Suspect Regimes, not Bodies

David Hammons, America the Beautiful, 1968,
lithograph and body print, 39" x 291/2"
COURTESY MOMA PSI

The poets of hip hop are influenced by the culture that raised them. The verse, in all its layers, inflections, form and content, connects to a collective consciousness fed by specific social bodies: the marked and punished Black body. The prominence of marked bodies in America is inorganic. Its creation maintains itself through institutional practice and feeds the imagination of a "Black Criminal" (Dualatzai, 2012, pp. 90). Think about the "bad man" Stagger Lee. This imagination is toxic: it fortifies racist ideologies. Hip hop manifests a tension between art and ideology and the ideology woven into the poetics often responds to politics of race, and in some style the justification of criminality. The response of this tension molds attitudes towards and perceptions about criminal justice in America. Hip hop interrogates social meanings of punishment by replacing tropes of the black criminal with that of a survivor.

Hip hop opened cultural space to invoke critique on harsh social inequalities. Paul Butler argues that the culture's depiction of the criminal as a socially useful actor is personal, "rappers who brag about doing time are like old soldiers who boast of war wounds" (2012, pp. 998). Hip hop denounces crime and punishment by curating the humanity of criminals and rejecting disgust that the law attaches to inmates. Prison is for folk that disrupt the political or economic status quo. In A Ballad for the Fallen Soldier, Jay-Z voices a "shout out to my niggaz that's locked in jail / P.O.W.'s that's still in the war for real... But if he locked in the penitentiary, send him some energy / They all winners to me." With his sentiment in mind, listeners gauge a level of heroism attached to inmates. As incarceration rates reach an all time high and prison populations are concentratedly Black and Latino (cummings, 2012, pp. 420), incarceration becomes happenstance and inequalities blaring. Disgust is flipped onto the American prison regime, not the inmate. Thus, any organization primarily composed of one's own people, demands respect. The inmate is a father, brother, friend, or husband. The inmate is a hero for surviving.

Hip hop suggests that punishment in America is not designed for the betterment of public safety or for retribution of the immoral. Rather than excusing some criminal conduct, hip hop justifies it. Take for example underground rapper Ka's question on the single 30 Keys: "If you doing it to eat, is it still a sin?" Law breaking can be a necessary tool to survival or a form of rebellion against oppressive status quo. To brag about conducting crime is to boast of surviving a racist system. Robin D.G. Kelley notes how hip hop treats crime as a mode of survival and rebellion; artists, specifically gangster rappers, run risks of idealizing criminal activity and "treat prisons as fascist institutions" (1996, pp. 127). Hip hop catechizes meanings of punishment and opens space to question the legitimacy of such "retributive" practices. The body is not suspect. The regime that harbors a surplus of similar bodies is as profane as the hollers to flow through prison walls.

Works Cited:

Butler, P. (2005). Much respect: Toward a hip-hop theory of punishment. Stanford Law Review, 56(983), 983-1016.

cummings, a.d.p. (2012). All eyez on me: America's war on drugs and the prison-industrial complex. The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, 15, 417-448.

Daulatzai, S. (2012). Return of the mecca: Public enemies, reaganism, and the birth of hip-hop. In Black Star Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America (pp. 89-131). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Kelley, R.D.G. (1996). Kickin' reality, kickin' ballistics: Gangsta rap and postindustrial Los Angeles. In W.E. Perkins (Eds.), Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (pp. 117-158). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.