The "Real" World

            When picturing a rapper’s identity we seem to always focus on certain traits: black, hyper-masculine, threatening, sexualized. This is the expectation for a rapper entering the genre. When we talk successful rappers we talk of an identity that has fully realized itself. A rapper is one who uses their confidence to a degree in which it becomes their persona. Being “real” in hip-hop is what it takes to make it and be validated by fans and a market alike.

         

     A rapper like The Notorious B.I.G can make claims such as, “…Used to sell crack, so I could stack my riches, now I pack gats, to stop all the snitches”. We don’t question Biggie's boastings because we have already validated him as “real”, even more so postmortem, being shot in a drive by, the ultimate testimony to ones “realness”. Even before his untimely demise, Biggies credibility was unquestioned. Hailing from Clinton Hill, an ethnically and financially diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn, Biggie dropped out of a private high school to attend a public counterpart in the surrounding Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Biggie was forever attracted to a life of crime. He began selling crack and was later arrested for both the dealing of crack cocaine and possession of a firearm. This helped Biggie establish an image, which would later be forever written into hip-hop’s history. These themes became the basis of Biggie's identity in the world of rap.  Through his words, Biggie’s identity became that of a drug-pushing thug. Because of his lyrics, we assume Biggie was raised in a poor broken home and choose to not draw focus on the fact that his childhood was much different than we initially perceive. Biggie was able to carry this image into his adulthood because he was strategic with all of the images, lyrics, and persona that he put out for consumption by his listeners and critics.  Maintaining an image like this is just as important as establishing it.  For Biggie to ensure success in the rap game, he would have to perpetuate the image and persona of “real”. His violent death permanently cemented his “realness” in the narrative of rap.

            “Realness” is based on the belief that a rapper’s self identity is somehow synonymous with the audiences perception of the rapper. This is an impossible ideal. Self-identities, according to Stuart Hall, “…are never completed, never finished…Identity is always in the process of formation”(47). We are never fully ourselves, as humans, we are always coming into ourselves, eternally discovering who we “really” are. The true self is one that is continually doubting and reaffirming trying to find a inner, deeper, "real" self. This push inwards is described by Hall, he narrates that there is always "some real self inside there, hiding inside the husks of all the false selves that we present to the rest of the world" (42). It is this inward motion that falsifies the rap persona. How can a rapper be true to himself and therefore "real" if the outside or exterior image of the self is always false?

by Leo Murphy, Fritz Pfaff & Samson Stilwell

Questions
1.) What is the audiences role in a rapper's identity?
2.) Is it possible for content to overrule identity?
3.) Is it more essential for a rapper to establish credibility or maintain it?