Sociology Compass 2/6 (2008): 1783–1800, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00171.

Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

Anthony Kwame Harrison*
Virginia Polytechnic and State University

Abstract
This article reviews the history of scholarship on racial authenticity within studies
of rap music and hip hop. The concept of authenticity currently enjoys a central
place in sociological work on popular music, subcultures, and racial identity. As
a music and cultural form that straddles all three of these fields, the debates
surrounding authenticity within rap and hip hop are as contentious as any. Using
the year 2000 as an arbitrary dividing line, this article presents the late 20th
century foundations of research on authenticity and race within hip hop, then
moves on to discuss more recent developments in the academic literature. Despite
hip hop scholars’ increased emphases on discourses of space and place, and
processes of culture and identity formation, the field continues to be framed
through notions of essential blackness, and critical interrogations of white hip hop
legitimacy. After providing an overview of the state of the field, it is argued that
greater attention to language use among hip hop enthusiasts, and a particular
emphasis on hip hoppers who fall outside the black–white racial binary will prove
fruitful in reinvigorating these longstanding debates. Ethnographic studies of local
underground hip hop scenes within the Unites States are recommended as a
logical place to begin.

Questions of racial authenticity have dominated sociological research on

hip hop (and rap music particularly) since the early 1990s inception of the
field. To paraphrase a statement more often made about critics than critical
thinkers, people didn’t seemed to pay much attention to hip hop until the
extent of its white audience was revealed. The base assumptions surrounding
hip hop and racial authenticity have always been that black identity is, by
default, legitimate, while white identity is either suspect or invalid. Writing
at the start of the 21st century, Bakari Kitwana (2002) took little pause in
defining the ‘hip hop generation’ as African Americans born between
1965 and 1984. Meanwhile, many of the most volatile and well-rehearsed
debates on the subject have focused on the contested acceptability of
white hip hoppers. Few question that white people have played an important
role as hip hop artists who have helped to expand rap music’s market, as
a dominant demographic within that market, and as key players behind
the scenes of the cultural industry machines that have fueled the popular-
ization of hip hop’s music and lifestyle (George 1998; Samuels 1991;
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1784 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

Stephens 1991; Watkins 2005). Still, the juxtaposition of whiteness and

hip hop continues to pose a series of intriguing sociological questions.
The attention given to recent books like Greg Tate’s Everything But the
Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture (2003), Jason
Tanz’s Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America
(2007), and Bakari Kitwana’s Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas,
Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (2005); Holly-
wood films such as Bulworth (1998), White Boys (1998), and Malibu’s Most
Wanted (2003); and television programs like VH1’s ‘Ego Trip’s (White)
Rapper Show’ (2007), all firmly attest to this fascination (see also Aaron
1999; Kleinfield 2000; Ledbetter 1992; Neate 2004; Wimsatt 1993).
Concerns over white participation in traditionally black avenues of
cultural production, or what Paul C. Taylor calls ‘the Elvis Effect’ (1997;
see also Hall 1997), have fueled a good deal of the ‘authenticity work’
(Peterson 2005) put forth by black people in an effort to secure hip hop
as distinctly their own. As debates swirl into the 21st century, audiences
of all sorts approach questions of hip hop authenticity and whiteness with
a range of different expectations, assumptions, and interests. Is white par-
ticipation in hip hop optimistically championed as indicative of America’s
improving race relations? Are white hip hoppers lampooned for having
the audacity to presume to understand something they could never truly
grasp? Do commentators critically engage issues of white privilege and
the cultural and economic damage that has been done to black individuals
and communities through the continuing cycle of music appropriation?
Of course, each of these angles is highly contentious. And it goes without
saying that, for those who take these matters seriously, theorizing what
the social significance of hip hop can tell us about race is an important
and consequential endeavor.
This article reviews how the issue of hip hop authenticity and race has
been treated within academic literature since hip hop studies first emerged
as a viable academic field. In order to give some perimeters to a topic that
dominates so much of the popular discourse on hip hop – including
journalism, literature, films, and Internet blogging – I am defining academic
literature as pieces appearing in peer-reviewed journals, published by
university or (widely recognized) academic presses, or that have been
authored by people holding academic positions. I further narrow my
scope to work, which is principally rooted in social theory.
Throughout this review, I take the position that approaching hip hop’s
racial authenticity through a framework of black legitimacy and (questionable)
white illegitimacy is limited in two ways. First, in juxtaposing black and
white racial identity, much of this work ignores the tremendous range of
peoples, neither black nor white, who also have strong attachments to hip
hop. Second, when operating within such a binary, there is a tendency to
reduce complex discussions of nuanced cultural processes to oversimplified
oppositional stances. Either white hip hoppers are genuine devotees to
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 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop 1785

‘the culture of hip hop’, or privileged interlopers whose mere presence

threatens to destroy it. The need to take and fortify one of these positions,
particular against the camps of scholars who profoundly feel otherwise,
has affected a good deal of the scholarship. Hip Hop, in the words of
Henry Giroux, is ‘the only popular culture that takes seriously the rela-
tionship between race and democracy’ (quoted in Aaron 1999, 72). As
such, an examination of racial authenticity within its scholarship serves as
a window through which to view recent academic perspectives on processes
of cultural assimilation, appropriation and diffusion, and the rigidity and
malleability of social identities within multicultural globalized contexts.

On authenticity
Authenticity is a slippery concept that has recently come into fashion in
scholarship on popular music (Barker and Taylor 2007; Grazian 2004;
Peterson 1997) subcultures (Thornton 1995; Williams 2006) and racial/
ethnic groups (Jackson 2005). Hip hop notably occupies the intersection
of all three fields. Assessments of authenticity, when applied to individuals,
are usually based upon a fundamental congruence between how one sees
oneself and how one is seen by others (Trilling 1971; see also Goffman
1959). At the same time, authenticity, which is always constituted through
the social institutions people participate within (Appiah 1994), demands that
a person, performance, or object conforms to a set of socially agreed-upon
authentic standards. Authenticity is never an organic quality naturally
found in things; it is rather ‘a claim that is made’ which is ‘either accepted
or rejected’ (Peterson 2005, 1086). In this sense, authenticity aims to
strike an agreement between the presentation of something or someone
(as authentic) and the reception or acceptance of that presentation. Thus,
authenticity is both constructed and contested, and therefore in a perpetual
state of flux. In situations where ‘authenticity work’, or the ‘effort [put
forth] to appear authentic’ (Peterson 2005, 1086) is too transparent, that
which it strives to establish becomes suspect and dubious. Indeed, one of
the ironies of authenticity is that it tends to emerge as an issue mainly
under conditions where it is in some way threatened (McLeod 1999;
Peterson 2005).

Underlying issues
Within the network of deliberations surrounding race and hip hop
authenticity, there are several important issues that underlie many of the
usual discussions. Occasionally, these concerns bubble up to the fore of
debates; however, they just as often lurk below the surface as assumptions
upon which many disagreements and misunderstandings hinge. As a point
of departure, I will briefly touch upon four of these, which will period-
ically resurface over the course of my review of the scholarship.
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1786 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

The first concerns the extent to which understandings of hip hop

authenticity are rooted in fixed notions of ‘how it all started’, or what
Imani Perry (2004) calls originalist arguments. The originalist position
certainly forms one of the strongest claims to authenticity; however, if hip
hop is to be thought of as a culture – as many people claim it should –
at some point, strict originalism must succumb to the well-established
notion that both cultures and traditions are social processes which are
continually changing (see Clifford 1988; Handler and Linnekin 1984).
Anytime someone starts speaking of the characteristics that comprise
authentic hip hop, it’s worth considering whether these qualifications are
rooted in a nostalgic notion of hip hop as it was at its outset (the perim-
eters of which are themselves a source of contention) or in a more
dynamic understanding of what it has become over its three decades as a
popular cultural form.
Second, do questions surrounding hip hop authenticity apply first and
foremost to hip hop artists, or does the discussion more broadly involve
anyone alleged to be a constituent of the hip hop nation? This is an
important distinction considering the fact that while the most celebrated
commercial forms of rap music continue to be dominated by black
performers, the majority of its consumers – and here I am speaking
specifically of people twenty-something and younger who have grown up
exposed to rap music their entire lives – are not African American (Samuels
1991; Watkins 2005).
A third issue concerns whether the category ‘hip hop artist’ specifically
refers to emcees/rappers or also includes practitioners of hip hop’s other
acknowledged elements, namely, deejays – and by association ‘beat makers’
(Schloss 2004) – breakdancers (aka b-boys and b-girls), and graffiti writers.
There is little question that the significance of black identity in hip hop
has been more strongly connected with rapping than any other of its
fundamental practices.
The fourth question relates specifically to issues of racial and cultural
identity: when discussing hip hop and blackness is one speaking specifi-
cally about African-American identity, or a black diasporic identity that
transcends any specific American experience? Although there are indica-
tions that through processes of globalization certain commonalities of
racial subjectivity have emerged (see Basu and Lemelle 2006; Clarke and
Thomas 2006; Gilroy 1993), the fact remains that being black in America
is not the same as being black in England, Jamaica, or Ghana. Thus, to
lump all African-descended hip hoppers into one collective authentic is
to privilege race ahead of cultural difference.

Pre-millenium hip hop scholarship – The foundations

In presenting a canon of hip hop scholarship (Forman 2002), there is no
better starting point than Tricia Rose’s 1994 book Black Noise. Although
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 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop 1787

Rose’s was not the first major work to be published on hip hop, the scope
and sophistication of her analysis announced the arrival of hip hop studies
as a legitimate academic field (see also Perkins 1996a). Black Noise is
sometimes upheld as a firm declaration of hip hop’s essential blackness –
a reading supported by the Rose’s subtitle ‘Rap Music and Black Culture
in Contemporary America’ – however, close inspection shows that Rose
was engaged in a far more complex endeavor. One of the great strengths
of the book is its second chapter which lays out the local context of hip
hop’s 1970s New York City formation in tremendous detail and elaborates
on how each of its principle elements (see above) forms part of a com-
prehensive vocabulary of post-industrial African-American youth expression.
In outlining what is perhaps the most authoritative scholarly statement on
hip hop’s origins, Rose is very intentional in including the contributions
of recent Caribbean immigrants (see also Hebdige 1987) and Puerto Ricans.
This places her in the somewhat delicate position of characterizing hip
hop (rap music particularly) as an African-American cultural form whose
‘critical force grows out of the cultural potency that racially segregated
conditions foster’ (1994, xiii) while at the same time recognizing its
hybrid origins and ability to ‘resonate with people from vast and diverse
backgrounds’ (1994, 19). In a telling passage, Rose states that ‘suggest[ing]
that rap is a black idiom that prioritizes black culture and that articulates
the problems of black urban life does not deny the pleasure and partici-
pation of others’ (1994, 4). Although Rose firmly defines hip hop as black
cultural expression, her stance on racial authenticity is often more precarious
than steadfast. She ultimately falls back on the explanation that hip hop
is shaped by ‘dynamic tensions and contradictions’ (1994, 21), which do
not easily conform to fixed definitions of what it is and is not.
In contrast to Rose, a handful of scholars have been much more resolute
in denying the authenticity of any hip hop (or rap music) that is not
directly connected to black experience. Errol Henderson, in a statement
that contradicts much of the prevailing history, describes the original hip
hop community as ‘exclusively Black’ (1996, 316), and goes on to explain
the appearance of Mexican and Caribbean American artists and ‘sucker-
ducktricktypewannabe’ white artists as resulting from processes of corporate
consolidation in which small independent black record companies were
bought up or bought out by major labels (1996, 320 –1). In a similarly
curious article entitled ‘It’s a Black Thing: Hearing How Whites Can’t’,
Ewan Allinson, a white writer, argues that ‘hip-hop lives and breathes as
a Black thing in ways simply not open to white experience, white thought’
(1994, 438). Although Allinson is willing to concede that a large white
hip hop audience does exist, like Henderson he views white-controlled
production of culture (Peterson 1976) mechanisms as inhibiting genuine
dialogue between hip hop’s ‘eavesdropping’ white audience and the true
(black) hip hop community. Although adopting a similar outlook, Todd
Boyd sees the relationship between hip hop’s fundamental blackness and
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1788 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

the cultural industries very differently when he argues that it’s hip hop’s
ability to maintain its ‘unadulterated Black cultural product’ (1997, 64) in
the face of mainstream success which separates rap music from earlier
black cultural forms (see also Garofalo 1994).
In an important article supporting this exclusively black stance, Kem-
brew McLeod (1999) suggests that an increased emphasis on blackness as
a key tenet of hip hop authenticity – along with other attributes like being
‘underground,’ ‘from the street,’ and ‘staying true to yourself ’ (1999, 139)
– occurred in an effort to preserve hip hop’s identity in the face of
mainstream assimilation (see also Decker 1994). Two noteworthy aspects
of McLeod’s contribution are (1) his recognition of the discursive nature
of all authenticity claims – rather than arguing for an authoritative Truth
about what hip hop is, McLeod bases his analysis on how hip hop is talked
about by artists, fans, and the press; and (2) his binary framework which
pits black realness against white fakeness. Not surprisingly, this straightfor-
ward dichotomy has lent well to future analyses (see, for instance,
Armstrong 2004; Hess 2005; Kahf 2007).
Before discussing the canonical texts that adopt a more racially inclusive
understanding of hip hop, I want to briefly touch upon a series of
publications that specifically sought to redress the ‘omission’ of Puerto
Ricans and other Latinos from accounts of hip hop’s formation. During
the mid-1990s, Latino scholars like Juan Flores (1994, 1996) and Mandalit
del Barco (1996) – and later Rachel Rivera (2001, 2003) – highlighted the
long history of interaction between New York City’s African-American
and Puerto Rican communities to show that ‘Puerto Ricans have been
involved in hip hop since the beginning’ (Flores 1994, 90). One common
thread through much of this work involved blaming such historical amnesia
on the commercial music industry (see also De Genova 1995; Negus 1999)
– an argument that can take either of two forms. The first focuses on the
traditional division of labor which has Puerto Ricans playing a greater role
in break(dance)ing and graffiti than in hip hop’s musical practices. Since
music was the only aspect of hip hop that translated into a viable com-
modity, by the late 1980s, the elements of hip hop traditionally dominated
by Latinos were largely invisible. The second position emphasizes main-
stream America’s longstanding fascination with black cultural forms and
inability to grasp the nuances of interethnic fluidity as the principal reason
why hip hop has been marketed exclusively as black American music.
At the nexus of these two phenomena, there is an early precedent for
what I am calling hip hop’s selective alignment with blackness. It would
appear that as hip hop’s non-musical forms faded from the popular cultural
radar, so did any particular interest in securing their exclusive association
with black identities. In fact, breaking, graffiti, and later deejaying, have
long been sustained as underground (less commercially visible) forms
through multiracial communities of practitioners (see, e.g., the documen-
taries The Freshest Kids [2002], Style Wars [1983], and Scratch [2001]).
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In opposition to an exclusively black (or even black and Latino)

perspective, several early contributors to the field took an interest in hip
hop’s ability to cross social boarders and engage a range of racial/ethnic
subjects. One of the first articles to praise hip hop for initiating an interracial
dialogue was Gregory Stephens’ ‘Rap Music’s Double-Voiced Discourse:
A Crossroads for Interracial Communication’ (1991), which used Jean-
Claude Deschamps and Willem Doise’s notion of ‘cross identities’ (1978)
to argue that rap acts as a ‘interracial bridge’ (1991, 72). Katina Stapleton
took a similar position in suggesting that ‘rap music has served to form a
cohesive bond among urban youth’ (1998, 231) and has become the
‘cultural and political voice of an entire generation’ (1998, 219). Although
Stapleton acknowledged that hip hop’s concerns were foremost with issues
facing black youth, she firmly believed that socio-geographic identity and
oppositional politics had come to be prioritized ahead of race.
The very nature of hip-hop culture has been one that accommodated many
types of people, many subject matter, and many types of music. The underlying
question, then, is whether or not hip hop can accommodate varying interests
while still retaining its distinctive urban identity. (Stapleton 1998, 227 [emphasis
added])
Brian Cross, in his tremendous history of Los Angeles hip hop (see also
Kelley 1996), echoed these sentiments when he asserted that ‘hip hop
learns and borrows from not only different musics but different lifestyles’
(1993, 63; see also Delgado 1998; Kelly 1993; Martinez 1997; Perkins
1996b; and Quinn 1996).
Hip hop’s polyvocality and cross-cultural appeal have also been
explained through highlighting its diasporic origins. Some of the most
formidable work falling within this category draws on Paul Gilroy’s (1993)
notion of the Back Atlantic as a transcontinental flow of materials,
customs, beliefs, and people that has been instrumental in shaping con-
temporary black subjectivity. One of the most frequently cited applications
of the Black Atlantic approach was provided by George Lipsitz, who used
the example of hip hop pioneering DJ Afrika Baabbaataa’s to suggest a
‘diasporic intimacy’ within the Black Altantic world (1994a, 27; see also
Keyes 1996). Lipsitz specifically details how colonially mediated African
imagery (i.e. Bambaataa’s ‘the Zulu Nation’), Hollywood film scores, and
European electronic music (i.e. the German band Kraftwerk) combined
in the creation of Bambaataa’s aptly titled 1982 hit ‘Planet Rock’. For
him, the Black Atlantic model allows for a reading of hip hop as part of
an international dialogue:
To be sure, African and Caribbean elements appear prominently in U.S. hip
hop ... but these claims place value on origins that distort the nature of Black
Atlantic culture. The flow of information and ideas among diasporic people
has not been solely from Africa outward to Europe and the Americas, but
rather has been a reciprocal self-renewing dialogue in communities characterized
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1790 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

by upheaval and change. The story of the African diaspora is more than an
aftershock of the slave trade, it is an ongoing dynamic creation. (Lipsitz 1994a,
39; see also Negus 1997)
Whereas Gilroy’s model was principally concerned with contemporary
black subjectivity, his theories have been used to legitimize hip hop’s role
as a form of post-colonial resistance among people of various racial back-
grounds (Hesmondhalgh and Melville 2001; Kelley 1997; Negus 1997;
Prévos 2001). Lipsitz sees hip hop as facilitating pan-ethnic coalitions
rooted in culture and politics rather than color (1994b; see also Irving
1993). Additionally, Russell Potter, who cites Gilroy at length, adds that
‘[t]he race ... of the listener is not the determining factor; it’s attitude that
separates “crackers” from “niggaz’ ’ ’ (1995, 153 [emphasis original]).
Not surprisingly, several early academic works focused specifically on
the question of white hip hop participation. In a piece entitled ‘Who Wants
to See Ten Niggers Play Basketball?’, Armond White surveys a variety of
white hip hop acts, arguing that the most legitimate ‘must be able to
borrow without losing sight of themselves as borrowers’ (1996, 194). Like
Potter, White sees ‘attitude’ as the key factor in determining non–African-
American hip hop legitimacy. In a more comprehensive treatment, David
Roediger, through his essay ‘What to Make of Wiggers: A Work in
Progress’ (1998), shows the diversity of white hip hop fans and considers
what makes them different from earlier ‘White Negroes’ (Mailer 1957).
Roediger reaches no definitive conclusions, instead conceding that these
‘complex and contradictory’ wiggers are simultaneously part ‘of a terrible
past and ... what is bound to be a long struggle to transcend it’ (1998, 359).
Many of the foundational works I have cited already are rooted in the
understanding that hip hop authenticity involves a dialogic construction
of identity (see, e.g., Irving 1993, Kelley 1997, Quinn 1996, Roediger
1998, and Stapleton 1998). Two pieces that particularly foreground these
processes are Christopher Holmes Smith’s ‘Method in the Madness’
(1997) and Andy Bennett’s ‘Rappin’ on the Tyne’ (1999). Smith’s article
– which begins with the powerful statement that ‘[i]dentity construction
and the vigorous enactment of identity remains the most fertile source of
artistic creativity within hip hop’ (1997, 345) – focuses on the ways in
which (black) hip hop artists seek to ‘represent’ the struggles of contem-
porary ghetto life in their efforts to ‘keep it real.’ In a revealing section
on racial authenticity, Smith explains that within ‘rap’s dominant marketing
paradigm, blackness has become contingent, while the ghetto has become
necessary’ (1997, 346). More than a statement on hip hop legitimacy in
any absolute sense, Smith’s comment emphasizes how hip hop’s construction
of authenticity has shifted over time.
Bennett’s article distinguishes itself as one of the first pieces to approach
hip hop through the lens of ethnography. Like Roediger and White (see
above), his focus is on the authenticity of white hip hoppers (in Northeast
England). The richness of Bennett’s ethnographic data lead him to
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identify two distinct approaches to claiming authenticity: one which defines

hip hop as black music and seeks affinities with the black experience
through styles of dress, knowledge of music, and local experiences with
prejudice; and a second which views hip hop as a versatile cultural
medium that can be legitimately engaged through local participation.
Throughout the first decade of scholarship on hip hop, the reception
of white hip hoppers remained central to understanding racial authenticity.
At the same time, the connection between hip hop and blackness
prevailed. In fact, key tensions within these discussions have typically
revolved around questions of whether hip hop should be seen as a black
music/culture or as a cultural form that can be legitimately accessed by
multiple subjects. This debate was perhaps best encapsulated in an August
1999 edition of the Sunday New York Times where two opposing pieces,
both falling under the heading ‘The Hip Hop Nation: Whose Is It?’,
asserted their charges. The author’s competing positions are clear enough
from their titles: Neil Strauss’s ‘A land with Rhythm and Beats for All’
(1999) and Touré’s ‘In the End, Black Men Must Lead’ (1999).

Twenty-first century scholarship – The state of the field

Much recent work on hip hop, race, and authenticity is lodged in familiar
paradigms of understanding and dispute. The intensity of longstanding
debates, and the perception of what’s at stake – in failing to acknowledge
black American contributions to national and global culture, in celebrating
multiculturalism with a blind eye to power relations, or in insisting on
essentialist understandings of race and culture – compel many hip hop
scholars to align themselves with one of the pre-existing camps (if nothing
else simply as a means of navigating the peer review process). Recent
developments in the field include: an increased focus on spatial dynamics
and locality as an alternative to racial authenticity; an elaboration on social
processes of culture and identity formation; and a recognition of the value
of ethnographic methods (particularly in the growing number of studies
that look at hip hop outside the United States).
The most important 21st century work to be published on the
construction of space and place within hip hop is Murray Forman’s The
‘Hood Comes First (2002). In this extensive and largely theoretical work,
Forman builds on the foundations originally laid down by Rose (1994)
by exploring the centrality of discourses of race, space, and locality in hip
hop’s emergence and proliferation (see also Quinn 2005). Forman identifies
‘a highly detailed and consciously defined spatial awareness’ (2002, 3) as
one of the key factors that distinguishes hip hop from other youth cultural
forms. Paralleling what Robin D. G. Kelley (1996) has described as rap
music’s shift away from Afrocentricity towards ghettocentricity (see also
Smith 1997), Forman presents a framework of hip hop authenticity
constructed principally through sociogeography by describing its salience
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1792 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

as most profoundly felt within ‘high-density urban localities inhabited

predominantly by black, Latino, and multiethnic immigrant working and
nonworking populations’ (2002, 41; see also Kelley 1997).
Adam Krims (2000) similarly emphasizes the geographic distribution of
‘authenticity regimes’ in his work on rap’s musical poetics, ultimately
arguing that ‘urban locality and ethnic and/or class marginality’ (2000,
198) are most critical to hip hop legitimacy. In doing this however, Krims
is careful not to isolate local inflections of hip hop authenticity from the
transnational orientations that spawned them. Such attention to the nexus
of local and global resonance has dominated recent work on hip hop
outside the United States. Tony Mitchell uses Roland Robertson’s concept
of glocalization (1995) – that is, the mutually implicated processes of
homogenization and heterogenization through which, in an increasingly
interconnected world, local identities take on new salience – as an
overarching framework for his edited volume Global Noise (2001a), as do
Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemmelle in The Vinyl Ain’t Final (2006).
In this global context, the emergence of different national scenes has
introduced various counter narratives of (local) originalist authenticity
(Condry 2006, Durand 2002, Fernandes 2006, Mitchell 2001b, Pennay
2001, Prévos 1998; Solomon 2005; Wood 1998). Yet, as Krims reminds
us (see above), such claims are in regular dialogue with the authentic
symbolism of earlier black American hip hop forms (see for instance
Cornyetz 1994; Nayak 2003; Weiss 2002).
Some scholars see a danger in focusing too exclusively on sociogeo-
graphic dimensions of hip hop authenticity. Perry particularly fears that
hip hop’s connection to blackness has become minimized. In fact, she
dedicates a chapter of her book Prophets of the Hood (2004) specifically to
re-establishing hip hop as black American music (see also Cobb 2007;
Bynoe 2002). Given the current popularity of highlighting hip hop’s
multicultural origins and global manifestations, Perry sees her position as
quite ‘radical’ (2004, 10). She bases her argument on four characteristics
of hip hop: (1) its linguistic rootedness in African-American Vernacular
English; (2) its opposition politics which are distinctly modeled after black
American culture and aesthetics; (3) its continuing a trajectory of African-
American orature; and (4) its following from a long line of black American
musical traditions. Perry spends some time critiquing the prevailing view
of hip hop originalism – specifically how the perceived roles of black
American, black Caribbean, and Puerto Rican youth during hip hop’s
formative period contribute to its image as a multicultural (and not an
African American) expressive form. She reminds us that the relationship
between these different groups – crammed into the boiler room of 1970s
post-industrial New York – was not always as congenial as ‘romantic
Afro-Atlanticism’ (Perry 2004, 17) portrays it. She goes on to state that
‘what really makes hip hop music black American is America’s love-hate
relationship with it’ (Perry 2004, 27).
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Perry sees no contradiction in applying such a strict African-American

characterization to what has obviously become a nationally popular and
internationally prolific music form. In a statement that sounds strikingly
similar to Black Noise, she explains ‘to describe rap or hip hop as black
American is not inconsistent with an understanding of its hybridity’
(Perry 2004, 10). While much of what Perry argues with regards to hip
hop and race is compelling, it is a sad irony that ten years after the
publication of Black Noise, Prophets of the Hood’s greatest contribution to
the discourse on racial authenticity and hip hop might be to provide new
avenues leading us back to where Rose got us started.
In one of the better works to critically consider the notion of hip hop
as culture, African-American philosopher Paul C. Taylor constructs an
entire essay around the question ‘why would anyone think that I’m a more
promising potential citizen of the hip-hop community than, say, a Chinese-
American who’s spent his whole life living in Brooklyn, listening to rap
music, and breakdancing?’ (2005, 89). Taylor’s point is to interrogate the
relationship between cultural processes, classic racialism, and what he calls
critical racialism – or the idea that ‘races are socially defined groups ...
that we create when we assign meaning to appearance and ancestry’
(2005, 86). Taylor believes that a good deal of the discussion equating hip
hop and blackness is based on conservative and dangerously outdated
modes of understanding race (see Lusane 1993). This seems straightfor-
ward enough. Yet, to me, Taylor is every bit as radical as Perry in forcing
people to confront the unpopular truth that he, an African American –
and member of Kitwana’s ‘hip hop generation’ (see above) – never felt
particularly close to hip hop. In his rich discussion, Taylor is critical of
narratives of cultural authenticity, arguing that they obscure more than
they reveal and ultimately present a false picture of stability. He concludes
that ‘once we start to attend to the complexities of history, to the details
of cultural borrowings and cross-fertilizations, it becomes hard to say
when a culture really belongs to any single group’ (Taylor 2005, 91).
In the dialogue between Perry and Taylor, we can see that hip hop
scholarship is no closer to resolving its racial authenticity debates than it
was 10 years ago. One recent book that I feel contributes considerably to
the discussion is John L. Jackson’s Real Black (2005) – an ethnography of
racial sincerity written principally in the interest of furthering current
understandings of racial authenticity. Starting from Lionel Trilling’s
definition of sincerity as the idea ‘that we actually are what we want our
community to know we are’ ( Jackson 2005, 14; see also Trilling 1971,
10 –11), Jackson’s ruminations become considerably more diagnostic when
he explains that whereas authenticity ‘presupposed a relationship between
an independent, thinking subject and a dependent unthinking thing’
(2005, 14), sincerity ‘presumes a liaison between subjects’ (2005, 15 [emphasis
original]). Sincerity, then, becomes a way of ‘resisting,’ ‘policing,’ ‘subverting,’
and ‘redrafting’ authenticity’s hegemony (Jackson 2005, 175). In his chapter
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1794 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

on hip hop, Jackson explains that its realness involves a ‘contradictory and
internally conflictual’ dance between the mandates of authenticity and the
insistencies of sincerity (2005, 178). While Jackson uses these concepts to
specifically address the connections between blackness and hip hop, his
theories help to clarify positions that have been taken when discussing hip
hop in more racially inclusive ways.
Ian Maxwell (2003) in his intriguing ethnographic study of Australian
hip hop uses the concepts of truthfulness and respect similarly to Jackson’s
use of sincerity. Maxwell’s book Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes, strikes a fascin-
ating comparison with Real Black in that it focuses on a predominantly
white hip hop scene in Sidney. For Maxwell’s Australian hip hoppers,
truthfulness is exhibited through rapping in an Aussie accent in much the
same way that some of Bennett’s white English hip hoppers placed a
premium on ‘home grown rap’ in the local Geordie accent (Bennett
1999, 19–20). Reminiscent of Trilling, Maxwell explains that for the hip
hoppers he does research among, authenticity is ‘derived not from color
or race, but from truthfulness to oneself ... [thus] it is okay to be white
and into Hip Hop as long as you don’t misrepresent who you are’ (2003,
161 [emphasis original]).
One of the more striking aspects of Maxwell’s discussion is the great
length he goes to in insisting that white hip hop in Australia is not
misguided or inauthentic, but should be viewed as genuine and legitimate.
At one point in his text, while making this qualification for what seems
like the umpteenth time, Maxwell even adds the parenthetical note ‘(I
cannot state this often enough)’ (2003, 47). Such scholarly neurosis seems
to me to be an obvious reaction to what Gilroy calls the ‘highly charged
and bitterly contested issue’ of authenticity within black music (1993, 96).
There is perhaps no greater testament to the continuing vitality of the
racial authenticity debate in hip hop than the fact that Maxwell –
although taking a completely different stance from Perry – feels that he
needs to go to such effort to justify his own radical position.
White hip hoppers continue to garner a great deal of attention in
studies of hip hop within the United States. In Hip Hop Matters, a
thoughtful and illuminating book on hip hop’s political economy and
social significance, S. Craig Watkins dedicates a chapter to examining ‘the
steady growing impact of whites in the movement’ (2005, 88). Much of
his time is spent discussing the identity maneuverings of Eminem – who
is described as a master of masking his own whiteness, thus making it a
non-issue (2005, 107). Watkins also covers the familiar territory of the
early 1990s popularization of gangsta rap among white middle class teens.
He concludes that ‘in their own way, white youth, largely as consumers,
have become just as important to hip hop as black and Latino youth’
(2005, 109).
Edward Armstrong (2004) and Mickey Hess (2005) also examine
Eminem’s construction of the authenticity. Armstrong combines many
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 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop 1795

previously mentioned authenticity threads by presenting it as ‘being true

to oneself ’ [à la Jackson’s racial sincerity], ‘prioritizing local allegiances
and territorial identities [à la Forman] and having ‘proximity to an original
source of rap’ [a first person derivative of Perry’s originalism] (2004, 7–
8). Hess builds on Armstrong’s approach but does so in a more expansive
treatment of white artists in rap music history. Hess also briefly touches
upon the large numbers of white artists that are currently operating within
the less-commercial underground hip hop world – an arena of subcultural
activity that remains vastly understudied.
Jason Rodriquez (2006) is one of very few scholars to examine issues
of race within underground hip hop – a subgenre oriented towards ‘con-
scious rap’ acts like Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, and Blackalicious (see also
Harkness 2008). In conducting ethnographic research among white
underground hip hop fans in Northampton, MA, Rodriquez illustrates
how adopting a colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva 2001), helps to rationalize
and justify white fans engagement with an ‘an unmistakably African-
American art form’ (2006, 648). Such findings are important in that they
support the concerns of scholars like Perry (2004) and Allinson (1994)
regarding the power of white privilege to circumvent hip hop’s opposi-
tional politics. In a moment of classic privileged denial, one of Rodiquez’s
interviewees explains, ‘it’s all just people and no matter what the color of
your skin it doesn’t matter’ (2006, 661).
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar’s recent book Hip Hop Revolution (2007), breaks
new ground in both its comprehensive discussion of hip hop authenticity
among black, Latino, Asian, and white emcees, and its deft awareness of
underground artists like Dilated Peoples, the Perceptionists, and Little
Brother. Through examining the lyrics of a vast range of acts, Ogbar
demonstrates the considerable variability with which hip hop authenticity
has been constructed through time and space. Ogbar is highly critical of
fixed assumptions about what constitutes authentic hip hop. His intent is
rather to show how hip hop artists have continually ‘contrived, repack-
aged, and embellished their images to locate themselves at the center of
what it means to be legitimate in hip hop’ (2007, 68). Ogbar’s work
compares favorably with Harrison’s (forthcoming) ethnographic research
on the dynamics of racial authenticity within multiracial underground hip
hop settings.
In the examples of Rodriquez and Ogbar, we see immense promise for
the future of scholarship on hip hop, authenticity, and race. At the
conferences I attend, I am continually impressed with the directions in
which graduate students and recent PhD’s are taking the field. New
approaches are sorely needed if we are to reinvigorate these well-worn
notions of essential black belonging expressed through scrutiny of white
participation. More ethnographic studies within the United States are
needed. Given the importance of local accent use to issues of authenticity
in both Bennett’s and Maxwell’s studies (see above), I feel further analyses
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1796 Racial Authenticity in Rap Music and Hip Hop

of language and code-switching (Morgan 2001) – along the lines of the

research done by Cecelia Cutler (2002, 2007) and new work being
published by Geoff Harkness (2008), and H. Samy Alim, Awad Ibrahahim,
and Alastair Pennycook (2008) – will be tremendously valuable. There
also needs to be more of an emphasis on populations and individuals that
fall outside America’s black–white racial binary (see for example de Leon
2004; Maira 2000, 2002; Wang 2007). The most logical place to begin
this is within the multiracial arenas of underground hip hop. Lastly, if we
are going to continue to talk about hip hop as a culture a more rigorous
interrogation of cultural process along the lines of that initiated by Taylor
(2005) is absolutely necessary. Such research may not resolve the great
debates that have dominated hip hop studies for nearly 20 years now, but
they certainly will inject new life into the discussions.

Short Biography
Anthony Kwame Harrison is an assistant professor of Sociology and
Africana Studies at Virginia Polytechnic and State University. An anthro-
pologist by training, Dr. Harrison teaches classes on popular music and
has lectured throughout the country about issues regarding hip hop and
racial identity. His forthcoming book entitled Hip Hop Underground: The
Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification (Temple University Press) explores
the contours of racial identity within the multiracial San Francisco Bay
Area underground hip hop scene.

Note
* Correspondence address: 560 McBryde Hall (0137), Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA. Email:
[email protected].

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