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November 4, 2024  

The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part One) 

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

By now, it’s safe to say very few people have not caught wind of the biggest Hip-Hop battle of the 21st century: the clash between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Whether you’ve seen the videos, the memes or even smacked a bunch of owls around playing the video game, this battle grew beyond Hip Hop, with various facets of global popular culture tapped in, counting down minutes for responses and getting whiplash with the speed of song drops. There are multiple ways to approach this event. We’ve seen inciteful arguments about how these two young Black males at the pinnacle of success are tearing one another down. We also acknowledge Hip Hop’s long legacy of battling; the culture has always been a “competitive sport” that includes “lyrical sparring.”

This three-part article for Sounding Out!’s Hip Hop History Month edition stems from a longer conversation with two co-authors and friends, Hip Hop listeners and aficionados, trying to make sense of all the songs and various aspects of the visuals. This intergenerational conversation involving two different sets of Hip Hop listening ears, both heavily steeped in Hip Hop’s sonic culture, is important. Our goal here is to think through this battle by highlighting quotes from songs that resonated with us as we chronicled this moment. We hope this article serves as a responsible sonic assessment of this monumental Hip Hop episode.

First things first: what’s so intergenerational about our viewpoints? This information provides some perspective on how this most recent battle resonated with two avid Hip Hop listeners and cultural participants.

LeBrandon is a 33 year old Black male raised in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. He is an innovative curator and social impact leader. When asked about the first Hip Hop beef that impacted him, LeBrandon said:

The first Hip-Hop battle I remember is Jay x Nas and mainly because Jay was my favorite rapper at the time. I was young but mature enough to feel the burn of “Ether.” It’s embarrassing to say now, but truthfully I was hurt—as if “Ether” had been pointed at me. “Ether” is a masterclass in Hip Hop disrespect but the stanza that I remember feeling terrible about was “I’ll still whip your ass/ you 36 in a karate class?/ you Tae-bo hoe/ tryna work it out/ you tryna get brolic/ Ask me if I’m tryna kick knowledge/ Nah I’m tryna kick the shit you need to learn though/ that ether, that shit that make your soul burn slow.” MAN. I remember thinking, is Jay old?! Is 36 old?! Is my favorite rapper old?! Why did Nas say that about him? I should reiterate I am older now and don’t think 36 is old, related or unrelated to Hip Hop. Nas’s gloves off approach shocked me and genuinely concerned me. But I’m thankful for the exposure “Ether” gave me to the understanding that anything goes in a Hip-Hop battle.

Todd is a Black male who grew up in Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, New York. Todd is about 15 years older than LeBrandon, and is an associate professor of African American Studies and English. Todd stated:

The first battle that engaged my Hip Hop senses was the BDP vs. Juice Crew battle –specifically “The Bridge” and “The Bridge is Over.” The stakes were high, the messages were clear-cut, and the battle lines were drawn. I lived in Ravenswood but I had family and friends in QB. And “The Bridge” was like a borough anthem. Even though MC Shan was repping the Bridge, that song motivated and galvanized our whole area in Long Island City. This was the first time in Hip Hop that I recall needing to choose a side. And because I had seen Shan and Marley and Shante in real life in QB, the choice was a no-brainer. That battle led me to start recording Mr. Magic and Marley Marl’s show on 107.5 WBLS, before even checking out what Chuck Chillout or Red Alert was doing. As I got older, it would sting when I heard “The Bridge is Over” at a club or a party. And when I would DJ, I’d always play “The Bridge is Over” first, and follow it up with either “The Bridge” or another QB anthem, like a “Shook Ones Pt. 2” or something.

We both enter this conversation agreeing this battle has been brewing for about ten years, however it really came to a head in the Drake and J. Cole song, “First Person Shooter.” Evident in the song is J. Cole’s consistent references to the “Big Three” (meaning Kendrick Lamar, Drake and J. Cole atop Hip-Hop’s food chain), while Drake was very much focused on himself and Cole. It is rumored that Kendrick was asked to be on the song; his absence without some lyrical revision by Cole and Drake, seems to have led to Kendrick feeling snubbed or slighted in some way. This song gets Hip Hop listeners to Kendrick’s verse on the Future and Metro Boomin’ song “Like That” where Kendrick sets Hip Hop ablaze with the simple response: “Muthafuck the Big Three, nigguh, it’s just Big Me” – a moment where he “takes flight” and avoids the “sneak dissing” that he asserts Drake has consistently done. 

We both agreed that Drake’s initial full-length entry into this battle, “Push Ups,” was the typical diss record we’d expect from him. Whether in his battle with Meek Mill or Pusha T, Drake’s entry follows the typical guidelines for diss records: it comes with a series of jabs at an opponent, which starts the war of words. The goal in a battle is always to disrespect your opponent to the fullest extent, so we find Drake aiming to do just that. We both noticed those jabs, most memorably is “how you big steppin’ with some size 7 men’s on.” We also noticed Drake’s misstep by citing the wrong label for Kendrick when he says “you’re in the scope right now” – alluding to Kendrick Lamar being signed to Interscope – even though neither Top Dog Entertainment (TDE) nor PGLang are signed to Interscope Records. Drake’s lack of focus on just Kendrick would prove a mistake: he disses Metro Boomin, The Weeknd, Rick Ross, and basketball player Ja Morant in “Push Ups.”

While we agree that in a rap battle, the goal is to disrespect your opponent at the highest level, we had differing perspectives on Drake’s second diss track “Taylor Made Freestyle.” LeBrandon felt this song landed because it took a “no fucks” approach to the battle. Regardless of how one may feel about Drake’s method of disrespect (by using AI), the message was loud and inescapable. LeBrandon highlighted the moment when AI Tupac says “Kendrick we need ya!”; outside of how hilarious this line is, Drake dissing Kendrick by using Tupac’s voice – a person with a legacy that Kendrick holds in the highest esteem – further established that this would be no friendly sparring match. Not only did Drake disrespect a Hip Hop legend with this line and its delivery, but an entire coast. The track invokes the spirit of a deceased rapper, specifically one whose murder was so closely connected to Hip Hop and authentic street beef. This moment was a step too far for Todd, who lived through the moment when both 2Pac and Biggie were murdered over fabricated beef.

Furthermore, LeBrandon pointed to the ever controversial usage of AI in Hip Hop, something Drake’s boss, Sir Lucian Grainge, recently condemned (especially when Drake, himself, condemns the AI usage of his own voice). By blatantly ignoring the issues and respectability codes the Hip Hop community should and does have with these ideas, Drake’s method of poking fun at his opponent was glorious. It was uncomfortable, condescending and straight-up gangsta. It also showcased Drake’s everlasting creative ability and willingness to take a risk. Todd acknowledged a generationally tinged viewpoint: this might also be a misstep for Drake because he used Snoop Dogg’s voice as well. Not only is Snoop alive, but Snoop was instrumental in passing the West Coast torch and crown to Kendrick. So when Drake uses an AI Snoop voice to spit “right now it’s looking like you writin’ out the game plan on how to lose/ how to bark up the wrong tree and then get your head popped in a crowded room,” it strikes at the heart of the AI controversy in music. This was not Snoop’s commentary at all. We both agree, however, that the “bark up the wrong tree” and “Kendrick we need ya” lines came back to haunt Drake. We also agree that dropping “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle” is Drake’s battle format, hoping that he can overwhelm an opponent with multiple songs in rapid fire.

Todd and LeBrandon’s Hip Hop History Month play-by-play continues on November 11th with the release of Part 2! Return for “Euphoria” and stay until “6:16 in LA.”

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Our Icon for this series is a mash up of “Kendrick Lamar (Sziget Festival 2018)” taken by Flickr User Peter Ohnacker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) and “Drake, Telenor Arena 2017” taken by Flickr User Kim Erlandsen, NRK P3 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Todd Craig (he/him) is a writer, educator and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching and music. His research inhabits the intersection of writing and rhetoric, sound studies and Hip Hop studies. He is the author of “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press) which examines the Hip Hop DJ as twenty-first century new media reader, writer, and creator of the discursive elements of DJ rhetoric and literacy. Craig’s publications include the multimodal novel tor’cha (pronounced “torture”), and essays in various edited collections and scholarly journals including The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy, Amplifying Soundwriting, Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Fiction International, Radical Teacher, Modern Language Studies, Changing English, Kairos, Composition Studies and Sounding Out! Dr. Craig teaches courses on writing, rhetoric, African American and Hip Hop Studies, and is the co-host of the podcast Stuck off the Realness with multi-platinum recording artist Havoc of Mobb Deep. Presently, Craig is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at New York City College of Technology and English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

LeBrandon Smith (he/him) is a cultural curator and social impact leader born and raised in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively.  Coming from New York City, his efforts to bridge gaps, and build  community have been central to his work, but most notably his passion for music has fueled his career. His programming  has been seen throughout the Metropolitan area, including historical venues like Carnegie Hall, The Museum of the City of NY (MCNY) and Brooklyn Public Library.

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  REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project—Todd Craig

SO! Reads: “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies—DeVaughn (Dev) Harris 

Caterpillars and Concrete Roses in a Mad City: Kendrick Lamar’s “Mortal Man” Interview with Tupac Shakur–Regina Bradley

August 28, 2017  

Unapologetic Paisa Chingona-ness: Listening to Fans’ Sonic Identities

For the full intro to the series by Michelle Habell-Pallan, click here.

The forum’s inspiring research by scholars/practioners Wanda Alarcón, Yessica Garcia Hernandez, Marlen Rios-Hernandez, Susana Sepulveda, and Iris C. Viveros Avendaño, understands music in its local, translocal and transnational context, and insists upon open new scholarly imaginaries. . .

Current times require us to bridge intersectional, decolonial, and gender analysis.  Music, and our relationship to it, has much to reveal about how power operates within a context of inequality.   And it will teach us how to get through this moment. –MHP

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Que Buena Epoca Instagram Post (reposted by El Original)

I am a self-identified Paisa, a Paisa Girl from Playa Larga – my home –  in the Eastside of Long Beach, California. The term paisa/s is slang for paisanos (homies) and it references someone who takes pride in listening, dancing, and attending nightclubs where Banda music, corridos, and norteños are performed. I am part of a generation that has been referenced as the Chalinillos; youth with an urban gangsta aesthetic that was influenced by Chalino Sanchez, The Riveras, Saul Viera, Adan Sanchez, Los Dos Grandes, Tigrillo Palma, Los Amos; later came the Alterado, Progressivo (DEL) and now people like El Fantasma, Lenin Ramirez, Alta Consigna, Grupo Codiciado, Jesus Mendoza, and Los Perdidos de Sinaloa.

As they say, “Fierro Parriente!” “Andamos al Millon,” “Pa que vayan y digan” and “Puro Pa Delante!”

In the mid 2000s, besides partying hard in the paisa nightclub music scene, I also partied with several paisa party crews in Long Beach.  The songs, “Las Malandrinas,” “Parrandera,” “Rebelde, y Atrevida,” and “Mi Vida Loca” by Jenni Rivera were my anthems. These songs described the music scene we were a part of,  and how we situated ourselves within a male-dominated subculture. “La Malandrinas” for instance says that we make a lot of noise, we drink, ask for corridos at clubs (a masculine tradition) and do not care about what people say about us.

Thus, Jenni’s participation in this music genre was important because she created paisa sonic identities for the women in this subculture. “Sonic identities”, is a term that I use to describe the process fans engage in when they use a song to create a nickname and identity for themselves. This is a common practice among party crews and fan clubs. For instance, the nickname that I gave myself was “La Yaquesita” which is a title of a song. My participation in this nightlife shapes my analysis of this subculture. The gender dynamics and negotiations I had to engage with in this space made me an unapologetic feminist (although I did not call myself that at the time) who was fierce and defended herself but who—despite the slut shaming—approached this nightlife through a sex-positive attitude. Our attitude was “Fuck Haters!” and having this mentality was liberating. So, it makes sense that now I write about haters –or what Jonathan Gray calls anti-fans. I am interested in analyzing sonic haterism and how it tries to police Latina women-centered and sex-positive spaces like fan clubs and paisa party crews.

Las Malandrinas de Long Beach, 2008

In my dissertation entitled, “Boobs and Booze: Jenni Rivera, the Erotics of Transnational Fandom and Sonic Pedagogies,” the intertwined themes of sound and home emerges via a loud shout-out of my hometown that sounds like “Playa Larga, Baby” or a louder shout out that says “Son Ovarios de Playa Larga, Chaooowww, Baby.” Similar to “Fuck Haters!,” the latter shout-out implies a particular attitude and feminisms rooted in unapologetic paisa chingona-ness. Paisa Chingona-ness is the sonic condition, the rebellious and intoxicating state of being a chingona “rancherota.” Chicana feminists such as Sandra Cisneros and Josefina Lopez have defined and theorized being  a chingona in multiple ways. In her poem titled “Chingona,” Lopez for instance defines a chingona as a sex-positive Chicana who refuses to be slut-shamed for owning her fat body, sexuality (literally she loves to be on top), and agency.  There are overlaps with how Lopez, Jenni and her fans practice being chingonas; however, the added layer with Paisa Chingona-ness is that Jenni’s music and fandom shapes the way they embody it.

Activist and Writer, Raul Alcaraz Ochoa, has written a piece titled “Jenni Rivera y los 9 Puntos del Feminismo Chingona” here he acknowledges that Chingona Feminism is rooted in the barrio, the hood and is born from within and in response to a machista context, where the priority is always given to men.  According to Ochoa, Chingona Feminism is also born from race oppression and class-struggle. Ochoa states that Jenni “dice lo que piensa sin pelos en la lengua, te agrede si eres injusto porque su lengua es una bala que te deja con los huevos estrellados.” My work shows how chingona feminism is also practiced and embraced among fans. I expand on Ochoa’s analysis to think through Paisa Chingona-ness which asks us to listen to the “details” that Chingonas make when they are surrounded by each other.

Heard through my experiences, identifications, and stance toward the world, it makes sense why home manifests itself in the approach that I use to study popular music: that of fandom, that prioritizes fans and their approach to what I call sonic pedagogies. Which is a concept that was inspired by scholars such as Deborah Vargas, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Jillian Hernandez, Anya Wallace, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Martha Gonzalez. These scholars write about the power of music as “sung theory,” the power of music to create “sonic imaginaries,” or inspire teachings between the artists and the listener, that oftentimes creates “an erotic of feminist solidarity.”

For me, sonic pedagogies is a concept that centers the fan and what John Fiske has called their “textual, enunciative, and semiotic productivity.” Sonic pedagogies allows me to think about the affective and corporeal fan-to-fan teachings that are inspired even when the artist is dead and yet their legacy and conocimientos are being used to teach fans to understand each other. Sonic Pedagogies centers the practice that Lawrence Grossberg explains when he states, that fans give “authority to that which he or she invests in, letting the object of such investments speak for and as him or herself” (59).

A J-unit’s Altar: Andrea’s Jenni Collection, photo taken by author, 2015

Listening to sonic pedagogies asks us to write about music from a different perspective, from the perspective of its fans. Oftentimes we listen and write about music from the perspective, the voice, the body, and lyrics of the artist. But what if we start from their re-interpretation of a song in a YouTube video for instance? What if we start from a fan shout-out during a concert? What if we start from the conversations that emerge when fans talk about their favorite songs to non-fans? What if we make anti-fans our starting point to understand an artist or a music genre? Analyzing music in this way allows us to hear the multiple sonic layers that a song and music in general inspires.

I am also a filmmaker, so the way I understand sound and the reception of music is inspired by how I edit sound for a film. When we edit film, we layer the sound, we usually have at least three layers of sound: the interview (main story and Track 1), music (Track 2), and background noise (Track 3). However, sometimes you can have up to 20 sonic tracks layered at once and, actually, is how I have experienced fandom. There’s a song that we usually are listening to because we identify with it (Track 2), then we add our own conocimiento to the song (Track 1), that conocimiento or what many times turns into “archisme” provokes background noise of solidarity (Track 3), either to show the other fan that you understand, acknowledge, and relate to what they are sharing. Fans ask us to listen to the study of music from a perspective of “love” (Duffet), “magic” (Guy) and “erotics.”

Scholars in the field of fan studies such as Daniel Cavicchi have defined fandom as “not some particular thing one has or does. Fandom is a process of being; it is the way one is” (59 ). Alexandra Vasquez, in particular, reminds us of the importance of “listening to details” when thinking about fandom, music and performance. Sonic Pedagogies requires that I listen to the “details” of audience members, fans, and anti-fans that tell me about how Chicana/ Mexicana/Latina women resist structures of governmentality by questioning gender norms, and traditional ideas about sexuality. In Listening on Detail, Vasquez explains that details are “interruptions that catch your ear, musical tic that stubbornly refuse to go away. They are things you might first dismiss as idiosyncrasies. They are…saludos, refusals, lyrics, arrangements, sounds, grants, gestures, bends in voice” (19).  In my work, Jenni chants, removal of clothing, mobile recordings, posters, fliers, fan shirts, and sing alongs, are the details that allows me to examine Jenni Rivera.

For instance, I analyze the deschichadera “removal of bra” ritual that both Jenni and her fans engaged in during concerts. I am fascinated by the deschichadera ritual and Jenni’s concerts in general because these fans are constantly redefining home, embodying Cherrie Moraga’s feminist praxis of “making familia from scratch” (58).

Thus for fans, home is found in the affective, erotic, collective, and intimate aspects of music reception and its sociality. Home is found in fan clubs, fan gatherings, tribute events, living room, and the travels of bumping music in the car. Listening to the details of fans allows me to view audience responses to Jenni’s performance part of Jenni’s own presentation and music, not separate from them. Engaging music through fans allows me to see that songs, concerts, and albums do not end when the music stops.

J-units in Mexicali celebrating Jenni’s Birthday, 2017

In “Boobs & Booze,” home also appears in murals, particularly their visual representations of Mexican music. In the vein of Deborah Paredes’s study of Selenidad, I write about the visual politics of Jenni’s remembering, particularly Jenni Rivera Memorial Park, dedicated by the city of Long Beach in 2015.  Home appears in the fashion that we decide to dress our bodies in, especially the femme challinillo aesthetic, and homegirl/Pachuca/partygirl look that Jenni performed on stage. We also find home in the memories we make when we listen to a particular song.  So for me, listening to” Mi Vida Loca” for instance always bring me back to Long Beach, the barrio that has shaped me as a chingona feminist, scholar, and artivist.

Sergio Ramirez working on the Jenni Rivera Mural (2015) photo taken by author.

Home is the music that we take with us, the music and sounds that we carry in our backs when we enter white or middle-class dominated spaces where our paisa music is not acknowledged or it is even looked down upon and critiqued for being “too Mexican,” “too chunti,” “too low.”   Home and sound makes me think of how people of color co-exist with each other sonically. In the EastSide of Long Beach, for instance, home and sound is black and brown relations, tensions, and solidarity. Home and sound is acknowledging that both corridos, hip-hop, and G-Funk relationally, has formed paisas. I mean, I also get an adrenaline rush when I hear Snoop Dog, Warren G, Nate Dogg, O.T Genasis, and Ladies of Beach City referencing their roots to Long Beach, as Snoop says, “it’s an Eastside thang.”

The recent example of Playa Larga’s black and brown sonic solidarity is Snoop Dog’s recent Instagram video listening to Jenni’s music. Watching two Playa Larga finest artists being fans of each other, despite the differences in music genre, language,  and spatial politics (East vs. West) is powerful, it tells us that we listen to each other even when they try to put us against each other.  In this video, Snoop Dogg embodies the “We have each other” solidarity with which Gaye Theresa Johnson ends Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles (189).

 

Listening to Chingona-ness pushes me to theorize a new framework for anti-fandom, one that centers race, class, sexuality, and is not only about an artist’s music–  or what Gray calls the “text” – but also about their bodies and the bodies of the fans, their ontologies, and existence.  Focusing particularly on Jenni and her fans allows me to think about gender, sexuality, class, pleasure, music reception in relation to anti-immigrant sentiments, war on drugs, war on poverty, and the war on Latina reproduction and fatness. Jenni as a case study allows me to explore how unapologetic paisa chingona-ness triggers anti-fans, exposes what I am calling agitations  and their “agitated responses.” Agitated responses refers to the hater comments that anti-fans (or non-fans) make towards Jenni, (and there are many), while agitation is the carnal disgust that anti-fans display when they police the behavior of Jenni and her fans. In this anti-fandom framework, agitation is the disaffection – the visceral aggression or enmity – that people who hate Jenni and her fans express when they write, say, or gesture agitated responses towards them, a form of sonic haterism.

I entered academia to theorize my home and write the paisa girl epistemology since there is little literature written on our sonic identities, and to show how sonic haterism, in conversation with fandom, allows me to understand the historical, social, and cultural realities working-class Latinas face.  Here is how Jenni Rivera once expressed this same intersection in the song “Mi Vida Loca,”  which asks listeners to hear what Paisa Chingona-ness sounds like in Playa Larga, her sonic home, and mine too.

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Featured Image: Paisa Party Crews in Long Beach, The Myspace Days , courtesy of author

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Yessica Garcia Hernandez is a doctoral candidate and filmmaker in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California San Diego. Her scholarship bridges fan studies, sound studies, women of color feminisms, fat studies, girl studies, and sexuality/porn studies to think about intergenerational fans of Mexican regional music. Yessica earned her B.A. in Chicanx Studies from University of California, Riverside and an M.A. in Chicanx and Latinx Studies at California State University Los Angeles. She has published in the Journal of Popular Music, New American Notes Online, Imagining America, Journal of Ethnomusicology, and the Chicana/Latina Studies Journal. Her dissertation entitled, “Boobs and Booze: Jenni Rivera, the Erotics of Transnational Fandom, and Sonic Pedagogies” examines the ways in which Jenni Rivera fans reimagine age, gender, sexuality, motherhood, and class by listening to her music, engaging in fandom, and participating in web communities. She explores the social element of their gatherings, both inside and outside the concert space, and probe how these moments foreground transmissions of Latina power. Yessica’s broader research interests includes paisa party crews, Banda Sinaloense, Contestaciones, and Gordibuena/BBW erotics. She is a co-founder and member of the Rebel Quinceañera Collective, a project that utilizes art, music, photography, creative writing, filmmaking, and charlas to activate spaces for self-expression and radical education by and for youth of color in San Diego.

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Listening (Loudly) to Spanish-language Radio—Dolores Inés Casillas

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New Wave Saved My Life—Wanda Alarcón

 

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