what is really at stake in the struggle for hip hop. At its core the ten-
sions percolating within the movement are a startling recognition
that for all of its pop culture allure and economic success hip hop
has failed to realize what many believe is its greatest calling: the
chance to have a meaningful and enduring eƒect in the lives of ordi-
nary youths.

The impending struggle for hip hop comes at a time when the

movement has never been more commercially successful. And yet, it
also comes at a time when the movement has never been more inter-
nally divided. Both hip hop’s young and old sense that the movement
has reached that all-important crossroad—a moment that beckons
for greater calm, introspection, and vision. Hip hop never asked to
change the world. But in its own noisy and stylish way it has done just
that. Imagine pop music today without the inventions inspired by
hip hop. Imagine the demeanor of youth without the irreverent spirit
of hip hop.

In addition to being a pop culture force, hip hop’s widening

sphere of influence has shouldered it with the burden of being a gen-
uine political force. Gone are the discussions about

whether hip hop

matters; they have been replaced instead by the key issues of who and
what kinds of values will define

how hip hop matters. The struggle

for hip hop is real, and it is being played out across a remarkably rich
and varied terrain—in pop culture, old and new media, colleges and
universities, in prisons, through the conduit of community activism,
in suburbia, among youth, and throughout the political minefields
of race and gender.

In its own bizarre and lamentable way, the beef between Ja and 50,

the call to Farrakhan to calm the unsteady waters in hip hop, and the
commercial impulses that drive the movement to unprecedented
heights while also plunging it toward potentially deadly depths
demonstrate how many of the issues percolating throughout the
world of hip hop—race, politics, history, violence, generational
cleavages and the growing power of corporations in everyday life and
in the lives of young people—are, in the end, bigger than hip hop. It

P R O L O G U E

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