Getting a Bad Rap : The creative energy of the black street music shouldn’t be buried under racism and misinterpretation : Commentary

Nothing since the arrival of punk in the late ‘70s has given pop music a greater creative jolt than rap music. This aggressive, black street-spawned sound has become the most exciting inner-city contribution to pop since the Motown hits of the ‘60s.

So, how can such a creative force alienate so many people?

The simple answer: Rap makes people nervous--on a variety of levels.

* The language and themes--the most controversial of which range from angry expressions of social frustration to X-rated sexual bravado--can be shocking.

* The rapid, street-smart vocal insistence backed by a jittery sonic assault, akin to that of an active video arcade, is sometimes jarring.

* The rappers themselves--often projecting, in attitude and clothing, a youthful, inner-city toughness--appear threatening. This leaves rappers looking, to many outsiders, like the gang members seen on TV news being handcuffed by police after a drive-by shooting.

The paradox is that the factors that make rap seem alien to much of the mainstream are the same elements that give the music its significance and strength--a view of the inner-city, African-American experience that is rarely presented elsewhere in the media.

And the current obscenity controversy over Miami rap group 2 Live Crew may well have made rap more unattractive than it already was to many people.

A manifestation of this now high-charged national debate has spilled over into the most mainstream of the mainstream--network prime-time television.

Before a U.S. District Court judge’s declaration this month that the 2 Live Crew album, “As Nasty as They Wanna Be,” was obscene, NBC was promoting a new fall sitcom based on rap’s popularity with young people.

Although the sitcom isn’t about rap music, “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” stars Fresh Prince, a well-known rapper. His music, which he performs as part of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, is far removed from the hard-core rap that generates so much controversy.

Still, just after the federal court’s ruling, some at NBC appeared worried. “There’s no doubt (the show’s image) is a problem for us,” an NBC vice president said recently.

“There’s an up side and a down side. Our feeling is that younger people know (Fresh Prince) as a rapper. The down side is that it’s a turnoff to a lot of people who think they’re going to see rap for half an hour.”

If television executives are concerned that the 2 Live Crew flap may keep some viewers from even tuning in to a sitcom, it’s easy to see how the potential backlash could further cement resistance to rap music itself.

There are two primary knocks against rap. The music is said to be a negative influence on its core audience--young blacks--and that it is without artistic merit. Both notions are painfully misguided.

Rap isn’t the first noteworthy pop style that has made adults anxious, especially in the rock era, but there are ingredients in rap that make it more isolated than past pop idioms.

Parents in the ‘50s feared that rock’s sexy, outcast blend of country and R&B; was going to turn American teen-agers into delinquents. Related fears about rock’s “negative” influence were expressed during the social turbulence of the ‘60s and again during the anarchy tone of the punk rebellion of the ‘70s.

After relatively short periods of circling the wagons, however, adults learned to tolerate--if not always embrace--the once-feared rock forces. Parents finally decided they were just a new generation’s way of expressing itself.

Yet rap continues to be foreign in a way that underscores the enormous social separation between black inner-city residents and the more affluent, typically white communities of the United States.

One reason is that rap has remained, at its core, a black medium.

There have been successful white rap groups, notably the Beastie Boys and 3rd Bass, but no single artist of Elvis-like talent and charisma has emerged who could translate the energy and style of rap in a way that might neutralize the issue of race.

Another factor is the public’s misconception of the idiom.

Virtually every time rap has moved beyond its largely underground status (the music receives scant national airplay), it has been chiefly in the form of news reports viewing rap as a social time bomb.

The first occurred in 1986. Nearly four dozen people were injured during an outbreak of gang violence at a Long Beach Arena concert headlined by the New York rap group Run-DMC.

Though few adults had even heard Run-DMC’s music, the events at the show and photos of the trio (the members favored black get-ups that made them look vaguely like gangsters) were enough to make the group seem dangerous. Ironically, Run-DMC’s message was almost totally wholesome; it included strong pro-education and anti-drug pitches.

The next media explosion in rap involved Public Enemy, a New York group led by Chuck D., a rapper with a Bob Marley-like sense of social urgency.

The group’s records--the black pride message was taken equally from Malcolm X and Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan--and image (they came on stage with a security force carrying imitation Uzis) did seem confrontational.

Though Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” was voted the best album of 1988 in a Village Voice poll of the nation’s leading pop music critics, fireworks went off last year when one of the group’s members, Professor Griff, made anti-Semitic remarks in a Washington Times interview. While Griff is no longer associated with Public Enemy, the incident made the rap outfit seem possibly dangerous and irresponsible.

The second giant rap aftershock of 1989 involved Los Angeles’ N.W.A, whose album, “Straight Outta Compton,” dealt with gang life without apology. Pushing the boundaries of rap imagery much further than anyone had before, the group featured sirens and gunshots as backdrops to its stark, frequently X-rated tales of drug dealing, gangbanging and police confrontation.

To some listeners, it seemed like an all-out invitation to violence. An FBI official was so disturbed by the album that he accused the group of encouraging violence against law enforcement officers.

Finally: the 2 Live Crew album, which was declared obscene even though the mostly shallow series of X-rated comedy sketches are hopelessly tame in a country where “Deep Throat” has been almost a cultural touchstone for two decades.

Concert violence. Uzis on stage. FBI criticism. Obscenity rulings.

How could anyone find value in rap, let alone defend it?

One reason for the confusion over the message of rap is that much of it is delivered in an exaggerated style that employs literary devices from an inner-city culture that is simply foreign to white observers, especially middle-class, college-educated ones.

It’s easy to see the positive message of rap in some records, including “Self-

Destruction,” an all-star project last year that was recorded to curb black-on-black crime and promote education. Among the rappers who participated: Chuck D., Boogie Down Productions’ KRS-One and Kool Moe Dee.

Sample lyrics:

Back in the ‘60s our brothers & sisters were hanged.

How could you gang bang?

I never ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan

And I shouldn’t have to run from a black man.

Similarly, “We’re All in the Same Gang,” a just-released album featuring such West Coast rappers as Ice-T., M. C. Hammer and members of N.W.A, also carries a clear anti-gang message.

Other races say we act

Like rats in a cage

I tried to argue, but check it

Every night in the news

We prove them suckers right

And I got the blues . . . America.

But the image of rapper as gangster or delinquent is so strong that words, like Uzi , are taken literally when Public Enemy’s Chuck D. employs them in a song, though he said the image was simply a metaphor for the power of the mind.

Asked why he and other rappers aren’t more careful with language so that it won’t be so easily misunderstood, Chuck D. said the music is primarily aimed at the inner-city community that first supported rap and that to change it would be to dilute its impact.

“Music should be regarded No. 1 as communication. That’s what all us rappers are--communicators,” Chuck D. said in an interview earlier this year.

Similarly, one of the most controversial passages in Ice Cube’s new “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted” album is the former N.W.A rapper’s reaction when a woman--whom he feels tricked him into having sex so that she could get pregnant and force him to take care of her financially--tells him she indeed is pregnant. His impulse: kick the woman in the stomach and kill the baby.

What’s often overlooked in the criticism of the song is that the narrator doesn’t follow through on the impulse, if for no other reason than he doesn’t want to go to prison. Without laying down a moral, Ice Cube is demonstrating an awareness of the consequences of one’s actions.

Later in the album, the narrator, a veteran of robberies in the black community, goes on a burglary spree in a white neighborhood and is arrested. The song isn’t a call to action, but a commentary on how little Ice Cube believes the general community is concerned with black-on-black crime.

But apart from the message, the bottom-line value of rap is its musical vitality. Look at the range--from the playful innocence of De La Soul to the Chicago “hip house” dance energy of Mr. Lee to the comic exuberance of Digital Underground. Public Enemy’s albums, too, contain some of the most striking musical textures on record today. “Welcome to the Terrordome” is a sonic extravaganza as dark as the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” was light.

To bypass rap is to miss the most creative energy in all of pop these days. And rap’s most important message may not be in the music or words at all, but in the establishment of rappers as role models.

Elvis was arguably the most political figure ever in pop, not because he sang of revolution but because he helped inspire a generation of young people. Through their individuality, Presley and other early rockers encouraged young people to think for themselves--to challenge adult assumptions and conventions.

There was a revolution in the celebratory spirit and self-identity of early rock that was later articulated by Bob Dylan, John Lennon and others, who added content to what was at first simply a generation’s declaration of independence.

Rap, too, is a declaration of independence. And it is healthy--both for the rap audience to have a forum for debate and for outsiders to hear the debate and realize that inner-city spirit and ambition haven’t been crushed by social and economic deprivation.

A final irony: In the best rap, there is intelligence and energy as persuasive and valuable as Spike Lee’s movie “Do the Right Thing.” Remember the charges that “Do the Right Thing” was irresponsible in its depiction of race relations and how bloodshed might follow?

Time has vindicated “Do the Right Thing.” Time will also vindicate rap.