Friday, 11 p.m.: Listen closely enough, and you'll hear it. You'll hear it from the lonely single dorm room in Giles to the packed dance floor at Shooters. It's playing in the busy halls of any Edens dormitory, and in the ears of that girl trying to beat Perkins' closing bell. It's playing on the way to Chapel Hill and on the weekend ride home up to New Jersey.
Can you hear it?
It's hip-hop.
Arguably the most popular musical form of our time, hip-hop has catapulted from the recesses of the New York housing projects to the lexicons of straitlaced grandmothers (albeit, only in old Boost Mobile commercials). It has even become entrenched in the nation's most elite universities. My friend, it has successfully bridged the gap.
I would even argue that it has fulfilled the dream. In Martin Luther King's famous speech, the revolutionary had faith that "we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." I can't think of anything closer to a symphony than a pulsating DJ Khaled beat and the future lawyers, doctors and I-bankers of America exclaiming with the oppressed, "I'm so hoooood." In that (brief) moment of (drunken) introspection, we as Duke students have finally moved beyond our privilege and took up the cry of the less fortunate.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into all of this.
Realistically, the permanence of hip-hop in American and, more specifically, Duke culture is farther from a dream and closer to fantasy. Let's face it, folks, only in fantasy can the overly motivated, usually wealthy, frequently non-black student body call themselves hustlas, gangstas, ballas, playas or even an "n-word." Even within the black student body, can one truly brag of stealing and drug dealing and somehow have actually obtained the necessary grades and SAT scores to attend Duke? I think such stellar extracurriculars were omitted from most resumés. And as we (the student body) all strive for the American dream of wealth and (sometimes) changing the world, how could taking money out of our pockets and throwing it in the air from the VIP (this waaay, that-a-waaay) possibly be an option? It goes against the hyper-competitive Duke grain!
So why does Duke like hip-hop so much? Why does America like hip-hop so much? With all of its derogatory language, degradation of women and delinquent values system, why is it quoted in our Facebook statuses, AIM away messages and greetings to each other? Why is most of the "Most Played" on our iTunes of this scandalous genre? Because it's freaking good.
For once in our overly ambitious lives, it is liberating to pretend that we are the people we would run away from if we saw them outside of Whole Foods. It is exhilarating to imagine that we can floss so hard, rolling around in pimped out cars, with tons of females, pouring Cristal (my b, "Crist-ALL") everywhere and still complete a significant amount of criminal activity in the span of 24 hours. It definitely makes my sleep-eat-Facebook-sometimes-class-mostly-homework itinerary look weak.
But with all the luxury and haute-couture that being a thug can provide, it is interesting that the actual "hood" resident lives nothing like that. Instead, most people in the ghetto live hand-to-mouth. But what I think gives hip-hop its street cred is its promise: the promise that by living a life so anti-"the man" one can achieve the debaucherous standards of "the man" in no time at all.
But for those of us who seek excessive wealth the traditional way, the hip-hop culture that has come to define so much of our popular culture in no way pokes fun at our whackness. Instead it welcomes us with open arms and addictive beats into its secret society. In this new society, there is no black or white, Jew or Gentile, Protestant and Catholic-only Soulja Boys and Ice-T's. In this world, one can put on the guise of being the boss, whether one is the nerd in Link or the fratty dude in 1C. The night, and the T-Pain auto-tuned chorus, masks all our insecurities and imperfections. My friend, hip-hop has saved our lives.
Ashley Sarpong is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Friday.
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