Is Hip Hop to Blame for Rampant Consumerism Among Black Folks?
I enjoy my fair share of hip-hop just like anyone else (well that’s not entirely true, let me stop lying). Nevertheless, is it just me, or have some artists gone too far with their message of rampant consumerism? While I am not one to bash the whole genre and blame rap music for the demise of an entire generation, I do believe that at some point, as informed consumers we have to stop and ask ourselves, “What the f*ck did he/she just say and how does that ish really pertain to me?” I don’t know about you, but I don’t “ball so hard” and the ish that I particularly find cray is five-dollar gas prices.
If you didn’t notice by my references, the latest rappers to perturb me are Kanye West and Jay Z.
I may be one of the only people who did not purchase, or listen to every song off of the Watch The Throne album. But the two that I have heard–OTIS and the infamous, too often recited N*ggas in Paris–make me want to throw up in my mouth. After barely getting through both songs in their entirety, I thought my head was going to rupture, and I wouldn’t be able to afford my subsequent melt down with the exorbitant cost of health care.
In fact, I kinda find some of this music to be in bad taste, considering the real economic conditions of some of the most ardent Hip-Hop followers. These guys have the problems of the 1%, with concerns such as “spilling ace of spades” on a pair of Jordans. A $1200 bottle of champagne, that cost more than most folks’ rent or mortgage. I’m just saying, the least of the 99% concerns are “Audemars that don’t tick tock” (which can cost as much as $500,000). The sad part is that some of us can recall these lyrics more than we can the debtors we owe.
What frightens me is that, collectively, the world is experiencing an economic crisis, but Black folk are being disproportionately impacted by this fiscal catastrophe. With African-Americans average a net worth of a whopping 20 times lower than whites in this country, (only about $2,000), and one study even finding that the median net worth for Black women is a meager five-dollars, we should really give less than a damn that Kanye West is “about to go dumb again” because he “pulled up in [his] other, other Benz.”
These hip-hop songs boasting of all the material items they have accumulated, and the fabulous gold-plated, diamond-encrusted lives they live is a bit passé. Unfortunately, Americans (and specifically black folks) are the ultimate consumers and eat up every word of this mess up, dying to buy new Louis Vuitton bags (or sneakers), when they receive government assistance, or live a paycheck above the poverty line.
As Yasiin would say, “Poor so hard….that ish cray.”
Am I wrong for putting some of the blame on hip-hop for keeping Black folk in debt, or are their more substantial factors involved?
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Stop blaming hip hop for everything. Black people have been suffering from rampant consumerism or what i call ‘Conspicuous consumption’ even before hip hop existed.
Go to the library and pick out E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie and write something deeper than this. Blaming hip hop is the easy way out.
Love ur post!!
folks always tryna blame music. I blame parents! if ur broke n ur kids are rocking designer gear that u bought, u r teaching them the wrong priorites. lol
keep speacking Truth :)
Are poor people really buying Louis bags and other designer items? I don’t see how this could be happening? By the very definition poor means you don’t have very much money so how can poor people be spending a lot of money if they don’t have it? I actually grew up poor in a poor community and I can tell you that I nor any of the other poor people were walking around with designer clothes and shoes. Poor people shop at Rainbows and City Gear not the Louis store or the Gucci store. I know my experience might not be representative of the entire population of poor folks, but if you want me to believe this argument I’m going to need to see some facts.
Hi FPP,
I am so sorry to tell you this but I personally know plenty of sisters who are flat out broke with Gucci purses, etc. They do this in the following ways:
1) Get eyeball deep in credit card debt. Then pay the lowest payment each month and get buried under compounding interest.
2) The “buy what you want and borrow what you need” types: They use their paycheck to buy the expensive sunglasses, then hit mama, you, or me up for rent — an ‘emergency’ that will be paid back when they get their tax return.
3) The ‘savers’ instead of putting money on Roth IRA, the money gets socked away for the next exhorbitant purchase. So great stuff, no savings.
4.) Get a boyfriend who buys it. Or two. Nuff said.
This is not ALL or even most sisters that I know, but this type tends to congregate in certain cities that I won’t name. While I only buy quality, I don’t wear labels everywhere or go blinged out — so I’m looked down upon when I visit. But I have 35k in savings, own my car free and clear and cover my mortgage with no problems.
As soon as poor people get money they’re spending on needs food, shelter, transportation. These people don’t have disposable income. These people dont have very little in the way if savings and aren’t thinking about Roth iras. They are thinking putting food on the table and keeping the lights on. These people have large amounts of credit card debt because they don’t make enough to save so when emergencies arise they have to turn to credit and because of predatory lending practices.
You said yourself it wasn’t most or even a large number of poor blacks doing this…so what’s the problem.
If I’m supposed to believe this is an actual issue, I’m going to need to see some studies.
Don’t we get mad at republicans for doing this? Trying to villianize the poor. And making Blacks the face of poverty. Black people who are all poor because they are irresponsible, ignorant, and morally bankrupt. If its wrong for whites to do it it’s also wrong for us.
I need proof of this and if it’s true let’s get to the actual root of the problem and not some some lazy blame hip hop excuse. And then let’s hear some actions we we can take to combat it.
Years ago, Bill Cosby came to Detroit and talked about the 50% dropout rate of African American males. The 50% number never existed. In the late 1990s-early 2000s, people also talked about the high rate of drug use among young African America males, a rate so high that police departments and my factory couldn’t hire them because they tested positive for weed. Many complainted that most young Blacks smoke too much weed. Fortunately, many of us quest these assumption and thought those stories were BS. Check out Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” — Drug use amoung Blacks, Whites and Hispanics if the same. We need to question these simplistic, and racist, assumptions. Black folks are not the ultimate consumers of luxuary goods. Yes, we are dying to buy new Louis Vuitton bags (or sneakers) and yes, many of us receive government assistance, but I don’t think there’s any hard facts out there that show that most poor Black folks are out there buying big cars, big homes, etc. If anything, its us, middle class and working class Blacks (and Whites and Hispanics) who are buying new Louis Vuitton bags, big homes, Jordans, and big cars, and then going into debt.
Let’s stick to the facts. Blaming hip-hop is an easy cheap shot! Let’s talk about Hip-hop lyrics, or images in hip hop videos, or take on something more substantial. Blaming hip hop for social ills is a lazy, cheap and easy.
I think you should take a moment to read into marketing and psychological persuasion. There is nothing lazy about recognizing the powerful persuasive advertisement component of Hip-Hop.
According to your logic a Coke commercial isn’t to blame for people buying Coke they just buy Coke “just because” or Michael Jordan’s image has nothing to do with selling $150.00+ shoes to black children on a diet of Ramen noodles. Why did Hakeem Olajuwon pass up shoe endorsement deals for LA Gear? He didn’t want to contribute to the exorbitant prices kids would pay just to fantasize that they putting the “dream shake” on the court.
You think Michael Jackson doing a Pepsi commercial did nothing for the product?
IT
IS
THE
SAME
THING
“McDonald’s is already paying rappers to name check hamburgers. Can it get any worse?”
- Reginald C. Dennis
Better wake up and hear it from people in the industry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jybwj0ai6ZE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q9z1WzB0nU&feature=related
It would be a lot more interesting if all of the stars and those idolized spent the money on giving back, or creating entities and organizations that employed and educated the youth and their listeners on the proper ways to manage finances.
Hip-Hop isn’t making anyone broke, people are making bad decisions because they can no longer separate reality from fantasy….sadly, and again, they just so happen to be the people that weren’t given an equal shot from the get go.
Hip Hop is not some “monster living in the hills”, it’s everywhere, and it’s being marketed to everyone, without the cash flow coming back to those that helped cultivate and originate it..
You can’t tell me the top 5 hip hop artists couldn’t pool money together to actually fund a black-owned Music Entertainment channel with NO affiliation to a major corporation simply selling packaged examples of our ‘culture’ (but if you spend 2G’s on some bubbly for a video, I guess you wouldn’t have the money left over).
Check any photo from the Harlem Renaissance and you’ll see our people dressed and ready to show the world…Were there economic disparities back then? Yes. Did we carry ourselves differently? Yes. There’s been a huge disconnect between where we came from and where we are, and more importantly what we think we are worth.
When we begin to realize that the ‘whips,’ the kicks, the handbags, and hideous bedazzled jeans with paint all over and 30 flap pockets do NOTHING to determine how far we can get in the world, then we can begin to rectify the problems that exist. They will always judge us based on what they see, even if we wear a suit and tie…Once they get past that it’s up to us to prove we are a strong people, like hip-hop used to.
Very good post theefunklord; and allow me to take it a step further:
How about the top five successful artists pooling money together to opening workshops in teaching young minorities skills in entrepreneurship, finance, and professionalism in making themselves successful?
Since they’re the ones who have “made it”; why not pave the way in teaching those who also want to learn and do it as well?
Plainly put; instead of giving them a fish, they should teach them how to fish for themselves…and let them GROW. :)
@Qon….No… …Step Up and I will punch you in your face….how bout that.
Like I said…the comments were a bowl of crap. Everything is Everything! say what you mean ….be who you say you are…..at all times. People need to go back to teaching their kids that.
Serria Says…
Honestly, we can try to pretend that the hip hop world, reality tv, and other means that show gratuitous spending don’t influence us, but it does. It always have, for everyone, not just us. When Paris Hilton had a mini dog, sales of mini dogs went up. Now we have the girls on reality shows walking around in $1,000 shoes, and guess what? Girls out here and everywhere else are buying $1,000 shoes.
I don’t know what rap music says, I don’t listen to it. I’m too old for it, like I’m too old to wear mini skirts. But I do know that it creates an unrealistic expectation for money, and young men towards young women and what you get in return are wars. From what I understand from therapist is that these young kids are literally fighting each other, domestic violence has increased amongst teenagers. With money, African Americans have the lowest inheritance, savings and wealth accumulation rate amongst any minority.
What does that mean? It means we can’t keep our money. Our upbringing hasn’t taught us how to behave and be wealthy…We like to “ball out!”
It sucks and hell yeah I blame hip hop because when the average person doesn’t have a two parent family and they have the tv and radio raising them and it’s misogynistic bullcrap, it fills their heads. If you think I’m lying, just listen to your young cousins or nephews, you will be disgusted.
The solution is that we need to have more education within our own communities. Not just a retirement account, that’s not how you build wealth, that’s how you finish your life. The first step is marriage (marriage creates wealth, everyone seems to know that except us), second is savings and lastly protecting and maximizing your stuff. It’s real and hard when the hip hop world is encouraging us to spend on expensive name brands.
http://www.serriasays.com
“I don’t know what rap music says, I don’t listen to it.”
I’m too old to listen to today’s R&B and pop music, but I have better things to do than place blame on them as to why the music sucks.
“But I do know that it creates an unrealistic expectation for money, and young men towards young women and what you get in return are wars”
If you don’t listen to it, then how would you know what they are talking about? Sounds like you are contradicting yourself here.
“From what I understand from therapist is that these young kids are literally fighting each other, domestic violence has increased amongst teenagers.”
Yeah, and therapists know everything just because they saw it in a book or in a paper, so it must be true. This comes from single parentage and/or parents not willing to raise their kids (which is basically all of the baby boomers).
“With money, African Americans have the lowest inheritance, savings and wealth accumulation rate amongst any minority.”
And that has more to do with Black people being taught more about getting a degree and a good paying job- not about savings and wealth accumulation. In a lot of Black folks eyes, wealth accumulation to them means playing the lottery. You can’t Blame hip hop for bad parenting- which is what a lot of Black parents born between 1940-1960 are guilty of.
Blaming hip-hop is taking the easy way out. People want to buy “nice things” because they don’t have nice things. Nice things give you “status”. It’s that simple. If you’re from a poor hood, and you have nice things, people are going to attracted to you, and try to be like you. I know how to/about save money, make a budget, balance a checkbook, money market accounts, etc, but what I do usually end up doing, spending. It’s a self-control/financial literacy issue.
Paulo Freire would chalk it up to the emulation of the oppressive culture by the oppressed culture. It’s a historical mechanism that has played out time and time again, all over the world.
It’s one of the reasons that urban kids in poverty are 7 times more likely to own a video game than a book.
I had ZERO interest in WTT and have not heard or was even remotely interested in listening it.
No, hip hop isn’t to blame for consumerism, but I get the intent of this article. Rappers have massive influence, young people want to be like them, want to dress like them. Like someone stated, consumerism was around before hip-hop…However, i feel that if more rappers started rapping about things that really mattered in the world, such as education, taking care of your children, saving, investing, that young minds would start to open up & thrive for better things. Yes, it is the parents’ responsibility to raise their children, but the media also has a hold on them too.
a good number of Black Americans have ALWAYS been flashy and have ALWAYS used material possessions to try to belong and show “others” that we are “successful”. This was before hip hop existed. Yes hip hop has helped to perpetuate the problem here in modern times (hence the reason we’ve seen so many multi-millionaire athletes sadly go broke) but it’s a problem that has always existed in our community.
@ LALA
YES! to “buy what you want borrow what you need” nail on the head. I see this in a lot of our women AND men though. prime example being the circus surrounding the latest Nike shoe release this past weekend.
It happens in every genre, country and rock it is rampant. Objectifying women and using them as punching bags, unnecessary violence, and other similar things.