Midterm

I decided to use Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” for my example of a performative sample.  I didn’t choose it because I think it’s a wonderful song or dance, or because I think he’s an amazing artist or dancer.  I chose it because it’s a fantastic example of how hip-hop affects people’s lives, especially somewhere like this college town.  Most people have gotten completely sick of that song and that dance and almost no one would argue that there are any real musical merits to the song.  However, whenever it comes on at a bar or club or even in a clothing store, there is at least one person doing the dance (and usually more than one).  You can go on youtube and find countless videos of people doing the dance, including elementary age children who look like they might even be in gym class.  The fact that people got so into it is probably the only reason it even got famous.  They just loved the dance—nobody could get enough.  Soulja Boy made an instructional video of himself teaching the dance and put it on youtube.  The song/dance is one of the best examples of group participation in Southern hip-hop that can be mentioned.  Repetition and variation are also very present in “Crank That”.  The dance itself is a series of moves repeated over and over until the song is through and while a dancer can stick with the proscribed motions, there is also room for changing the dance and adding in moves of your own, if that’s what you want to do.  I’ve seen people in clubs back someone up with the “right” dance while the person with them breakdances or just completely does his/her own dance that may or may not incorporate any parts of the “right” dance.  The song is definitely part of Southern hip-hop because Soulja Boy has lived in the ATL since he was seven and was very influenced by the Atlanta music scene.  Personally, I think it’s incredible that he made his own video and his own single and got famous by putting them on youtube.  For me, that makes the whole thing more important.  He put his own video on youtube, probably not actually expecting it to go anywhere but he thought his song was important enough for the world (or at least the internet population of youtube) to see it so he did something about it.  And the wave of “Crank That” that swept the world after his leap of faith was definitely excellent validation.

I think that part of the reason that Soulja Boy did the video was just for fun.  He made a youtube video that managed to get him famous.  That’s incredible.  And he didn’t just get famous in the way that the chubby kid who sings and dances to the Romanian song (Ozone) did—he got commercially successful and he became a household name.  That’s incredible.  In addition to the fact that he put a really fun song out there on the market, made millions of dollars, and got ridiculously famous, he is an example of hope for every other Internet artist in the world.  He’s an example that you don’t have to be well known or rich or well connected to get famous and do what you want with your life—you just have to have the faith to try.  Personally, I think that’s what a lot of hip-hop is.  Many hip-hop artists capitalize off of the image of a ghetto-born, urban-poor gansta with criminal pasts or presents (drugs, gangs, shooting, etc) which seems to be a very defiant reaction to a negative perception of a lifestyle born of circumstance.  By that, I mean that many people look down on the type of person who is born into an environment that perpetuates violence and criminal activity as a means to survive, and a lot of what hip-hop does is defend or explain or even sometimes glorify that type of existence.  Upper middle class white collar workers have no idea what it is that many of these people have to overcome to even make a life for themselves and much of hip-hop (including David Banner, in particular) is a justification or even just an explanation of their actions.  That’s what a large part of the dirtiness of Southern hip-hop is.  Yes, it’s raw and gritty and dirty but it’s real.  “Crank That” has another aspect of dirtiness to it as well.  He talks about supermanning hos, which is a very explicit sexual act.  Along with that, there is a certain dirtiness to the language that he uses.  It’s not particularly coarse language, it’s just very Southern urban and black, which goes back to Keyes’ discussion of the words used in rap.  She calls the language used in most rap songs black street speech, which is the language used in “Crank That” and goes back to Soulja Boy growing up in Atlanta.

Personally, even reading the lyrics to “Crank That”, I don’t understand a word of it.  But that doesn’t really matter.  The thing that makes “Crank That” good is the social importance that has been attached to it.  The song means nothing to me, lyrically, but it’s just fun.  Even my seventy-two year old grandmother knows parts of the dance because it’s become such a huge part of the culture.  And again—it’s just because he thought it was important enough to try to put himself out there regardless of whether or not anyone ever saw it.  That goes back to what Cheryl Keyes talks about with the intersections between rap music and “blackness” and also what Hall says about differences and how they are represented.  Keyes talks about words, specifically, as well as how they are spoken contributing to meaning.  I have no idea what Soulja Boy is cranking in that song.  It means absolutely nothing to me in the sense of a definition.  However, it doesn’t really matter.  The song itself is what matters and the way that people react to it and each other when they hear it.  Halls talks about representing “otherness” and the way that we react to it.  When I first started listening to rap (or, more accurately hearing it) I hated it.  The words didn’t make sense, I can’t dance, and I just couldn’t follow it.  Now, I accept it as part of a culture of “otherness”.  I’m still not really a part of that culture, my biggest action as a practioner has been to take Crunkology, so when I listen to it I definitely get a sense of otherness from the music.  Despite that, I can find appreciation for the culture and the music that comes from it.  That more than anything else expresses to me how culturally defining this music is. 

A common sense understanding of hip-hop is that it’s dance music as much as it is a statement of anything else.  It is almost exclusively played in clubs for the sole purpose of dancing to it.  And Soulja Boy uses that in his song by coming up with a prescribed dance for it.  You don’t have to do his dance to it, but it’s easy for someone who doesn’t normally dance in public to dance to this song because you know exactly what you’re supposed to do when it comes on.  The “Cupid Shuffle” is another example of a song that is solely meant for dancing.  The difference is that the “Cupid Shuffle” tells you exactly what to do as the music plays and “Crank That” is a song as well as a dance.