I seem to be in one of those headspaces where I need to respond to some hip hop media coverage with points that may not concern most people. So this is for the record regarding hip hop and academia.
Since hip hop in academia is on a growth curve, meaning we're going to hear more opinions about academic research from those untrained in research, I want to address as presented in a recent SF Chronicle article:
When hip-hop journalist and former emcee Davey D, a.
k.a. David Cook, turned in his undergraduate thesis titled The Power of Rap in 1987, he didn't think he had a problem with sources.
I handed it in with no footnotes, he remembers in a phone interview, and my professor was like, 'Cool. This is good but there aren't any footnotes. You need footnotes.
' I mean, I'm talking about something I was a part of, something I knew a lot about, and he was like, 'Footnote something. There's got to be books about hip-hop.'
But there really weren't any source books on the subject, so Cook the student ended up footnoting emcee Davey D -- himself -- as someone who had been quoted in Bomb magazine.
What bothers me here, beyond the fact that undergrads aren't taught anything about research and pickup phrases like footnote something without ever really understanding why, is that the teacher obviously hadn't discussed the likelihood of there being significant coverage that wasn't in books.
The writer of the article relates the point that there really weren't any source books on the subject as if that mattered. Citations can be to anything and, depending on the discipline and the level of knowledge of the teacher, can include one's own experiences, emails, etc, though citing personal experience was not so acceptable in the late 80s and remains unacceptable to those uninformed of historical advances in qualitative research.
Citations simply tell you where something came from and have never been limited to books because a lot of important research never makes it to book form. It's all academic journals and direct conversation for serious researchers wanting to know the state of the art.
But the fact that Davey D is saying the only thing he had is Bomb in 1987 [which is a little hard to believe] suggests that the teacher did an even bigger disservice by not introducing Davey to basic library reference tools for periodicals.
If the teacher had, Davey D would have found the treasure trove of early hip hop culture coverage that emerged in the Village Voice very early on and that was informing me in North Carolina via a subscription throughout the 80s.
There are a lot of interesting issues related to hip hop and academia but I'm afraid that most journalistic coverage will stop at the stereotypes of what academia and research are all about without ever knowing what's actually going on.
Key Point:
Davey D didn't really need a book about hip hop to cite a book based source useful in a research paper about hip hop.
So, let's assume that his undergrad thesis The Power of Rap spoke to issues like the political content in the lyrics or the exciting experience of a live show.
A useful source for considering the political content of hip hop lyrics might include books on political poetry, for example, in the 1980s there was a revolution in Nicaragua and all sorts of stuff making the news. When the Sandinistas took power, they installed many artists and writers in important positions typically held by professional politicians.
This was widely reported in the news and I bought numerous books about the situation discussing how artists were deeply immersed in the nation's revolution.
For a live show approach, there's so much on the power of crowds, live performances, rhythmic group movement, popular dance, etc. that it would have been easy to find something that discussed the elements that made rap a powerful live experience.
So, even in the absence of topically specific material, there is usually a great deal of material that is directly relevant and could even simply be used to generate some references that confirm what you already believe, like most normal people would probably do.
Posted by Clyde on March 15, 2007 in And let me know if it's any good. I'm not a very good listener if I don't get to do some of the talking!
Update:
This post seems to be attracting a lot of sp@m so I'm closing comments.
Posted by Clyde on July 31, 2006 in Search term trend sites tend to be fun but rarely seem that useful from a business sense, though they should be for so many reasons. I think the main problem is that they generally only give you enough data to treat them as entertainment, which is probably the point, but not so helpful to business researchers.
In playing around a bit with , I did see a couple of interesting possibilities for those concerned with marketing hip hop in other countries and I'm sure more uses could be found.
A combined search for illustrates my point. Notice that, at the moment, the cities list begins with Santiago, Chile at no.
1 with New York, NY in the 6 spot. What you're seeing is not a comparison of overall searches on hip hop or rap but a comparison of cities with a large number of search on those terms that are ranked by the percentage in their area of searches on those terms.
So if only 10 searches were made in Santiago and one of them was on hip hop, they would be ranked higher than New York if 100 searches were made and 5 were hip hop, i.
e. 10% beats 5%. But somehow they make up for the overall number of searches so that you're not comparing Lizard Lick, NC with Los Angeles, CA.
At least, that's what . Since there's a limit to how much info they share, it's hard to really evaluate it thoroughly but, if you see a readable explanation by someone who also seems to understand what Google actually does, please let me know.
You'll notice when comparing cities in the search, searchers in Santiago were much more likely to use hip hop than rap while searches in Los Angeles appeared equally likely and those nutty folks in San Francisco used rap more often than hip hop.
Even this miniscule piece of data suggests some interesting possibilities for further exploration. For example, if you were planning marketing campaigns that were country specific, you might want to use hip hop more often than rap in copy for Chile while in California it might not matter.
Of course, we know that in the States, some hip hop acts who market themselves to fans that see rap as a degraded form of hip hop would not want to use the term rap at all.
And the issue of native languages vs. English also complicates things. Nevertheless, realizing that differences in use of terminology may be revealed by search trends suggests a lot of interesting possibilities in shaping language to regional markets, especially online.
Unfortunately, the current limits of data available from Google Trends means that it's primarily useful as a quick tool for idea generation and brainstorming. But that's a good thing, especially if it helps one past misguided assumptions and moves one towards more useful data gathering.
Posted by Clyde on July 7, 2006 in I cannot live without music.
It's such a big part of my culture.
Latinos, we need our music, we need a daily fix of our music, it's like
our life drug. I couldn't go a day without listening to my iPod.
I even
bought a cell phone that has iTunes on it. I have to have some rhythm in
From William, a 19 year old from Chicago:
My personal style is mine. I don't know how to explain it .
.. I'm a fresh Latin Hip Hop style .
.. It's my unique and own style.
I try to take samples from other styles, but I don't just straight copy. I take bits and pieces here and there and just make it my own.
Jessica, a 17 year old from New York.
this segment maintains a multicultural, broad worldview and embraces
diversity. Family orientation is important, but so is establishing
their unique individuality.
navigators, and as cultural ambassadors with their friends.
They are
proud of the growing influence of Hispanic culture in the U.S.
* They are optimistic.
While achievement oriented, they also seek life
balance and opportunities for altruism. Education is important to
them, and they recognize the advantages of their own bilingualism.
For more information on the 3-DVD $5,850.
00 set including a video sample see:
I'm reading a research report that has just been released by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation's entitled Music, Substance Use, and Aggression. It looks at the correlation between music preferences and listening habits by genre, alcohol use, aggressive behavior and sensation seeking . I just got a copy from one of their pr folks.
In the , the lead author of the report, Meng-Jinn Chen, Ph.D., states that:
People should be concerned about rap and hip hop being used to market alcoholic beverages, given the alcohol, drug and aggression problems among listeners .
. . That's particularly true considering the popularity of rap and hip hop among young people.
Based on what I've read of the study so far, I think the title of the press release, Rap Listeners Prone to Alcohol, Drugs, Violence; Study Raises Questions About Alcohol Industry Marketing Through Hip Hop, is problematic at best but I'll hold off on the spin for my follow-up post.
The actual report is a nine page article published in the May issue of the , a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, and the research was funded by the .
There's much of interest in the study including the presence of cultural artifacts.
If I were to make fun, I'd focus on the fact that they revealed that malt liquor is no longer quite so popular nor synonymous with rap music. Since I associate the marketing of malt liquor and 90s gangsta rap, that does suggest likely correlations between marketing, product placement and alcoholic beverages of choice, if young people are now drinking whatever product is being mentioned in lyrics and shown in videos. However, such questions were not included in the survey.
I'm getting the feeling that their research team has a knowledge gap in understanding things like musical genres and how they're currently functioning in the lives of young people. For example, they offer three rock related genres (alternative, punk and rock) and only offer rap for the whole of hip hop. I'd prefer seeing the rock genres combined or seeing rap broken up into something along the lines of gangsta, party music and conscious hip hop, or some other way to indicate forms of rap with distinctly different perspectives.
I also think that to productively turn science into policy, which seems to be the aim of the Pacific Institute, they'll need to examine the full range of lyrics, visual images used in music videos and also include a discussion of rhythmic and other elements of the music itself as it is experienced by young people.
To really study what they're trying to study, they need an interdisciplinary team with social and/or cultural researchers who can contribute a richer perspective.
More on this later in the week, including a cynic's look at the implications of this study for marketing.
Posted by Clyde on April 17, 2006 in In an article about at the Grammys, he confirms what Tamara Palmer discusses in , that strip clubs are like research centers for many Southern producers:
The strip club, Mr. Dupri earnestly explained, serves as his de facto research lab. Here, he said, where skirt hems are high and inhibitions are low, he is better able to assess what really makes a crowd move, and to discover new music.
In the strip club, the music is more grimier than what you hear on the radio, he said. It's like a D.J.
in New York playing a mixtape.
Posted by Clyde on February 8, 2006 in Recent media reports claim that, "according to research", the easy availability of music via downloading has led to a " ". Since this announcement immediately appeared to be one of those media items that would return to haunt me via op-ed columns and blog posts and since, as with most scientific research, the research itself was likely to be misrepresented, I thought I would try to check out the research findings.
So I went to the web page of , a researcher at the University of Leicester's School of Psychology who is quoted in the BBC article linked above. I was surprised to find no mention of the research on Dr. North's page or on any of the University's press release pages so I wrote Dr.
North directly.
North, A. C.
, Hargreaves, D. J., and Hargreaves, J.
J. (2004). The uses of music in everyday life.
Music Perception, 22, 63-99.
Since that seemed a bit old for research being reported in the BBC, I followed up and Dr. North stated:
"I did an interview for one of the Scottish newspapers a couple of weeks ago in which I was asked to speculate about how downloading might have affected attitudes towards music.
After that it just seems to have snowballed - strange how these things work."
Strange, indeed. What began as some speculations on Dr.
North's part about the effects of downloading in light of North's earlier research becomes the media creation of a generational label that can now go on to have a life of its own. Since my copies of Music Perception are in storage, I'll have to hold off on a closer look at the research itself for the moment. If you happen to track down a copy, feel free to respond in the comments below.
Otherwise we can simply continue the conversation like most conversations about science generated by media interest, the discussion will have little to do with the research itself.
Posted by Clyde on January 12, 2006 in Hashim Warren relates the "hustler's spirit" of the Hip-Hop Generation to a research study finding that " ." Although it's another example of how the can be viewed in a positive light, Hashim's take is mostly speculative in relationship to this particular study.
If you want to follow up and check out more than the section to which Hashim links, the full study is called and was produced by Paul D. Reynolds, Director of Florida International University's .
In related news, WSJ's Startup Journal has an article on .
The Pew Internet American Life Project has released another of its ongoing series of research projects into American use of the Internet and, in doing so, reminds us that the future us grownups keep predicting is already being lived by teens. The newest report is entitled and examines the fact that:
"Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations.
"
Representatives of old media sometimes attempt to ridicule the general population's content creation by focusing on the fact that few will be great artists in order to downplay the fact that the Internet makes it possible for anyone to become a publisher and potentially reach a world wide audience if they can execute well or bring something unique to the table. But what critics of media democracy miss that's perhaps even more important is the fact that the Internet and digital media more generally have offered an environment in which young people can create content as a normal part of everyday communication.
"Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts.
Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey."
When I was first using Blogger for various blogs, the recently updated weblogs list was more prominent in the interface and I would check it out regularly.
In clicking on interesting looking blog titles, I encountered what various researchers have verified, that a large proportion of blogs are created by teen and, sometimes, preteen girls. No, they aren't creating political blogs or trade blogs or any of the other blogs we currently take so seriously. They're simply using the weblog as another form of communication among many forms and by communicating online they remind us that the professionalization of content creation which has resulted in amazing riches has also tended to disempower everyday people.
Tom Zeller Jr. of the NY Times looks at and references recent situations in which students were threatened with suspension for posting on MySpace in order to "protect" them. In addition to the fact that such threats extend beyond the appropriate realm of pedagogues, I found the responses from 20 somethings rather interesting.
At least the 20 somethings I read seemed unaware of the political history of young people's battles for free speech while simultaneously seeming old and cynical in relationship to the concerns of teens. It must be tough being over the hill while still in college, but that's how fast things move today.
Although the issue of young folks' attitudes about downloading copyright material is also raised in this report, I find the response so far to be rather uninteresting.
Blah blah blah about what the music industry is going to do in the face of downloaders when the fact that what we are seeing is the becoming a mundane part of everyday life. That's some heavy shit and academic theorists had little to do with bringing it about.
Both the can be freely downloaded as .
pdf files providing to research, one of the many reasons the Pew/Internet projects get widely discussed in the media, far beyond the usual brief flare from inaccessible research shared with the public only via press releases.
The September issue of online research publication features a paper entitled by coauthors Sheri Crofts, Jon Dilley, Mark Fox, Andrew Retsema, and Bob Williams.
The paper includes a bit of history and an overview of podcasting technology followed by the social, commercial and legal context for podcasting before getting into issues related to business models.
The authors focus on business models for "nanocasters" or folks doing podcasting for niche audiences with commercial intent. They identify and discuss a variety of possiblities for generating revenue:
"Given the ease with which podcasts can be created, the only true barrier to entry — or at least a barrier to generating a sizable listener base — is product differentiation. Given the ease with which podcasts can be subscribed to and discarded, consumers are only going to tolerate podcasts that appeal to them.
This creates a challenge for new podcastsers — how to differentiate their podcast from the thousands of others already on the Internet. Clearly focusing upon a niche area in which one has significant expertise is one means of doing this. However, as with traditional radio, insightfulness, entertainment, and creativity will be necessary to create audience interest and a listener base of any significant size"
Overall I'd say the paper's a solid effort at sketching out some of the basic issues in professional podcasting with a relevant bibliography that includes live links.
It should be particularly useful for those needing an introduction to podcasting or for those who are thinking through issues related to making money via podcasting as well as other forms of online publishing.
In related news, two recent research studies had conflicting views of .
Hashim Warren at Hip Hop Blogs .
He has a "theory about buying music. It relates to the battle between pay per download sites (like iTunes), subscriptions sites (like Napster and Yahoo Music), and p2p sites (like Limewire)."
But before he announces the results of his theorizing, he needs you to go to the site and respond to a list of tracks from "this week's Hot 97 playlist.
" He's conducting an informal survey in which you tell him "which songs you would buy, whcih tracks you like to hear but wouldn't buy, and which tracks you don't like to hear and of course wouldn't buy."
There's more information . The more people that participate, the closer he'll come to statistical validity.
Together we can make hip hop research more scientific!
The current edition of , an open access peer-reviewed Internet studies journal, includes:
- on file giving.
- based on British and German music data.
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