The Tanning of America (40 page)

When I followed up with Mike and asked him to elaborate, he described the brush of tanning as having shifted the balance in America, creating the urban mind-set for a growing percentage of the public, regardless of age. In addition to that he pointed out, “The majority of the population now lives in an urban environment rather than suburban and rural. We've become urbanized.” In his industry, with what we were all seeing—especially given economic and energy crises shifting the focus to
need
marketing versus the
want
marketing of the past—it was easy to predict where values were headed. Urbanization and lives lived in closer proximity to one another were shaping the landscape for European-style smaller cars to dominate the streets. Adaptation. However, Mike noted that marketing the cool of brands, as always, would still look to culture to provide cues. And toward that end, he believed that hip-hop was going to continue to be that truth-telling force able to hold a mirror up to real needs in consumers' lives.

As we discussed this further, it was clear that cultural globalization—the counterpart to economic flattening—was giving rise to hip-hop music bubbling up in developed and developing nations, thus creating a global tanning effect in other nations. The countercultural voices coming from the poetry were being empowered to challenge color and class lines, in some countries, that had been in place for much longer than America has even been a country.

“The thing that gives me a lot of confidence,” Mike Bentley said emphatically, “is that young people don't see it as white culture, African-American culture, or, in the UK, Caribbean culture or West Indian culture.” Again, it's seen as just culture. “That is the future of hip-hop and urban culture—that's where it's going. Its influence has to grow,” Mike said, and he admitted that it would be exciting to see another new form, another paradigm, come into being. Remembering “Rapper's Delight,” he went on, “There haven't been new breakthroughs since 1979. What's the next thing that's coming along? Hip-hop seems remarkably enduring. I was listening to it in my twenties. My daughter's listening to it now.” Other than rock music, which has a multigenerational following, Mike asked, “Can you think of another genre that's done that?”

Yeah, he's right, I can't. On the other hand, there are some generational language gaps connected to culture that still need better translating.

Jay-Z told me an interesting story about a visit to the home of an elected head of state when he was in Europe—French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy invited Jay and his beautiful wife to his home for a delicious, elaborate luncheon with spectacular wine and wonderful chocolates. As the group moved from the table to the sitting room to enjoy cigars and more conversation, the president's twenty-three-year-old son joined them. As he walked into the room, the father apologized for his son's “french” braids. Apparently, Sarkozy's son was an avid fan of Allen Iverson and wore his hair in cornrows to embody the same youthful rebellion as his pop culture basketball-playing hero.

President Sarkozy didn't get the look. “Oh,” he said, “why do you wear those dreadlocks?” Then the president proceeded to talk about how he had taken his son out to a fancy restaurant and had told him that people would be offended by an inappropriate hairstyle and would stare at him.

“And that is what happened,” the president insisted. He described how there were stares from many of the diners in the fine restaurant. Then, turning to his son, he reminded him, “Yes, I was right, they did look at you differently.”

At that point, Sarkozy's son smiled and said, “Dad, you've told that story before but you never tell the part at the end when I'm the one who gets with the beautiful waitress.” Or words to that effect.

In the middle of all that elegant culture, there was nothing to do but laugh. Generations mixing with one another, like cultures intermingling, and like brands with consumers, just need to have dialogues and megalogues and get to the common intersection of understanding.

Fortunately, nothing about that punch line went over anyone's head. They continued storytelling and joking, smoked the rest of their cigars, and agreed that certain rites of passage never really change. Perhaps that's why global youth culture has made hip-hop so enduring.

There was a time not very long ago when I seriously wondered if the end of my generation's story would be about how we created an art form, built it from nothing to become one of the most influential forces on the face of the planet, had it all, and then gave it away. That is what happens to relevant cultural forces when they become so popular that they're not rooted to their origins or to the real and the true anymore—to the needs and the wants that summoned them into being in the first place. In fact, Nas wrote a song some years back called “Hip Hop Is Dead.” Later he spoke about what he meant in Michael Eric Dyson's far-reaching book
Know What I Mean?
and went on to say that there were many who came forward to agree and disagree with him. His point was, “Although the voices may have clashed, the one constant in the clamor was that all of these people out there felt that hip-hop was worth fighting over and fighting for.”

The solution that Nas recommended was, “We need to be able to learn from our history if we are going to take control of our future.”

In fact, that's exactly what's happening at many of the country's top universities that now offer hundreds of classes in hip-hop studies. Howard University offers an interdisciplinary minor in hip-hop history and culture. Boston's Berklee School of Music offers a course in writing rap lyrics and creating beats. At UC Berkeley, political and legal scholars are writing doctoral theses on how urban culture has influenced law enforcement and the judicial system. A class at Columbia University taught by a leading cultural historian analyzes the poetry of hip-hop's prominent voices. NYU's music school 2011 schedule offers a class in The Business of Jay-Z. Courses across the nation cover aspects of hip-hop culture taught from the perspective of anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, linguistics, ethnomusicology, music history, poetry, literature, and more. The formal study of street dance now includes classes in everything from uprock and break-dancing to popping and locking.

As Nas can attest, learning from the past to understand the future also means staying connected to the scene—which he does by touring and using his stature as a headliner to feature some of the young voices on the local level as opening acts for him. In the process, his own work becomes all the more relevant and informed by what kids are going through.

It's true that what they're going through today may not be as apocalyptic as was the crack cocaine epidemic—the catalyst that accelerated the music's journey into becoming a culture and a creed for survival, with its code for language and behavior that made it possible for a community to keep from becoming collectively insane and provided aspiration to move forward. But without a doubt these millennials are going through their version of hard knock life remix. Many of them have never had to face the challenges they're experiencing now. I don't just mean economic woes but also with everything coming to a head that has needed fixing in our country for a long time. Then they are dealing with issues that other generations never had to confront in their youth. Many millennials lived through 9/11 in the same way that earlier generations witnessed Kennedy's assassination or that their parents got the news of Pearl Harbor—or whatever their equivalents are in other countries. Many in this group know better than other generations that climate change is real, that energy resources are dwindling, and that life on earth, if not valued, is not as forever as it once seemed.

Let me quickly add, however, that I know every generation has had its own existential/economic crises and crossroads that have caused values to be recalibrated. This isn't exclusive to now. The eighties had corporate excesses that led to a crash. In the nineties we had a dot-com boom that was bigger than the gold rush until it went bust as we entered the 2000s. Now we're confronting the lawlessness on Wall Street that got out of control in the first years of the new millennium and emptied coffers across a lot of industries. With CEOs' pay now being restricted and the opulence of earlier eras being scrutinized with a finer eye, questions arise about a culture of excess—
Is that cool or is it too much?
And those are cues brands should acknowledge as people's values are reset.

Millennials have adapted well to the shift from
want
marketing to
need
marketing—and that you should get what you can afford, not all that other stuff that's not within your means. Cheap credit was everyone's crack and it dried up. In some ways, it's been easier for this more adaptive generation. You can hear it, in fact, in the values of music, which are shifting too. In rap, talking about how much money you have is still part of the code, but it's starting to be downplayed or put into the context of other realities. Aspiration remains, first and foremost. How do you quantify the aspiration, connect it to authentic challenges of the present, and make it lyrical? Those are the questions that millennials are answering in their art today.

With all the raw material coming out of life, hip-hop is humming as a music form, localizing and globalizing simultaneously, with a vibrant and diverse cultural scene that is as varied as the people who are increasingly being drawn into it. This rich diversity is a healthy outgrowth of tanning often overlooked in all the coverage of the death of the record industry.

And just how bad is the music business? Well, the numbers ain't pretty. In 2009, sales of CDs for all genres were down by 52 percent from where they were in 2000. Physical units of CD sales were the biggest decline, with an impressive 1.16 billion downloaded singles for the year. Digital, accounting for 40 percent of all purchased music, wasn't going anywhere.

All of this makes it clear that for millennials, the scene today is very much an online affair—with posted music and videos shared in a variety of networking sites that serve as the mix tapes of now. On MySpace alone, there are 1.8 million rock bands, 1.6 million R&B artists, and 4.9 million hip-hop/rap artists. As a result, the equivalent of yesterday's underground counterculture is mainly Internet-type rappers who have developed followings with postings of their latest content, sometimes without monetizing it, and who don't necessarily have local followings or many opportunities to perform live. Edgy music blog sites, such as Nah Right, post new songs, samplers, and videos daily, driving traffic and promoting greater circulation with listeners. There are also entertainment and fashion-news blogs with music too, like
YBF.com
and
hypebeast.com
, that provide connection for global youth culture.

The question from brands that we often hear is,
Where are the emerging youth markets for music and culture?
The real question should be,
Where
aren't
they?

Whenever I check in with Fab Five Freddy—who has his finger on the creative underground pulse as much as anyone—he reports on the latest new crew he has discovered in Brazil or in South Africa. Recent break-dance champions have come from places like Korea and Russia. Fab has also confirmed that here and abroad, it is an art form open to everybody: black, white, brown, yellow, red, male, female. As polyethnic as it has ever been. From younger artists, the talk that I hear says many of the MCs making names for themselves in local scenes still happen to be male and African-American, but there are increasingly exceptions, with more females, more artists coming up the ranks who are Latino, white, and Asian, crowds that are more multicultural and multiracial. The story of
8 Mile
remains in the code in that when kids from different backgrounds connect, ethnic/racial differences pale once someone proves they can rhyme or shows their moves are real. Timeless and timely.

Around the world, we're seeing style moving as fast as information, sometimes driven by leading American artists and sometimes by local groups before being adopted elsewhere. This is another reason that I maintain that American culture and entertainment continue to represent out most profitable export. James Lassiter, who rose up from the grass roots of hip-hop as Will Smith's manager, to become his business partner and now film producing partner at Overbrook Entertainment, has not only watched the evolution of the tanning effect in developed countries everywhere but is seeing it in the developing nations. Not long ago, he and Will came back from Tanzania and reported seeing huge painted likenesses of hip-hop and pop culture icons on the different buses and the barbershops. Instead of even having business names, the barbershops are simply known by whoever's likeness graces the front window—like Ice Cube or Snoop Dog barbershop. James and Will saw a bus go by and that was Beyoncé's bus. James said, “Tupac is omnipresent.” So you could go to Tupac's barbershop or travel on Tupac's bus route, seeing his face everywhere. Of course, in bigger cities, like in Kenya, they have similar iconography, only the pictures are real photographs, as James said, “High tech.”

None of this should have surprised Will Smith or James Lassiter, given their respective journeys. In his own way, James had been a pioneer for a new generation of entertainment industry executives to follow nontraditional paths to success. He once told me about the amazed reaction he got from Howard Stringer, the CEO, president, and chairman of Sony Entertainment Corporation, who hadn't realized until then what a significant role that hip-hop had played in James's career. Unlike most black executives who go to Wharton or get their MBAs at Harvard or degrees at law school so they can compete at the highest levels, James had taken his own route to the top through hip-hop—but without the ten-year delay. He recalled to me that “had I done those other things and then had to work my way up through the corporation, it would have been that much more difficult because it's not easy to be the third man in the room with Howard Stringer.” But coming in with the expertise and experience that managing a hip-hop duo had given him, James was able to walk through any room and sit at any board table with any chairman and hold his own, at twenty-two years old. How? Mostly, James remembered, it was because “I was smart enough just to listen and not talk my way out of those rooms.”