Exploding from a simple neighborhood party in the Bronx in 1973, hip-hop birthed its own sounds, style and language. As the music took off, an entire culture blossomed from under it. The four elements of hip-hop: rapping, DJ-ing, break dancing and graffiti, began to take form. However, like all great cultures, a sub-sect of opportunists and grifters have infiltrated the game at all levels for personal gain, notoriety, or worse.
Hip-hop has such a glamorous depiction that it’s only logical that people with less talent and more connections would try to weasel their way in for their own stake of the limelight. Today, the ecosystem that rap music created is littered with losers, from “The Executive Parasite” who preys on the nativity of young talent and their desperation to make it out of poverty by giving them a phonebook-sized contract all written in ‘Saul Goodman’, to “The Drug Dealer Parasite” who hangs out in the entourage, supplying your favorite fallen rapper with the bad pack they OD’ed on. Then there’s “The Groupie Parasite”, beyond being there for consensual fun, they look to trap rappers with pregnancies or go viral by “exposing” them, to even getting them robbed or killed.
As deplorable as some of these parasites may be, in many ways, they are all symptomatic of their environments. (Even parasitic music execs are pervasive throughout the industry, not just rap.) However, there is another parasite. A different one. These are the people not from the culture of hip-hop who mimic the aesthetic and take from the culture without providing much of anything in return.
Now pump your brakes before you get your burner accounts fired up at me. “The culture” is not a code word for “Black people”. There have been white and non-black people who have been productive members of the culture. (Paul Wall, Eminem, and Cypress Hill immediately come to mind.) We’re talking about the true “culture vultures”, a phrase coined in the late 2000’s by hustler/philosopher, Damon Dash. The ones who didn’t grow up with a passion for the music nor the concern for the people who created it to truly appreciate the space that they are in today.
In a recent interview with CBS (retired) rapper and country singer, Post Malone tiptoed around the subject of being labeled a culture vulture for sympathy stating: “It sucked—I was a kid,” and that he “drank a lot” in order to cope and admitting to taking the perception personally. “Absolutely, it’s hard not to,” he said. While it sucks to be misunderstood, it’s also hard to find sympathy for a man who interviewed with a media outlet in Poland in 2017 saying:
“If you’re looking for lyrics, if you’re looking to cry, if you’re looking to think about life, don’t listen to hip-hop,” as he quipped that he had a lot of emotions because he’s white. “There’s great hip-hop songs where they talk about life and they spit that real shit, but right now, there’s not a lot of people talking about real shit. Whenever I want to cry, whenever I want to sit down and have a nice cry, I’ll listen to some Bob Dylan.”
Anyone who spent any time around hip hop knows you can’t throw rocks and hide your hands, Mr. “White Iverson”. This is not to say that hip-hop is in its best space currently, but there are songs and artists to appease just about any sensibilities these days, no matter how niche. For every over-inflated kid with locks and face tats who couldn’t even spell R-A-P, an underappreciated emcee is speaking on life, love, God, family, passion, grief, and a whole world of content beyond “money, hoes, and clothes”. Those people could use the platform of a mega star like Post Malone to amplify their music, but instead, he elects to kick the genre that embraced him when the country platforms wouldn’t.
Far from alone, hip-hop has dealt with disingenuous white people who became millionaires off of their accessibility to the genre time and time again. After musically breaking away from the Hannah Montana gimmick and riding the sonic coattails of Mike-Will-Made-It with her 2013 album, Bangerz, Miley Cyrus ditched hip-hop by 2017 acknowledging to Billboard, “I can’t listen to that anymore. That’s what pushed me out of the hip-hop scene a little. It was too much, ‘Lamborghini, got my Rolex, got a girl on my cock’ — I am so not that.”
Even Kid Rock, who collaborated with the legendary RUN D.M.C., retreated safely back to his trailer park Taj Mahal with this to say about his eras, musical contributions: “Rap-rock was what people wanted at the time, and they still love those songs at shows…But it turned into a lot of bullshit and it turned out to be pretty gay.”
Tyler the Creator recently caught flack for indirectly calling out a young rapper with the creative stage name, “Ian” by saying: “This white kid, regular Caucasian man, and he’s like mocking Future and Gucci Mane like… rap music,” Tyler said. “This is like… weird. Something about it don’t even sit well with me, in comparison to someone like Mac Miller or Eminem […] they had a genuine love for it, and they were still big.”
The exploitation of hip-hop doesn’t just stop at the rappers, however. Podcasters and “journalists” being allowed to interview in rap spaces just to be in the way and propagate nonsense is also at an all-time high. DJ Vlad, Adam 22, and Bobbi Althoff open their platforms up for reckless loose cannons and ratchet chicks to make fools of themselves, while they sit quizzically behind their microphones like “the Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, translating what is happening for the masses. No, this is not hyperbole. These people never speak intimately with any knowledge of the music or the culture in which it emanates from. In fact, the more clueless they appear, the better.
Many could say that these points were also a part of the greater issue that Kendrick has with Drake, but that’s another article for another day. However, the playbook seems to be running its course. Though there seems to be no shortage of hangers-on, taking for more than they ever give to hip-hop, we collectively seem to be more astute than ever before at spotting this trend. Fortunately, as we see these people for who they are, we can learn to operate around them. There are plenty of artists from all walks of life making real hip-hop. Likewise, some platforms still want to talk to musicians about music! (ahem @hhsreport ) These “culture vultures” will likely still exist and even have success, but any shred of dignity they posses, or understanding of the historical contextualization of their actions should prevent them from ever profiting at hip-hop’s expense.