american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

186 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY
dominant text that the margins within hip-hop comment on the
center, both in hip-hop and in the greater culture. This dynamic
makes small club live shows and the voices of contestatory urban
agency critical because they often interrogate the consumerism that
marks commercial rap. Potter’s analysis of this commodification aptly
sums up this situation: “since bourgeois culture craves difference,
appropriating subcultural forms and turning them into commodities
solves two problems in one blow” (120). As such, dispossessed black
youth are transformed from threat to commodity, and now, more
dangerously, into tools for promoting capitalism and consumerism.
Strangely enough, though, what threatens hip-hop culture also invigorates
it. There is both a creative and market equilibrium that keep the
diverse culture in balance, at least for those participants capable of and
willing to search beyond the mainstream. If there is hedonism, there
will also be a community-based ethos, and so on. However, that balance
has tilted negatively since the late 1980s and early 1990s, which
suggests that hip-hop values may be cyclical; that corporate-run
record companies and radio and television stations have greater control
than they did then; or that there is more money to be made and
the temptation to make it too great.
The paradoxes of hip-hop are too complicated to sort out in a single
chapter, however, as a scholar and fan of, and a participant in, hip-hop
culture, I can draw one certain conclusion. In the twenty-first century,
responses to urban crises of racism, oppression, poverty, and inadequate
water supplies and health care will be more important than ever.
Here’s why: In 1950, there were 86 cities of one million-plus inhabitants.
In 2004, there were 386 cities with these demographics. By
2015, at least 550 cities will have populations exceeding one million.
Further, the current global urban population of 3 billion is greater
than the world’s 1960 population, and, in 2004, the world’s urban
population surpassed the number of rural inhabitants for the first time
in recorded history (Davis “Planet” 17). How are these demographics
relevant to hip-hop? With the growth of urban populations and of
“megacities” (over 8 million) and “hypercities” (over 20 million), poor
urban residents will struggle to survive and to be heard, and because
much of this population will be minorities and indigenous, they will
face institutionalized racism. Hip-hop artists have struggled with these
forces in similar contexts for nearly three decades. The voices of contestatory
agency, then, will echo, whether consciously or not, millions
of pleas from Bogotá, Mexico City, Lagos, Dakar, Rio, and Jakarta.
Governments in the developed and developing worlds will not be able