Translator: Stepan Spotar
Reviewer: Denise RQ What an introduction. (Laughter) It's good to know, man. How are we feeling, how are we doing? (Cheers) Alright. Well, today I want to talk
about heroes and villains. Is hip-hop a cancer or is it a cure? In every story, there's a protagonist. The protagonist is agonizing
to make wrong things right. And there's an antagonist who's fighting
against what everybody's agonizing for. In simpler terms, in every story,
there are heroes, and there are villains. The thing is, in today's society, the true
versions of these stories often go untold or they're told from
a limited vantage point. You look at the wide spectrum of things, and you'll notice that sometimes, our heroes are actually
more villainous than we think, and sometimes, our villains are far more heroic
than we give them credit for. You can look at the endorsement of slavery
from our nation's Founding Fathers to our own fascination
with murderous mobsters like Al Capone. Western society tends to change
narratives for the sake of pride or prostitute tales of murder and misogyny
for the sake of entertainment. From our gangster movies
to our murderous, misogynistic music, we do tend to paint
villainous ideas as heroic. Let's be honest, I mean, I'm sure we've all paraded around on Halloween
as a hockey-masked serial killer. (Laughter) And weren't we all rooting for
John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction"? (Laughter) And I know I'm not the only one
who's been out on a Saturday night reciting every line
to Ginuwine's song "Pony." (Laughter) And I'm sure that song
has nothing to do with baby horses. (Laughter) But we can all agree
that my favorite art form, hip-hop, is completely innocent
of painting villainous ideas as heroic. (Laughter) OK, it's not true. Truthfully, hip-hop is one
of this generation's biggest perpetrators, but I think I can show you
how that happened and how it's an art form
that can turn the ship around. But to truly understand this,
we've got to understand our own interpretations
of heroes and villains. So what's a hero? Well, to the Greeks, Odysseus was a hero. It derives from this ancient word,
the term for 'protector.' It embodied Greek virtues and values, it demonstrated the model
that they wanted society to emulate. Heroes are brave, they're courageous,
they're capable of leading others, they address the issues
that afflict the society, and finally, more importantly,
heroes are risk-takers, huge risk-takers. Professor Frank Farley from the Temple University,
School of Psychology, says that most heroic figures like Franklin D. Roosevelt
or Martin Luther King are what you call T-type personalities
or habitual risk-takers, people who will risk everything,
put everything on the line, including their lives,
in order to accomplish a goal. Most of us are not big risk takers; we admire this trait in others
and tend to want to follow him or her. Thus, they become our heroes. So what about a villain,
what makes a villain? Villain comes from
the Latin term "villanus," which means farmhand
or a worker of a plantation or a villa. It became to be known as anyone
who was less than knightly status-wise, and they were seen as unnoble. So essentially, being poor,
disenfranchised, and not a noble was synonymous with being a villain. So technically speaking, when society
creates subjective standards, anyone who upholds these standards,
represents these standards, fights for these standards,
is looked upon as a hero. Anyone who fights against
these standards or opposes them is looked upon as a villain. So for example, in the 1700s,
society agreed on legalized slavery. Anyone who opposed that
was looked upon as a villain. It wasn't until after society agreed
on the outlawing of slavery, that abolitionists were looked upon
as heroes and no longer villains. English scholar, Dr. Katherine Blakeney, says that it's tempting to classify
characters into these groups. It's severely misleading,
it's subjective, it's variable. And when you use terms like hero,
villain, anti-hero, anti-villain, it's important to consider what circumstances affected
these people's actions, what society and culture
these people come from, and finally, how our own associations,
our principles, our prejudices affect our interpretations,
affect our perspectives. What really does make a hero or a villain? And how much of that
is based off of mere interpretation? Come on, let's be honest, there's no public figure
of the past or the present that's without their fair share of biases,
skeletons, and more failures. There's no spotless leaders, none of us in here are morally unstained
characters in life's grand story. So it's wrong to just discard
those labeled as villains as these forces of darkness
that the hero should come and defeat. Think about Frankenstein
or Frankenstein's creation - we're going to be technical. (Laughter) Frankenstein's creation,
this big bad collage of a man thing, with the bolts in his head. I feel bad for this guy because no one
ever took into consideration that he was sewn together
from the bodies of dead criminals. Nobody cared that the man thing couldn't
even speak and articulate his own words before he was hunted down
like a wild animal and labeled a villain. Now, how does this apply to hip-hop, a culture where women
are constantly objectified, violence is dignified,
and drugs are glorified? Routinely, in the media, hip-hop is villainized
and talked about by correspondents despite the fact that they're speaking
from outside of the culture. You have Bill O'Reilly who says the rap industry
often glorifies depraved behavior that sometimes sinks into
the minds of some young people. Jason Whitlock says that the music,
the attitude, the behavior of this culture is anti-education, it's demeaning,
it's self-destructive, it's pro-violent, I mean, it's a pro-drug dealing,
and it's violent. Well, here's the thing: if you're wondering why hip-hop
is often violent, angry, and nihilistic, you got to take into consideration it's a culture that was created by
marginalizing, disenfranchised minorities who woke up on the wrong side
of the war on drugs. (Applause) Yeah. President Nixon, in the 1970s,
declared a war on drugs. We've all heard about this
more recently, in the news. But in 1982, this war
was enforced by Ronald Reagan when hip-hop was still wearing diapers. Cultural critic and music journalist Touré says this war would not only
shape the urban community, but it would mold hip-hop,
a culture whose undercurrent remains: Black and Latino male anger at a nation
that declared these young men monsters, abandoned them, and destroyed
any chance they had at accomplishing or achieving
the American Dream. So if our societal standard
of the American Dream, chasing the American Dream is heroic, is heroism from working hard
and working legally, then anyone who can't, or doesn't,
or find some other means to do that becomes a villain. In the beginning, hip-hop
was not pro-violent, pro-drug dealing. It was socially conscious,
it was anti-drug almost always, and the music actually
addressed the societal walls and did more of a narration
than a glorification. In 1982, you have "The Message"
by Grandmaster Flash, who says, "I can't take the smell,
I can't take the noise. Got no money to move out,
I guess I got no choice. Rats in the front room,
room roaches in the back, junkies in the alley with a baseball bat. Tried to get away, but I couldn't get far, a man with the tow-truck
repossessed my car." You got Melle Mel who writes, "Whether up your nose or in your vein, with nothing to gain
except killing your brain," he's talking about cocaine,
this is in 1982, he's talking about it
in a negative context. You got Run-DMC who talks about the rise of
the unemployment rate in the early 80s and talks about all these societal walls, but they're narrating them,
they're not glorifying them. So what happened? How did it change? Well, a shift happened in 1983. The unemployment rate
in the urban community skyrocketed to 21%. This was coupled and followed
with FBI anti-drug funding, which ironically, happened
at the same time the CIA was giving aid
to Central and South America who just so happened to use that aid to traffic drugs back
into the United States. Whether you like to call this a political oversight, or a misstep,
or an outright scandal, poor inner city communities
caught the brunt of the blow. Nobody forced these communities
to take part in illegal drug sales, but that skyrocketing unemployment rate, coupled with this widespread
availability of drugs, made it kind of hard
to turn down a drug trade. For a lot of young men, it was the only option they saw
for chasing the American Dream. It's unfortunate. And then what happens?
Well, the 90s happened. The 90s painted this narrative
using hip-hop. Hip-hop was like the canvas to speak about this new world of crack, killings,
prison, militarized police forces, right? It was like the Prohibition era
had re-emerged, prison sentences were
as long as basketball scores. The communities were being destroyed
by this powerfully addictive drug, and the incarceration rate
in the United States was higher than in any other place in the world, destroying and damaging
countless families. By 1995, nearly a quarter of non-college
educated Nlack men were in prison. My mother's, my aunt's greatest fear wasn't that we wouldn't get into
a good school, or we'd have bad grades. It was that we spend
the rest of our lives in prison. No college meant prison. And so, for us, hip-hop
was this audio documentary, it was telling us
and detailing these stories of prison, and murdering,
and gangs, and drugs, but it was also communicating
to us our story, and what we were going through, right? So now we're looking at the society, and this environment has been destroyed. Drugs, for rappers in the 90s - who grew up in the 80s
and the 90s, like myself - dominated our economic possibilities. I found myself idolizing and looking up
to drug dealers and to gang members. It was the world that I existed in. And it was unfortunate
because as a child, I watched it happen. I watched families and communities
go from being laid off, lacking jobs, community being destroyed, people searching and hoping
for financial restitution and help, and all of us wanted to go to college,
but it wasn't a financial reality. Our parents were the products
of the Civil Rights era, they weren't even allowed
a quality formal education. So high-paying careers
were not really an option. I watched again and again
families work odd jobs, move from city to city, chasing factory work
only to find it was not available. And then drugs came. When drugs came, it was like a gold rush,
it was literally like a gold rush. In the 80s, nobody
understood the implications, but the 90s reaped havoc. I lost every man that was important
to me, including my father, to the infestation of drugs
or the war against them. So yeah, in the world outside my community
Ronald Reagan was a hero, but in my backyard, he was a villain. How could Ronald Reagan
possibly be a hero to us, how can Scarface possibly not? So like I said, in the 90s,
hip-hop painted this response, there was this big response
to all of the stuff that we were seeing in our environment: the murder, the mayhem, the prison,
the death, the destruction, and rappers were speaking a language
that we could relate to. I grew up feeling like I was being raised
by Lil Wayne, by 2Pac, by Jay Z. And in order to understand
who I was as a man, I had to construct
my own warped sense of masculinity, because hip-hop was the language
of a generation of men without fathers. So I'm finding my role models
in drug dealers and gang members, piecing together
what masculinity looks like. Truthfully, in order to wear the badge
of authentic masculinity, you had to be associated in some kind
of way with this way or lifestyle. You certainly needed it
to get a record deal. And so what was happening was hip-hop was now being stigmatized
as the equivalent of criminal. And guess what we did unfortunately?
We embraced that stigma. And why would we do that? What's a classic psychological strategy. Michelle Alexander writes
in her book, "The New Jim Crow" that embracing your stigma
is a political act, an act of defiance in a society that seeks to demean a group
of people based on an unalterable trait. We found ourselves in a nation that saw us
as criminals, so we embraced it. Besides, it was good marketing. In the 80s, hip-hop's target audience
was Black male and urban, by the 90s and 2000s,
it has spread out to the suburbs, and the largest purchasers of hip-hop
were white suburban males. So when the music was indigenous
to its own community, it was positive,
socially aware, and anti-drug. When it broadened out
and diversified to the suburbs, it embraced criminality,
sold it for profit. Social consciousness
and positivity was out. Criminality and gangsterism was in. And now that love for "Pulp Fiction," that love for "Godfather,"
and a good old Western shoot-'em-up was now embracing
these street tales of rap music. Hip-hop could have grown
to challenge the war on drugs. Instead, rappers glorified it,
embraced it, sold it for profit. The biggest artists embraced
this identity and this lifestyle, and they sell it, they make millions, and they're looked upon as heroes
for making it out of the ghetto. Those who don't make it
are looked upon as villains, arrested, conveniently warehoused. In many cases, hip-hop
has failed its community, however, I believe
it can still be a tool of resistance, artists like Public Enemy,
Kendrick Lamar, Lauryn Hill have fought back with music, while others have become
philanthropists and activists and created jobs in their communities. Hip-hop does not have to be
a pawn of villainy in exchange for profit. It can be used as a tool to tell the story
of how things got here, how they began (Applause) and it can also tell the story. I believe it can tell the story of
how a dark past created a bright future, I'm a product of this reality.
I'm a living breathing testament. This is my story. I didn't just get here by happenstance, I get here because I'm
the product of people who were humble enough to not see me
and write me off as a villain, but embrace me
as a would-be hero in the making. They didn't write me off. (Applause) So I say this in closing.
I say, every character has a story. Sometimes, those stories are untold
or told from the wrong vantage point. Today you've heard one story. May we all have the humility
to hear many more. Thank you. (Applause)
I only skimmed this vid, but it's nothing new that others have mentioned. tl;dw: yeah hiphop can be a bad influence but really it's just reporting what they've seen, and at the same time can be a vehicle for positive change
Another good hiphop-based TED talk was Akala's presentation about hiphop and it's use of language and empowerment
Who are the biggest hip-hop scholars? I can only think of Questlove and Bun B (teaches about "Hip-hop and religion at Rice")