The honky problem...Or, the unbearable lightness of keeping it real

Writing about hip-hop makes me a little self-conscious.
Let's review my credentials: White? Check. Privileged? Um, does my consciousness of it make it any less distasteful? In any case, check.
My flow is nonexistent, even when drunk. All the attempts I've ever made at graf writing have been pretty pitiful, and I have too much respect for breakdancing to have ever even tried.
If you're keeping score at home, that's three of the four fabled elements of hip-hop I don't have covered. The only one I don't completely strike out on is turntablism, but no one would characterize me as nimble on the ones and twos. What, you mean scratching is supposed to be rhythmic?
OK, so we've established my overwhelming honkiness. Honestly, the emo glasses in the picture above should have given away the fact that Eminem I am not.
But let's complicate the suburban white boy stereotype a bit. Fact: from age 6 to 11, I rode a bus to public school in San Diego's "gritty" inner city. Fact: Most school bus drivers prefer the urban radio station to NPR. Fact: I was exposed to the glories of hip-hop before I could ever have realized that the "Juice" to which Snoop Dogg referred was not, in fact, made from apples.
Of course, as a child of the '90s, it's only natural that hip-hop has been an integral part of my aural environment since day one. It's the music that defined our generation -- namecheck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" all you want, but it's a fact that, in the last decade, rock 'n' roll has had at least two distinct resurrections while hip-hop has remained unrelentingly vital.
So why should it matter that my only claims to street cred are, in order of viability: my best friend from high school who wore a different Wu-Tang Clan shirt every day, my eternal devotion to Juvenile's "Back that Azz Up," and my frankly startling capacity to operate a 40 and a spliff at the same time?
If hip-hop is everywhere, affecting everyone, why do I feel so self-conscious about my love for it?
To sum it up in a sentence: because there's a long and tragic tradition of music originating within the African-American community and then being invaded, colonized and claimed by white artists.
On that, let's go to one of the best rappers of the last decade, Mos Def: "You may dig on the Rolling Stones, but they didn't come up with that shit on they own. Elvis Presley ain't got no soul -- Chuck Berry is rock 'n' roll."
Thanks, Mos.
White folks' historically blithe appropriation of black musical forms means that any conversation about hip-hop -- especially any input on the subject from a white boy like yours truly -- is going to have to deal with the racial politics of popular music.
The topic of race is elided from much of the mainstream discussion of popular music because it's just as potentially uncomfortable as pop is potentially escapist.
And as enlightened and as progressive as we like to imagine ourselves, here at this profoundly diverse urban university in the most racially diverse city in the world, race is still a sketchy subject. Conversations about race relations don't happen as much as they ought to because people are terrified of being perceived as less informed or evolved on the topic than they ought to be.
So when I think about hip-hop, I constantly second-guess myself. For instance: Does the fact that I think most rappers fail to live up to the potential of the most profoundly verbal popular music form ever by fixating on misogynist, homophobic, criminality-glorifying, bling-and-booty-celebrating subject matter just mean that I'm missing the point? Is it racist to suggest that too many rappers seem to have remarkably little to say?
Well, actually, no, it isn't.
One of the most beautiful things about hip-hop is the fact that it functions as the cultural site where the cycle of white appropriation of black art finally ended. White artists who have made it in hip-hop -- Vanilla Ice excluded, as I think it's clear he always should have been -- have had to do so on the form's own terms, and according to the desires of a black marketplace.
To put it simply, one of hip-hop's more dominant paradigms, "keeping it real," can be glossed as "keeping it black." For example: Eminem keeps it real because he's down with Dre, who keeps the beats real hot, and will kill you with words if you cross him in accordance with the old-school battle ethic.
There's certainly no problem with that. The issue only becomes troubling when "keeping it real" begins to be understood as "keeping it gangsta," and the message of commercial hip-hop becomes "black = gangsta."
You know, because Common and The Roots, for all their consciousness and literacy and engagement, just aren't as "real" as Jay-Z (who is, it should be noted, no less a genius for only talking about what a great criminal he used to be). And their beats aren't as bangin', either.
But there's light at the end of the tunnel. When Kanye West can sell 3 million on a Chaka Kahn sample and the lyric "It wasn't about coke and birds, it was more like spoken word," he's keeping it real soulful. When Dizzee Rascal reminds listeners to "stay ghetto if you want, but remember to get out," he's keeping it real, UK-style.
And me? Well lil' lily me can't help but be really happy that hip-hop's idea of reality seems to get broader by the day.