Pop Music and the Spatialization of Race in the 1990s
by Mark Anthony Neal | History Now
In September 1990, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air debuted on NBC. The show starred Will Smith, also known as the Fresh Prince, of the rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, portraying a character, “Will Smith,” who relocates from a working-class community in Philadelphia to live with wealthy relatives in Bel Air. The series was loosely based on the life of music industry executive Benny Medina and was executive produced by Quincy Jones. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was significant for several reasons. It anticipated the emergence of recognizable rap stars as mainstream American pop icons; two decades later Smith, O’Shea Jackson (Ice Cube), James Todd Smith (LL Cool J), Dana Owens (Queen Latifah), and Tracy Marrow (Ice-T), to name just a few, are all major stars who have found success in both film and television. The series was also a broad metaphor for demographic shifts that were occurring in various American institutions. Will Smith was a cool, street-wise, mischievous black kid moving into suburban America. Such a reality was rendered comical and even innocuous as Smith’s so-called street edge undercut the stiff morality and pretensions of elite America as represented by Smith’s relatives, the Banks family.
At the time of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s debut, these demographic shifts were depicted in more menacing ways in other sectors of American popular culture. “Gangsta rap,” as epitomized by the lyrics of Ice Cube, was emerging as an expression of anger and violence among black youth. In his first solo album, which came out just a few months before Fresh Prince debuted, Ice Cube rapped: “It’s time to take a trip to the suburbs . . . I think back when I was robbin my own kind | The police didn’t pay it no mind | But when I start robbin the white folks | Now I’m in the pen.”[1]
Ice Cube’s lyrics captured some of the rage later associated with the violence that exploded in Los Angeles in 1992. The acquittal of four LAPD officers for the beating of unarmed motorist Rodney King became ground zero for a national debate about police brutality and racial profiling. Ice Cube’s skill as a lyricist was rooted in his ability to combine both the realist sensibilities of some black art and the metaphorical expressions of a more universal message. The metaphorical aspect of his work was often obscured given the way gangsta rap was tethered to black urban violence, instead of being read as a metaphoric response to the unchecked powers of law enforcement in those communities.
Beyond the realist view of early 1990s rap music, Ice Cube’s lyrics represent another kind of invasion, where black youth culture—this again is where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air resonates—invades the airwaves, strip malls, and bedroom walls of suburban America. For young rap artists of the era, it was a recognition of the commercial possibilities of rap music beyond its traditional listener and consumer demographic. This, of course, was not a new narrative in mainstream commercial appeal; black rhythm-and-blues artists in the 1950s such as Little Richard, Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, and Sam Cooke all experienced great popularity among mainstream audiences. A few, like Charles, were able to sustain that popularity over the full course of their careers. So cognizant was Motown founder Berry Gordy of the crossover possibilities of black artists in the 1960s that he famously described the label’s music as “The Sound of Young America” to make explicit his desire to break down racial boundaries in popular music. Even rap music experienced such moments, notably when the genre’s signature group in the 1980s, Run-DMC, crossed over to young white audiences with a calculated collaboration with the rock group Aerosmith on a remake of the latter’s “Walk This Way” in 1986.
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