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Claims that R. Kelly Has Increased Record Sales is a Bunch of Hype

January 5, 2019 By

So all these news outlets are running around reporting that in the wake of the documentary that there’s been a spike in his ‘Sales’ of R Kelley’s music… There’s a lot of straight-up bullshyt in those headlines so let’s unpack what’s happening.

The headlines ‘R Kelly Record Sales Increase‘ suggest one of two scenarios. The first is tens of thousands or perhaps ‘millions’ of people upon watching the documentary and hearing all these disturbing and compelling testimonies of rape, sexual assault, and abuse were moved and inspired to go to the local record store and ‘purchase’ R Kelly music…

Really?? Think about that. Does that make sense? Tens of thousands of people heard about R Kelly urinating in the mouth of a 14-year-old and reacted by saying; ‘Ya know.. lemme go purchase the latest R Kelly album‘ Do people even know the name of R Kelly’s latest album? Common sense told you that didn’t happen.

The other scenario is that folks saw the documentary or heard about it and said they didn’t believe the women and their stories and said they would go out and purchase R Kelly music to make a defiant statement. So, in other words, folks said; ‘Damn it R Kelly is in trouble, they are trying to pull him down, lemme go purchase music to help keep this embattled brother alive’…Is that what we think happened.?

So let’s look at some of the numbers being tossed about in these articles and give this some context. There is are two websites, The Blast, and Refinery29.com that seem to be the first to report that ‘streams’… not record sales… but streams of R Kelly’s music on Spotify had increased. In the articles, they note that R Kelly’s numbers had increased by 16% since the Surviving R Kelly documentary aired. They also toss out some impressive-sounding numbers like R Kelly has a monthly listener base of ‘over 5.5 million and over 1.7 million subscribers. You can read the articles HERE.. and HERE.

Many of the stories reporting on Kelly’s supposed ‘increased record sales’ have quoted or pulled from these two articles including actress Jada Pinkett Smith who put up an Instagram video expressing bewilderment that R Kelly is sales are flourishing.

So yes, 5.5 million monthly listeners seems like a big number. And to be honest, should we be surprised? Keep in mind, R Kelly is an A-List artist, who’s been around for more than 20 years and has sold over 75 million albums. So 5.5 million listeners sounds legit until you compare him to some of his contemporaries.

For example, let’s compare R Kelly’s numbers to someone like Lil Wayne who has 21 million monthly listeners, Kodak Black who has 27 million listeners, Meek Mill, another embattled artist has 22 million listeners, or Drake who has 44 million listeners. R Kelly’s monthly listeners are comparable to someone like Iggy Azalea who has close to 5.5 million.

What’s the point being made here? Since these news reports wanted to entice us by tossing out numbers we can do that as well, and when you start stacking it up, R Kelly ain’t doing all that, as these stories would imply.

Let’s look at some other numbers. On Youtube, the R Kelly Channel has 2.2 million subscribers. He gained about 100k new subscribers since November 2018. Compare his numbers that with Drake who has 17 million, Kodak Black who has 4.8 million, Meek Mill who has 2.9 million. In short the R Kelly has increased record sales is a bunch of hype..




Filed Under: Commentary, Feature, Music news

Davey D: Did the Telecommunications Act of ’96 Stifle Diversity in Rap Music?

August 7, 2018 By

A lot of folks point to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and say its the key mark in the sand… I disagree and allow me to give some context..

First I was one of those people who actually spoke at FCC hearings when this was being proposed and covered the 96 Act on my radio show here in SF.. I worked at KMEL which later went on to become a Clear Channel station..

KMEL was a unique station in the sense that it was really the first Top 40 station that laid out a solid successful blue print for how Top 40 stations could play Hip Hop and not lose advertising dollars or be stuck with the stigma of being a Black station.. That Blue print was later picked up by Hot 97 under Steve Smith who was from the Bay Area and worked at Hot 97 in San Jose and later Power 106 in LA..

One of things that was notable about those times in the early 90s.. leading up to 96 was the role Black/Urban radio played and the challenges they faced..

One of the key aspects was there was alot of hatred from some Black program directors for Hip Hop.. This was well before that 96 act and with the exception of a few places.. Rap/ Hip Hop was limited to weekend mix shows which many of us vigorously recorded and passed around..

Complicating this situation was the challenge that Black Urban stations had with securing advertisements if they got identified with playing too much rap.. hence many found there was an economic squeeze to move in a certain direction..

Lastly we had those Black music/ Pop division in the record labels.. Black divisions serviced Urban stations while Pop divisions serviced crossover stations with a much bigger budget..

In the early 90s… say 91 – 92 we saw a number a pop stations emerge and go full throttle in playing Rap.. Ours (KMEL) was one that led the charge.. This resulted in some misgivings among urban stations who felt like they were at a disadvantage because stations like ours were deemed crossover and not stigmatized with Black /urban label..

Some of this came to head at the Gavin Convention when Urban and Pop stations basically had a face off.. The argument made by urban stations was that the CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) outlets were Urban stations and thus should be classified as such and not get these big pop budgets.. Urban programmers claimed they were warming up all this good Black music only to have CHR outlets get the credit and promotional budget from the labels..

The CHR stations made the argument that Hip Hop was basically crossover music.. and 2 they were playing Hip Hop without hesitation and restriction.. They accused urban outlets of being too cautious and many of them straight haters to Hip Hop.. They also said that it was not their fault these urban outlets didnt have an effective sales team to sell ads..

There was a call for CHR to be classified as urban.. CHR responded and said Hip Hop was crossover and the compromise was for some CHR to be called Churban.. That contentious meeting was the last time urban PDs showed up at Gavin en masse.. Many simply opted to go to the Urban Network convention..

Around that time we saw a switch in formats with many urban outlets becoming adult contemporary and using the slogan we don’t play rap…

So we saw this squeeze early on with playlist shrinking on the urban side.. Later we saw the shrinking of the list on the CHR side before 1996 as labels began to flex muscles and insisted on playlists and heavy on air rotation that centered around the groups they signed and were pushing..Around time you still had a ton of local based labels who were able to shine, but as major labels began to sign acts we saw those local homegrown/regional labels in various markets becoming viable competition..

I recall some of those big labels folks who sat in music meetings and pretty much demanded that stations scale back on regional play.. The logic was the labels had paid for advertisement, sponsored promotions and trips and basically put money on the table that was not being matched by their regional and local counterparts..

I cant speak for every market but the ones I’m familiar with before 96.. had tighter musical rotations being applied both on mix shows, Hip Hop specialty shows and regular programming.. I kept alot of our old playlists and the playlists of other stations if folks wanna ever see those how stark those changes were..

I would also add that when we saw the shutting down of Yo MTV Raps and a limiting of music requests on the Box that added to the centralizing of music..

There is no doubt the 96 Telecommunications Act put a nail in the coffin to all this.. But from where I sit we were already headed in that direction for many of the reasons I mentioned and number of other reasons that I don’t have a lot of time to lay out..

What stands out in my mind is being at new Music Seminar and other conventions in the 80s and early 90s where artists from Queen Latifah to Chuck D to many others were forcely and aggressively speaking out about the lack of airplay they were able to receive and talking about how wack and overly cautious program directors were when it came to rap..

The fact that we saw 5 year opening for Hip Hop on Crossover/pop stations was always borrowed time.. They would dance with Hip Hop as long as it was trending and in style with that pop audience.. But the goal in those outlets was to never nurture the essence of Hip Hop but to find the best pop formula..

Its funny how in looking back there were artists like the Snap, Heavy D, Redhead KingPen and some of the early New Jack swing that was deemed pop and even soft compared to the hard hitting Hip Hop produced by others.. 25 later those pop sounding Hip Hop songs that fused R&B are deemed bonafied classics.. that we all wax nostalgic over ..

Lastly I’ll close by saying that some of what I wrote I think changed from region to region.. If there is one thing the 96 Act killed was a regional sound and style.. There was a time you could go to Washington DC and listen to the radio and it had a different sound a rhythm than a station like KDAY in LA.. and KDAY had a different sound then KUBE in Seattle and that sound was different then the sound on WGCI in Chicago.. Nowadays you cant tell what city you’re in listening to those outlets.. They all sound the same musically and even personality wise thanks to voice tracking and syndication..

Filed Under: 2018 News, archived story, Feature Tagged With: , ,

Is Bruno Mars a Culture Vulture? No, He is Not!

March 20, 2018 By

So as of late, there has been a lot of discussion around singer Bruno Mars and some folks insisting that he is guilty of cultural appropriation.

The definition of this term Cultural Appropriation means: the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture

Bruno also borrows heavily from singers Michael Jackson and James Brown who without question have major footprints on lots of popular music. Jackson popularized dance styles that he got from the streets here in Cali while James was the unintended blueprint for a variety of genres most notably Hip Hop. Those of us who are old enough will recall James was not too keen on folks sampling his music and not giving him credit and even said so in a couple of songs. We won’t even get into the dance steps that many borrowed which are now part of Hip Hop key dance moves.

Back in the days, folks said that James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, and others who were being sampled should be happy. In fact, they should be thanking Hip Hop for bringing back to life a sound and style that had essentially been dead.

Artists like Daddy O, lead emcee for Stetsasonic laid out that argument excellently in a song called ‘Talking All That Jazz’…


In the case of Bruno Mars its crystal clear that he clearly understands the roots of the music genres that have influenced him. In fact, he probably knows it better than most. It’s also crystal clear that he has profusely given credit to the originators of the sounds he uses.

Here’s the larger point, when folks accuse Bruno Mars of cultural appropriation, they are basically saying ‘dude is ‘Not Black‘ and he’s getting over doing Black music’. Now we can get into a long discussion about who is Black and who isn’t from a Diasporic perspective. Don’t Puerto Ricans have African blood in their veins? Are they not part of the diaspora? But for some, no matter what is said or proven folks are gonna fall back on the notion that Black music is being exploited and thus Bruno should be the target of their anger.

What’s interesting is that while folks will focus all their attention on Bruno, they will remain silent and even compliant with the real exploiters and cultural appropriators of Black music. We can start with the many of the major record labels who got generations of young, easily influenced and naive artists to sign away their copyrights and publishing. If you really peel back the onion there are lots of stories of Black artists being forced to give away their creations.. This is a sordid history that’s been outlined in a variety of books like:
‘Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business’, by Fredric Dannen. Another one is ‘An Autobiography of Black Jazz‘ by Dempsey J Travis. ‘Death of Rhythm and Blues’ by Nelson George outlines this exploitative relationship as does ‘Blackout: My 40 Years in the Music Business’ by Paul Porter.

This sordid history of exploitation has been spoken about very publicly by everyone from Prince to Michael Jackson to Ice Cube to Gza… The list is long. The stories are detailed and really show the depth of cultural exploitation and appropriation within the music industry. The stories detail the unapologetic boldness and epitomize the notion of someone Not Giving zero f–ks which is an attitude that’s alive and well today within those corporate structures. These entertainment conglomerates are the ones who really ‘cake’ off Black music.

Bruno Mars dancing like Michael Jackson or using a Teddy Riley-inspired beat is him paying homage. What’s exploitation is corporate music outlets from the IHeart Radios of the world (formerly Clear Channel to the Viacom’s) that peddle a particular type of narrowcasted musical Blackness that is steeped in harmful and demeaning stereotypes that nets these corporations billions while having us collectively looking like savage baboons.
It gets really insidious when those executives and gatekeepers will invest millions of marketing dollars and define these negative expressions and market them as ‘Authentic Black Culture‘.

That’s cultural exploitation and it’s rooted in the legacy of Blackface minstrelsy where white actors donned Blackface and adopted stereotypical speech patterns and Black mannerisms and entertained millions. Black face was the country’s biggest form of entertainment for over 100 years.

This industry really took off when Black actors desperate for money, fame and economic opportunity started wearing Blackface and enhancing those negative stereotypes. These Black minstrels were marketed to white audiences as authentic. They were the equivalent of a certain type of heavily promoted artists who today are advertised as ‘keeping it real and being ‘true to the streets’.

Filed Under: Essential Hip Hop Articles, Feature Tagged With: , ,

Hip Hop Has Always Been Political

January 26, 2012 By

Whenever we talk about Hip Hop and Politics it’s always done from the standpoint with us going to the ballot box as the ultimate goal. Don’t get me wrong, voting and participating in the electoral arena are important, but Hip Hop is so much bigger and so is politics.

For many of us politics is more than us voting for a particular candidate or having a catchy slogan that everyone chants at a rally. At its core, politics is about Empowerment. It’s the social, economic and political control of our communities with voting and political education being among the important steps we take to reach that goal.

Hip Hop is more than a ‘Hot 16‘, ‘fresh new gear‘ or ‘swagger devoid of substance‘. At the end of the day Hip Hop like politics is also about Empowerment. It’s about giving voice to the voiceless and helping remove both ourselves and the community from a position of being maligned and irrelevant with respect to the larger society. Like voting, knowledge and understanding of self and our communities is critical.

It’s important for us to have a firm understanding about the political and social conditions that existed at the dawn of Hip Hop’s birth in the early 70s. It’s important to note that our communities were under serious attack and the expressions associated with Hip Hop was one way in which we responded and ultimately coped.

The pioneers to this culture came up seeing how the FBI under the leadership of J Edgar Hoover and his Cointelpro Program, went all out to destroy the symbols of resistance and liberation from earlier generations including; Malcolm X who was killed, Martin Luther King who was killed and the Black Panther Party which was destroyed with many of its members jailed. Among those incarcerated during the dawning of Hip Hop was Afeni Shakur and the mother of Tupac. She along with her Panther comrades known as the New York 21. were jailed in 1971 while she was pregnant with Pac.

Also part of Hoover’s Cointelpro  Program was to have his agents focus on Black Culture. He had his agents learn everything they could so they could control and disrupt the Black community. The FBI went all out to try and undermine the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Many feel the FBI kept aspects of its program alive to undermine aspects of Hip Hop which emerged in the aftermath of BAM. Below is a former FBI agent named Darthhard Perry speaking about the significance of Black culture and how the FBI sought to undermine it. I would urge people to watch the entire video, but the part that pertains to culture starts at 1hr 20 minutes into the video..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHnUFpCeGxQ

The Free Speech and Anti-War Movements were under attack with then President Nixon declaring an all out war on radical youth. Hippies and Yippies were two components of youth culture caught up in the cross hairs as were Black and Brown organizations like SNCC, the Young Lords and the Brown Berets.

During Hip Hop’s dawning, New York City was enduring serious financial hardship as it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. That calamity was avoided when city leaders decided to keep the cops, the firemen and garbage workers and instead fired 15 thousand school teachers leaving many of us without after-school programs, extracurricular classes like music and art and our overall education, shortchanged on many levels.

All this was exasperated by greedy landlords in the South Bronx who were burning down tenement buildings almost every other day and collecting the insurance money. Their actions put an already stressed community into an economic tail spin as the Bronx became the worldwide symbol of urban decay.

While all this was going on, the NYPD seemingly working in tandem with President Nixon’s War on Youth had launched an all out war on the gangs that were starting to emerge in the Bronx. They even had a special gang division who were just as brutal back in the days as they are now. Compounding this war by the police, was the fact that many Black and Brown gangs formed because they found themselves under attack by what was known as white greaser gangs who didn’t take too kindly to the Bronx neighborhoods expanding its Black and Puerto Rican populations. Hence there was serious racial tension.

It was in this climate that Hip Hop emerged.

Charlie (Cholly) Rock an original Zulu Nation member and former Black Spade which was the largest gang in New York gives a run down of the political and social climate at the dawning of Hip Hop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycREFrL6-RA

The Spirit of Resistence: Hip Hop Has Always Been Political

Resistance-It’s a facet in Hip Hop that is not fully appreciated and reflected upon.

So again let me repeat… Hip Hop is resistance…It was us fighting back, standing up to and flipping the script on oppressive forces. Bottom line Hip Hop was always POLITICAL.

Afrika Bambaataa

It was political when Afrika Bambaataa a former Black Spade warlord while attending Stevenson High School in the Bronx sought to escape gang life and formed the Organization which he later turned into the Mighty Zulu Nation. This was Hip Hop’s first organization which had among its goals to be a youth movement.

It was political when you went to hear Bambaataa spin at a park jam and he would rock Malcolm X speeches over break beats, reminding us what our political ideology should be.

It was political when Bam took the name ‘Zulu’ for his new organization after being inspired by the movie of the same name that depicted the South African Zulus fighting European colonizers. As the Zulu Nation grew, Bambaataa sought to instill pride and bring out the best positive attributes from the people around him. He did this by referring to Zulu members as ‘Kings’ and ‘Queens’. Bam once told me he did this to help raise people’s self esteem with the hopes that they would live up to the lofty titles he bestowed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL1YntDNRHo

It was political when Bambaataa and other artists including Kurtis Blow, Kool Herc, Mele-Mel, Run DMC and the Fat Boys all participated in the Artist United Against Apartheid project where they recorded several songs for the Sun City album. Later Bambaattaa would tour Europe doing concerts to raise money for the ANC (African National Congress).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joYTCwNMdq8

What was even more remarkable and definitely ‘political’ about Afrika Bambaataa who was dubbed the Master of Records, was his goal to turn his former gang comrades into a positive force. Bam has often remarked how and he and others would spend lots of time working and building with folks. He said it took a ‘whole lot of meetings and whole lot of patience‘ but eventually folks grew and got it together.

When he started touring Bam took many of the folks from his Bronx River neighborhood with him. He gave them jobs as roadies or as security. He did whatever it took to get them into new environments to help expand their horizons. He was essentially doing a prison to work program years before the city was doing one. If that isn’t political I don’t know what is..

Years later we would see a number of other Hip Hop artists, most notably MC Hammer a former High Street Bank Boy out of Oakland, do similar things. Hammer spent hundreds of thousands of dollars creating jobs within his company in to help facilitate the transition friends and people in his neighborhood would have to make when returning home from the pen.

Hammer took his desire to transform lives to another level when he approached local Bay Area urban radio station KMEL in the early 90s and convinced them to let him air a radio show he created called Street Soldiers. The show was designed to give folks who were ‘in the life’ (gangs drugs etc) an opportunity to get out. Gang members would call in and talk about the challenges they were facing and get feedback from their peers and community experts who would help them turn their lives around. Hammer hosted the show for the first several months and then turned it over to current hosts Joe Marshall and Margret Norris of the Omega Boys club.

The Geto Boys

In a similar vein we have the Geto Boys out of Houston. Everyone is familiar with many of their politically charged rap songs that dealt with everything from crooked police to shady DEA Agents to a President and his quest for war. We’re also familiar with the fact that Willie D used to do a political talk show on Houston radio.

However, what many people didn’t know was that the GB spent quite a bit of money paying legal fees and other court costs trying to get innocent people out of jail. Bushwick Bill and Scarface talked about this in great detail a few years ago when they came on our daily Hard Knock Radio show to protest the state of Texas executing Shaka Sankofa. If I recall correctly, Bushwick said they spent at least 200-250 thousand dollars in their efforts. That was another example of Hip Hop’s spirit of resistence.

Hip Hop Has Always Addressed Electoral Politics

Melle-Mel recorded a song called ‘Jesse’ praising Rev Jesse Jackson-It one of the earliest rap songs encouraging folks to Get Out and Vote

Moving into the arena of the Ballot Box, Hip Hop has been a participant in some form or fashion going all the way back to 1984 when Melle-Mel of Grand Master Flash & the Furious 5 recorded a song called ‘Jesse’ which highlighted Reverand Jesse Jackson‘s historic run for the White House. The song also encouraged everyone to ‘Get out and Vote‘ while at the same time taking then President Ronald Reagan to task for the economic harm he was causing poor people around the country.

See Ronald Reagan speaking on TV, smiling like everything’s fine and dandy
Sounded real good when he tried to give a pep talk to over 30 million poor people like me
How can we say we got to stick it out when his belly is full and his future is sunny?
I don’t need his jive advice but I sure do need his jive time money
The dream is a nightmare in disguise (Let’s talk about Jesse)
Red tape and lies fill your for spacious skies (Let’s talk about Jesse)
But don’t think that DC just did it first (Let’s talk about Jesse)
There’s a lot of DC’s all over this universe (His name is Jesse)

Later in the song, Melle-Mel smashes on the former President for his initial refusal to meet with Jesse Jackson after he offered to go to Syria and help secure the release of Navy Lt. Robert O. Goodman Jr. who was being hostage after his plane was shot down when he ‘accidently’ flew into their airspace. Ironically even though the song was popular in clubs and at rallies, many urban station never played the record. Jackson himself, told me he didn’t hear the record until the some 10 years after it was recorded. Talk about a disconnect between generations. Below is a video of a live performance of this song that’s damn near been erased from history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3IsCfMB0rk

In 1988 Luther Campbell aka Uncle Luke of the 2 Live Crew teamed up with one of his artists Anquette to back former US Attorney General Janet Reno who at the time was a Dade County (Miami) District Attorney vying for another term.

Anquette did this incredible James Brown inspired song called Janet Reno where she praised Reno for her legal prowess and for going after dead beat dads. The song helped Reno win the election which in turn angered her opponent a lawyer by the name of Jack Thompson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROZllkxVshM

Janet Reno

Janet Reno

Thompson sought revenge on Campbell and launched a campaign where he pressured officials throughout the state including Governor Bob Martinez and Broward County sheriff Nick Navarro to go after the 2 live Crew for violating state obscenity laws. Eventually Navarro won a ruling that deemed the group’s album As Nasty As They Wanna Be as obscene.

Local record store owners were warned not to sell the album or they would be arrested. Many shop owners protested but didn’t dare test Navarro. Things came to a head when 2 of the 2 Live Crew members were arrested for performing songs off the album. This is turn set off a huge legal firestorm around first amendment rights.

Campbell, fought this case all the way to the Supreme Court where Harvard Professor Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates testified on behalf of the 2Live Crew. He noted that the salacious material they recorded was rooted in the oral/song traditions of African-Americans. The ruling of obscenity were overturned. Again, all this legal drama was caused by Luke’s subversive efforts and Anquette’s song which help turn the tide in an election.

Now we could do an entire book on Hip Hop and Elections where we’d have to cover everyone from Diddy‘s Vote or Die efforts to Russell Simmons Hip Hop Summit Action Network to the Hip Hop Political Conventions that took place in 04, 06 and 08.

We’d also have to talk about the formation of Hip Hop Congress and the work they do on campuses around the country, the introduction of Rap Sessions and the political town halls they hold around the country, The League of Young Voters who put out Hip Hop oriented voting guides and recently has been doing work around the census and we’d have to cover Washington based Hip Hop Caucus that routinely engages elected officials on Capitol Hill and did the Respect My Vote Campaign in 08.

Below is a video of Diddy during his Vote or Die campaign speaking to a young Barack Obama in 2004 who at the time was running for US Senate in Illinois. In this interview Diddy predicts Obama would one day be President.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqzZWkMtz68

We would also have to talk about the recent victory of artist/activist Ras Baraka to the City Council in Newark. He used to serve as deputy mayor. We’d have to talk about the Honorable George Martinez who is currently serving as cultural Envoy, Hip-Hop Ambassador at U.S. State Department. Prior to him serving that position well known Brooklyn based freestyle artist Toni Blackman was this country’s Hip Hop Ambassador. I believe Martinez who also once served on the New York State Democratic Committee is currently running for Congress in NY’s 12th district.

Also running for Congressional office is author/ activist Kevin Powell. This is his second attempt and from the looks of things he stands a really good chance of beating the 28 year incumbent Edolphus Towns. The battle ground is in New York’s 10th district in Brooklyn. Below is an interview with him speaking on his run. It starts about 1:50 into the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMUL14RujC4

Lastly we’d have to talk about Dr Jared Ball out of Maryland who is best known for his political mix tapes ‘Freemix radio‘ ran for Green Party nomination for president in in 2008 and long time activist Rosa Clemente who made history by securing the vice presidential nomination for the Green Party. She and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney had their name on the ballots in all 50 states and garnered impressive numbers even though their historic bid was overshadowed by Barack Obama’s historic run for the White House which definitely brought out and politicized many in the Hip Hop generation.

Below is Rosa’s acceptance speech for the Green  Party nomination at the Green Party Convention which was held in Chicago. She starts off by playing a song from Chicago natives Rebel Diaz. On stage with her is TJ Crawford who convened the National Hip Hop Political Convention two years earlier in Chicago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzXB98dp9xM

From Paris to Brazil Fear of a Politicized Hip Hop

Never in our wildest dreams did marginalized Black and Brown ghetto youth living in the South Bronx, one of the poorest most dilapidated regions of the country ever think this culture of music, dance and oratory expressions we call Hip Hop would mean so much to so many people all over the world. From the slums of Nairobi, Kenya to the streets of Paris, France to the favelas in Rio, Brazil to the hoods in Detroit, to the streets in Gaza, Hip Hop’s presence is not only felt, but has been a driving cultural force in resistance movements especially amongst the young, poor and oppressed. Much of this was inspired by seminal artists like Public Enemy, KRS-One, dead prez , X-Clan and 2Pac to name a few who embodied this spirit of resistance.

For those who think this is far-fetched, think back to 2005 when Paris erupted in riots and over 200 French politicians signed a petition calling for legal action against Hip Hop acts and their aggressive lyrics which they said incited the riots. Acts like Monsieur R and Sniper became the main targets and were actually brought up on charges and faced lawsuits because of their songs that encouraged resistance to the police and government oppression.

In fact, Monsieur R was facing 3 years in jail for his song FranSSe, not because he had topless white women rubbing against the French flag, who symbolized how France was a ‘slut’, but because the song talked about French colonizing various parts of Africa and he dissed Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle and threatened to pee on them. He was charged with offending public decency. Luckily he beat the case. Below is a link to the video of the song..

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ru9h

Although there were no government petitions signed, in the late 80s, the FBI’s assistant director Milt Ahlerich saw fit to shoot off a letter to Priority Records expressing outrage over the song ‘Fuck tha Police’ which was put out by NWA. In the letter he noted that “advocating violence and assault is wrong and we in the law enforcement community take exception to such action“. Over the years NWA found themselves not being allowed to perform that song at many of the venues because of police pressure. The one time they did in Detroit, 20 plain clothes officers rushed the stage to shut the group down.

MV Bill is an artist we should all know

Several years ago in 2004 a corporate MTV-like 2 day Hip Hop festival called Hip Hop Manifest featuring Snoop and Ja Rule was boycotted by a coalition of Brazilian artists including the enormously popular MV Bill who stated in a Stress magazine article “The organizers are not interested in our issues, or what we rhyme about, they just want to buy our legitimacy, and I have a moral commitment to uphold the history that has created hip-hop. I pity the black man who sells our history for a price.”

What was at stake was these corporate media promoters refused to reinvest the profits into the poor communities in the area and lower ticket prices to make the event more accessible. Many of the Brazilian artists gave up hefty paychecks and a chance to get a serious international spotlight, but they felt strongly about the issue and held their ground. They also put a call out to Snoop and Ja Rule and other American rappers to recognize the injustice they were fighting and invited them to come to spend time in the poor communities.

“We cannot allow ourselves to be seen simply as idols. Ever since I began creating hip hop, my dream was to show Black people that we could be free and break the shackles.” Snoop, isn’t this beautiful?”, is the question Sao Paulo rap star LF posted to Snoop in an open letter.

Below is a video from MV Bill showing what life is like in the Favelas and the child soldiers that guard them…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhKyMtd0sfQ

M-1 of dead prez who recently went to Gaza always represents for the people

These are just a few of the dozens of examples that could easily be cited to show the resistence and political nature within Hip Hop. From the anti-police brutality albums, put together by artists like Mos Def and Talib Kweli, to the legendary voter registration rallies in Harlem once put on by Sista Souljah to the Stop the Violence Movement started by KRS-One, to the Orphanage recently opened by Immortal Technique in Afghanistan to M1 of dead prez making a trip to Gaza to the anti-police brutality work done by groups like One Hood in Pittsburgh or Hip Hop Against Police Brutality in Texas, to Knaan having his song Raise the Flag be used in the World Cup to Invincible and Finale using their song Locust to make a full-fledge documentary about gentrification in Detroit, Hip Hop doesn’t give lip service to politics.

From the anti-war efforts put forth by numerous artists (over 200 songs have been recorded at last count) to the efforts around the Jena 6 with artists like Jasiri X doing a theme song. tireless work put forth by artists like David Banner, Nelly, and others in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the recent efforts put forth by artists like Wyclef Jean, NY Oil, Mystic and many others to help bring relief to victims of the earthquake in Haiti, Hip Hop artists have proven to be responsive. Pick a subject, Immigration, Domestic Violence, Gulf Oil Spill, you name it and Hip Hop has and is there. The reason being that there are always people in our communities who will resist and are down to fight for freedom no matter what.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4P6v3pGGmI

Currently, Hip Hop’s biggest challenge is to resist all the attempts to dilute and redirect its potential to spark meaningful social and political change in the face of oppression. This especially true for Hip Hop that makes its way into corporate backed mainstream enclaves. The corporate agenda is to reduce Hip Hop down to a meaningless disposable song and to reduce politics to a voting over catchy phrase or sensationalistic headlines and scandal.

It’s no mistake that much of what I’ve written about has not been highlighted, celebrated, shown on TV or played on the radio. It’s not because people won’t find these acts interesting, newsworthy or popular. The end game is to lessen the influence of an artist and dumb down the audience so game can be run on us. That game of course is to sell us product and complacent ideology. The end game is to get Hip Hop to be used as a tool to drive consumerism vs activism and make the music and our people disposable entities to be discarded or conquered.

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Is Hip Hop’s Audience Really 80% White?

July 15, 2006 By

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Is Hip Hop’s Audience Really 80% White?

By Davey D

original article-July 15, 2006

daveyd-raider2In recent days a debate has ensued on my website daveyd.com, around one of Hip Hop’s biggest myths. It started in 1991 when Newsweek Magazine did a cover story on Gangsta Rap and in their article they put out an un-researched statistic that said 80% of Hip Hop’s audience is white and that its reflected in record sales. That stat has been bantered about ever since as an undisputable stone cold fact.

Adding to this myth was a conversation that took place at the Gavin Convention in San Francisco around the same time when Ice T during a panel discussion stated that anything above his average 750 thousand record sales was attributed to white kids.

But is this really true? Granted if one goes to a Mos Def show or even a Wu-Tang concert you will see a majority white audience in many cities, but does that translate to that 80% white audience? How does an all white Wu-Tang show in Northern Cali compare to a sold out predominantly Black T.I. or Yung Joc show in Atlanta or in Oakland? How does that compare to a sold out predominantly Latino Psycho Realm or Sick Symphony show in East LA?

Back in 91 when this 80% first surfaced, there was no study or methodology that that kept track of race when it came to album sales. About the closest one could come was by estimating based upon record stores in a particular area, but that would yield far from accurate results. To start in many areas, folks from different ethnic backgrounds would frequent stores that were in sections of a city dominated by one race. For example, if you came to Berkeley in Northern Cali,  you found three main record stores up near the UC campus in an area that was statistically majority white. Folks from all over including predominantly Black South Berkeley and majority Black Oakland shopped at those stores. How were statistics based on purchases by race kept?

The truth of the matter is that this 80% white Hip Hop fan myth has long been a nice marketing tool used by media corporations to justify ad revenues for Top 40 radio stations. Here’s a little background on this.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, many rap artists complained how the urban (Black) radio stations did not play rap except on the weekends and even then it was only in the mix late at night. Chuck D highlighted this concern in his song ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’. He goes into further detail about this lack of support by Black urban programmers in a song called ‘How to Kill a Radio Consultant’.

According to Black radio programmers they avoided playing rap, because it was affecting their advertising. In spite of Hip Hop’s cross over success with groups like Run DMC and the ‘positive, vibe that existed within rap at that time-(it was the Golden Era), many companies associated Hip Hop with violence done by Black people. Hence a Black radio station playing Hip Hop was likely to have difficult time getting money.

The Showdown Between Urban & Top 40 Radio Over Hip Hop

Around this time several prominent Top 40 radio stations were starting to aggressively play Hip Hop. Most notably was KMEL in San Francisco which became very successful and quickly moved into the number one spot over its urban competition KSOL which had been number one for years.

This sparked a lot of controversy and resulted in a big face off in 1992 at the Gavin Convention in San Francisco between Black urban programmers and white Top 40 stations that were starting to play Hip Hop. The packed panel discussion was hosted by Lee Michaels an African American editor at Gavin who interestingly had laid down the groundwork and started Top 40 giant KMEL which went on to win Best Rap Station in the country 5 years in a row. He posed the question as to weather or not Top 40 stations should be playing Rap or were they exploiting it?

The argument put forth by Black programmers was that they were playing the music but not getting both the ad dollars and promotions benefits from record companies. They talked about how the industry had a dirty secret which two sets of rules and budgets, one for Black urban stations which were small and one for Top 40 stations which in some cases were 3 to 4 times bigger. These budget disparities were also reflected in the Black music departments of and the Crossover and Pop music departments of the record labels

They went on to talk about how major labels would come to town and show support to these urban stations by giving them a bunch of tapes and later CDs for giveaway to the audience while across town these new pop stations playing rap were given huge prizes like tickets and all expense paid flyaways to music awards and album release parties.

Black programmers contended that they were responsible for breaking a lot of the urban music into the market place only to see their cross town Top 40 rivals reap the benefits.

The biggest point of contention was that these Top 40 stations were being allowed to keep their Top40/ CHR classification in popular industry trades like Gavin, Billboard and R&R which kept them in a higher budget class. 

Hence Top 40 stations could walk into an ad agency and even though their playlist was 90% identical to their urban counterparts they could walk away with a higher ad rate even if they were not number one in the marketplace. Plus they wouldn’t have any negative stigma attached to them for playing rap. A white Top 40 station playing rap weighed differently in the minds of ad buyers compared to a Black station playing rap.

The top 40 programmers countered by saying that many of the urban stations were missing the boat by not playing rap. I remember it being said that the urban stations were not staying close to the streets and paying attention to what was going on with their own kids who no longer wanted to hear slow jamz and sappy R&B songs.

They also insisted that they keep their Top 40 classification. What they emphasized was that Hip Hop was the new Top 40 and that was what was being reflected in the playlists was what the mainstream (white audience) now wanted to hear. The compromise to this particular point was the creation of a new classification called Churban which meant Crossover-urban. However it got applied to the Top 40 stations playing rap and not to the urban stations so in many people’s mind they were still seen as Top 40 crossover entities

They also pointed out that like their urban counterparts their sales departments had a difficult time convincing ad buyers to purchase time on a station playing rap. One of the Top 40 programmers pointed out that this was a competitive field no matter how you sliced it and that it was up to the urban programmers not only to put together a strong programming team, but to also have a strong sales team as well that could successful convince skeptical advertiser to purchase air time.

What wasn’t stated and this is where this 80% myth comes in, is the fact that the Top 40 stations had this Newsweek quote along with their CHR status that they could present to ad buyers. Essentially they were able to say, ‘yes we’re playing Public Enemy, NWA and 2 Live Crew’ which we (KMEL) was doing at that time, ‘but this is what the mainstream (white audience wants). Look at this Newsweek article. It’s proof positive that 80% of the people who like this aggressive music are the main ones purchasing it. I recall specifically seeing sales kits with that page and quote highlighted.

The bottom line whether we like it or not is that many advertisers have a hierarchy of who they want as consumers. It may be as follows depending on the product; White males between 18-34, White males 25-54, White women 25-34. Women of color 25-34, white teens etc. Last on the list is often time Black males. The pervasive belief is that white males have the most disposable income and can afford to purchase expensive appliances, cars and computers.

Women are desirable because they not only have income of their own, but usually influence the purchasing in households if they are married.

Black men, especially young males are seen in many instances as unwelcome. We all got a glimpse of this several weeks ago with the Cristal debacle where their spokesperson dissed Hip Hop artists for supporting them. He said all the mentions by artists like Jay-Z and P-Diddy was ‘unwelcome attention’. Author and former ad agency executive Hadji Williams in his book ‘Don’t Knock the Hustle’ underscores a lot of what I’ve written and goes into greater depth about all this in his book.

So it’s with all this in mind that we can better understand how and why this 80% myth was sold over and over again.  It was if people’s lives depended on it or in this case, people’s livelihoods depended upon it.

Now the real question was weather or not Top 40 stations KMEL and later stations like Hot 97 in New York and Power 106 in Los Angeles which followed suit a couple of years later really had large white listening audiences.

Asians, White Folks, Arbitron and Hip Hop

Well as I mentioned earlier one of the first and more successful Top 40 stations to embrace rap was KMEL who’s sale staff definitely flipped that Newsweek quote their advantage. They had another thing to help them out, and that was Arbitron Ratings to show large white listener-ship.

If I remember correctly we were boosting a number one rating with half our audience being white.  However, you wouldn’t have known that from the large numbers of people of color who would show up at our events. You never saw like 50% of our crowds being white. It was always explained that many of our white listeners weren’t our ‘active’ P1 listeners who would enthusiastically show up at station functions. I later learned something different.

What wasn’t really publicly known or even taken into account was how Asians were classified when it came to radio ratings. They were always counted as white people. You see in the Bay Area where KMEL is based there is a huge Asian/Pacific Islander population. In San Francisco more then 50% of the population is Asian with Chinese followed by Filipino being the largest ethnic groups.  Outside of their respective countries, the largest concentration of Filipinos, Tongans and Cambodians live in the Bay Area. There’s a sizeable Vietnamese, Korean Samoan and Laotian populations. Many of the people within these Asian groups have grown up and listen primarily to urban music.  Many of the younger people went from listening to Latin Freestyle to Hip Hop as stations like KMEL evolved.

I recall when the Arbitron people came to our station to talk about ratings and this fact about Asians being counted as whites was made clear one of our Asian deejays damn near hit the roof and went off. She wanted to know why Asians did not have their own category and she said she found it offensive that they would put an entire population down as whites. She noted that it played into the model minority myth that was impacting a lot of Asian communities and it also added to this pervasive perception of them being an invisible group of people.

The Arbitron rep said he understood the concerns and acknowledged that although the Asian population was growing, it would be a while before they would count Asians as a separate group away from whites. Nevertheless the large amount of ‘white listeners’ enjoyed by Top 40 urban leaning stations in California was touted to advertisers and helped rake in a substantial amount of ad dollars. It was later estimated that the actual percentage of white listeners was more like 20% when we subtracted the Asian count, but we never really knew for certain.

But lets suppose for the moment many of these Top 40 Hip Hop radio stations have large white audiences as asserted with the 80% myth, why is that we rarely hear many of the artists being played in regular rotation that we know for fact have a large white audience?

When was the last time we heard Living Legends, Del, Sage Francis, Atmosphere etc etc? We might hear an Eminem song, but hardly a Mos Def, Public Enemy or even Talib Kweli. The aforementioned artists seem to always have packed houses at their shows. Some of those groups do pretty well in record sales as independent artists, but dont hear them now and we didnt in the past-why is that? Shouldnt they be getting airplay to satisfy the tastes of this 80% white audience?

Who is Hip Hop’s Biggest Ethnic Supporter?

So now that we understand how and why the 80% myth came about lets look at the results of an actual study that was done.In January 2003 Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Push organization held their 6th Annual Wall Street project conference.  In the past Jackson had not put together panels focusing on the entertainment industry and its impact on Wall Street, but that year he did. He put together is memorable standing room only panel which included some very distinguished guests including; former Vibe Magazine CEO Keith Clinkscales of Vanguarde Media, Carol H Williams of Carol H Williams Advertising, Thomas Burrell of Burrell Communications, Samuel Chisholm of the Chisholm Group, James L Winston of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters and Daisy Exposito-Ulla of the Bravo Group

The Bravo Group is part of the powerful Young and Rubicam company is considered the third largest multicultural agency in the US. The panel discussion talked about market share and leveraging dollars. During the discussion Daisy Exposito Ulla was making her remarks and while it wasn’t the main focus she mentioned that her company had done a study and come to find that the Latinos are the biggest purchasers of Rap music. They buy more rap music than both African Americans and whites.

Because this wasn’t a Hip Hop specific panel her remarks were made in the context of talking about some other issues, what she was not met with any big gasp from the audience or anything like that. But for me I took special note as she continued her presentation, because it basically coincided with the push in broadcast media to target Latinos as a primary audience. http://www.daveyd.com/articlelainsupport.html

Yes, Hip Hop is large and everybody enjoys it. And yes, a large part of that audience are white folks. But 80%? No way.  Unfortunately white Hip Hop fans were used to validate to skittish advertisers and even venue owners that Hip Hop is safe and non threatening. To me its no different and just as bad as those programmers and industry experts who hawk Black gangsterism and stereotypes and make it appear as if its a vital part of Black culture and a true representation of Hip Hop.

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