Some of Rap's Fathers Start Taking Responsibility

Wall Street Journal New York

Derek Phillips was worried. For eight weeks this math teacher had been organizing the first Black Fatherhood Summit, held at Harlem's Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion Church. Yet on this muggy June Saturday, the expected crowd of 400 was not materializing. Then Mr. Phillips was hailed by the moderator for the summit's panel discussion, James Mtume, host of a popular talk show on 98.7 Kiss-FM.

Speaking as someone whose résumé includes playing percussion for Miles Davis and writing songs for Roberta Flack, Mr. Mtume reminded Mr. Phillips that a small audience deserves the same effort as a big one. And, speaking as a veteran community activist, he noted that, in Harlem, noon on Saturday was a bit early for a meeting. Referring to the topic on the agenda, he added, "Plus, this is hard."

Yes, fatherhood is hard. After years of neglect, the problem of "father absence" began to attract attention in the early 1990s, with the founding of national organizations like Promise Keepers and the National Fatherhood Initiative. A growing number of grass-roots African-American groups like Mr. Phillips's Real Dads Network provide moral and practical support. The current Real Dads newsletter contains brief, informative articles on "Improving Your Credit Score," "When She Makes More Money" and "Things to Remember When You Are Stopped [by the police]."

Yet these subjects were not discussed at the summit. Instead, the conversation kept returning to the depiction of black men in rap. Three of the six men on the panel assembled by Mr. Phillips were old hip-hop heads, to use the preferred term, which encompasses the whole urban youth culture that began in the late 1970s. Kurtis Blow was one of the first rappers to have a hit record ("The Breaks") back in 1980. Barry Mayo is vice president and station manager of Kiss FM. And Bill Stephney is the co-founder of Def Jam Records and the group Public Enemy. Their comments about the music they grew up with were sobering.

First, the panelists expressed dismay at the way commercially successful rappers like 50 Cent, the Game, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Nelly depict young black men. In countless song lyrics and videos, young men are either embittered losers despairing on the street corner (or cell block), or extravagant winners disporting themselves in surreal mansions or tropical paradises, amid harems of sexy, available, and highly disposable young women. Some songs and videos are more offensive than others, but all reduce manhood to the pursuit of cash, followed by sex, in a world that requires no responsibility of any kind, least of all that of fatherhood.

Mr. Blow, who now leads a hip-hop ministry, commented: "God created hip-hop, but now Satan has gotten into it." Mr. Mayo admitted that he finds it troubling to work in commercial radio: "It's a conflict, honestly. The music industry is a business. This is the most popular music, but it's a double-edged sword...I would support any parents who would want to tell their kids not to listen -- and I make my money from that."

Mr. Stephney, whose rap pedigree was the most impressive in the room, explained in an interview after the summit that the gangsta style of rap that came out of Los Angeles in the early 1990s was "essentially the crack trade set to rhythm....Young men getting easy cash and blowing it in strip clubs." And he noted how this kind of rap reveals the impact of father absence on young men. Most videos do not attack individual women -- their images of unlimited wealth and sexual power have an impersonal, dreamlike quality. Indeed, 50 Cent's current hit, "Candy Shop," ends with the rapper snapping out of his reverie at a fast-food drive-in where the young woman at the window treats him like any other chump. Most videos do not end as honestly. But all manifest the same obsessive, frustrated desire to achieve what the popular culture holds up as manhood.

As Mr. Stephney and others have noted, the abuse and disrespect of women in gangsta rap is fueled by resentment at the power of women in fatherless families. Feminists are right to criticize this abuse, but because their criticism assumes the existence of male domination somewhere in the background, it misses the bitter reality. One can, of course, blame the white male power structure. But as Mr. Mtume remarked during the summit, "It's too easy to say, 'I can't do it with that white man's foot on my neck.' What particular white man is keeping you from being a father to your children?"

Sometimes a gifted rapper will deal directly with the fatherhood issue. The most powerful example is Tupac Shakur's "Papaz Song" (1994), which contains the lyrics: "A different father every weekend/Before we get to meet him/They break up before the week ends/I'm gettin' sick of all the friendships/As soon as we kick it he done split/And the whole s- ends quick/How can I be a man if there's no role model?"

But Tupac was killed in 1996. And while his poetic, sensitive side is revered by loyal fans, it is the other side of his persona -- the celebrator of "thug life" -- that moves product. Topping the chart today is 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson), a 29-year-old who, while not as skilled as Tupac or Eminem, has just what the market requires: Handsome and physically powerful, he was raised by his grandmother after his crack-dealing mother died when he was eight; he sold crack himself and served time in prison; he has been stabbed and shot; and he struggled against great odds to become a success and would do anything to stay on top. And, of course, he never knew his father.

Mr. Stephney expressed amazement that, unlike every other popular style of African-American music, gangsta rap has lasted almost two decades without changing. The reasons he gave for this are interesting and may hold a glimmer of hope.

First, Mr. Stephney underscored the fact that the market for hard-core rap is predominantly white. How does this tilt explain gangsta rap's persistence? A clue can be found in heavy metal, which preceded rap as the longest-running genre, capturing a reliable segment of the young male audience from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. It, too, was a pure distillation of youthful male fantasies of power, aggression and lust. What the creators of gangsta rap figured out was add blackness to the mix, and you will corner the mass market in a way that no white competitor will be able to touch.

So where is the hope? One bright spot is simply that hard-core rap has knocked out such unmusical predecessors as heavy metal and punk. Having lost the power to shock, perhaps white musicians will find something else to do, like play music. And young African-Americans are less enamored than ever of what Mr. Stephney calls the "ghetto orthodoxy." Many are turning back to styles elbowed aside by hip-hop, such as soul, R&B, even reggae. Rap opened a generation gap within the black community, and revulsion against the caricature that rap has become may be helping to close that gap.

But most hopeful, in the end, are the efforts of people like Derek Phillips, tirelessly building his Real Dads Network one father at a time. By the end of the Black Fatherhood Summit, Mr. Phillips was no longer worried, because, to judge by the discussion and the audience response, his work has touched a very deep nerve and is only getting started.

Ms. Bayles is the author of "Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music."