Is "American Gangster" Good for Hip Hop?
Rappers aren’t always doing hip hop a favor by crossing over to the silver screen.By Erica Williams
November 21, 2007
Common, Idris Elba, Denzel Washington, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Malcolm Goodwin in “American Gangster.” Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.They may be. It’s almost taken for granted today that when a rapper becomes famous enough, he should start lining up roles for the silver screen. “American Gangster,” which features T.I. as well as hip-hop artists Common and RZA next to actors Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, and Cuba Gooding, Jr., is just one of many recent films to place rappers in supporting or lead roles. The trend makes sense for movie studios: “American Gangster” raked in nearly $47 million during its opening weekend, and many films centered on rappers—like “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” and “8 Mile” have done well at the box office. And it certainly makes economic sense for the rappers. Acting is a lucrative side hustle. Why should T.I. spend years touring and promoting his albums when he could make the same amount of money acting in one box-office smash? It helps, of course, that the media feed off the music-and-film cross-pollination. When “American Gangster” hit box offices in early November, Vibe magazine’s website devoted a week’s worth of coverage to the movie.
Movie studios, the media, and hip-hop artists all probably agree that the collaboration is not only good for them and their bank accounts, but for the hip-hop industry, too. As more audiences accept rappers and their music, the genre—which was once considered counterculture—will become a more central part of the American mainstream. When money is the bottom line, exposure is everything. And the more hip hop merges with mainstream culture, the more reach and influence its artists will have. Right?
Well, it’s not that simple. Hip-hop artists’ success at crossing over depends on the type of movie roles they accept. How they choose to promote themselves can actually do more harm to hip hop than good. When rappers take roles in films about urban crime or the “hood,” they run the risk of perpetuating the stereotype that hip hop is inherently concerned with—and enamored by—drugs, violence, and crime. This complicates things for the numerous rappers who are using music as a means of sharp social commentary, and who offer more subtle, nuanced visions than the “guns ‘n hos” material that clogs our airwaves. By taking on predictable, clichéd roles, rappers are actually limiting hip hop’s power and fueling society’s desire to see rappers in stereotypical movie roles.
The presence of rappers in film, and the effect that presence has on the hip-hop industry, is set against the background of Hollywood’s long, troubled history with race. Black actors have traditionally been offered only certain types of movie roles: caricatures of black Americans instead of characters that accurately represent them. Hattie McDaniel, for example, became the first black Oscar winner for her role as mammy in “Gone with the Wind.” (She justified her portrayal cleverly: “Playing a maid is better than being a maid,” she quipped.) Even Dorothy Dandridge, one of the first black actresses to successfully break out of the mammy role, could only find work if she agreed to be typecast as a “Jezebel” figure—a sexually promiscuous, tragic female character.
In their days, these actresses’ successes were considered a step forward for black America. And they were, in part. Unfortunately, to get ahead in the movie business, black Americans had to act in roles that fulfilled mainstream America’s stereotypes. The same holds true for rappers today. While McDaniel, Dandridge, and other pioneers like Sidney Poitier paved the way for a handful of black actors and actresses (mostly actors) that now get to handpick their roles, rappers are an exception. They are repeatedly cast as the same tired, stereotypical characters. “Hood flicks,” a moniker used to describe films that appeal to the young, urban viewer, have been seen as a fantastic way to broaden hip hop’s appeal for the last 20 years. Since 1985’s “Krush Groove” and 1990’s playful “House Party,” hip-hop artists always seem to be answering Hollywood’s call. Yet as the films in which rappers star have attracted larger, more diverse audiences, the range of roles in which rappers are cast has narrowed.
“American Gangster” is, at its core, just another gangster film. It’s a movie about drug culture and the decay of urban America—an issue for which rappers have long been the spokespeople. Common and T.I. play a father and son who work together in the family business. RZA plays the role of an upstanding police officer. At first, these roles do not appear to be stereotypical rapper roles—and neither RZA nor Common is a gansta rapper by any stretch of the imagination.
But for Common’s and T.I.‘s characters, the “family business” is the drug trade, and RZA’s cop used to be in tune with drugs and the streets—although now he has chosen to use his knowledge for good. The simple fact that each of these characters has some connection to drugs, guns, and crime makes it easy for hip hop’s foes to wag their fingers and say “We told you so.” And with the current assault on hip hop—one in which pundits like Bill O’Reilly regularly lay the blame for America’s cultural ills at its feet—Americans don’t seem able to understand the intricacies and nuances of hip hop culture, let alone the roles and movies in which its artists star. To the media and most of hip hop’s detractors, Common may as well be Tupac, and “American Gangster” may as well be his latest CD.
Of course, part of the beauty and essence of hip hop is that it began as an American subculture. Rappers don’t, and shouldn’t, care about what mainstream critics think and say about them—in other words, “Do you and I’ll do me.” Hip hop’s primary message is, “Be authentic.” Making your own choices—despite what the critics say—is an essential part of the ethos.
But even if rappers ignore what hip-hop’s critics say about their movie roles, they should still be conscious of how the roles they chose put hip hop in a box—they not only define the way mainstream America views hip hop, but how hip-hop artists see themselves.
To be sure, some rappers have been able to break this mold, but they’re the ones whose music is uncontroversial—the kind of bubblegum fare that’s irrelevant to hardcore hip-hop fans anyway. Take Will Smith, for example. He rapped about girls, parents, and lemonade in the summertime before making it big on TV and then in films. If Smith had rapped about substantive issues like police brutality, urban disinvestment, and the underground economy, or had used profanity like, God forbid, the “N” word, he probably would never have been cast in his breakthrough performance in “Six Degrees of Separation,” or any of the other “race neutral” roles for which he has been widely acclaimed.
Most “real” rappers—artists who deal with the realities of life in down-to-earth lyrics—are typically limited to more one-sided roles, the ones that narrow the possibilities of what hip hop can represent.
There’s another, more practical, argument for why rappers should avoid these roles, one that Samuel L. Jackson has summed up well: “‘I know there’s some young actor sitting in New York or in L.A. who’s spent half of his life learning how to act and sacrificing to learn his craft but isn’t going to get his opportunity…because of some actor who’s been created—and you can use the word ‘actor’ loosely.” He continued: “To take people from the music world and give them the same kind of credibility and weight that you give me, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, Forest Whitaker—that’s like an aberration to me. You just can’t do that.” But even Jackson hasn’t been able to avoid the inevitable. He himself has starred in five movies with rappers.
Jackson’s argument—that young black rappers are filling roles better served and better acted by young black actors—is echoed by many actors, media-diversity advocates, and film connoisseurs. The problem with this common critique is that it doesn’t address the crab-in-a-barrel syndrome: It attacks the rappers who “take away” opportunities from black actors instead of attacking the system that produces too few quality roles in the first place. The reality is that in Hollywood, there is a lack of quality roles for black actors and a need for greater diversity among directors, writers, and producers. Why is Hollywood so fascinated with casting popular rappers in blockbuster films? Does it have anything to do with the mainstream fetish of hip-hop culture? Why can’t the film industry portray black culture, black manhood, and black American without references to hip hop?
Perhaps it is because most rappers are, by definition, actors. Although “keeping it real” is a cardinal rule, hip hop, to its detriment, is one of the few genres where artists create and embody a persona so fully, so completely, that they become the image. Unlike other musical artists, rappers are expected to always be the subject of their art. They act the part so well that America rarely allows them the opportunity to grow into figures with bright futures. As a result, hip-hop artists have become caricatures of themselves—which makes them even more likely to be typecast in movies aimed at a broader market. Who, to the American public, could be more believable in roles that deal with drugs, crime, and underground street culture, than rappers?
The ultimate culprit is the small-mindedness that has made hip-hop artists scapegoats, the ones responsible for all that is wrong with urban America. Maybe someday rappers won’t be seen as thugs with microphones, and it will seem ludicrous (no pun intended) to see a rapper in handcuffs. At that point, a rapper choosing to take on a “hood” role might be considered bold and unique. But for the time being, damage is undoubtedly being done by and to those who are already unfairly representative of all that makes America uncomfortable with young black men—and with hip hop. “American Gangster” reinforces the message Bill O’Reilly has been spouting for years: that rappers really are our American gangsters.
Erica Williams is Issue Campaigns Manager at Campus Progress.
*This article has been edited from its original version.
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Comments
Hmmm…so would Mos Def’s role in the Italian Job be a step forward or backward for his career based on his music?
— Ali - Nov 26, 09:37 AM - #Good question – I don’t know… His role brings to light the nuances of this “don’t play a criminal” argument because his character is involved with so-called “white collar crime”. Although still involved in illegal activities, I wouldn’t necessarily put it in the same category as the more common stereotypes of young black men – carjacking and drug dealing and characters that are inarticulate, menacing, or perceived as hopeless products of their environment. His music, often characterized as “conscious, backpacker hip hop” is the complete antithesis of such stereotypes and hasn’t received much mainstream commercial success (unfortunately) or attention. Depending on the direction of his acting career in the future, he may end up being an exception to this typecasting rule.
— Erica - Nov 26, 04:52 PM - #I believe Mos Def was acting before he was a rapper. He played Dante on the “Cosby Mysteries” in 1994 alongside Bill Cosby. So he definitely is an exception to the rule.
— Ricardo - Nov 26, 06:02 PM - #He was definitely very funny and articulate in his Italian Job role and as we all know being articulate is somehow not inherently expected of black men. Didn’t someone make a comment not too long ago about being surprised by Obama being “articulate?” as if it is somehow not expected of him because he is a black man.
— Ali - Nov 27, 05:27 PM - #