Manicured Street Dreams and Dreamers: Street Authenticity and Rap Culture

411: I submitted this piece for the XXL Magazine Guest 360 Blogger Competition.  I loved the question, didn't make it to the spot...maybe I sounded too nerdy LOL.  It's all good I enjoyed writing it!
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I’m surprised the idea of street still has such relevance as a gauge of authenticity in Hip Hop Culture.  This is a capitalistic era where experiences are manufactured and imagined for a consumer audience who often does not have a clue.  Street culture and music can make a profit. For the most part, today’s idea and interpretation of street music is often subjected to trend and demand – what was once representative of inner city black America is now also synonymous with manicured lawns in the ‘burbs.  To be street is an option, not a requirement; a business move instead of an experience. 

Keeping Consciousness in the Ivory Tower

Authenticity debates exist outside the realm of Hip Hop Culture and rap music. 
Let me give an example from my archives:


I met with tenured Professor Guy X (or your favorite alphabet letter) back when I first started my MA.  He called me into his office of books - I'm a fiend for and always salivate at a sexy library - and asked me where I saw my career heading in the next twenty years.  Twenty years? Chile boo. Can I get past this first semester? Not pee a little when I look at my weekly reading schedule, who, if it could talk, would probably say "do you really want this ass whoopin'?!" 

Can't Rep a Side, Just Stuck in the Middle - My Personal Experiences with Colorism and Class

From as far back as my youngin' days, I've been consistently reminded of light skinntedness and dark skinntedness. Skin color and class are inextricably linked where I'm from. In the 'Bany, the sides of town were often framed and stratified by skin color - amongst the black folks! The east and south sides were supposedly the working class folks who happened to have a little more melanin than most.  The west and north sides were reserved for well off, bougie lighter blacks who "were tryna front and be whiter than they ass really was." I didn't rep a side at concerts and football games. I was in the boonies. I lived in the field, literally - my house was surrounded by corn and cotton fields outside the city limits.  I repped Dougherty County. As I got older and wanted to socialize, my grandparents were weary of certain places in which I was forbidden to go - football games on the eastside, friend's houses on the eastside....wait, just the eastside in general.  That was the nigga side of town, my Paw Paw stressed. What, I couldn't be a nigga? Or nigga by affiliation? Is it 'cause I'm lightskinned? But I digress...

Bust Ya Ass on the Black Ice and Laugh: The Tragi-Comedic Generation

I'm an '84 baby. According to Walter Kimbrough and Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar I barely made the Hip Hop Generation.  I don't really remember the "golden" era of Hip Hop culture as lived experience - I was too busy with He-Man, Care Bears, Lite Brites, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - but I went back later on in life and appreciated that moment in history.  


What I DO remember, however, is what I was doing on September 13, 1996 and March 9, 1997. 

Fortress of In-Solitude: Representations of Mental Health in Black America

Within the last year, the idea of black folks having (the capacity to have?) mental health concerns has surfaced  through the American popular culture.  From the media frenzy surrounding Fantasia Barrino's suicide attempt to Ron Artest's shoutout to his psychiatrist after the Lakers won this year's NBA Finals, a quickly emerging albeit intriguing disposition is rising to the top of our daily conversations: how do we deal with the taboo issues of the African American psyche?