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Forman, Murray

Page history last edited by keilah.glover.514@csun.edu 14 years, 11 months ago

Forman, M. (2005). The Deal, the Image, the Product: Independent Entrepreneurs and the Hip-Hop Industrial Complex in the 1990s. In Meiss, G. & Tait, A. (Eds.), Ethnic Media in America: Taking Control. . Doubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company (pp. 119-150)

 

Murray Forman is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. He has published many books as well as articles about the hip hop culture, reflecting his interests in the relationship between popular music and society. He conducts a critical analysis of Hip-Hop industries and their cultural products, including music, clothes, and videos. The author applies Marxist theory specifically in his consistent emphasis on the power of owning a means of production.

Forman argues that successful African-American hip hop entrepreneurs established themselves through commercial branding. Proximity to “the street” meant having a cultural “authenticity” of being connected to the Black community. It gave these entrepreneurs a power leverage. Paradoxically, as they became successful, they socio-economically moved away from “the street”. African-American entrepreneurs achieved a “classic commercial-capitalist” (p. 56) status by being actively involved in market strategies and distribution processes to sell their cultural products.

This study reveals that initially this connection to the “street” was exploited by the White-dominated entertainment industry. Hip-Hop would recruit inexperienced young African-Americans with a strong sense of hip hop market trends. This strategy was intended to reduce the power and control of Black executives, resulting in exploitation, “restricting their professional growth” (p. 123), and “de facto professional ghettoization” (p. 123). Within this environment, African-American careers were relatively short and provided a few opportunities for promotion.  However, through the years, these young Black executives learned from their experiences in the music business and have succeeded into becoming multi-millionare moguls.  For example, Sean Combs as known as Puffy Daddy, started as an intern at Def Jam, and now he is the CEO and Founder of the  Bad Boys record label, he has a clothing line, a hit television show called "Making the Band", and has starred in numerous movies, including  "A Raisin in the Sun".

Motown Records is introduced as the predecessor to Black hip-hop entrepreneurs. It effectively operated through cross-marketing and branding, using logos to establish its distinctive identity. The company’s success became one of the first breakthroughs in overcoming racial barriers.

After the 1970s, Motown’s influence declined significantly and Russell Simmons emerged as a key leader in hip hop entrepreneurship. He succeeded in calculated branding, identity making, and commercial promotion. Due to his influence, the hip hop culture expanded beyond music during this period. Simmons’ business empire and success grew by creating spin-offs from fashion to film, from publishing to philanthropy. The author notes that beginning with this generation, hip hop entrepreneurs more comprehensively understood their industry in terms of “cultural influences and market opportunities”.

 

 

 

 

By the 1990s, the hip hop industry encompassed projects with wide ranging influence. Suge Knight leveraged his power through ownership of the master recoding tapes. He marketed and strengthened his association with the “neighborhood” and the darker side of Black culture. This risky strategy translated to great costs in terms of crime and violence, emphasizing the negative and destructive aspects of the hip hop culture. Violent tensions between artists- particularly regional disputes between the East and the West- and shady backgrounds and connections led to damaged careers and even loss of lives.

 

 

      Forman states that Sean Combs became the next hip hop mogul after developing his own company, Bad Boy Entertainment. His entrepreneurship, modeled after Motown and Suge Knights’ Death Row Records (later renamed to Tha Row), brought a new, distinct identification with wealth and achievement. Though successful, his unconcealed ambitions to become part of the mainstream through cross-over marketing were heavily criticized as not being true to the “real” hip hop culture. Further, Combs’ allegede involvement with shootings and other physical violence reinforced the association of the hip hop culture with violence, adding to damages resulting from the previous murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Disassociation from these violent tensions between urban cities and the two coasts resulted from the emergence of hip hop artists in the South. These artists provided an alternative to violence-related hip hop music and promotion. The author points out that they used distinctive Southern aesthetics, rhyme and style. Forman states this new and more positive marketing strategy helped the hip hop culture regain its strong ties with regional, local, and neighborhood ideals. Cash Money and other independent labels also controlled their production process through ownership of the master recording tapes. 

In conclusion, this study demonstrates that by owning and controlling the production process, one of any ethnicity or race can remain independent and competitive within a huge industry. The author found that cultural products can be accepted, even sought after, across racial lines. Moreover, Forman is successful in applying a Marxism point of view- the importance of owning the production process- to our modern life and culture. He associates the hip hop industry with the Marxist concepts of base and superstructure relationships where exploitation of labor continues until there is ownership of production.

On the contrary, Forman’s study has some critical limitations. It only focuses on successful entrepreneurs and tends to idealize commercial-capitalism, using culture as a mass product. The audience is presented as an invisible, passive consumer. Further, his research addresses a narrow interpretation of the hip-hop culture. His analysis could have delved deeper into social meanings of the hip hop industry. Further discussion about the social and political relationships between the hip hop industry and African-American communities, as well as the broader American society would have provided greater value to media studies.

(Reviewed by Sara Motomura)

Edited by Keilah Glover

 

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