common on alt.rap and rec.music.hip-hop and though this particular post speaks to many issues of hip-hop's mixed relationship to commercialization, I would like to use it to center on the anti-materialistic and anti-commercialistic sentiment among Internet members. The Source ("the magazine of hip-hop culture, fashion and politics") is often criticized on the newsgroups for being too materialistic and clothing-oriented and discussions about hip-hop clothing often turn into critiques of the role of fashion in hip-hop culture. Alongside this criticism of material goods' role in hip-hop is a strong skepticism of commercially successful artists. This is shown in the above poster's anger at "crossing over" and his claim that money is the "root of all evil". Once an artist becomes a staple on MTV, as happened with the Fugees, there is a noticeable decline in the number of threads discussing his/her/their music and posters who only discuss popular groups are either quickly dismissed or completely ignored. Most threads revolve around artists that are less well known and are only seen on video programs like The Box or BET's Rap City. This is important because there is not necessarily an intimate connection in hip-hop between these aspects of the Internet newsgroup's appropriation. There are plenty of artists that are commercially successful without being materialistic, or rap about material goods without being commercially-oriented. So what do these different aspects of their views toward success and spending say about their views of capital?

One of the first aspects to understand is that, similar to Kenya, the commercial explosion of gangsta rap introduced many American youth to rap music who had no non-mediated contact with hip-hop culture. These non-urban and mostly white youth became a symbol of the "outsider" who appropriated an exaggerated, exploited, and out-of-context black culture. As Common Sense raps in "I used to love H.E.R", his metaphorical rap on the history of hip-hop:

Now I see her in commercials, she's universal.

She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle.

Now she be in the burbs, licking rocks and dressing hippy,

and on some dumb shit when she comes to the city--

talking about shooting rocks, popping glocks, and hitting switches.

The widespread endorsement of this image and the corresponding idea that hip-hop fans that appear as outsiders (i.e., white, wealthy) must prove themselves is a powerful force on the Internet. Because these newsgroups are most accessible to those that are the most likely to be characterized as an outsider, many members constantly strive to distance themselves from this image.

Two main ways in which these members assert their legitimacy within hip-hop culture is by supporting an authenticity in the past and in poverty:

My radio in my car died one day, so me and my partner wanted to check out Mike's show. Both of us broke out some walkmans and tuned to the same station. To me that is the essence of keeping it real. Going down to the last inch of Koolaid-- no more powder-- so you take a cup of sugar and 2 quarts of water and just pour it on. That's keeping it real. Keeping it real for me has an economic connotation, in classic minority style. Necessity is the mother of invention, in this case improvisation; basically what inspired people to create something from two copies of a record...(not) keeping it real is label rockers. Great, you're wearing Donna Karen; I know you must have something in your wallet, anything in your head? (kari orr, 11/17/96)

By claiming a connection to poverty and hip-hop's roots before gangsta rap's commercial boom, these members try to establish their non-commercial relationship to hip-hop and their commitment to its larger contextual culture. They repeatedly give preference to less popular artists and distance themselves from the image-oriented materialism related with gangsta rap's success. In doing this, newsgroup members seem to follow hip-hop's logic of prioritizing cultural capital over economic capital. They see authenticity in inner-city black experience and use these ideals or their past experience with them to either assert their own legitimacy and/or question others'. But herein lies a contradiction: why would a community brought together by a medium that presumes some economic capital follow an ideology that privileges cultural capital? And why is this sense of authenticity separated from economic success, especially since rap embraces both?

Some of the answers behind these questions will be answered throughout this paper for these youths' relationship to cultural capital is central to their searches for hip-hop's authenticity. However, I believe some of these dynamics can also be explained in the fact that many of the e.mail addresses of the newsgroup posters end with the same three letters: edu. A large number of members gain access through college institutions and thus have an opportunity for upward mobility very different from most rappers. Whereas rappers use hip-hop as a means for economic gains, newsgroup members are not using their Internet hip-hop activity as a means for upward mobility. Hence, Internet newsgroup members are not relying on cultural capital for economic stability. I believe this lack of dependence on cultural capital can be used to explain their subscription to hip-hop's ideology. They are following the logic of "authentic" hip-hop to establish their own legitimacy, but in part because they have the luxury to do so. It is easier to promote a cultural capital if you are not one who has to convert it to material sustainability and safe to say "stay real" when its not your reality that is at stake. Thus, by asserting their authenticity through hip-hop's emphasis on cultural capital, these members often end up showing their distance from it by ignoring the material impossibility of living off authenticity alone.

The contradictions within this relationship between cultural and economic capital are not lost on Internet members. It is usually those with a lack of economic capital that (figuratively) step in and clarify the hypocrisies inherent in this capital dialectic. I think this is best said by the posters themselves:

It's my belief that Cube became IRRELEVANT to hip-hop when he bought that multimillion dollar house in the burbs. Not to imply that this is in itself a crime, but he's too rich to be 'hungry' like he used to be. I don't think he's putting it down correctly right now cos his vision is blurry (rtb, 11/7/96).

I think the nigga has been around long enough to see clearly. You know, people always start talking shit when they find out some big rap star bought a mansion in the suburbs somewhere. Name a nigga who has made big doe and NOT done that. People who have phat cribs-- KRS, Rakim, Dre, Puffy, Jermaine Dupri, bla bla,bla-- Fuck that, the list goes on forever. I'll tell you one thing-- If I had major scrilla, fuck living in the ghetto. I'll go move somewhere where a nigga can leave his car unlocked at night, and you don't have cats trying to sell double-ups to your kids when they leave the house. I'm from the ghetto but I'm not tryin' to reside there any longer then I have to (E. Peterson, 11/7/96).

I'm about to get deep and drop a ton of shit for ya. Ever since I been up this computer joint doing e mail and all that, I've been reading all these little bullshit posts that ya be doing talkin' bout that rap is only for blacks and white men can't jump or Asians should be studying somewhere, that shit is straight up ignorance. I don't give a fuck if a nigga from Turkey started rapping. I'm a listen to that shit if it sounds good. A lotta ya muthafuckas just started listenin' to rap (I can tell by ya posts and questions) but it's all good. I don't give a fuck if you liked rap before God was in existence or that you started liking the shit yesterday. I don't give a fuck if rap is the new fad or whatever, if you like it it's all good... I'm from Queens, New York. Lefrak city to be exact... No, it's not a separate city but a bunch of buildings wit apartments. So I guess I live in the so-called ghetto. I'm livin' where some of ya wish ya could live. So if it was right to say what should be going on in rap, then I should be the muthafucka to say so right cause I live in the ghetto? Nah son, it ain't like that... Yo, I know ya want the music and all but what about the food stamps? What about the fucked up schools? What about having to take all your jewelry and shit out of your pockets to pass the metal detector before watching a movie (Green Acres Mall) or the mouse and cockroaches in your apartments. What about constantly having to watch ya back cause some trife ass nigga want to play you for some shit? I know ya don't want that shit in ya lives cause it's straight up bullshit... Don't get me wrong though, I love Queens and I love NY but it ain't all that like in the videos ya be seeing. Don't forget them niggas is entertainers (mnd, 4/3/95).

By reading these posts, one can see not only these particular posters opinions, but also their impressions of the larger sentiments present in the hip-hop newsgroups. Their criticism of the glamorization of poverty speaks to the tendency of newsgroup members to deprivilige economic capital and though this is done in an attempt to relate to hip-hop's larger cultural context, in doing so they often instead do the opposite. This is not to imply that the member's appropriation of hip-hop's capital logic is in anyway wrong. I instead hope to show the areas of change when hip-hop's ideology is appropriated and how the complex logic of competing capital takes on new meanings in different contexts.

Continue to Production in Hip-Hop, Nairobi and the Internet

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