Authentic Black English in White Rappers Lyrics - Research Paper Example

Black English in White Rappers Lyrics Rap music integrates both aspects of musicaland cultural elements. On the other hand, of this argument, are people supports to measure their fixed criteria of white American cultural norms? Contemplating on the same concept, double consciousness feasibly contributes a substantial role in the formation of Rap culture. It would be exceedingly reductionist to examine the Rap genre of music as a black initiative only. Researchers have recognized the involvement of Whites and Latinos in the Rap culture formation. Presently the Rap or Hip hop culture has spread extensively all over the world. White rappers have been diluted by the African American dominance in the rap culture. Keywords; Rap, Hip hop Introduction Rap is an art articulated through the articulation of rhyming words rooted with deeper meanings within the lyrics. A lot of MCs have appeared in the past decades to nurture the reputation of rap culture, namely; Eminem, Tupac, Techn9ne, Rakeem, Dr Dre, Jay-Z among others (Mickey, 2009). Producing rhyming lyrics with influential messages is a difficult task to come up with. However, making an unplanned song to achieve rapid publicities is simple. Creating an insightful lyric is not easy. One has to pour his, or her, emotion, effort and thoughts into the lyrical content. Though, it is vital to comprehend the musical basis of the rap genre furthermore to its social importance, in order to really understand the artistic, political and social effect of rap as a movement. The Rap/Hip hop genre is one of the earliest music cultures in conventional pop music. The prevailing African-American musical arrangement has celebrated Vanilla accomplishment for years and with that victory he has experienced the presence of other non-black cultures. The success or rise of the white rapper is challenging to hint. Popular performances and rappers from the 1980s, such as Vanilla Ice achieved a lot of publicity in the 90’s however; his audience and music differed from his black counterparts such as Dr Dre. Vanilla Ice’s victory in the initial 1990s is possibly the best instance of a white rapper accomplishing conventional victory in the hip hop culture (THE Rhetorical, 2013). Nevertheless Vanilla Ice arrogation of MC Hammer steered to Vanilla Ice’s mockery and ridicule, particularly with the dawn of Gangsta Rap. This took almost a decade for another white rapper such as Eminem, who is currently the most well-known white rapper, to achieve conventional victory and approval of a predominately black enterprise. Vanilla Ice’s fame steered to the approval of other white rappers into the hip hop culture and subsequently, terminated the discussion about whether white rappers can uphold their eminence of the performer in the Rap culture. This essay discusses the authenticity of Black English among White Rappers’ lyrics as opposed to Black rappers (Austen, 1999).. Black English in White Rappers Lyrics It is difficult to dispute the reigning predominance of the African American as the principal performers of the Hip hop community and Rap culture in general. Hip hop culture being a Black dominant genre, has destabilized the white rapper to appear as minority and eventually unauthentic. In Rap culture it is white who are obligated to perceive themselves through the African American eyes and attempt to size up to the criteria of knowledge, genuineness and achievement of formation that constitute the Rap culture (Austen, 1999). The customariness of the Black enterprise stems for disclosure that privileges the Black community with the contemporary street life experience. However, inspite of the popularity and visibility of White rappers such as Vanilla Ice and the likes of Eminem, White rappers are still discriminated against the Black enterprise domination. This is evident in public Rap battles where aspects such as race forms a judgmental basis and subjected to a matter of scrutiny by the audience. It is difficult to ignore the ethnic background between Black contestants and the White opponents (THE Rhetorical, 2013). Methods According to Irvine analysis, Vanilla Ice shows how he incorporates African American Black English to design his own whiteness. According to data collected from historical background, according to Irvine states that Stance is an important tool in delivering suitable answers on how White rappers and Black rapper reject, transform, construct and resist cultural variations. According to this work stance takes three forms, namely, stance as footing, stance as social position and stance as an ideological position. Significantly, stance can file more than one identity thereby rescuing speakers from stagnant analyses of their identities, their utterances and others. For this reason, it makes stance a prolific manner to perceive how speakers’ opinions, manage various functions and identities in multicultural relations (THE Rhetorical, 2013). Results In disparity to the Rap ethos founded by African American rappers, the white ethos is encompassed of three main aspects, namely: A social class epistemology, dissimilar from African American epistemology a constituent of the African American rap ethos, white rappers cannot counterfeit their encounters or institute them similar to African American encounters. Though, prosperous white rappers such as Eminem experienced comparable economic challenges like their African American opponents. Employing such kind of encounters as a basis for narrating and growing from impoverishment can advance one trustworthiness within the general structure of Rap culture (Austen, 1999). Secondly, is the ethos of “keepin’ it real”. As mentioned earlier, deceitfulness or being dishonest about one’s upbringing is “a cardinal sin” according to Rap culture. Similarly to their African American colleagues, white rappers must be honest about their epistemology and appear believable to their audiences that they have existed through the encounters they reveal (Austen, 1999). Lastly, is the ethos of “dropping AAVE”. White rappers well-read from Vanilla Ice case that implementing AAVE (African American Vernacular English) for Hip hop brands one to appear unbelievable, as if one is pretending to be black. As an alternative, white rappers such as Eminem created their own slang that integrates components of AAVE but resembled their whiteness. To maneuver this, white rappers frequently uttered words. For instance, a classic Hip hop lyric may sound or appear ike “You could neva eva, brave the weatha I’m too cleva.” These are lyrics from rapper Afu Ra, which is an instance of African American Vernacular English releasing the letters r and e and the /r/ diction and swapping it with a small vowel “u” sound (Austen, 1999). However, white rappers did not perform this art of exchanging letters and replacing them with a vowel or vice versa. The greatest outstanding variance of Vanilla Ice in lyrical content is that some music is certainly subjective and showing, most significantly, "Scars," a vicious dislike memo to his skiver dad, and a pledge to his own child to perform an enhanced task. Harmonizing out the substantial things though, are a several tracks which have an indistinguishable lyrical outline, big-headed lyric content and even the metaphors of yore such as "I spreads butter like Parkay/Real smooth with the flow when I parlay". Adapted to this fresh lyric content its inspirational, however, there is a little Ninja aspect here, theres abundant assassins (Joshua Angeles, 2015). Though Vanilla Ice up-front confessional content, blunt, while more expressive and subjective, is disputable as easy as his claims, essentially there are some really smart openings on his lyrical content. Vanilla Ice is a smart spewing out of every adverse label that has ever been placed in Vanilla Ices way, comprising a spectacular, oath laced, bitterness scorched rage against the Iceman. The lyrical content is cleverly named, "Fuck Me." Though it might be perceived as though numerous novelties the staunch re-creation of "Ice Ice Baby" which was performed by Vanilla Ice in an interview was later released as a song. Personally, Vanilla Ice shamelessly entitlements unapologetic possession of his history (Joshua Angeles, 2015). Discussion The discussion of how these rappers both white and black achieved their victory is up for discussion, for a numerous of elements comprising of recognition by African American peers and lyrical originality could have backed to this victory. An upsurge of scholarship over the historical past has tried to describe this marvel by reviewing the linguistic of white rappers a linguistic that imitates and even take over the Rap genre ethos but is evidently diverse from their African American opponents. This dissimilarity is established in their lyrical content, like a subject matter and code switching, in addition to the releasing of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) for a fresher slang that patent a rapper’s as white (Joshua Angeles, 2015). The motives for such variances may differ from rapper to rapper, but the primary reason for this variance is for white rappers to find their whiteness in Rap genre as something distinctive, more reliable and attractive to comprehensive listeners founded on the inspiration of their lyrical content and enhance the insight that this fresh slang narrates to a conventional slang. This epistemology is fragment of the Rap genre ethos. Popular rappers, particularly African American rappers, are capable to bear their tussles against the economic and racial pressures. This is defined by Olson and Shobe in a manner that associates to African American listeners. The Rap genre ethos needs rappers to be original and authentic in this depiction, frequently labeled as “keepin’ it real.” This phrase basically means rappers must never propaganda about where they come from and who they really are. Despite the fact most rappers overstate personal encounters, some of them may tend not be dishonest about gang affiliations or poverty. If they do, listeners and fellow rappers will term them “fake” and blemish their reputation (Austen, 1999). Rap genre ethos is demarcated by vernacular and style. Choice of words and Lyrical content are typically an allowance of (AAVE) African American Vernacular English where vernacular and cipher interlocking. For instance, “Hey friend” is substituted by “Yo dog” (Mickey, 2009). Code gridding in the lyrical content of the track is predominant. This smartness is a fragment of the African American epistemology which needs not only articulate about a particular focus matter but to talk the talk of Rapper’s theme (Joshua Angeles, 2015).             The white Rappers ethos of 2013 is very dissimilar from the ethos of past white rappers. In some reverences, ethos is a seizure of African American Hip Hop in substance and style, with elusive variation in phraseology and an substitute epistemology that is not to state a non-African American epistemology. All the same, the development of the white rapper ethos can be described by probing the occupations of two very dissimilar rappers: Eminem and Vanilla Ice (Austen, 1999). Ponder on this stanza of rhyme from Ice’s well-known single, “Ice Ice Baby:” “Jealous cause Im out getting mine/ Shay with a gauge and Vanilla with a nine/ Ready for the chumps on the wall, The chumps are acting ill because theyre so full of eight balls/ Gunshots ranged out like a bell/ I grabbed my nine all I heard were shells/ Fallin on the concrete, real fast/ Jumped in my car, slammed on the gas/ Bumper to bumper the avenues packed/ Im tryin to get away before the jackers jack/ Police on the scene/ You know what I mean/ They passed me up, confronted all the dope fiends…” This stanza of rhyme tries to clarify to listeners that Ice is a character who has encountered brutality in their personal experiences. While numerous rappers narrate comparable tales in their lyrical content, they do not essentially encounter this brutality directly. For instance, rappers who were brought up in cruel localities may have observed gang violence. However for Vanilla Ice, his contextual disproves any such impression, for there are no facts that he encountered brutality first or second hand (Joshua Angeles, 2015). Conclusion As I conferred in earlier, within well-known music scholarships, the notion of authenticity frequently hubs on the act’s closeness to idea of an authentic culture that at one time occurred outside the document industry. Perceptions of “real” Rap music, as these phrases are employed in lyrical content, structure rap genre as an African American established culture endangered with absorption into a white conventional. Rap music is an African American practice, given the participation of blacks in its formation and because its ideology of authenticity is rooted in the origins of its culture. As stated earlier in this report, Rap genre authenticity is tangled in black community rhetoric. Its weight on the Rapper keep it authentic to oneself, develop out of African American rhetorical customs such as affirming and bearing evidence, in which ability to talk is discussed through allegation to understanding experienced through lived encountered (THE Rhetorical, 2013). White Rappers are repossessing a position misplaced by Vanilla Ice, who broke this custom of truth, as their acts remain responsible for the musics African American customs. As I present a stand past of the White Rappers, however, I want to be distinct that the dominant features of lyrical content tradition, Rap vernacular, oral ethos, and political position make it an African American custom. In reality, the account of White Rappers is a past of their language of the African Americans who endure to dictate the lyrical content tradition (Joshua Angeles, 2015). References Austen, J. (1999). Vanilla Ice. Roctober.com. Retrieved 2 May 2015, from http://www.roctober.com/roctober/greatness/vanilla.html (Austen, 1999) Is Hip Hop Dead?: The Past, Present, and Future of Americas Most Wanted Music. (2008). The Journal Of Popular Culture, 41(4), 742-744. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00544_18.x (Mickey, 2009) Joshua Angeles, J. (2015). Learn How to Rap Professionally: Fundamental Elements of Rapping. HubPages. Retrieved 2 May 2015, from http://janusjoshua.hubpages.com/hub/Learn-How-to-Rap-Professionally-Fundamental-Elements-of-Rapping THE Rhetorical Wrinkles BLOG,. (2013). Act White Wit Da Mic: The Language of White Rappers in Mainstream Hip Hop. Retrieved 2 May 2015, from http://www.rhetoricalwrinkles.com/blog/act-white-wit-da-mic-the-language-of-white-rappers-in-mainstream-hip-hop Read More