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Thursday 4 December 2008

Hip-hop hell

Marcus Berkmann doesn't enjoy hip-hop

Is there anything racist about this? Of course not, we agreed. Well, it might be for some people but it wasn’t for us. Perish the thought. Nonetheless, it’s unusual in today’s throbbing pop marketplace for any genre or sub-genre to spark such strong feelings. You really like hip-hop or you really don’t. Everything else seems to span the age-groups and the nations. On Radio Two the other day a small boy rang Chris Evans with a request. He was as bourgeois as they come, in daddy’s car driving back from a family holiday in Cornwall. And it was daddy’s request: ‘Teenage Kicks’ by the Undertones. It’s like Don Henley seeing a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Anyone can like anything. It’s allowed.

Hip-hop is different. One of its primary purposes, I’d suggest, is to annoy people on buses. Teenagers can play it knowing that most grown-ups will hate it; black people can play it knowing most white people will hate it; men can play it knowing most women will hate it. If you play hip-hop in your convertible, to what extent are you enjoying the music and to what extent are you declaring something about yourself to the wider world? Maybe that’s not the way to think about it: maybe the two are utterly intertwined. What’s clear is that it works: hip-hop is a gigantic industry, staggeringly lucrative, which has constantly and cleverly renewed itself over 20 years. You have to admire it, if only from a distance. At least one double-decker-bus length will do for me.

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