In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Powell discusses the ways that the hip hop community has contributed to Obama’s nomination. He discusses how while some hip hoppers have damaged Obama’s campaign by producing misogynistic and vituperative songs about McCain and the Republican party, other hip hoppas, such as Jay Z, Nas, and Russell Simmons, have successfully promoted not only Obama’s campaign, but also the vote.

Although Powell’s article avoids essentializing hip hop, I find it troubling that we only investigate the political side of hip hop when an African-American is running for president. Hip hop has always been political, and, throughout the life-span of hip hop, many politically conscious hip hoppas have dramatically changed the political discourse of their communities as well as our national political discourse. This, however, gets little attention from the mainstream media. Thus, we still have people who believe fully in the stereotypes of hip hop.

Some of the bloggers that responded to Powell’s piece prove that sterotypes of hip hop, like sterotypes of black folk, are still a long way from dieing out.

One blogger writes:

In the mind of this misguided critic of hip hop, all “rappers” don’t really care about politics and political issues such as poverty, discrimination, the economy, race relations, and America’s treatment of people living around the globe; instead, this blogger argues that hip hoppers are actually incapable of thinking about anything other than money, violence, etc.

Even some bloggers that defend “rappers” still can’t get away from embracing stereotypes about hip hop. In response to “Blueblood,” one blogger writes:

I guess it’s very difficult for people to see hip hop in 3 dimensions. In the minds of many listeners, hip hoppas are either truly violent and hateful or they’re just greedy, trying to make a buck off of images of violence and hate.

One reason for this, like I discussed earlier, is the media’s portrayal of hip hop. Although the controversy surrounding Ludacris’s song “Politics” brought widespread negative attention to hip hop, the community activism and political progressivism of hip hop tends to go unreported; in fact, it is silenced.

I guess the mainstream media thinks that positive images of hip hop just don’t sell. I guess they think that no one would tune into a news piece that shows how hip hoppas are helping inner city kids get through school, helping to keep violence off the streets, and helping to educate people about the choices that they have this upcoming November. But, like I said, these images don’t sell…

Now who’s being greedy?

While the DNC wants hip hop to back its candidate, I’m pretty sure that the DNC won’t do much to re-pay hip hop for its decades of political struggle after Obama wins the election. Indeed, mainstream politics has rarely thanked hip hop for any of the positive ideas that hip hop has brought into American political discourse.