US Elections

Why D.C. rap matters, even if you don't care about rap

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

13 July 2011

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D.C. rappers like those in Diamond District offer a perspective on the city that exists outside the Capitol

The District of Columbia has a population of 601 723 residents, half of whom are black, but the daytime population swells when Congress is in session and government workers pour in from the surrounding suburbs. It's a divide Andrew Nosnitsky recently discussed at The Fader:

Like every story, most cities have two sides. Nowhere 
is this more apparent than in our nation’s capitol and its surrounding ’burbs, where the line between the rich and poor is at its most rigid. This divide extends to the hip-hop community where Wale and Tabi Bonney have made national inroads with their brand of upwardly-mobile rap, while the city’s street scene has yet to produce a significant local hero. There, go-go still reigns as the dominant local music, and gentrification fragments any semblance of a gangsta rap scene. But it’s this chaos that birthed Fat Trel, an undeniable talent who could very well grow to be the city’s own brash and hedonistic d-boy champion—if not a more multifaceted rap hero. “I want the [DC area] to know that they got a voice from the street side,” Trel says. “I want to motivate the thugs.”

One of the reasons I think hip-hop is important (apart from its status as one of America's most consistently vibrant and creative cultural exports) is that it gives voice to the sides of cities that don't usually get a voice. In America, social, political, and cultural conversations are dominated and directed by a predominantly white and predominantly male elite. Hip-hop doesn't correct the gender divide, but it is an alternate reality where black voices are the norm. Public Enemy frontman Chuck D famously described rap as "CNN for black people," but it's better to understand this not as an argument that it's a source of political debate, but that it's a realm in which the conversation is controlled by the Tupac Shakurs of the world, not the Anderson Coopers. Not to denigrate Andrew Brissenden or the cultural importance of jazz, but I feel that heading to a D.C. jazz club is an exercise in history, not an experience of contemporary America.

When I first came to D.C. last year, the town's hip-hop was my way into beyond its government offices, monuments, and museums. My introduction came courtesy of Wale, one of the upwardly mobile artists Nosnitsky identifies as being on one side of the DC rich/poor line. Reflecting on my experiences in Washington after I'd left the city, I wrote the following:

The Metro would be my lifeline from the Capitol to the rest of the city. Certainly, there were places around the building in which Congress bled into the city surrounding it. Pennsylvania Ave, a few blocks away, had bars and restaurants so heavily frequented by Capitol Hill staffers that they felt like outposts of the Capitol itself. But only when I would venture farther beyond that, to the collegiate surrounds of Georgetown, or the African American neighbourhoods around U Street, did I find a D.C. that wasn't purely a government town. Waiting on the Metro platform to go to these places, I would listen to "Nike Boots," a song by a local rapper Wale, predicated on a D.C. united by an austere footwear choice. The rapper sprinkles his verses with locations I could see spread out on the Metro map: "P[rince] .G[eorge County]., Riverdale, Largo, Temple Hills, Cap Heights"; distant places in the far reaches of the District—or even up in Maryland—that, in this conception of the city, were more vital than the monuments and offices at its centre. Wale talks about "getting [his] U Street on," but he also pays heed to the poltical institutions that built his city, making them one and the same as his hometown: "No Congressional reppers, no respectable rappers," he bemoans, as if the two were equivalent. "D.M.V. [D.C., Maryland, Virginia], so we used to the waiting," he puns.

Nosnitsky recently commented on my connecting Wale with D.C. in this way

I think this statement pretty accurately reflects a large portion of Wale’s local or formerly local fanbase. His (pre-Ross) music panders pretty specifically to an informed transient/outsider perspective of what DC is like by crafting simple, short term “home”town recognition through brief and obvious flashes of DC-centricity. Oh shit! Ben’s Chili Bowl! I’ve been there! Nike Boots! I see the kids wearing those on the metro! For the most part he delivers these signifiers through a hip hop template that isn’t otherwise region specific, thereby creating an easily digestible pride for people who have no particular investment in the city. This makes a lot of sense too. Listening to Wale for the DC experience is like going to the Lincoln Memorial for the DC experience. Which is exactly how most people on earth experience DC. So in a weird, backwards way, his superficiality is as authentic a representation of the city as any actual, authentic DC rap would be.

Hey, maybe he's right! I did, after all, come in every day from Arlington, VA. Perhaps the Wale experience is the commuter experience, the tourist experience. I'm not local enough to the city to be able to tell.

Either way, whether talking about Wale or Fat Trel, Tabi Bonney or Diamond District, these are all perspectives of D.C. that don't make it into Politico or The Hill, that aren't a part of Georgetown boutiques and the Lincoln Memorial. They are themselves incomplete, as well; hip-hop cannot be expected to speak for the entire black population, or all urban poor, and it would be a mistake to suppose it does. Nonetheless, it's one product of the parts of D.C. that exist externally to feuds between John Boehner and Barack Obama. That those parts are so rarely heard from makes them even more worth listening to.

The entirety of my time in Washington last year, I wanted to visit a club playing the local D.C. style of funk called go-go. It never happened, partly because I was one of D.C.'s transient residents; spending all day in the Capitol and nights in Virginia made the long trip to a strange part of town that would have been required an ordeal I never had time to undertaken. Next time, I hope. In the interim, introduce yourself to D.C. rap with Wale integrating go-go into his sound on "Back in the Go-Go," Diamond District's "The District" or Trel's chaotic (and profane!) "Respect With the Teck." This is not the Washington you see on C-Span:

Go-go is a different conversation entirely, but if you've never heard the sound, try Trouble Funk's "Pump Me Up" or Chuck Brown's "Bustin' Loose."

Tags: African Americans, Diamond District, Fat Trel, Hip Hop, Hiphop, Music, Race, Wale, Washington Dc, Washington Dc Internship Program

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