Earlier this year, hip-hop (which, sadly, for stat tracking purposes now includes R&B as a sub-genre, versus the other way around) was declared the most consumed genre in music, beating rock for the first time while claiming 25.1% of all music we bought and/or streamed during the first six months of 2017. According to Nielsen Music, the industry sales tracking company that measures these things (and feeds Billboard’s charts) rock music was second with 23%.
Now this of course takes into account online streaming figures, which is the predominant means by which people get their music these days. And hip-hop artists benefit the most from that as their audience is generally younger – and younger people tend to gravitate more towards audio and video streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Pandora and YouTube than do their older, presumably rock- (and other genre-) leaning counterparts.
Hip-hop’s new crowning would normally be a good-news story for hip-hop artists, and for black acts in general, especially considering how far hip-hop has had to come to finally overtake a genre that has been king for the better part of six(!) decades.
But there’s also an ugly side to this victory for hip-hop and R&B, a side that couldn’t be more stark in its extreme nature.
And no, I’m not talking about the recent trend that is mumble rap or that annoying sound effect “skrrrr” rappers over-use in mimicking the sound made by the expensive cars they brag about.
Nor am I sparking a debate on whether trap music – monotonous beats and all – is truly hip-hop (yes, folks, it is).
And this is not a “my generation’s music is better than today’s music argument,” it goes far deeper than that.
I’m talking about a side to hip-hop we’ve always known to exist, but the extent to which didn’t dawn on me until a recent long road trip where I had the occasion to listen to all the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 – the authoritative chart for tracking the most popular songs in America – via a playlist a good friend created for me.
Admittedly, I hadn’t really listened to many of the songs on the chart before then (I have a nine-hour drive to thank for this recent occasion), so many of these tunes I was hearing for the first time.
But what I heard made me take notice…and cringe.
For the Hot 100 chart dated October 7, 2017, there were 35 hip-hop songs listed, plus another eight that qualify as R&B. For context, thirty-five (or 43 with the R&B included) is a pretty large number – I remember a time as late as 1986 when there were no rap songs charting – and this recent tally is certainly reflective of the market share that hip-hop has amassed in 2017 as Nielsen Music’s mid-year numbers indicated.
But here’s the cringeworthy part: of the 35 hip-hop records, all but two of them had at least one – and many times four or five – of the following words in their lyrics:
Nigga
Bitch
Pussy
Dick
Fuck
Ho
That’s 33 out of 35 currently charting hip-hop songs – predominantly by black artists – whose lyrics are so littered with vulgarities that it would make Queen Latifah cry foul.
At the very least it would make her take notice.
In addition, of the remaining eight “R&B” songs (the ones by black artists), four of them used at least one of those six words. So that’s 37 of 43 hip-hop/R&B songs that had one or more of those six terms in their lyrics – or roughly 86%.
The biggest offenders were, not surprisingly, the F-word, N-word and B-word.
The F-word appeared in 26 of the hip-hop recordings and one of the R&B hits, while the B-word appeared in 26 hip-hop songs.
The N-word wasn’t far behind, appearing in 23 of the hip-hop songs and two of the R&B tunes.
That means that all three of those words appeared in at least a quarter of the songs charting on the Hot 100. (And don’t even bring up the whole parental advisory label thing or the fact that many of these songs have clean edited versions; many kids can and do still access the explicit ones online.)
Additionally, female private parts were described using the P-word in nine of the songs, including Yo Gotti’s “Rake It Up,” where Nicki Minaj made note of hers, while men got called out in six tunes with the D-word. At one point during a stretch of about four or five consecutive songs, I felt like I was in a torture-porn flick.
Women were called “hoes” in five hip-hop songs – actually a lower number than I expected – and that doesn’t include the one tune (“These Heaux”) that skirted the issue by coming up with a clever way to spell it. Finally, drug use (Molly, Percocet and the like) was referenced in six of the songs.
So which tunes were the worst offenders?
Three songs made use of five of the words: “Pills and Automobiles” by Chris Brown featuring Yo Gotti, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie & Kodak Black; “Rake It Up” by Yo Gotti featuring Nicki Minaj; and “HUMBLE.” by Kendrick Lamar.
“Pills and Automobiles” was easily the worst of the bunch. Here’s a sample of its lyrics:
I’m a street nigga, I’m supposed to really be behind bars, baby / Really wanna be faithful but this shit hard, baby/ Yup, I got the pussy first and then I ignored you/ You fucked another nigga, you ain’t loyal/ I told you bring a friend, this shit gettin’ borin’ / She asked me what we are, we just cordial/ I’m a gangsta I can make a wet, wet turn into a pool (splash)
Interestingly enough, the song was so immersed in its self-indulgence that there was no mention of an “automobile” anywhere in its lyrics.
Further analysis showed that this issue is clearly split down color lines. All 32 of the hip-hop songs by black artists used the offensive language. Conversely, of the three hip-hop songs by whites, only one made use of any of the words (and no, not the N-word).
Of the 57 non-hip-hop/R&B songs by non-black acts, only two of them made use of the B-word and/or F-word. And context is important here. In both those cases, neither use of the B-word was done in an embracing way. One was a commonly used reference to “payback” being a bitch (“Demi Lavado’s “Sorry, Not Sorry”), while the other described what a woman’s ex-boyfriend unflatteringly called her after their breakup (“Bad At Love” by Halsey).
The only thing missing from this sad state of affairs for black artists on today’s charts was the violence. Thankfully, only one or two of the songs seemed to glorify that – a welcome change from the gangsta-rap heyday of the 1990s.
But the fact that we’re still niggas, bitches and hoes talking about our dicks and pussies in most of our music is disturbing. The fact that it’s being done to this large an extent is alarming. To me it says that, in order for black musicians to even chart these days, we must continue to degrade ourselves.
The only new black artist seemingly given a pass on this unwritten rule is the young singer Khalid, whose concurrently charting songs “Location” and “Young Dumb and Broke” avoid any of the derogatory terms altogether.
But then, the brother did have to title his latest hit “Young, Dumb and Broke,” which isn’t much of a consolation. And a recent remix of the latter featuring Lil Yachty and Rae Sremmurd slipped a “nigga” into one of the verses.
Now I’m not trying to come off as being on some higher moral ground here than hip-hop artists. We’re all guilty of using crude language and can get down and dirty from time to time. But this isn’t just about the language. It’s about the messages it sends.
Popular black music was once empowering and uplifting, with messages of love and brotherhood contained throughout. This was especially true coming out of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. It was nothing to see songs like “What’s Going On,” “Wake Up Everybody,” “War” and “Love Train” ruling the charts.
For years, blacks were able to sing about love in soul music classics like “Lean On Me,” “The Closer I Get To You,” “Strawberry Letter 23” and “Let’s Stay Together” and watch them sell millions of records alongside their pop counterparts.
Even in hip-hop’s earlier days, rap music was more diversified. Sure there was gangsta rap, but there was also more balance. Pro-black messages by groups like Public Enemy and Queen Latifah were mixed with the ratchet music of 2 Live Crew and Too $hort, but not to the point that it is today. If you put all 35 of this past week’s charting hip-hop songs on a single playlist, you’d swear you were in an Atlanta strip club on Piedmont Rd.
So how did this happen? How did it become the case that black artists could occupy more than 40% of the Hot 100 yet have more than 85% of that be ratchet music?
One must look first at an industry that is controlled by just three major labels (Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group) whose bottom line interest is profits. Through their smaller subsidiary labels like Columbia, Atlantic, Cash Money and Def Jam, many artists are signed to do one thing: deliver the hits, even if they’re just quick hits to ride the wave of a current music trend.
But it’s my belief that the blame doesn’t solely lie with the financial bottom line aspect of these labels’ businesses. There’s a conditioning that’s happened in black society – particularly among our youth – over years and years of being made to think that being a gangsta, a btch, a ngga or a ho is equal to holding some kind of power or value. I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but perhaps there’s some truth to the notion that this is what major labels want African-American artists (and their audience) to believe.
Many have speculated that real “black music” died some time ago and that the only way for the songs that are charting now to be as successful as they are is that non-black fans are consuming them in massive numbers as well. Non-black fans have increasingly embraced hip-hop over the decades, but clearly the music is more marketable to them if they don’t contain Afrocentric messages celebrating blackness.
Knowing its broader audience and bigger profit margin potential, labels had to tone down the pro-black messages so prevalent in ‘70s soul and early ‘90s hip-hop, to make the music more palatable to non-black consumers.
Indeed, in 2012, Billboard Magazine stopped bothering to even determine what black consumers like by making the R&B/Hip-Hop charts mere subsets of the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 lists. In that way, songs on the R&B charts appear in the exact same order they do on the pop chart, just with their pop and other genre-specific counterparts omitted. (Heck, it might as well be 1963 and ‘64 all over again, when Billboard briefly discontinued its R&B chart altogether because it wasn’t distinguishable enough from the Hot 100 pop survey.)
The three major labels certainly have the power to carry out such a narrative today. A recent report stated that Sony/BMG, Universal and Warner controlled 80% of the industry’s revenue as recently as 2015. Those labels control not just the companies’ purse strings but what music is released by their artists.
In other words, the music on today’s charts is apparently what those labels want us to hear – and sound like.
If that is indeed the case, there may be very little that young artists like those on this month’s Hot 100 charts can or are willing to do about it, especially with the lure of a get-rich-quick, hip-hop recording contract dangling before them at the hands of a Universal, a Sony/BMG or a Warner – or one of their subsidiaries.
But there may be hope.
With the Internet, more artists can control their own fate when it comes to controlling their music. The late Prince followed that model for several of his post-Warner Brothers, post-heyday releases in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently in 2016, contemporary artist Frank Ocean tricked the label to which he was signed, Def Jam/Universal Music Group, by releasing only a video album for that label (available for streaming on Apple), followed by the actual 17-track album Blond a week later on his own label, Boys Don’t Cry. Ocean apparently absolved himself of any liability by repaying Def Jam the $2 million the company had spent in recording costs.
But not every artist is as savvy as a Prince or a Frank Ocean when it comes to walking away from the majors. And long-term freedom can often come with a price, as Prince learned and Ocean may yet find out (we will see with his next release as the previous one was deemed a success by most accounts).
In the meantime, we will likely continue commemorating the milestone successes of artists like Nicki Minaj (most Hot 100 entries by a female), Cardi B (first female solo rapper to hit No. 1 in 19 years) and Future (first artist to début two albums at No. 1 in consecutive weeks) because, well, that’s all there is today.
But that commemoration comes at a price as well.
We may have taken most of the gangsta out of our hip-hop, but we’re still killing ourselves slowly (or it’s being done for us) with these pimped-out lyrics that devalue us.
The problem is likely more complex than what I’ve laid out above, but wouldn’t it be nice if artists could take it upon themselves to address it. The solution could be as simple as this for today’s hip-hop stars:
Just stop being pimped!
DJRob
[…] And get this: the albums by Pop Smoke and The Weeknd are distributed by the same label – Republic – as Wallen’s. I could go on writing about how labels have exploited young Black artists these days, but I’ve already done that in this 2017 piece. […]
Hip-hop,rap and R&B after about 1975 BLOW !!!!!! I’m a black Canadian lad with cover boy good looks at age 66,and I’m HUGE Country music fan !!!
Hip/Hop, rap AFTER 1975? What was it like BEFORE 1975? LMAO!
[…] October 2017, djrobblog did a study of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and found that – of the 32 hip-hop songs listed by […]
Stop the criticism
Well written expose on one of the most disturbing trends in black/African self-degradation world wide. We are carrying this sily Afrophilia too far. What’s the point of being black when you turn vulgarities and obscenities into badges of Afrocentric self assertion ? Some one calls this cunning of impotence
Thanks, Denis. I (obviously) align with your point of view.
This article is spot on, the mainstream hip hop industry is wack and its been like that for years. But one positive thing that happened throughout the years was the development of technology and the social networks. Thanks to them, you don’t have to simply join the wave and listen to the mainstream music that everyones hearing. Now you can actually find trully talented artists that are not part of the system, artists that are purely good. I got so irritated that I created a blog called Groove Detector. This blogs main emphasis is to give credit to the non mainstream good quality rap and hip hop. So check it out because hip hop is not dead!
You can simply google—-> Groove Detector
Thanks, Nir! Appreciate the positive feedback.
Simply well articulated. Thanks for addressing this problem just as much as I want it to. Listening to hip hop over the years, I seem quite happy the violent pictures/scenes aren’t of worry anymore but, the use of the degrading and damning words in hip hop/RNB songs coupled with the fact that access to these music is so much like a free roller coaster ride is worse than imagined. Like you said, the black community are been fed through these music that these words are an atom of POWER, so rather than reject them cuz they are demeaning, we should accept them cuz they are empowering. Big problem for black folks. Morals are refuted, black culture is being neglected, what made us blacks an epitome of hope for other races is been trampled by our new generations. How can we really solve this if the artists in question, don’t come to this self awareness?!
Thanks, Diamond!
Nice article. I should read it again.
Wow! This has got to be the best article I’ve read all year. Many at times long write-ups lose barely halfway while reading for sheer length than content but you were able to keep me reading all through. I’m African, more specifically Nigerian, and I must tell you that what you have outlined here represents the pitfalls of today’s hiphop music and black music in general, which will include afropop music from my home country that has grown popular with the rest of the world over last few years highlighted by the recent MOBO award in the best international act category given to Wizkid. While I’m excited about the level of acceptance black music has attained in the last two decades, I still lament that what we are giving out is no longer black music, rather we have discredited ourselves in the most disparaging and derogatory ways possible through the ceaseless and senseless use and reference to sexual and racial obscenities. This has lingered in my mind for so long but you’ve finally given expression to my frustrations. It’s already bad enough that real hiphop has been sidetracked by the meaningless and wordless crap that has taken center stage on the music scene in the name of mumble rap/trapmusic, they had to go as far as misrepresenting black culture and portraying the black man in negative light. I can’t say Nigerians artists back home are better on moral grounds because they too taking after their African-americat brothers. It is a general black problem and I’m glad that a there is forum such as this to address these issues. My only annoyance with this article is that I didn’t get to write it first. Lol. But I must admit that I couldn’t have done it any better than this especially with regards to the level of research and work you put into it. Please I’d love to read more of your articles. I’m now a fan and I’m super excited that someone shares the same thoughts with me. Thanks!
You are most welcome, my brother! Your words are just as astounding and articulate, even more so, than what you’ve credited me for. I could have easily replaced the last four or so paragraphs of my article with your more succinct messages and gotten the points across. Thank you again for reading and for contributing! I am most humbled!
Your brother!
You are an old soul who see through their bullshit my brother
I love this article so much, I really do… I am an upcoming or should I say aspiring artist(Instagram:skppr_lexie, facebook Alexander Lawrence, twitter :alexande Lawrence… Please follow and add up, thanks) , I was born into a Christian family and environment, so it’s already hard enough going into the music industry, talk more of going “secular” because of the insanity and immorality depicted in the lyrics and the visual contents of the songs. I am having some serious problem with support from my family and church acquaintances, but that’s not even my point… Now, I have always tried to justify some of these words considered as dirty by concluding that they are just ordinary words in the dictionary, but of course, how they are used comes into play, right? I feel that music is an art form and some of these musicians are just exercising “poetic justice” . Now, basically, my question is; is it possible to not view these words on their own as vulgar words thereby vindicating it’s usage in some contexts??? And particularly, I’ve always wanted to ask, is “nigga” a vulgar word??? I mean, yes it was used by the whites back in the day to ridicule us blacks but from my point of view I see the usage of the word as “turning an ugly situation to one’s advantage”, by accepting it and even turning it’s negative identity to a positive one identifying a race that was once defamed but stood strong and United and rose up successful.
Please I need answers to these questions to help me take a firmer decision and resolution…
By the way, I’m Nigerian too pro_vibes and our music is making me proud sha o
What a dumb article. You can go listen to kindergarten-censored lyrics. No one’s forcing you to listen to GOOD music
Hahaha. It’s funny, I was actually more offended by you calling it “GOOD” music (in all caps even), than I was you calling the article dumb. Your assessment lost all credibility when you labeled this trash GOOD.
Excellent, excellent summation of the situation! And you’re absolutely right, I am happy that the violent strain of Hip Hop and Black music has calmed down, but the usage of sexual and racial obscenities in every song shows how much this has become normalized in our conversation and our music especially. Also, the thing that gets me, is as you say, this music is more popular currently than any music in black history. Even arguably, the great music of Motown, just due to the easy access to music nowadays and the ubiquity of it. This music no longer has to be worked for to be heard either, no longer does a kid have to go to a record store, buy an explicit piece with a “tipper sticker” on it and hide it from their parents. This is the highest and easiest time of musical access in history and these artists are representing Black people in the lowest of ways, while broadcasting to the ENTIRE WORLD. But I don’t think the music will change until we can change the conversation within the community to a degree, but its hard to do so when art is influencing the community in the way it is!
Well said my brother. I could discuss this subject with you for hours!