HIP-HOP BINARY

The multi-foldedness of a term always already suggests its irrevocable ties to the idea of image as it exists within our social understanding. Hip-hop is a binary term in itself in the sense that it is irrevocably tied to the spatial understanding of battling—which demands polarities for itself to take place. A generation’s socio-economic conditions and imagined image of themselves stimulates the existence of such binary understanding from the outset—from the street, to the club, to the studio, to the stage, to the club, to the media and commercialisation. It infuses dimensions into our understanding of such phenomena which therefore cannot be fully grasped in one moment or instant of criticism. Therefore its criticism or any which is based on prior articulations is always already from the outset problematic if directed into this articulation’s singular spatial existence. Likewise, ‘Nigger’ is undoubtedly negative in relation to its history prior to its positive appreciation within and amongst the generational space it seems to be dynamical. Surely, we can assume that its obliteration from everyday usage is the best way to resist its historical significance, yet can ‘we’ also overturn this dimension of its existence and flip it so its positive connotations dominate the consciousness of those around us?
Can Nas’s music and image flip the cube and seclude the negativities with which the world looks upon this term?

2bcont…