Analyzation of Race by Russell Potter

COMM 307 Blog Entry for the week of 1/18-1/22

Analyzing Race

White people ruined music--

Everything that was at one time good about music, or a particular genre has been taken by affluent white folks, like myself, and commercialized. In Race by Russell Potter, Potter implies what I have just wrote; Elvis Presley took jazz and blues and “whitened” it with influences from Bing Crosby and Elvis Costello. White record label executives jumped at the increasing sales figures of R&B and commercialized the once mainly improvisational genre. Herein rock n’ roll was formed (for the kids) and through the influence of a black-talking, but actually white, radio DJ the first rock n’ roll concert was held, even though it just made it through the first song of the first act.

The record labels created a fantasy that is was white listeners buying all these albums, and showing up to the concerts because they were the ones with the money to do so. Therefore, the record labels slowly ruined each genre, through the “appropriation, [and] commodification” hip-hop and R&B were driven to an “end [of] innovation” (Potter, Race). Once the records hit the radio it became easier for whites to procure, and more popular, as well. Record labels and artists would accommodate this, while the genres slowly lost their edge and were “relentlessly reproduced until they died” (Race).

However, I tend to look at it slightly differently, while the difference between lyrics can sometimes be quite obvious from the referenced “The Message,” “It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder/How I keep from going under.” Speaking of tough life on the street, a complete opposite of current hip-hop song themes; songs referencing parties, dancing, money, and sex. It’s ironic that upon listening to “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash I hear tones of modern european dance style music in the chorus, dissimilar from the bass lines and blues influence it supposedly was born from. And the very beats that Sasha Frere-Jones argued are currently ruining hip-hop because Jay-Z had strayed too far from the aforementioned roots of hip-hop. I believe the wealth of hip-hop lies in the potential, the whole soundboard that is available to rap artists that possesses any sound one so pleases, whether it be a jazzy bass line and percussion, or european dance beats and a guitar solo etc.. And while Race mostly contends that white music has dissolved all that was once great about hip-hop, jazz, and R&B the other song Potter mentions is “Walk This Way” which is made up of Aerosmith’s collaboration and riff, Aerosmith a white rock group, hailing from black influences, but that’s beside the point, the point being, that two of the most prominent early rap songs feature clearly white influences.

However, while the potential of rap is not being fully reached, white kids seem to like the idea of “gangsta” lifestyle as they are supplying most of their sales and record labels continue to pay the bills for the “gangsta” rappers to supply more uninspired songs about last night’s party and the extracurricular activity that followed in their drunken adventures.