June is Black Music Month, a month to celebrate, honor, appreciate, and raise awareness of Black music. From gospel and folk to blues and jazz, it’s hard to find a genre Black musicians haven’t influenced. This summer also marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop.
Earlier this year, reporters for URL Media partner Epicenter-NYC asked New Yorkers about their favorite female hip-hop musicians. From Queen Latifah and Lil’ Kim to Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, the answers were as varied as the inspiration folks pulled from their lives and careers.
But hip-hop is much more than a genre of music, it’s also a culture and a consciousness, Joseph Sanchez, a member of the Temple of Hip Hop, recently told Epicenter-NYC.
“The culture of Hip Hop, in my own words, is a way to exist, it’s a way for the inner city youth to exist and create its own language and its own existence within a world where when you don’t get recognized, you have the opportunity to create yourself,” Sanchez told the outlet.
The consciousness of hip-hop, Sanchez said, is the innate need to create beats, rhythms, graffiti or other creative endeavors. The genre of hip-hop is part of the product — the records, the speakers, the flyers.
So it’s no surprise that a genre, which came from a group of people whose existence was often ignored, paved the way for protest music throughout the nation, URL Media partner Prism reports.
In 2018, Childish Gambino released his song, “This is America,” a scathing indictment of our nation’s willingness to consume Black art while not valuing Black communities. In 2019, Beyoncé released “Black Parade,” a joyful celebration of Black culture. And in 2020, Anderson .Paak released the song, “Lockdown,” which samples audio from one of the protests in Los Angeles where police declared the demonstration an unlawful assembly.
“We was tryin’ to protest, then the fires broke out
Look out for the secret agents, they be planted in the crowd
Said, ‘It’s civil unrest’ but you sleep so sound
Like you don’t hear the screams when we catchin’ beatdowns”
Five years before .Paak released that song, I was leaving work when I found myself in the middle of a protest. Thousands of Chicago residents, mostly Black and Brown, took to the streets to protest the police killing of Laquan McDonald, a Black 17-year-old youth who was shot 16 times by a white officer. The moment that struck me the most was when the crowd began chanting, “We gon’ be alright,” the oft repeated refrain from Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 song, “Alright.”
The protestors’ hurt, angst, sorrow, grief, anger and rage was coupled with their unwavering belief that, despite the ongoing threat of police violence against Black communities, they would persevere.
By the summer of 2020, I noticed these protest anthems were taking on a different tone. One that felt jubilant, gleeful even, in its defiance of the status quo. As URL Media partner Scalawag reported in the fall of 2020, hip-hop subgenres drill and trap have become this generation’s choice of protest music.
The outlet points to a live video from the night the Minneapolis Police Department’s third precinct was set on fire. The video shows youth jumping on cars rapping to recording artist Chief Keef’s “Faneto.”
But you won’t see reporting on this cultural shift in mainstream media.
“Although drill and trap have served as the soundtrack of youth uprising this summer, mainstream accounts of ‘protest music’ still usually leave these genres out,” Nicholas Vila Byers wrote. “The reason is simple; white journalists prefer protest music that makes them feel optimistic.”
And I think that’s an important point for non-Black folks, like myself, to recognize. When we, as listeners who aren’t Black, consume the art of Black artists, we have to understand that their intended messages won’t always resonate with us or make us feel good — and that’s OK.
I urge you to make a concerted effort this month to seek out Black music critics and find new Black musicians whose work you enjoy. I know I will. —Alicia Ramirez
P.S. If you’re in the Philadelphia area on June 16, URL Media partner WURD Radio will be celebrating Black Music Month and the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with an event at World Cafe Live at 3025 Walnut St., from 8-11 p.m.
