I miss and often think about Black Conscious rap and wonder why it didn't last longer as the prevalent form of popular rap. I also often wonder why it got overshadowed and forever overtaken by gangsta rap as the most popular and predominant form of hip-hop music. So this Black Conscious rap as a once powerful movement within hip-hop; a salute to its greatness and a brief examination of its rise and fall as the one-time leading sub-genre of hip-hop. Black Conscious rap, which can also be tagged Afrocentric rap, socially conscious rap, political rap, Black nationalist rap, militant rap, revolution rap, etc., was at its peak and was most widely consumed & embraced by the masses during the golden age of hip-hop in the late 80's to early 90's. However, Black Conscious rap, which can be described as a lyrical form that proudly celebrates the accomplishments of the Black community, past & present, in addition to voicing complaints, concerns, and/or social observations of the African American community from a firsthand perspective, has always been part and parcel of hip-hop. Early popular examples would include 1982's "The Message" single on Sugar Hill by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five feat. Melle Mel & Duke Bootee, while current day examples include the soon-to-drop 2011 album track "Clap" by Brooklyn emcee Saigon off his Feb 15th release The Greatest Story Never Told (Suburban Noize). Black Conscious rap has been with us from day one and will never go away. However, it may never return to the popularity of its heyday, unless black people take back their narrative and make their own media. and take it back to a time when it was common to see rap videos on TV espousing politically charged, pro Black imagery and messages. Black Conscious rap, as a distinct movement within hip-hop, occurred mainly from the late 80's to early 90's -- essentially within the broader, musically & lyrically diverse "golden age" of hip-hop which, depending on whom you ask, ran from around '87 or '88 up to '92 or '95. Lyrically, use of the traditional Muslim greeting "as-salaam alaikum" (peace to you) was commonplace in the music -- something that, in a pre 9/11 America, didn't raise too many eyebrows. In addition to pro Black lyrics, the use of politically charged samples (EG Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., The Last Poets, or evenJames Brown) was also commonplace. Visually, the colors of the Pan African flag -- red, black, and green -- were synonymous with popular Black Conscious rap. Album cover art, artists' clothing, song lyrics, and song/album titles weaved in these colors. DeLa Soul, Tommy Boy Records' promotion department made leather African medallions as promo items. They also styledQueen Latifah's promotion around Black Conscious imagery. Other artists that conjured the essence of Black Conscious rap in its peak included, to name but a few, Public Enemy, BDP/KRS-One, X-Clan, Sister Souljah, Jungle Brothers, and Paris. But Black Conscious/conscious rap came in many shapes and forms and, just as in real life, most artists have more than one side to them. Schoolly D, NWA, Ice Cube, Ice T, Toddy Tee, The Geto Boys, and Cypress Hill are all artists who, as well as being hardcore/gangsta, also embodied elements of conscious Black Conscious rap. Too $hort, while written off as player/pimp styled rapper quick to drop the "B" word, also delivered a powerful Black Conscious anthem in his 1990 single "The Ghetto." The track is his emotionally charged, heartfelt, sad, and soulful blues-rooted rap tale of the struggles of "trying to survive...in the ghetto." Additonally,2Pac, who, granted, came to fame after the Black Conscious movement as a trend had passed, was also a complex artist offering both blatantly sexist & gangsta messages and strong, militant Black Conscious perspectives. Many cite the mid December 1992 release of Dr Dre's phenomenally successful & influential album The Chronic(Death Row/Interscope) as the end of the Black Conscious rap era and the ushering in of the gangsta rap era. Before this, gangsta, while certainly in existence and popular with many, was not the leading genre. Hence, many blame Dr Dre and gangsta rap in general for killing off Black Conscious rap. But that really wasn't the full story. There is one common thread between Black Conscious rap and gangsta rap -- they are both simply trends within the rap industry and therefore equally influenced by the allure of money. Many so-called conscious Black Conscious rappers back in its heyday were just fronting, jumping on the band-wagon to make a quick buck; just like the current legions of wannabe hardcore, studio gangsta rappers that think a gang sign and some swagger makes them hard, there were similarly many superficial faux conscious rappers who donned the red, black, & green colors and insincerely quoted/sampled Martin and Malcolm -- all in their paper chase (money hunt). These trend followers only helped in the demise of the genre. In my opinion, Black Conscious rap as a predominant force in mainstream hip-hop faded out and died for two key reasons. First, because the marketplace for the music -- dominated by the major labels' A&R's who decided who got signed and, effectively through their moneyed influence, who got played on the radio -- totally evaporated. The labels simply stopped signing Black Conscious artists. Artists learned quickly that if you wanted to keep making militant Black or Black Conscious hip-hop you had to fund it yourself and take your chances on getting airplay. Bay Area rapper Paris is one of the exceptions to the rule; an artist who has stuck to his guns from day one and never wavered in telling it like it is, no matter how unpopular that might have been. In fact, his anti Bush (senior) rhetoric is what got him kicked off of the Warner distributed Tommy Boy label -- albeit with a handsome severance fee to help him fund his new-found freedom. The other, perhaps more profound, reason for the death of Black Conscious hip-hop as a force within the genre was because for all the protesting and complaining it presented, no matter how valid, at the end of the day it offered no tangible solutions. As the ever pragmatic Boots Riley of The Coup(who arrived after the Black Conscious trend had peaked) so clearly said in his Black History Month Amoeblog interviewtwo years ago, the reason it died was because the music was not attached to a real movement to back up the well-meaning messages of its artists. "You could wear the African medallion and go home and there is no food in the refrigerator and you are struggling to pay the rent. And then you consciously or unconsciously start looking at that music as fantasy, whereas someone making a record about how you can sell a rock (crack cocaine) and make $10, that's connected to a real movement."
Now this may be a rumor but like all rumors there is fact to this point Last year Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the biggest name in the private prison industry, contacted 48 states offering to buy their prisons. One stipulation of eligibility for the deal was particularly bizarre: “an assurance by the agency partner that the agency has sufficient inmate population to maintain a minimum 90% occupancy rate over the term of the contract.
What kind of legitimate and ethical measures could possibly be taken to ensure the maintenance of a 90% prison occupancy rate?
Two months later an anonymous email was sent out to various members of the music and publishing industries giving an account of a meeting where it was determined that hip-hop music would be manipulated to drive up privatized prison profits. Its author, despite claiming to be a former industry insider, did not provide the names of anyone involved in the plot, nor did he specify by which company he himself was employed. As such, the letter was largely regarded as a fraud for lack of facts.
The Letter:
"The Secret Meeting that Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation"
This anonymous letter landed in my inbox about a minute ago:
Hello, After more than 20 years, I've finally decided to tell the world what I witnessed in 1991, which I believe was one of the biggest turning point in popular music, and ultimately American society. I have struggled for a long time weighing the pros and cons of making this story public as I was reluctant to implicate the individuals who were present that day. So I've simply decided to leave out names and all the details that may risk my personal well being and that of those who were, like me, dragged into something they weren't ready for. Between the late 80's and early 90’s, I was what you may call a “decision maker” with one of the more established company in the music industry. I came from Europe in the early 80’s and quickly established myself in the business. The industry was different back then. Since technology and media weren’t accessible to people like they are today, the industry had more control over the public and had the means to influence them anyway it wanted. This may explain why in early 1991, I was invited to attend a closed door meeting with a small group of music business insiders to discuss rap music’s new direction. Little did I know that we would be asked to participate in one of the most unethical and destructive business practice I’ve ever seen. The meeting was held at a private residence on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I remember about 25 to 30 people being there, most of them familiar faces. Speaking to those I knew, we joked about the theme of the meeting as many of us did not care for rap music and failed to see the purpose of being invited to a private gathering to discuss its future. Among the attendees was a small group of unfamiliar faces who stayed to themselves and made no attempt to socialize beyond their circle. Based on their behavior and formal appearances, they didn't seem to be in our industry. Our casual chatter was interrupted when we were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement preventing us from publicly discussing the information presented during the meeting. Needless to say, this intrigued and in some cases disturbed many of us. The agreement was only a page long but very clear on the matter and consequences which stated that violating the terms would result in job termination. We asked several people what this meeting was about and the reason for such secrecy but couldn't find anyone who had answers for us. A few people refused to sign and walked out. No one stopped them. I was tempted to follow but curiosity got the best of me. A man who was part of the “unfamiliar” group collected the agreements from us. Quickly after the meeting began, one of my industry colleagues (who shall remain nameless like everyone else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the floor to a man who only introduced himself by first name and gave no further details about his personal background. I think he was the owner of the residence but it was never confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our industry and congratulated us for being selected as part of this small group of “decision makers”. At this point I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering. The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement. He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. I remember many of us in the group immediately looking at each other in confusion. At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn't the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. It was also made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded, we’d be able to buy shares. Most of us were taken back by this. Again, a couple of people asked what this had to do with us. At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice. He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employee, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons. Immediately, silence came over the room. You could have heard a pin drop. I remember looking around to make sure I wasn't dreaming and saw half of the people with dropped jaws. My daze was interrupted when someone shouted, “Is this a f****** joke?” At this point things became chaotic. Two of the men who were part of the “unfamiliar” group grabbed the man who shouted out and attempted to remove him from the house. A few of us, myself included, tried to intervene. One of them pulled out a gun and we all backed off. They separated us from the crowd and all four of us were escorted outside. My industry colleague who had opened the meeting earlier hurried out to meet us and reminded us that we had signed agreement and would suffer the consequences of speaking about this publicly or even with those who attended the meeting. I asked him why he was involved with something this corrupt and he replied that it was bigger than the music business and nothing we’d want to challenge without risking consequences. We all protested and as he walked back into the house I remember word for word the last thing he said, “It’s out of my hands now. Remember you signed an agreement.” He then closed the door behind him. The men rushed us to our cars and actually watched until we drove off. A million things were going through my mind as I drove away and I eventually decided to pull over and park on a side street in order to collect my thoughts. I replayed everything in my mind repeatedly and it all seemed very surreal to me. I was angry with myself for not having taken a more active role in questioning what had been presented to us. I'd like to believe the shock of it all is what suspended my better nature. After what seemed like an eternity, I was able to calm myself enough to make it home. I didn't talk or call anyone that night. The next day back at the office, I was visibly out of it but blamed it on being under the weather. No one else in my department had been invited to the meeting and I felt a sense of guilt for not being able to share what I had witnessed. I thought about contacting the 3 others who wear kicked out of the house but I didn't remember their names and thought that tracking them down would probably bring unwanted attention. I considered speaking out publicly at the risk of losing my job but I realized I’d probably be jeopardizing more than my job and I wasn't willing to risk anything happening to my family. I thought about those men with guns and wondered who they were? I had been told that this was bigger than the music business and all I could do was let my imagination run free. There were no answers and no one to talk to. I tried to do a little bit of research on private prisons but didn’t uncover anything about the music business’ involvement. However, the information I did find confirmed how dangerous this prison business really was. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Eventually, it was as if the meeting had never taken place. It all seemed surreal. I became more reclusive and stopped going to any industry events unless professionally obligated to do so. On two occasions, I found myself attending the same function as my former colleague. Both times, our eyes met but nothing more was exchanged. As the months passed, rap music had definitely changed direction. I was never a fan of it but even I could tell the difference. Rap acts that talked about politics or harmless fun were quickly fading away as gangster rap started dominating the airwaves. Only a few months had passed since the meeting but I suspect that the ideas presented that day had been successfully implemented. It was as if the order has been given to all major label executives. The music was climbing the charts and most companies when more than happy to capitalize on it. Each one was churning out their very own gangster rap acts on an assembly line. Everyone bought into it, consumers included. Violence and drug use became a central theme in most rap music. I spoke to a few of my peers in the industry to get their opinions on the new trend but was told repeatedly that it was all about supply and demand. Sadly many of them even expressed that the music reinforced their prejudice of minorities. I officially quit the music business in 1993 but my heart had already left months before. I broke ties with the majority of my peers and removed myself from this thing I had once loved. I took some time off, returned to Europe for a few years, settled out of state, and lived a “quiet” life away from the world of entertainment. As the years passed, I managed to keep my secret, fearful of sharing it with the wrong person but also a little ashamed of not having had the balls to blow the whistle. But as rap got worse, my guilt grew. Fortunately, in the late 90’s, having the internet as a resource which wasn't at my disposal in the early days made it easier for me to investigate what is now labeled the prison industrial complex. Now that I have a greater understanding of how private prisons operate, things make much more sense than they ever have. I see how the criminalization of rap music played a big part in promoting racial stereotypes and misguided so many impressionable young minds into adopting these glorified criminal behaviors which often lead to incarceration. Twenty years of guilt is a heavy load to carry but the least I can do now is to share my story, hoping that fans of rap music realize how they’ve been used for the past 2 decades. Although I plan on remaining anonymous for obvious reasons, my goal now is to get this information out to as many people as possible. Please help me spread the word. Hopefully, others who attended the meeting back in 1991 will be inspired by this and tell their own stories. Most importantly, if only one life has been touched by my story, I pray it makes the weight of my guilt a little more tolerable. Thank you."
Ninety percent of what Americans read, watch and listen to is controlled by only six media companies. PBS’s Frontline has described the conglomerates that determine what information is disseminated to the public as a “web of business relationships that now defines America’s media and culture.” Business relationships. Last year a mere 232 media executives were responsible for the intake of 277 million Americans, controlling all the avenues necessary to manufacture any celebrity and incite any trend. Time Warner, as owner of Warner Bros Records (among many other record labels), can not only sign an artist to a recording contract but, as the owner ofEntertainment Weekly, can see to it that they get next week’s cover. Also the owner of New Line Cinemas, HBO and TNT, they can have their artist cast in a leading role in a film that, when pulled from theaters, will be put into rotation first on premium, then on basic, cable. Without any consideration to the music whatsoever, the artist will already be a star, though such monopolies also extend into radio stations and networks that air music videos. For consumers, choice is often illusory. Both BET and MTV belong to Viacom. While Hot 97, NYC’s top hip hop station, is owned by Emmis Communications, online streaming is controlled by Clear Channel, who also owns rival station Power 105.
None of this is exactly breaking news, but when ownership of these media conglomerates is cross checked with ownership of the biggest names in prison privatization, interesting new facts emerge.
According to public analysis from Bloomberg, the largest holder in Corrections Corporation of America is Vanguard Group Incorporated. Interestingly enough, Vanguard also holds considerable stake in the media giants determining this country’s culture. In fact, Vanguard is the third largest holder in both Viacom and Time Warner. Vanguard is also the third largest holder in the GEO Group, whose correctional, detention and community reentry services boast 101 facilities, approximately 73,000 beds and 18,000 employees. Second nationally only to Corrections Corporation of America, GEO’s facilities are located not only in the United States but in the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.
You may be thinking, “Well, Vanguard is only the third largest holder in those media conglomerates, which is no guarantee that they’re calling any shots.” Well, the number-one holder of both Viacom and Time Warner is a company called Blackrock. Blackrock is the second largest holder in Corrections Corporation of America, second only to Vanguard, and the sixth largest holder in the GEO Group.
There are many other startling overlaps in private-prison/mass-media ownership, but two underlying facts become clear very quickly: The people who own the media are the same people who own private prisons, the EXACT same people, and using one to promote the other is (or “would be,” depending on your analysis) very lucrative.
Such a scheme would mean some very greedy, very racist people.
There are facts to back that up, too.
Prison industry lobbyists developing and encouraging criminal justice policies to advance financial interests has been well-documented. The most notorious example is the Washington-based American Legislative Council, a policy organization funded by CCA and GEO, which successfully championed the incarceration promoting “truth in sentencing” and “three-strikes” sentencing laws. If the motive of the private prison industry were the goodhearted desire to get hold of inmates as quickly as possible for the purpose of sooner successfully rehabilitating them, maintenance of a 90% occupancy rate would be considered a huge failure, not a functioning prerequisite.
Likewise, the largest rise in incarceration that this country has ever seen correlates precisely with early-80’s prison privatization. This despite the fact that crime rates actually declined since this time. This decreasing crime rate was pointed out enthusiastically by skeptics eager to debunk last year’s anonymous industry insider, who painted a picture of popularized hip-hop as a tool for imprisoning masses. What wasn’t pointed out was that despite crime rates going down, incarceration rates have skyrocketed. While the size of the prison population changed dramatically, so did its complexion. In “‘All Eyez on Me': America’s War on Drugs and the Prison-Industrial Complex,” Andre Douglas Pond Cummings documents the obvious truth that “the vast majority of the prisoner increase in the United States has come from African-American and Latino citizen drug arrests.”
Add to this well-documented statistics proving that the so-called “war on drugs” has been waged almost entirely on low-income communities of color, where up until just two years ago, cocaine sold in crack form fetched sentences 100 times as lengthy as the exact same amount of cocaine sold in powdered form, which is much more common in cocaine arrests in affluent communities. (In July 2010 the oddly named Fair Sentencing Act was adopted, which, rather than reducing the crack/powder disparity from 100-to-1 to 1-to-1, reduced it to 18-to-1, which is still grossly unfair.) This is not to suggest that the crack/powder disparity represents the extent of the racism rampant within the incarceration industry. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal prison system, even where convicted for the exact same crimes, people of color received prison sentences 10% longer . Where convictions are identical, mandatory minimum sentences are also 21% more likely for people of color.
Finally, let us not forget the wealth of evidence to support the notion that crime-, drug- and prison-glorifying hip-hop only outsells other hip-hop because it receives so much more exposure and financial backing, and that when given equal exposure, talent is a much more reliable indicator of success than content.
Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) put it best; “‘hip-hop” is just shorthand for ‘black people.'” Before our eyes and ears, a “web of business relationships that now defines America’s media and culture” has one particular business raking in billions of dollars while another defines the culture of a specific demographic as criminal. Both business are owned by the same people. Mainstream media continue to endorse hip-hop that glorifies criminality (most notably drug trafficking and violence), and private prison interests, long since proven to value profits over human rights, usher in inmates of color to meet capacity quotas. The same people disproportionately incarcerated when exposed to the criminal justice system are at every turn inundated with media normalizing incarceration to the point that wherever there is mainstream hip-hop music, reference to imprisonment as an ordinary, even expected, component of life is sure to follow.
Conspiracy theorists get a lot of flak for daring entertain the notion that people will do evil things for money. Historical atrocities like slavery and the Holocaust are universally acknowledged, yet simultaneously adopted is the contradictory position that there can’t possibly be any human beings around intelligent enough and immoral enough to perpetrate such things. Even in the midst of the Europe-wide beef that was actually horse-meat fiasco, and the release of real-life nightmare documenting films like “Sunshine and Oranges,” there is an abundance of people content to believe that the only conspiracies that ever exist are those that have successfully been exposed.
The link between mass media and the prison industrial complex, however, is part of a very different type of conversation.
The information in this article was not difficult to find; it is all public.
This is not a conspiracy. This is a fact.