the Greater Nomadic Council

The Souls of White Folk

O-Dub and the Quarterwit have come together like flint and steel to spark a discussion regarding the role of white fans in hip hop. It’s a recurring discussion, of course, but I think this instance of it happens to be particularly informed and subtle. In case you haven’t picked up on it, I am a white man, and have certainly spent plenty of time turning this question – the question of whether I am, by listening to “Freek-a-Leek,” perpetuating a history of exploitation by members of my race, the question of whether laughing at Ol’ Dirty makes me a racist – over and over, trying to figure out just what the reality is. Hell, I wrote my damned undergrad thesis on the issue (a gesture which was itself emblematic of the deep, deep divide between the sources and consumers of hip hop). Given that, I couldn't help but make an over-long, somewhat digressive and indirect response to their discussion.

I’m not particularly insecure about my place in hip hop - I’ve done my bit for king and country. I held down a moderately significant radio slot for a year or so, was one of the first guys in Austin really representing the Company Flow, indie-wierdo wing of the underground, and I did some really good work in exposing that music when I was at Audiogalaxy, particularly giving early wide exposure to the Rhymesayers and Def Jux, and, um, anticon crews. I also, obviously, write about hip hop quite a lot, but I don’t know if I’m comfortable classifying that as a contribution to the culture.

Regardless of my contributions, the strange part is that I’m still a perpetrator when it comes to the kind of fantasy wish-fulfillment that Mos characterizes as the defining feature of the white suburbanite fair-weather fan. I went through a not-brief-enough phase of having dreadlocks and wearing baggie “hip-hop” style clothes, a phase memorialized on a driver’s license photo, which I still have and in which I look much more like John Walker Lindh than KRS-One. But even having outgrown that unfortunate indulgence, now that I’m back to dressing like the standard-issue white hipster that I was through high school, I hold back a sequestered corner of my soul in which to store “Rap Dave.” I let him out every once in a while when I need to have some voice in my head telling some asshole to go fuck himself, or whispering sweet nothings to some fine girl passing me in the street. Of course Rap Dave rarely makes it out of the confines of my head intact, but I know for a fact that his presence influences my behavior in other, more subtle ways – having the template of hip hop masculinity to draw from has changed my personality, allowing me to open up and let loose in ways I never could in my younger days.

I think it’s safe to say that every hip hop fan is, to a greater or lesser degree, engaged in emulation of their idols’ behavior. It’s just the way things work, and there’s nothing wrong with it as outlined above. The problem comes when we acknowledge that the dynamic between lil’ white me and (to take the obvious example) Ghostface is different than the dynamic between me and, say, Lemmy (another idol of mine), because I know people like Lemmy (or at least, Lemmy minus the musical genius), and so have an automatic reference point for the humanity that lies behind his persona. On the other hand, I quite frankly don’t know anyone like Ghostface. I’m not even going to get my feet tangled up by talking about all the black people I know, but suffice that none of them are risen-from-the-ghetto hardmen. So even when Ghostface is working harder than anyone out there to make it easy for outsiders to understand what it means to be like him, I don’t think I really can. I’ll always mainly see the flash and the grit and the smooth bedroom talk – I’ll only rarely, if ever, see the man underneath. This is why, to me and many others, guys who make less or no effort to be understood by non-blacks – guys like Cam’Ron or Juvenile – seem like one-dimensional cutouts. They operate on an assumed common understanding that we’ll never be a part of, and in which their seemingly empty boasts and posturing are transformed into . . . what?

One thing that happened recently that made me realize that I’d crossed some kind of line was when I found myself genuinely moved by Z-Ro’s “I Hate U.” Of course I’ve grooved to my share of ghettolicious R&B schmaltz over the years (mostly courtesy of Robert K.), but always with a very white sort of detached irony, recognizing the cheesiness of the sentiment while singing along in an absurd falsetto. But the Z-Ro song, it’s different. I can’t entirely tell whether a) the song transcends the cheesiness of the genre and reaches a level of true emotional depth, or b) I’ve listened to nothing but cheesy pop hip hop and soul for long enough that my emotional palette is starting to shrink, to a point where I find the following lyrics moving: “I was daddy for a while, though I’ve got no seed/ But the kids are my H-E-A-R-T.” I think if I was listening to more Neutral Milk Hotel, there wouldn’t be even the slightest chance of me getting taken in by this sort of one-dimensional higglety-pigglety, but then again it isn’t a black/white thing particularly – the same could be said with, I’m guessing, Angie Stone or Cody Chestnutt in place of NMH above.

The problem, though, is that I sub/consciously tend to interpret this acceptance of Z-Ro as some sort of proof that I’m no longer separate from hip hop culture, that it has in fact become a part of me from such long exposure and dedication. But of course, while hip hop music may very well have become my own personal lingua franca, it’s not my native language. It’s as if I had moved to Japan at 18 and was now fluent – I may understand the meaning of everything going on around me, even the ever-shifting slang and colloquialisms involving vegetables and figures of speech based on Buddhist legend, but I wasn’t born in Japan, or and so there are levels that I will never have access to. I was not born speaking hip hop, I was not born to the people whose language it is, so I’ll never truly understand it. This doesn’t mean I can’t have a real relationship to the music or the culture, it just means that, regardless of how much knowledge I cram into my head, there will always be parts that I won’t understand on a gut level. It’s as simple as that.