Rap Leaders Work on the Message

These are the bad boys of hip-hop?

There were no guns, little bad language and not even any music. An unprecedented meeting featuring some of hip-hop’s biggest stars and industry executives being held here this week started with a frisk and a prayer and ended with pledges for more community work and political action. But there were also no apologies for raunchy lyrics or promises to clean up their musical act.

Under attack by Congress and other critics for lyrics said to encourage violence, drug use and poor treatment of women, hip-hop artists say they want to reassert control of their music before someone else does. On Tuesday and Wednesday, luminaries such as Sean “Puffy” Combs, Will Smith, and LL Cool J gathered with music executives, lawmakers, academics and spiritual leaders to talk about the influence of their recordings and how to harness it.

“Hip-hop is a force that can connect Compton with Beverly Hills, the projects and the trailer parks. That’s a very powerful thing,” said Russell Simmons, co-founder of multimedia powerhouse Def Jam Records, who convened the meeting. “We’re not here to criticize ourselves. We’re here to grow.”

Held at the New York Hilton Hotel, the gathering had few signs of the outlaw allure that has made hip-hop a $2-billion business and, after 20-plus years on the scene, arguably the most dominant force in pop culture, spinning its global influence from music to fashion, movies, advertising and TV. Somber-suited security men from the Nation of Islam stood guard as rap stars filed into seminar rooms.

But there was clearly something unusual going on. LL Cool J, wearing a red rhinestone-studded bandanna and mid-calf shorts, strode past a convention of bewildered pediatricians headed for an adjacent conference room.

Street-fresh rap stars and wizened civil rights leaders bumped fists and embraced. Those bulges in bodyguards’ waistbands turned out to be the light artillery of business: cell phones and pagers, not guns.

Part of hip-hop’s power is that it joins white and black America: 75% of the consumers who buy hip-hop recordings are white, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

“Hip-hop is a cultural phenomenon,” said Minister Benjamin Chavis Mohammad, a Nation of Islam leader who moderated sessions with congressional members and scholars. “The critics’ concern is the profanity of the language, but the artists’ concern is the profanity of their environment, the obscenity of racial discrimination and poverty. There is a consensus here that the language reflects those conditions, it doesn’t create them.”

But critics worry that hip-hop also reinforces stereotypes.

“It’s no good for white America to know black America through negative images,” said Minister Conrad Mohammed, the former youth director for the Nation of Islam who has become one of hip-hop’s most vocal critics. “Rappers are modern-day Sambos, shining and Uncle Tomming for record executives who think that only sex and violence sells.”

Artists argue that the rawness of their music reflects the reality of the streets. “There is some negativity, but it comes from the truth,” said Combs, who recently was acquitted after being charged in a shooting at a New York nightclub. He says he discourages artists at his label, Bad Boy Records, from rapping about violence gratuitously but would never censor anyone.

“There are people who know the poverty, the robbing and stealing, who were abandoned by their mother and father. They speak from dark times, abuse and crimes. That’s important to put out there so people around the world don’t think everything is perfect over here.”

Martin Luther King III spoke, as did Kweisi Mfume, the leader of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. And on Wednesday, the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, delivered a 2 1/2-hour address that verged on a sermon.

“Here you come with your hip-hop. Here you come with your dreadlocks. Here you come with your pants hanging halfway off your butt. Here you come with your new walk and way to talk. And it’s frightening folks in power because your picture is on their children’s walls,” he said.

“The rap that you speak has brought the youth all over the world to you. Now the question is, what will you do with your leadership role? The question is, what do you want to produce? Do you want to produce anger or rage, or do you want to produce change in the hearts and minds of the people who follow you?”

After his lengthy address, Farrakhan, who mediated a truce between warring East and West Coast rappers in 1996, ended up taking over the meeting, sweeping the artists up to the hotel’s 44th floor for more inspiration and mediation.

At 70, he said he is no rapper but used to be quite a dancer and sang naughty Creole tunes his mother disapproved of.

By Wednesday evening, the group thought they had come up with some answers to Farrakhan’s questions. Although they made no promises about toning down the content of their lyrics or videos, there were several other proposals.

They discussed a code of ethics for marketing, and putting parental advisories on videos and radio to warn of explicit images or lyrics. Their hope is to avoid outside regulation, which, as some legislators have suggested, could include a rating system similar to that for motion pictures. They talked about increasing black ownership of record labels and music ventures and mapped out a mentoring program for youths.

Professor Manning Marable, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, volunteered to start a think tank devoted to hip-hop. And the organizers of Rap the Vote, an effort to register voters at concerts, planned a hip-hop lobbying organization designed to target critics in Washington.

Tiye Phoenix, a female artist who raps about women’s issues and spirituality, said, “People have found the support here to be more innovative in their music. We can’t keep talking about cars and drugs and [women] for the next five years. The world will change without the permission of the music industry. When it changes, the record companies have no choice but to follow. We need to be the leaders.”

But for all the rap, is hip-hop really going to change? The lucrative industry has been driven by the lure of broken taboos, a sure appeal for young people. So-called positive rap has failed to sell.

“There’s a group of people here who are inspired to grow,” said Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the RIAA, the trade group that represents the music industry in Washington. “I don’t think it’s about apologizing or defending what they’ve been doing. I think it’s about expanding their message and their activities. The outside world perceives them as outlaws. But the artists see themselves as reporters. Now they’re discussing whether they should be teachers.”