The Nightmare and The Dream (Chaps. 19 & 20)

Chapter 19: Biggie and Tupac

Life After Death

Ross asserts that in hip-hop, disposability among artists is very common. However, for Biggie and Tupac, this hasn’t been the case. Their works have lived on, remain popular and the two rappers have become idolized. But why is that? Ross focuses on Biggie’s martyr-making, and lists a number of reasons as to why his artistry has survived despite his death, including Puffy’s tribute to him on the VMA’s and the release of posthumous albums. Biggie, in particular, has been kept alive through films and books that examine his life and death and, furthermore, his giving personality is said to have made an impact on his admires: “He is universally admired as a ‘man of the people,’ someone who not only represented the streets from which he came, but looked out for others” (280).

The Dyad Syndrome

Ross questions whether Biggie would still be such a significant cultural icon if Tupac hadn’t been murdered too. According to Ross, “Tupac had a profound impact on popular culture that extended (and extends) beyond hip-hop. He is linked to a continuum of black resistance” (281). While Biggie’s music was about making it out of the ghetto, Tupac’s was more complicated and ‘mercurial’. However, despite their differences, the two rappers are inextricably linked together.

Ross explains how this linking of Biggie and Tupac relates to a ‘stream of double-consciousness’ that exists in black America. Additionally, the hip-hop generation—much like generations before them—seemed to be looking for martyrs to help define its own movement. For instance, Ross notes the Civil Rights movement as having Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X as its leaders: “Even though no human being is purely an expression of an idea, the way they were represented through the media and by those who heroize, demonize and mythologize stripped them of their complexity, commonality and ambiguity in order to serve their hero-worshipping purposes” (283). Basically, we often view MLK and Malcolm X in very static terms and shape their views to fit our own.

Seemingly, the same thing has happened to Tupac and Biggie, yet these two rappers are a product of the social and political atmospheres that were forged before them. While Ross suggests that making them martyrs is better than just forgetting them, he says that “we should ask ourselves why we chose these figure to elevate and what they represent within the larger context of the struggle within black American culture” (285). For example, Ross claims that Tupac represents the ‘nightmare’ of this double-consciousness. However misguided some of his actions or statements were, they were fully representative of the struggles and experiences of blacks at the time. Yet, this isn’t something that most people have been comfortable with as Americas has been more comfortable listening to the ‘dream’ metaphor as opposed to the hard truth. Ross says, “the integrationist gospel has evolved to meet the needs of the American conscience” (285).

Post-Civil Rights Integrationism Revisited

Ross claims that Biggie and Tupac represent so much more than an East Coast/West coast battle, even though that’s usually how they’ve been marketed to appear. (Ross also acknowledges that the pop-culture industry thrives off of black death.) Rather, their iconography was representative of the feelings of black Americans, stuck between the nightmare and the dream. Biggie’s lyrics often related a tale of going from rags-to-riches and obtaining the American dream, while Tupac’s lyrics represented a marginalized and unwanted voice in society. Essentially, because both rappers are such large parts of hip-hop despite the many years after there death, its representative of the struggle that blacks feel in regards to American. Furthermore, until the hip-hop generation understands how they feel about America and their place in it, they will war with one another and “continue falling pray to divide-and-conquer tactics that are consistently employed and deployed to keep oppressed people from identifying their common aspirations for justice, liberty and peace of mind” (288).

Chapter 20: Ghetto Gold

In chapter 20 of his book, The Nightmare and the Dream, Dax-Devlon Ross examines the artistic choices of the rap artist Jay-Z to exemplify the impact that a growing financial market plays upon the content of mainstream hiphop music. Ross uses part of Jay-Z’s song “Moment of Clarity”:

I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars/They criticize me for it, yet they all yell “holla”/If sells sold/Truth be told/I’d probably/Be/Lyrically Talib Kweli/Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like common sense/But I did five/I ain’t been rhymin’ like common sense/When your cents got that much in common / When you been hustlin’ since your inception/ Fuck perception/ Go with what makes sense / Since I know what I’m up against/ We as rappers must decide what’s most important/ I can’t help the poor If I’m one of them/ So I got rich and gave back/ To me that’s a win-win (Ross, 2008 p.289).

Ross uses this segment of the song to deconstruct it’s meaning, as well as to deconstruct the meanings that of the conversations that arise when discussing the impact of highly successful commercial rap upon the content of hiphop artists. Ross would argue that the statement Jay – Z is making within the context of the song is that he merely changed the style of his rap and the change alone was the deciding factor of his success (Ross, 2008, p.291). Ross states that Jay –Z’s explanation of his content fails to mention outside forces that influenced his music and that his explanation also produces a contradiction of self identity. Ross claims that by changing his music to make more money, what Jay-Z is really doing is changing the market of consumers that will listen to his music. “Jay –Z consciously changed his music to capture a greater share of the mainstream market. In short, he didn’t simply dumb down, but to an extent, he flip-flopped” (Ross, 2008, p.291). Ross would also state that Jay-Z’s explanation is just a bad excuse for sacrificing artistic credibility in order to make more money (Ross, 2008).

This explanation also provides for a contradiction between what Jay- Z would identify himself as and what he really projects to others. Jay- Z identifies with being a “ghetto spokesman” who speaks and represents his people (Ross, 2008, p.293). However, because his decision was to make money over preserving his content, he is really exploiting those who he claims to represent because he is moving hiphop away from “its resistance roots and deeper into corporate America” (Ross, 2008, 293).

Later in the chapter Ross looks to the economic climate of the late 1990’s to help add an explanation to Jay- Z’s change in content. Ross explains how the development of an economy based on information technology created an opening through the 1996 Telecommunications Act that allowed for companies to have a stronghold over radio stations, which left little room for anything other than the national top ten recordings (Ross,2008). This change within the radio industry allowed for hiphop music to be widely distributed to suburban America (Ross, 2008, p. 293). Also this new environment did not leave room for anything that would fall too far outside of the mainstream. Ross contextualizes the economic market to explain that there were other factors involved in Jay-Z’s decision to change his content. These additional two forces were: audience change, and market change.

Ross also gives defense to Jay-Z when he explains the “creative class”. The creative class is a growing demographic that independent, energetic, and always striving to create new ways to mix and remix culture while at the same time affirming the traditional values of hard work and enterprise (Ross, 2008, p.297). Ross States (2008):

“In fact, although many fans and music critics have justly characterized his music as materialistic, misogynistic and violent, those same critics have overlooked both his commitment to creating new forms through experimentation, and how that exchange has kept him in the cutting edge and in the public eye” (p.297).

In regards to Jay-Z’s authenticity, Ross would state that what Jay-Z did was authentic in some ways. Jay-Z wanted to create a narrative that would translate into a sound that the rest of the world could understand(Ross,2008.p 299). However, Ross does claim that in that process Jay-Z made a conscious effort to become the voice of the hiphop community after Biggie’s death (Ross,2008). In doing this Ross would argue that Jay-Z gained the same mass appeal as Biggie while at the same time doing so at the expense of an unsophisticated market (Ross, 2008, p. 303).

Finally, Ross makes a comparison between Frederick Douglass and Jay-Z. The common ground he finds is that both men had an assertion of mainstream American ideals and values; they celebrate the conspicuous excesses of our times, irrespective of race (Ross,2008,p.304). It was these values that lead to the change in content for Jay-Z. It was these values that allowed for Jay-Z to claim his position of “Ghetto Spokesman” through self-promotion (Ross, 2008). It was market capitalism that allowed for the development of the American ideals that led to his eventual reign to the top (Ross, 2008, p.309).

- Lindsay Ferguson and Hannah Orlowski