At some point in the Nineties, I became fascinated by “rock” covers of hip-hop songs. For example, there’s the Gourds’ cover of “Gin and Juice,” the Barenaked Ladies’ version of “Fight the Power” and Dynamite Hack’s “Boyz-N-The Hood.”
It was around ’91 when rap music really took off nationally, and we started to see artists like MC 900 Ft. Jesus and Bloodhound Gang mix alternative music and hip-hop elements.
What interested me was the recontextualization of lyrics. Let’s face it – almost all of hip-hop is rooted in a specific content, generally from a personal point of view. To try to appropriate that – for example, if you’re a rich white rock star singing about busting a cap or unloading your nine – then you’re going to look foolish at best and possibly racist.
What sometimes happened in these songs is that by slowing down the beat and singing in a direct manner, the meaning of the words completely changed.
There are a lot of varieties of hip-hop: party records, positive messages, socially critical, goofy, hard. People are familiar with the gangsta style, which is very aggressive in nature. Everything about those records is hard: the beats, the lyrics, the verbal delivery. Maybe gun shots are dropped into the track. You don’t mess around with this rapper – that’s the message.
Listen to Nina Gordon’s folk cover of “Straight Outta Compton.” There’s a wistful tone to all the violence and posturing. Is this mockery or just pulling something else out of the original work?
Take “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” by Dr. Dre from the 1992 album The Chronic. It’s not terribly difficult to identify this as an extraordinarily misogynistic song. Check out this 1993 article by Dream Hampton, describing the reaction to the song.
They came three days in a row. They stayed ten hours a day. They wore dreadlocks in shades of red and brown. Doobies and wraps dyed blond to black. They were mothers, daughter and sisters. They were girls and women. They came totally unannounced—no media, no rally—carrying placards and bullhorns, shouting obscenities “Dre, I will kick yo mothafuckin’ ass!” The men, African vendors and b-boys alike, kept their distance, muttering their disapproval when the women weren’t looking.
Harlem’s marketplace, 125th Street, had never seen anything like it. All summer long the boys had worn their little t-shirts without receiving so much as a second glance. “Bitches ain’t shit but hos and tricks.” It is, after all, the line from the best song on the best album of a pretty slow year, Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. “Why’d the girls have to go and get all crazy?” their little faces begged. “Ain’t nobody talking bout them no way.” The confused Senegalese vendors pleaded with their wives to intervene when the women surrounded their tables, decorated exclusively with the item under fire. The African women dismissed their husbands by sucking their teeth. What were they to do?
Now check out Ben Folds’ 2005 version of “Bitches Ain’t Shit” (Fan-made video embedded below). Again, to me, it completely subverts the meaning of the original lyrics.
I am reminded of a discussion of Facebook over this cover of Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now” by the Boston duo Karmin. We look at young white girls rapping lines like “killing every jigga that tryin’ to be on my stuff,” and we are moved to ask: “What is this? How do we interpret it?”
Is it simply performance, with no further meaning to be drawn? Is it minstrelsy? Is it parody or sincere tribute? Appropriation or homage? Is it racist or a sign of a post-racial society?
(By the way, I think it also depends if this is a one-off by Karmin, or if they make it a regular shtick.)
I dunno. I hesitate to label hip-hop as some special case. But I also hesitate to call it all fair game.
Kreayshawn and Ke$ha liberally borrow stylistically from hip-hop (to such an extent that the New York Times once foolishly flat-out called Ke$ha a white rapper, which is just wrong on factual grounds). But those two performers also have a bizarre white trash aesthetic. So, they mimic hip-hop, but they also clearly behave in a way that only a pop singer would (and that actual rappers never would).
Honestly, over the past 20 years, the influence of hip-hop has become so expansive, touching almost everything in pop music except for country, that it’s hard not to see touches of it pop up everywhere.
So, white pop performers covering rap. So what?
Hardcore hip-hop devotees – the true believers, the ‘heads – may be shocked and appalled. But we may have to accept that hip-hop is bigger than all of us.