Absorbing the Rap Culture Shock

    The summer before my senior year in college, I worked as an investigator for the DC Public Defender Service, spending most of my time driving around the streets of Southeast DC looking for crime witnesses.  My investigative partner used this opportunity to seize control of the radio and force me to listen to Rap and Hip-Hop ceaselessly, assuring me that it would make us “cool with the clients.”  Maybe it was the transition in my life, maybe it was the power of suggestion, maybe it was the sheer amount of exposure to the music, or maybe I was just bored listening to Sarah McLachlan’s angst, but somehow, the impossible happened – I actually started to -- *gasp!* -- like Rap.

What is it about Rap that causes seemingly cultured people to be so fascinated with music that’s often considered crass and uncouth?

    When I got back to school that Fall, my roommates were appalled to find that all of the mellow, understated music in my Winamp playlist had been replaced by loud, sometimes even violent Rap.  Just when they thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, I started dating the roommate of my investigative partner, and he introduced me to the wonderful world of Snoop, Tupac, Biggie, and best of all, BET (Black Entertainment Television).  After winter break, my roommates would come home and find me sitting on the couch, eating dinner in front of the TV, engrossed by the latest 50 cent video.  In Da Club became known to all of my friends as my theme song. 

    The roommates made fun of me every chance they could get and couldn’t understand my fascination with the ugly rappers or the scantily clad, gyrating woman on the videos.  And then slowly, the unthinkable happened --  the roommates started watching BET with me.  They would never admit it, and they would never turn the TV to BET on their own, but when they came home to find me watching it, they would sit down with me to watch it too.  It was all under the guise of continuing to make fun of the bad music (and me), but they were almost involuntarily mesmerized by the videos as well.

    Overall, a lot of my friends consider me a classy and well put-together person.  The last book I read was Dante’s Divine Comedy – for fun.  I like to cook and I enjoy fine wines, both a direct influence from living for a few months in Florence, Italy, probably considered one of the most cultured cities in all of Europe.  I spent 14 years studying classical piano under a master concert pianist, and yet when people ask me what kind of music I like, the first genre that comes to mind now is Rap.  How much of a paradox is that?  What is it about Rap that causes seemingly cultured people to be so fascinated with music that’s often considered crass and uncouth?  I can’t speak for the rest of our generation (or even for my college roommates), but as someone who loves studying culture, the Rap genre presents the expression of an entire culture within itself that I can explore.

    I grew up in typical upper middle-class suburbia in Northern Virginia and was never directly exposed to the violence, the blatant disrespect for others or the party-hard mentality that Rap seems to perpetuate.  My parents grew up in the Philippines and then immigrated to the states before they got married and raised their kids here.  From a young age, my brothers, sister and I were taught to love God, to be very respectful and mindful of others, and to never take what we had for granted because there would always be poorer children in other parts of the world who weren’t nearly as fortunate as we were.  In that respect, I grew up in a very cross-cultural home, traveled to other countries with the family, and was constantly exposed to people who were different from us, not necessarily staying sheltered within our own suburban lifestyle.  However, it wasn’t until I started spending time in the heart of Washington, DC when I realized I didn’t have to travel all over the world to experience new cultures; culture was merely a half hour drive -- or the flip of a radio station switch -- away.

    I met a lot of people in the inner city while working for the Public Defender Service.  I learned a lot about how different their lives were from my own, how different their culture was from the one I grew up in, and I learned how to relate to them and bridge that gap between us.  I even learned to like their music.  I don’t agree with all the lyrics of certain songs, with the common themes of violence or the objectification of women, but I’m fascinated by these artists’ form of self-expression.  Furthermore, I’ve been encouraged by the recent emergent themes of hope that artists like Kanye West or Jay-Z put into their songs, telling the youth of today that life can’t be that hard when “Jesus Walks” the streets or that no matter what happens, you can brush the “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.”  Rap isn’t all bad.

    Rap, both the good and the bad, fascinates me.  Studying these artists and the drive behind their music fascinates me.  Studying the culture of a life on the streets I never experienced fascinates me.  And I’m not going to lie, besides the fascination and on a far less intellectual level, sometimes the music is just really catchy and fun to listen to as well.  Even my college roommates learned to tolerate it, and now, whenever they hear Rap, they think of me fondly, snicker a lot less and sometimes request certain songs to be played.  If anything else, they can now honestly say that they too have broadened their horizons by being exposed to a culture they never understood before.

    Or, if they prefer, it really was just a bad, catchy Rap song that Monica made them listen to again and again and they can’t get it out of their heads.