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No question that serious rap is, and is very

self-consciously, music by urban blacks about same to and for same.

And weirdly, all these prepositions and indirect objects remain

identical for the many 'Underground' rappers who are each month, now,

captured and contracted by the big white-run recording corps. There's

an aura of cohesion-in-competition, of an exclusive and shared

universe in the present rap relationship between black artists and

black audience not enjoyed by a music especially of and for people of

color in something like the last 80 years. To mainstream whites it's

a tight cohesion that can't but look, from outside the cultural

window, like occlusion, clannishness [sic] and inbredding, a kind of

reverse snobbery about what's 'def' and 'fresh' and in-the-Scene that

eerily recalls the exclusionary codes of college Societies and

WASP-only country clubs. Serious rap's a musical movement that seems

to revile white as a group or Establishment and simply to ignore

their possibility as distinct individuals-- the Great White Male is

rap's Grand Inquisitor, its idiot questioner, its Alien Other no less

than Reds were for McCarthy. The music's paranoia, together with its

hermetic racial context, maybe helps explain why it appears just as

vibrant and impassioned as it does alien and scary, to us, from

outside (Wallace, 1990: 23-24).

Although I am not sure if I agree with every

sentiment expressed by Wallace, I do think he makes an important

point about the exclusivity of hip-hop imagery. It is often said that

hip-hop culture can be for anyone who is dedicated, regardless of

race, and there is certainly enough division within the black hip-hop

community to dispel any myths of cohesion, and yet, there is still

truth in what Wallace says. Based on the content of rap's lyrics and

imagery, whites neither exist nor belong in hip-hop culture. Rappers

lyrics repeatedly reify white rap fans as suburban voyeurs and videos

by black artists almost never include white hip-hop heads. What is

more, white heads in hip-hop seem to predominantly participate in the

most non-visual and disembodied aspects of hip-hop culture. The

numbers of white hip-hop writers and editors has grown to a number

that is disproportional to their influence anywhere else in hip -hop

hold the record companies, and though some whites assert their

involvement in graffiti, it also has grown into a subculture of its

own that is not necessarily connected to hip-hop. The majority of the

hip-hop visual and vocal media refer back to hip-hop's embodied

cultural context because the racial, spatial and physical body is

seen to be core to hip-hop expression. Hip-hop's images and

signifiers are thus intimately tied to a body and space that is

irrefutably black and urban.

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Naughty by Nature's "Hip-Hop Hooray" demonstrate the

rapper as speaking to and for his unmistakably black

community.

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Historically, hip-hop has inevitably been

the product of many cultural movements and meshes. Besides the

long-term influence of European musical traditions on black music,

original hip-hop culture included a considerable Puerto Rican

population and often operated more on the premise of inner-city

street culture than on being exclusively for blacks. Regardless, this

street culture was defined by the predominately black population and

their roots in African tradition and African-American experience. As

I discussed in the section on capital, hip-hop developed a unique

counter-hegemonic logic that privileged the black inner city

experience and its cultural expressions. And, as I illustrated in my

examination of hip-hop's reproductive processes, these expressions

primarily relied on the body and its immediate space. Between its

Afro-diasporic dance moves and speech patterns and its descriptively

contextual lyrics, hip-hop is absolutely and undivorcably connected

to its black physical, social, political and cultural body.

Because of this, white attempts at rapping

have been largely labeled as either alternative (Beastie Boys) or

gimmick (Vanilla Ice) and though they have their place in hip-hop

history for drawing more people into rap music, they have had little

effect on hip-hop's musical trajectory. Tricia Rose questioned Rush

Communications' Carmen Ashhurst-Watson on the reasons behind the

failure of white rap and her answers point to an important aspect in

hip-hop's appropriation:

<BLOCKQUOTE>TR: "But what makes rap

so different? It seems that the marketing history is somewhat

different; the music seems to have retained a black edge to it for a

much longer period of time. Fifteen years into recorded rock 'n' roll

history and we had to remind folks that black musicians were the core

inventors. Now, fifteen years into rap's recording history we've got

Snoop Doggy Dogg and Onyx."

CAW: "Because white people really

can't do it very well, or has taken them a very, very long time.

Singing was different... For Pat Boone to move from Andy Williams-

type songs to black songs was not such a leap; the lyrical line was

somewhat familiar. Rapping is a much harder skill to develop from the

ground up. Certainly scratching is a different thing: people didn't

even believe it was a skill" (Rose, 1994: 127)

</BLOCKQUOTE>

She suggests that only those with a specific

cultural background would have the physical ability to rap and thus

leans towards an ideology that is propagated by many rappers. Most

rap albums seem to have lyrics that revolve around the idea that

although rapping is not a derivative of blackness, it is dependent on

it. Hip-hops' emphasis on its contextual black body thus occasionally

promotes a biological essentialism that not only asserts a

counter-hegemonic celebration of the body, but resists much of the

liberal logic of equality in favor of cultural and physical

difference. As rapper Wise Intelligent said, "You have to understand

that the potency of melanin in the black man makes him naturally

rhythmic... This is our blood" (Decker, 1994: 111). The extremity of

this biological essentialism is not propagated by all rappers, but

the essentialist undercurrents are definitely formidable forces in

hip-hop's ideologies .

This counter-hegemony is not new to black

culture, but because of the extensive media exposure and economic

viability of rap music, hip-hop's black body has gained a visual

power unlike any other black cultural forms. It has a predominant

position in today's popular culture from which it promotes hip-hop's

body and posture. This can be a source of empowerment within the

black community because it values black language and style, but the

widespread media can also make for some uncontrolled side effects.

For one, because there is limited media exposure of African-Americans

in non-musical and sport based positions and because there is a

tendency for hip-hop's visual imagery to favor harder, "blacker"

artists, there is a limited spectrum of black culture. This makes for

a narrow space for cultural variation and defines an authenticity

that dismisses variants as "less black". Another danger in media

exposure is the spread of hip-hop's posture to communities that do

not necessarily have any other contact with black culture and who

thus reduce hip-hop to its signifiers. The space between hip-hop's

body and the distant listener takes hip-hop out of its larger

cultural context which leads to numerous condemning

misinterpretations and distorted glamorizations.

Hence, the critics' appalled attacks on

hip-hop's violent lyrics take its metaphorical language out of its

context and position them as direct threats rather than as figurative

boasts of the rappers' lyrical skill. This distant mediation also

leads to the voyeuristic exotification of black bodies that though

changed, is not necessarily less drastic than the primitivism that

preceded it (Hall, 1996: 467).

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"Mama Said Knock You Out." Even if this were not a

metaphorical threat, it still would not have much weight in

TV-mediated distance. Like a panther stalking his cage: all

the exoticisism with none of the danger.

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Through hip-hop's TV-flattened body and

contextually flattened posture, outside youth are able to partake of

hip-hop's power and prowess without having any actual physical

interaction with the culture behind it:

<BLOCKQUOTE>Where the assimilation

of black street culture by whites once required a degree of human

contact between the races, the street is now available at the flick

of a cable channel-- to black and white middle class alike. "People

want to consume and they want to consume easy," Hank Shocklee says.

"If you're a suburban white kid and you want to find out what life is

like for a black city teenager, you buy a record by N.W.A. It's like

going on an amusement park and getting on a roller-coaster ride--

records are safe, they're controlled fear, and you always have the

choice of turning it off. That's why nobody ever takes a train up to

125th Street and gets out and starts walking around. because then

you're not in control anymore: it's a whole other ball game" (Samuels

1991: 251-252).</BLOCKQUOTE>

This appropriation has not been lost on

those within the hip-hop community. Many of the reifications of more

affluent rap fans I mentioned before are a direct critique of this

out-of-context, non-physical participation in hip-hop's posture.

Although some hip-hop artists praise rap's ability to create a

cultural bridge between white and black hip-hop heads, and educate

non-urban youths on the inner-city lifestyle, these same artists also

join others in diss(miss)ing the suburbanites sporting hip-hop style

and gangsta slang. Much of the style and language is directly

derivative of black American experience and so the fact that they can

choose to take it as it suits them, leave it when it does not, and

avoid all of the messy reality of being black in a racist country is

seen as yet another exercise of privilege and exploitive

appropriation.

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"Interested whites, in fortunate or unavoidable

moments, can only stare through a window whose bulletproof

glass reveals what makes us glad that glass is there. Hell

hath no illogic like fear that makes us pay to feel it"

(Costello and Wallace, 1991: 41).

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My generalizations on the role of body and

posture in hip-hop culture and its appropriation are just that:

generalizations, and are never as clear cut as I might have presented

them. Race, space, and culture are not mutually exclusive categories

and there is a constant pull between the importance of the inner-city

vs. blackness, with the one consensus seeming to be that those that

can claim neither are perpetually placed on the outside. Although I

have briefly discussed hip-hop's point of view of "outsiders"

appropriations, I would like to now take a closer look at the

dynamics behind non-inner-city, non-African-Americans' relationship

to hip-hop's posture. I plan on using language as a tool to explore

the issues of distance, physical threat and the authentic body. Often

more forced than a clothing style and more critical to the way one

defines one's world than a dance move, language is a fundamental part

of hip-hop's black roots and its appropriation can tell us a lot

about hip-hop's ideology. I believe this will further explain the

dynamics between hip-hop's counter hegemonic structure, its

authenticated cultural body, and the way in which hip-hop's

appropriation asserts its own specific and contextual

ideology.

<H2><CENTER>Language, Distance and

the Body in Nairobi</CENTER></H2>

I heard DJ Pinja's name many times before I

finally met him. He was the only person I heard of who owned his own

DJ equipment, he provided the musical mixes for many of Nairobi's

matatus and was going to be the DJ for Nairobi's newest radio

station. When we at last met, he had a definite opinion on Nairobi

youths' relationship to hip-hop: "They just like the beat, and even

if you do have guys who know all the words to a song, they don't know

what it means" (6/28). I had heard similar statements by other youth,

but each also pledged that they were the exception, and that they

listened to the lyrics carefully. In order to get at what was behind

these contradictions, I started asking my interviewees to define a

list of hip-hop slang. Most knew words like 'represent' and

'gangsta', but many did not venture guesses on standard hip-hop words

like 'front'. Considering the fact that I was interviewing rappers

and people who are considered to be the most knowledgeable on hip-hop

in Nairobi, I found this surprising. Even more curious was how many

defined words to me in the context of other rappers' lyrics.

<BLOCKQUOTE>AR: "What about 'commercial'?"

Kash Da Masta: " There's that song by L.L. Cool J that says something

like 'those commercial-ass niggers better have a coke and a smile'"

(6/20). AR: "And 'underground'?" Joel: "It's original, like when

Craig Mack says: 'Let's get down down down to the underground'" (K

South Flava, 7/3).</BLOCKQUOTE>

These responses are not necessarily 'wrong',

but the fact that they responded by using other rappers' words is

significant. If they are not putting it in their own words, their own

context, then are these terms local significance limited to its

specific text? I believe this speaks to a larger distance between

hip-hop language and Nairobi youths' lives. I repeatedly heard

rappers in competitions use words like "niggers" (often ending an

-ers vs. the -az heard in American rappers), "bitch" and

"motherfucker" and yet in all of my interviews and my less formal

time hanging out with Nairobi youth, I never heard anyone integrate

this slang into casual conversations. Granted, my presence might have

influenced how people talked, but I still think that if Nairobi youth

were using these words to describe their environment, I would have

overheard it. So what does it mean if Nairobi youth are not

appropriating the slang employed in lyrics into their daily lives?

And what are the reasons behind this separation between hip-hop

language and the youth who adopt hip-hop style?

As my explorations of Nairobi's

appropriation of hip-hop's capitalist and production logic have

shown, Nairobi youth have not integrated many aspects of hip-hop's

structure into a form that reflects their specific environment. I

have suggested that a lack of history and the particular structure of

gangsta rap makes for a lack of local referentiality. I would like to

propose another influence on the hip-hop's contextual separation from

Nairobi youth: social views of violence and crime. America is

infamous for being an obsessively violent country and though Kenya

has its fair share of violence and crime, it does not have the

romantic aura that Americans seem to give it. This is especially true

for the wealthier classes who have more access to rap. I remember one

time I was walking in Nairobi with a friend at night. We passed a

flower stall where all of the flowers were left out. Seeing how high

security was in Nairobi, this surprised me and I asked my companion

about it. He told me the only people who would steal were the people

who needed to, and they had no need for flowers. Crime is seen as

something done out of economic necessity, not for want of excess and

those who do partake in it are highly stigmatized. There are also no

gangs in Nairobi's upper classes. They tend to have strong family

structures in Kenya and so the alternative family formations provided

by gangs is not necessary. Youth do have friendship groups, but they

are not connected with livelihood like they are in the States. The

economic opportunities in Kenya are such that family connections are

the primary means of obtaining jobs (Josh, Ted, Charles), and since I

dealt primarily with youth who have these connections, gangs and all

of their corresponding behavior are simply not necessary.

But what does this have to do with hip-hop?

It explains why words like "glock" and "gat" (guns) may not be known,

but what can it tell us about other core concepts like "fronting"? In

order to answer this, I will first revisit the importance of violence

in gangsta rap. In the states, a gangsta rappers success depends

largely on the rappers' authenticity-- the believability that he

committed or witnessed the crimes he attests to in his songs. As

Ice-T said, "I'm talking about the hard-core, the kids who come with

shotguns, and the motherfuckers that are looking like they'll jump

off the stage and jack motherfuckers. That shit don't work. It's

like, if you don't believe that I'm capable of doing any of that shit

on the records, then it sounds like a joke" (Interview with R.J Smith

in Ross 1994: 6) After this gangsta realism proved popular, phrases

like "don't front" developed so that rappers and fans did not

perpetrate a posture they had not lived and could not back up. Music

promoters went as far as publicizing rappers' criminal records along

with their vinyl ones and those that donned hard-core guises for

gangsta rap's commercial success like MC Hammer were resounding

failures. The calls to "stay real" entered almost every rappers

vocabulary, each pledging their own "trueness" to their particular

background and lifestyle.

Since these phrases are such a widespread

and formidable force in hip-hop, Nairobi youths' confused looks over

the word "front" and the similar word "commercial" surprised me. Some

youth described "fronting" as faking which is a close approximation,

but other responses ranged from "to step on" (Ted and Charles, 6/16),

"to stand in front of someone" (Josh, 6/24) and "to trip, as in 'your

frontin' about going to school', you don't want to go to school" (K

South Flava, 7/3). Only one youth even ventured a definition of

"commercial". But then I realized that by gangsta rap's definition,

most of Nairobi youth were "fronting". Since those that listen to it

do not have a lifestyle that shares many aspects of the gangsta image

and since they do not see any parallels in their own environment,

there is no local application for not 'fronting'. None of the rappers

who don gangsta language in competitions would "stay true" to what

they were saying and thus American hip-hop's fixation with

authenticity was simply not applicable.

One more aspect of these language, violence,

and distance dynamics requires exploration: the black body. Nairobi

youth have easily assumed many of hip-hop's physical postures and

thus in clothing style, body language and dance, they look similar to

many young black American teenagers. What is more, the biological

essentialism in hip-hop seems to translate into a real source of

empowerment for Nairobi youth. They see people who look like

themselves in a visual and vocal position of power and relate their

bodies with their own. I had one rapper tell me that "Every black man

can rap" because it took "pain, heart, sympathy" and "anger" (Josh,

6/10). When I contested him on the grounds of the song that was

playing at the time, Skee-Lo's "I Wish", he expanded that rapping

required wanting things and said that no rich man could rap. I asked

about rich black men and he shrugged and when I asked about white

poor men, he responded "heavy metal". Or, as another young Kenyan

said:

<BLOCKQUOTE>I just believe it is a kind of

black music and it is only for blacks. So if you get a white rap,

they just like it once and forget about it... The first time I heard

of (whites listening to rap), I was like, oh, you guys are getting

more interested in black music and you are forgetting about rock and

roll. It's like you preferring black music, specifically rap, than

your own music (Kash Da Masta, 6/20).</BLOCKQUOTE>

This exclusionary impression of whites was

repeated by other interviewees, and I think it might have been said

by others were I not white. There is a widespread view that whites in

the US are separate musically, culturally and spatially from blacks.

The flexibility between race, class and space is not seen in the

videos they watch or heard in the lyrics rappers repeat. The "pain"

and "heart" Josh talked about is not seen to cross racial boundaries

because they do not see whites in rap's class struggles. This makes

for a strong identification with the racial essentialism in hip-hop

that is only reinforced by the imagery of white fans as the

"outsiders". Thus, hip-hop's ideology of a black body as a source of

skill and value makes for a direct connection with Nairobi youth and

their own bodies. It seems to be the one aspect of their

appropriation that most closely parallels hip-hop's counter-hegemonic

content. On the other hand, larger cultural and social conditions in

African-American inner-cities like violence, and gangs are not

appropriated in either Nairobi youths' language or lifestyle.

Hip-hop's signifiers are seen to refer to a body, not a cultural

context and thus Nairobi youth do not concern themselves with

"fronts" because there is no local connection to an authenticity

behind it. The surface image--the clothes, the style, the color-- are

the important signifiers while the aspects that grant authenticity in

the US-- language, class, and crime-- are inapplicable and

inappropriated.

<H2><CENTER>Language, Distance and

the Body on the Internet</CENTER></H2>

That was straight up wack. Internet "freestyle"

is a joke. What? You gonna type on beat? Make sure you're hittin'

these keys on time? Oh shit-- you were off key, uh I mean beat, un I

mean-- hey, not fair, you paused for two spacebars. What kinda

freestyle is that? Man, You're a wack Internet emcee. You can't even

flow off a keyboard. I'm a represent Compuserve cause all you AOLers

can't kick a rhyme for shit. (a new hip-hop dividing line:

net-trippin') Esc. Enter. Post your lyrics if you want, but fuck this

freestyle bullshit. Take it to the basement or street corner with

some peeps and a beatbox. You can't type a freestyle. That's stupid

(Quizativ, 10/22/96).

Listen-- I'm as into expansion as the next

guy-- I DO NOT think that text (not just the Internet) is a format

that lends itself to hip-hop. Hip-hop needs definition- I think one

of the things that defines it is the verbal component. That's

something I strongly stand by. Hip-hop isn't something you read: you

listen to it, you feel it. It's not something that you feel by just

reading lyrics. I've often advised people to just skip over posts,

but I think that this is a bigger ideological debate (Wassup,

10/21/96).

It's impossible to 'battle' on the net. Please

realize this, for as someone who realizes the written part of a verse

isn't even the half, works on his delivery between classes, and lives

for the day he might be able to hype a crowd, this is offensive.

You've stripped a talent down to words on a paper (computer). Kids

have posted verses, yeah, from artists whose music is available to

analyze, but not like this. Props to the kid for at least writing,

but can't you do anything better with your lyrics? Look at them,

text. Your soul's behind them words. How can that be represented in

text? How can that little pause, or the way you maybe say a certain

word come across?.. Put me down as one kid who would NEVER

deteriorate a verse I've spent time and effort on into simple words

(BREW, 3/25/96).</BLOCKQUOTE>

These posts are just some of the responses

to the posting of net "freestyles" or net battles. The attempts at

reproducing lyrical competitions are being dismissed on account that

they reduce a spontaneous, rhythmic, and, most important, embodied

vocal skill into mere words. This absence of the body is a recurring

tension in any aspect of the Internet's appropriation, but when it

comes to language, violence and posture, the cyberspatial

contradictions become paramount. There is an obvious and inescapable

distance between the street origins hip-hop privileges and the

cybertype that the Internet uses. Hip-hop's physical, social and

spatial body is lost in these newsgroups and though this kind of

space might be thought to be liberating for some minorities, it is

potentially devastating for hip-hop's counter-hegemonic value

systems. I will again look at language use to explore the dynamics

within these contradictions and examine appropriators'' relationships

to violence, distance and authenticity.

Every two weeks, The Unofficial Rap

Dictionary is posted on alt.rap and rec.music.hip-hop. Running over a

thousand lines in two posts, the dictionary gives Standard English

definitions for different words, meanings behind various numbers and

locations for different places. Every couple months or so, a debate

arises over the existence of this dictionary in which issues of

language, access and audience are argued. The following are segments

from one of these debates and they illustrate some of the tensions

over cultural ownership and understanding inherent in these

newsgroups:

<BLOCKQUOTE>'Without that dictionary,

Caucasians around the world couldn't communicate wit us, give them a

fair chance too...' As a Caucasian, I can vouch for this. Whenever

I'm befuddled over a bit of slang I always turn to the good ol'

Unofficial Rap Dictionary. So I'm down wit cha. Keep it real, son!

Peace! (bridge, 10/18/96).

I'm glad y'all are having such a good time with

this. It's shit like this that get true heads so fucking uptight with

the growth of hip-hop to mainstream. Y'all always want to analyze and

dissect shit. If you get it, good. If you don't, then obviously it

ain't for you to understand, so move on to something else. No peace

(robin, 6/1/95).

Word up dun. If you don't speak it, don't know

it, then it ain't for you obviously. What is the purpose of that

bullshit ass dictionary anyway? To give the whites around here a

means of understanding? To help those that aren't "down" get up on

it? That is something that belongs in a newsgroup like

alt.white.understanding-rap. I don't think anyone else has any use

for it. And you wonder why headz is always so fuckin mad. 'Cause

those herbs don't speak it, know it, they gonna be kissing your ass.

'Thanks gee, on the DL you put me on son' (gtb, 6/1/95).

What if your teachers in school would have

said, 'Well, if you get what's written here, good. If you don't, it

isn't for you to understand' in reading class. In a way we (Niels and

I) are paying the hip-hop culture respect by keeping track of a

fraction of it, so that many may learn from (or sometimes of) it. In

no way are we trying to disrespect the hip-hop culture (Patrick

6/2/95).</BLOCKQUOTE>

These posts definitely disagree on the idea

of having a translating dictionary on the net. Each of the posts

asserts different opinions on the legitimacy of cultural outsiders in

hip-hop, and yet, if we look at their underlying premises, we can

find common ground in hip-hop's embodied posture. For one, all of the

posters are accepting the correlation between whiteness and "outside"

status. This is definitely not a universally accepted relationship on

the Internet (the dynamics of which I will explore later in this

section), but the fact that this racial essentialism is not the

subject of the debate is worth noting now. Secondly, they are all

connecting language with a deeper contextual environment. The

anti-dictionary posters are arguing that hip-hop language is

derivative of a culture and that if one does not already know the

language from direct experience, then they have no need for it. The

pro-dictionary posters are asserting their need to know the language,

but not because they merely want to, but because of their need to

understand the same cultural context the others are emphasizing. In

doing so, they are both agreeing that the language develops from a

larger whole that must be respected. The exception to this is the

first poster who seems to be appropriating the slang exactly as the

third poster criticized, in order to be "down wit cha." His typed-in

adoption of hip-hop's black English symbolizes just the distance the

anti-dictionary members were posting against. However, threads with

this kind of forced slang are uncommon on the newsgroups and often

incite harsh responses that criticize their use of language as a

"front":

<BLOCKQUOTE>I'M FUCKIN LIVIN PROOF DAT WHITE PEEPS GOT MAD FLOW.

IM A WHITE MC MYSELF AND WHEN EVA I RAP 2 WHITES BLACKS WHO EVA I

ALWAY GOT MAD PROPS IT DOESNT MATTER WHAT FUCKIN COLOR YOU IZ IF U

GOT SKILLS YOU GOT SKILLS BUT ME I'M PROBABLY WAANA PHATTEST MCS IN

MY AGE GROUP MADAFACT IF YOU WANNA HERE A BUTTER WHITE GROUP BE ON DA

LOOK OUT 4 C.O.D. REPRESENTIN OUTA MASSACHUSeTTS SAPURB! (Doug,

11/4/95).

Anybody that types his messages with "4" instead of "for", "2"

instead of "to/too", "iz" instead of "is", compares his emceeing

skillz with his "age group", uses "wanna" instead of "one of the",

"dat" instead of "that", etc, is obviously FRONTIN HARD. Loose the

front kid. I don't give a fuck what you have to say, whether you're

representing Massachusetts or kakalaka, if you have skills, you don't

have to post some bullshit retarded message on a newsgroup. If you

are really all that, people will recognize and realize (Quizativ,

11/5/96).</BLOCKQUOTE>

Similar to the critiques of net freestyles,

there is a physical and spatial distance on the Internet that written

slang can not possibly represent. These mimics of embodied street

talk are usually taken as the above responder did: a front. It is a

sign that they appropriating hip-hop in a context outside of its

original setting, because it is being applied in a context where it

does not fit. The black English in hip-hop's slang is an empowering

part of hip-hop's posture because it affirms black cultural speech

patterns, but when it is removed from the body and laboriously forced

into a written text, it's specific contextual significance is lost.

Another aspect of hip-hop's posture which is debated on the Internet

is physical threat:

<BLOCKQUOTE>I heard you had some things to say about me. Dumbass,

you could have e-mailed me. Send me your street address and I can

beat your ass in person. Fuck Mobb Deep. I will beat those short

motherfuckers until they die. And you'll be next. I'm at XXX Sherman

Ave NW, Washington DC. Bring Havoc and Prodigy's bitch asses with you

and I will represent Westside by beating the living shit out of all

three of you (apage, 4/14/96).

Fuck, this place is beginning to look like air.rap. Fuck y'all

talking tough over the net-- what y'all got something to prove? Y'all

gotta feel you got something to prove. Pick up a fuckin' mic and

represent in your area. DON'T fuckin waste my time making me download

new articles in this newsgroup cause the shit is filled up with

bullshit and people frontin like above (Quiz, 4/15/96).

</BLOCKQUOTE>

Like the member "Doug" who used excessive

slang, the poster's threats are dismissed as "bullshit" because there

is no physical presence to back them up. The posturing that would

incite violence on the street loses its potency in the Internet and

becomes another sign of a "front". The first poster, 'Apage', seems

to recognize this distance and offers his address to show his

commitment to his physical threat, but the fact that he even had to

mention Washington DC shows there is not only a virtual distance, but

also a physical distance that will not realistically be traveled for

a typed threat. What's more, because of the issues of access and

class discussed earlier, any newsgroup member's claims to violence or

physical hardness are often questioned as being inconsistent to their

involvement with the Internet. For, as this member responded to the

following sign:

<ADDRESS>"| ||||||||| '---GNC.....|NetGangsta/</ADDRESS>

<ADDRESS>'+--- netgangsta@geocities.com--|''''</ADDRESS>

<ADDRESS>/ XXXXXX /'| .'/</ADDRESS>

<ADDRESS>/ XXXXXX /</ADDRESS>

<BLOCKQUOTE>Let's consider it: to post on this newsgroup, you

either have to spend money on a PC, modem and Internet connection or

you are at college. Real gangstas don't go to college. I've never met

a real gangsta so I'm just guessing here, but from what I've worked

out, posting to ngs isn't really a gangsta's main priority. so if the

above is true, there are no gangsta's posting to this newsgroup.

Then, who are all these motherfuckers claiming they are> They're

full of shit. However, as I say, I've never met a gangsta, so correct

me if I'm wrong about this please. What's more, I'd say 90% of people

here (not all, get this right) are white kids from the suburbs. So

fuck you if you're a white kid at college claiming to be a gangsta

(Mohamed, 11/14/96).</BLOCKQUOTE>

These critiques of using physical threats of

violence again emphasize the distance between the embodied hip-hop

posture and its inapplicable appropriation on the net, but their

references to physical spaces still warrant attention. For although

in the posts between 'Apage' and 'Quiz', 'Quiz' dismisses 'Apage's'

post, he still emphasizes street space and the physical body by

suggesting that he "pick up a fuckin' mic and represent in [his]

area." And although 'Apage's' address does not mean much in the

international meeting space of the Internet, by including it, he is

insisting on his commitment to his physical threat. I bring this up

again because, for all of the posts that put down people's attempts

to bring the body into the net, there is also a strong force that

argues the body must be the center of all authentic hip-hop. Those

who do not participate in its street space or in a black cultural

context are seen as not having experienced hip-hop at all:

<BLOCKQUOTE>If non-black people want to buy hip-hop, I want them

to come to the ghetto to get it (kari orr, 4/18/96)

Sounds poetic, but not too practical. I live in Toronto, and the

nearest ghetto is in Detroit, 400 miles away! Besides, not all

rappers are from the ghetto.(Ant, 4/19/96)

Do you think you can begin to understand this material if you do

not see it's origins? Making hip-hop accessible by first recording

it, second giving it mass-distribution, third pressing it on non-core

mediums like cd's makes hip-hop into a package you can buy at your

local mall for your amusement and entertainment... (kari orr,

4/19/96)

My advice to white kids into hip-hop, read Upski, go to a housing

project or rough house part of town, keep going. People will at first

look at you like your crazy, maybe scare you out, but if you keep

coming back, headz will realize you want to learn. Maybe you'll be

lucky and get schooled (Jeffrey, 10/27/96)</BLOCKQUOTE>

The Internet is thus not seen as an

essential element of hip-hop culture, but a related medium outside of

it. Those that do not deal with the real physical street environment

are repeatedly told they are not really part of hip-hop because they

are not confronting the violence they otherwise voyeuristically

participate in. To paraphrase: if your ass is not on the line, then

your ass is not in the game.

From here I would like to return to the

tensions between race and outsider status discussed earlier. As was

shown by the previous posts, whites are repeatedly reified as

outsiders: out-of-body and out-of-context. Despite this, because of

the large white and suburban presence on the newsgroups, the Internet

also becomes a space where these youth can make claims for their

legitimacy within the hip-hop medium. Many white youth use their

experience with urban environments or participation in hip-hop's body

activities (graffiti, dancing, MCing, rapping) to resist the label

"outsider" and prove their commitment to the larger cultural

context.

<BLOCKQUOTE>I'm not a wanna-be-emcee, kicking

wack rhymes behind a computer screen.. HOWEVER, I am a DJ for a group

with major, major affiliations in hip-hop. I sell mixtapes everywhere

in Queens, and LOVE HIP-HOP. EAST, WEST, anywhere, as long as the

artists are true to hip-hop, the music, the culture, etc. I keep it

mad real, not being hard, but being myself. let's see, can you guys

say the same?? Well, I can tell you what I'm not first. I'm not a

hardrock, or a fake hardrock fronting behind a Macintosh, or IBM for

that matter Oh yeah, I'm also WHITE, JEWISH, AND PROUD" (SUGARCUTS,

6/15/95). </BLOCKQUOTE>

As the above poster did, white newsgroup

members often connect their relationship to hip-hop's embodied

context with their "realness". Since there is so much criticism of

whites appropriating hip-hop's posture (i.e. clothes, style and

language) many white youth maintain their authenticity by claiming

they do not dress the part. People constantly say they do not wear

hip-hop clothes and if they do use black English in their speech,

they say it is the result of their upbringing, not because of

exposure to hip-hop. In doing so, they pledge not only their

knowledge of hip-hop's larger context, but also their commitment to

its underlying culture. Much of the tension around this relationship

between hip-hop's cultural body and its stylistic signifiers seems to

boil down to the fact that hip-hop's signifiers can be worn and

removed where as skin cannot. Thus, white members constantly struggle

with proving they will not exercise white privilege by assuming

hip-hop's posture when it suits them and leaving it when societal

prejudices make it inconvenient. They assert their distance from the

stereotypical suburban consumer by declaring they have no style and

are not temporarily adopting current fashion, and thus claim their

commitment to the contextual street culture.

Hence, unlike Nairobi, there is very little

biological essentialism seen on the Internet. There are discussions

of different race's vocal sounds and debates on why there are so few

good white rappers, but there seems to be a consensus that it has

more to do with demographics and personal skill than biology. Race is

usually seen in conjunction or conflict with class and culture, none

of which are mutually exclusive. And yet, the tension between these

different sources of authenticity are constantly in flux. Blackness

is often used as authenticity in itself because it can not be entered

like street space, learned like speech or worn like clothes.

Hip-hop's counter-hegemonic form speaks to and for black culture, and

in any other context, it creates its own ideology that results in

"fronting" postures and out-of context disembodied appropriations.

Thus, though biological essentialism has little force on the

Internet, the social essentialism of being black in America has a

ideological weight that is continuously struggling with the borders

and bonds between culture and color. I offer no answer on which

authenticity the newsgroup members subscribe to because the battle is

constantly being waged. The only aspect of these dynamics which

remains certain is the fact that neither the street nor skin can be

represented on the net and the fact that these remain the premise of

newsgroup relations speaks to the force of hip-hop's ideology