Tell Me What You Want From Me

Following in the footsteps of music executive Steve Stoute, I am writing a letter to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences regarding the 2011 Grammys. The letter is seven words, short and sweet:

To Whom It May Concern:
What more do you want from Eminem?

Last month, Eminem was nominated for 10 Grammy awards for Recovery, his album chronicling the struggles of a man just recently emerged from the cycle of domestic violence and drug abuse that fueled his violent lyrical career for a decade, and in every category that did not explicitly contain “rap” in the title he lost. This was not the first slight to Eminem, whose 2000 Album of the Year loss to the reemergence of Steely Dan is often cited as one of the most heinous Grammy snubs ever; the Eminem case and the omission of rapper Guru from the obituary reel are the most recent indicators of an out-of-touch academy that has passed on the works of rap powerhouses Jay-Z, Kanye West, Public Enemy, and Dr. Dre in any category not limited to their genre. The pattern begs the question: Does NARSA, and by extension the community of the musical elite, accept rap music as valid? They don’t, but they should. The Grammy Academy needs to stop turning its back on the most creative genre of our generation and accept that rap is an enduring art form that will long outlast the critics who consider it all to be the misogynistic or sadistic dregs of jazz and soul; rap will continue as an important part of cultural expression facilitating social consciousness, political activism, and poetry.

Rap has many merits that qualify it as a valuable form of cultural expression, from the innovative uses of sampling and remixing to the creation of new beats, but most fascinating is its often-ignored lyrical depth. Yes, there is a significant percentage of rap music that is, to put it nicely, shallow; critics are quick to jump on the lower content of the genre: easy women, fancy cars, recreational drug use, and violence (gang, domestic, police—the list is extensive). They turn a blind eye to the diverse lyricism of rap and choose to focus on themes that, in a truly demented way, are just perversions of our purest national obsession: The American Dream. To say that these are definitive of a category as broad as rap, or its even broader parent hip-hop, is recklessly metonymic.

Since its inception, rap has had a decidedly socio-economic bent. Whether under- or overtones in an overall track, the themes of poverty, crime, and racial conflict are represented throughout the last three decades of rhymes. The ways in which these themes are addressed has evolved as rappers have taken a different position in society, but they always reflect the unfortunate realities of the haves and the have-nots. In 1982, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released “The Message,” commenting on the issues of debt, education, prostitution, inflation, and unemployment in just seven minutes; The Notorious B.I.G. spun a similar tale with a happier ending in 1994’s rags-to-riches track “Juicy,” and Jay-Z picked up where that left off chronicling the perils of fame in 2001’s “Heart of the City.” And even off of Eminem’s Recovery there is the “Love The Way You Lie,” a wrenching duet with survivor Rihanna that exposed the inner-workings of an abusive relationship in a more real way than a psychology textbook ever could. Social awareness is a huge cornerstone of rap content. Admittedly, not every track is socially conscious; songs like “No Hands” and “Look At Me Now,” while catchy, are more about boasting about sexual prowess than acknowledging the dangers of promiscuity. But this is exactly the point, that rap is a diverse genre that churns out a significant amount of culturally relevant and artistically important work.

Rap is also infused with politics, making it a viable artistic expression of a moment or movement. Artists such as Common involved themselves in social and political campaigns, while others are figureheads for political movements like “the ghetto’s populist prince” Tupac. Again, not every work of politically inclined rap is a winner; for every brilliant call to vote like Wyclef Jean’s “If I Were President,” there is a misguided effort like Young Jeezy’s “My President.” But the message persists in making rap part of our political history, another primary source in our analysis of the century. Internationally, rap has really taken off as a mechanism for idea diffusion and political change. Lyricist El Général spit the anthem for protesters in his native Tunisia, while secretive rapper Ibn Thabit did the same for Libya; less incendiary sociopolitical leanings also pop up in the music of UK rapper Plan B and French-Senegalese rapper MC Solaar.

But even if rap was as hollow and meaningless as some have claimed, there is no denying the sheer beauty of (some of) it. As I’ve qualified everything thus far, this is not a blanket statement for all rap; some lyrics are vapid, ill conceived, and just grammatically incorrect. But others are modern-day poetry made for mass consumption and more readily consumed by our attention-challenged generation. Single line pop-culture quips by popular artists such as Kanye West (“Mayonnaise colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips”) are matched by indie rappers like Childish Gambino (“I move real quick like Nestle/Let me make it clear for a second like Pepsi”), elaborate metaphors are spun (such as the life of hip hop in Common’s “Used to Love H.E.R.”), and creative imagery is used to avoid censors. It is poetry to a beat, and the artistry behind the best rappers’ lyrics overrule objections based on their bedfellows’ lesser ones. It is through this lyricism, so poetic and socially relevant, that rap captures important moments in time through cultural expression that needs to be recognized for what it truly is—good music.