“Pop music is what white people have cherry picked from Black culture and a lot of times it’s detrimental to Black culture.” Music journalist and theGrio writer Matthew Allen and Michael Harriot discuss the formula that is used to create pop music and highlight the Black people who pioneered the sound.
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[00:00:00] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Welcome back to theGrio Daily and episode two. Why going pop is just going white. It’s Black Music Month. And we’re going to talk about that and other things with one of my favorite writers at theGrio, Matthew Allen, who is the music critic and columnist at theGrio.
Matthew Allen [00:00:27] Thank you very much for having me, Michael. I’m honored.
Michael Harriot [00:00:29] When I turned 16 years old, literally the day that I turned 16 years old, I got a job working at a radio station. I worked in radio for years, right from country to R&B to gospel to pop. College radio. And so when I first started there, we were literally playing records, right? So I would go in and there would be a wall, a literal wall of records, and I knew I had to play one into yellows, which was kind of an older song, uptempo song, or Green. A slow ballad was red. They had these stickers on them, right? But I could choose any song, right? And then when I got to college, they had a different system, but the system was more organized. And then by the time I got out of college, they had the stuff in a computer and the computer was telling you what to play. So the music that we gave to audiences was taken out of the hands of the deejays, out of the hands of the people you listen to on radio and put in the hands of corporate structure. What does that have to do with pop music? Right?
Michael Harriot [00:01:36] So you think about, for instance, this is my perfect example, right? When I started playing in radio stations, you couldn’t play rap music. Even on rap stations. You couldn’t play something like NWA. You might be able to get away with something like Heavy D, L.L. Cool J, Run-D.M.C., because they were huge records. And then when I got to college, you could play rap music as long as it wasn’t cussing. And then when I got out of college, you could play NWA. Now, what happened is those record companies, they saw that NWA was selling records not to white people, but because of the underground culture of rap they only saw Oh, they vile. They talk about gangbanging, they talk about violence, and they went and got the NWA. NWA was a really revolutionary group, but the what the white people took from that is the cussing. Is the gangbanging. And so the result of what white people did to hip hop to make it palatable for the radio is not play NWA on the radio but playing what they thought the copy, the carbon copies of NWA was right. It was just some gang bangers from the gang culture in L.A., Right? That’s what we call West Coast music. When that really wasn’t West Coast music. West Coast music was originally funk driven music, right? White people turn it into gangsta music, trying to find that formula. That formula that white people are always searching for is what we’re talking about. When we say pop music.
Michael Harriot [00:03:11] It might be based in Black stuff, but it is what white people have handpicked and cherry picked from Black culture to present to the masses and a lot of times is detrimental to Black people. Right. And that’s why people talk about selling out. Even N.W.A. Right. They went from f the police to describing what it was like to live in Compton, which was a middle class Black neighborhood, and that complex structure of gangs and violence and all of that to gangster like to thug music, too. Ain’t nothing but a g thing to, you know, bitches ain’t shit. All of that was white people’s influence. That was pop music. By the time I got to bitches shit, that was pop music. Now West Coast music. Not rap music. Not hip hop. Right. And so that complex mix of what constitutes music and what white people here is what we talk about when we say sellout. Tell me what you think about that.
Matthew Allen [00:04:12] I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I think that, you know, it’s a double edged sword. The thing is, is that, yes, white record corporations, labels, programing directors, like you said, the corporate people that are now making artistic decisions about what the people here. My theory is that they said, let’s make a lot of money off of Black people and make Black people look bad all at the same time. So in 1992, when The Chronic is released, that’s at a time where over the last two or three years, basically let’s just even go back between 1988 or 1987 to 1993, when between, you know, NWA’s first EP all the way to Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle which was produced by Dr. Dre of N.W.A. You have all of these diverse hip hop and rap records that are released from Paid in Full, Criminal Minded, People’s Instinctive Travels and Paths of rhythm. De La Soul is Dead. A Bizarre Trip to the Far Side, all of these amazing, multifaceted rap albums. But they decided, hey, the messaging is a great way for us because it’s not just about them wanting to make money from Black culture. They also want to control the narrative of how they are going to talk to the culture and what the culture is going to take in. So that’s why a lot of these record executives, a lot of these white program directors decided, let’s take NWA and the surface level things that they do in terms of the cussing and the degrading of women and find other artists that will do that in mass to flood the market with it, not only making a lot of money, but and controlling the narrative and the manic narrative in culture, but also stigmatizing the music, which is what happened with pop music. Going back to that is stigmatizing the music because of the narrative that’s being put in place. Also, so it’s two things.
Michael Harriot [00:06:23] So let me ask you this, though. So that like sounds like this a lot of times I think I say on this podcast is I don’t give white people credit for being that smart. Right. Like, we’re going to make this negative message for Black people. Like, I don’t think white people are that smart. What if that’s just how they see us? Like, what if. Like, because you had to think about from the origins of hip hop, even from during his heyday, white, white people didn’t know what was next like. You couldn’t predict that at the same time, there was an NWA that was going to be A Tribe Called Quest and a De La Soul and a Wu-Tang Clan like all existing simultaneously. They didn’t know anything about this culture, but what they pitched was what they knew about Black people. Like a lot of times it might not have been a nefarious thing. It might’ve just been like, This is what they think of Black people. And they picked artists who echoed their thoughts and who, when they hear N.W.A. Say F the police, they don’t think of, Hey, this is a protest against police brutality. What they hear is fuck and police, right? Like they hear the cussing and the resistance and the criminality in it, Right? So they take that that’s what they think about Black people and find that. Now, here is an interesting question, right? It could be what I just said. It could be what you said. Now, I tend to believe that it’s a little bit of both. Right, Because I don’t know. Have you ever seen the video of I think it was Chief Keef. Like in the roomful of record executives and he’s standing on the table?
Matthew Allen [00:08:07] Yes, he’s jumping out. Yes, It was either Chief Keef, one of those rappers, I can remember if it was Chief Keef or Bobby Shmurda, one of those two.
Michael Harriot [00:08:12] I think it was Bobby Shmurda. You’re actually right. Yeah, but I think that my perspective was always that maybe that’s what white people think of us. But then I saw that video and I said, Wait, I there ain’t no way that because what these we call music companies are just billion dollar corporations and ain’t no way that people who controlled billions of dollars are saying let’s give millions to this guy as dancing on the table.
Matthew Allen [00:08:41] Yeah.
Michael Harriot [00:08:41] Unless there’s something more than just their negative portrayals of Black men. Like it’s gotta be intentional. That made me think it is intentional. Like there’s something else afoot when you say I’m going to give. Because, yeah, being in the poetry scene and I know you being on the music scene, you know that when you go to live hip hop places, places that play underground hip hop, you know, there’s still that diaspora of music, still exist is just as much positive hip-hop in the world now. You just saying you’ll hear it on the radio, you just ain’t going to see it. Well, I guess there ain’t no more Sam goodies, but you never going to see that at Sam Goodies or in the place where Apple Music promotes. They’re going to promote the popular sell out negative portrayal of Black people or something that fits in the imagery of what already exists. And I think that combination of corporate and just, you know, old school white people, racism is just as nefarious as, oh, let’s all get together and make this plan to doom how people see Black people. I think it’s just like white people being white people the same way they were white people when they conceived of the Constitution is the same way that white people, when they can see the race be slavery is the same way they will white people, when they can see the Jim Crow and all of the things that doomed Black people. Music ain’t different. They just using our tool further their supremacy.
Matthew Allen [00:10:12] There’s a lot of truth to what she said, too, that first of all, that the character Jim Crow comes from minstrelsy. It comes from Thomas Dartmouth Rice creating this character via minstrelsy, which is the basis of pop music, like I was saying. So there is absolutely truth to that. And getting to what you were saying, like why the whole Bobby Shmurda thing, that’s minstrelsy again. Minstrelsy got so popular that Black people started to do it. You know what I’m saying? You had people like the Georgia Minstrels that had Black people putting on Blackface. So, yes, it’s that generational aspect of, okay, this is what we think of Black people. So we’re going to have a caricature sized thing about them and how we think of them to the point where Black people came on board and started doing the same thing. That and that’s not to say that that’s what Bobby Shmurda purposely did or whatever, but that’s just another example of that. So there absolutely is some truth to what you were saying, but in terms of, you know, them thinking about, Oh, this is how we think of Black people and everything like that, I have there’s my here’s my one pushback on that before we wrap things up. White people have always seen Black progress, independent Black progress. And every time they see it, they literally bomb it from the air, whether it’s Black Wall Street, whether it’s Seneca Valley, whether it’s the MOVE organization in Philadelphia, whether it’s Rosewood in Florida, every time they see Black people having knowledge of self, finding ways to be able to be independent and be successful being independent without needing white people and white validation, it’s literally destroyed by white people. And so in terms of music, it goes back to what I was saying about Dre and and all those guys and N.W.A. in particularly. When you have music like a Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest, let’s just say Public Enemy, which is on the opposite side of the coin of N.W.A. To a lot of people.
Public Enemy [00:12:08] I got a letter from the government the other day. I’ll open and read it. It said they were suckas.
Matthew Allen [00:12:14] You know, white people very much could have tried to make Public Enemy be that type of place. Looks more like a Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield sort of thing, where it’s talking about, you know, Black people, you know, commenting on society and being successful at it. And they very much could have done that, but they decided not to because Public Enemy was successful doing it, just like “What’s Going On? Was successful.
Marvin Gaye [00:12:39] My mother, mother. There’s too many of you crying.
Matthew Allen [00:12:46] Just like Superfly, and everything that Curtis Mayfield did was successful. Everything that Bob Marley was doing was successful. But they decided, no, let’s push these tropes that are dangerous and problematic because we want to control the narrative, because history teaches us that when white people notice that Black people are lifting themselves up and don’t need them to be under the thumb of white people, they decide to take all of that and destroy it. So that’s why I have some pushback about that, particularly when it comes to music, because history teaches us that that’s what happens.
Michael Harriot [00:13:23] I agree with you. I want to thank you for coming on. You know, my perspective on that is that I don’t know if it is. I want to control the narrative because, again, I don’t think white people know that that’s what it is, that they see it as something they can’t reproduce. But I do want to thank you for coming on for this conversation. You know, during Black Music Month, I think it is important to look at Black music as a product of Black people’s history and culture. And so I want to thank you for coming on. I want to thank you for stopping by theGrio daily. And I want you to tell me your favorite Black. We always leave with a Black saying because I always remind people to download theGrio app. I always remind them to subscribe, but I always end with a Black saying So, tell me, what’s your favorite Black saying?
Matthew Allen [00:14:08] I love the I’m finna do something. Or when people say I’m fitting to do, I’m fixing to do now it’s I’m finna do. That’s like one of my favorite things, like, Oh, I’m finna go get some Kool-Aid. I’m finna go get my lunch. You know what I’m saying? I’m finna go to this concert. That’s like one of my favorites. F.I.N.N.A.
Michael Harriot [00:14:27] I guess we’ll in this episode by saying, “We finna go.” Thank you for listening to theGrio Daily, and we’ll see you next time. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Download theGrio app, subscribe to the show and to share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcast at theGrio dot com.
[00:14:50] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
Being Black: The 80s Podcast [00:14:55] The Eighties gave us unforgettable songs from Bob Marley, De La Soul and Public Enemy. Being Black: The 80s is a podcast docu series hosted by me Touré, looking at the most important issues of the eighties through the songs of the decade. A decade when crack kingpins controlled the streets but lost their humanity. You couldn’t be like no soft, smiling, happy go lucky drug dealer. You had to suppress that. It was a time when disco was part of gay liberation. It provided information to counter-narratives that were given to gay people by the straight world. This is the funkiest history class you’ll ever take. Join me, Touré, for Being Black: The 80s on theGrio Black Podcast Network, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
