kagablog

Conclusion

The above all said, hip hop’s transformative potential does not extend so far as to permanently overthrow the constraining structures of society, as it necessarily obtains its impetus for existence through opposition to these structures, and would destroy itself should it supercede them (cf. de Certeau, 1984). However, it does provide highly effective symbolic ways of apprehending the threats of change, uncertainty and inequality encountered by headz in the everyday world and bringing them under control. Hip hop has a stylistic ethos which emphasises the maintenance of a “flowing” sequence of events or narrative which incorporates layers of disjunctural elements. These elements serve to rupture the continuity, embellishing and highlighting it as they challenge it momentarily.

Tricia Rose remarks that these stylistic practices can be applied in dealing with concrete practical dilemmas encountered by hip hop headz outside hip hop by suggesting affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can be managed and perhaps contested in the public arena. Let us imagine these hip hop principles as a blueprint for social resistance and affirmation: create sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish and transform them. However, be also prepared for rupture, find pleasure in it, in fact plan on social rupture. When these ruptures occur, use them in creative ways that will prepare you for a future in which survival will demand a sudden shift in ground tactics (Rose, 1994a: 39). Hip hop’s performative nature gives headz from population cohorts with a history of marginalisation and disregard by dominant hierarchies of communication the capacity to build their self-esteem and status within a group, as well as in wider society. Its practices foster a sense of pride in representing who one is as an individual, as well as acknowledging one’s “roots”, one’s peers and background influences. It exhorts adherents to take up a set of conventional practices to identify themselves with the “hip hop community” at large, but allows and encourages remarkable freedom in personal expression within these genres. It instils a positive sense of the significant cultural contributions they are able to make to Cape Town and, indeed, the world; and dispels the sense of inferiority and resultant apathy instilled by so many years of cultural, spatial and physical domination.

Hip hop operates in ways akin to de Certeau’s (1984) description of a “tactic” rather than a “strategy”. Both “tactics” and “strategies”, as delineated by de Certeau, are techniques of resistance to constraining elements in the dominant social order. The distinction between the two lies in their relative capacity to challenge the existence of those structural constraints. “Strategies” allow participants to transform, even overcome, oppressive systemic restrictions; “tactics” enable them simply to cope with constraints day to day, but not to surmount the structure of the constraints. Headz emphasize that hip hop essentially exists “underground”, in opposition to hegemonic structures. To overcome the structures of domination it rails against, as a strategy could, would be to destroy a significant part of hip hop’s raison d’ etre. Connected questions thus surface around the movement’s ability to sustain itself in a modern global economy characterised by millennial capitalism (cf. Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000). At this juncture, the most troublesome issue to devoted hip hop headz is that, in certain ways, hip hop – more specifically its rap element – is seen to be “selling out” and “going mainstream”. By this they mean that, in general, rap music is becoming part of the global cultural hegemony.

Hamma describes true hip hop as a perpetual “underdog”, suggesting that should it ever come out “on top”, it would lose its power.

Rosemary: Do you think that hip hop’s always gonna stay sort of underground?

Hamma: It will always be second, like I tell everybody all the time. True hip hop will always be second best, no matter what you do to it, no matter what you get out of it. No matter how many Slim Shadies29 come out, it will always be second best.

R: Second best?

H: Ja, there’s always something, in each and every country there’s something else bigger than hip hop.

R: Do you think that’s a bad thing?

H: No, I like it like that. Being the underdog’s cool man.

R: If you weren’t second best, if you came out on top, what would you be? How would you deal with it?

H: Shit. Then… that’s basically when it gets all played-out man, like commerce- the industry will get hold of it, they’ll fuck it up; you’ll see all their stupid emcees in ads and making dumb movies… All that stupid shit will happen and it will become so watered down. So I like it if it’s second best so people must fight, like, to get to the top, man. But even if they get to the top they must just remember, like, where everything comes from man. You must never lose that drive, and that determination, like, to always be better than the next one… always take it to the next level…