In the 1980s, Pillsbury tried to reach a different audience when it featured a commercial in which a 'ghettoed out' Doughboy wore dark glasses and rhymed about pie crust.\n"It's a pie thing," rapped the high-pitched pastry icon.\nThe audience didn't buy it, and the Doughboy dropped the rapping gig and went back to his trademark giggle. This style of ineffective, hip-hop-influenced commercials reappeared a decade later when M.C. Hammer pointed to a Pepsi and sang, "U Can't Touch This."\nBut despite these early failures, hip-hop's popularity soared as groups like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys reached gold-figure sales in the rap industry. And as the music's crossover appeal became more apparent, corporations continued to blend hip-hop culture into advertisements.\nMurray Forman, author of "The 'Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop," said the turning point when hip-hop culture became a major force in society occurred in the 90s when two separate genres of hip-hop artists emerged -- "gangsta rap" and "mainstream middle rap." Since then, hip-hop's influence has extended into all facets of American culture -- from music and film to clothing lines and alcohol.\n"Once people saw how popular this music was and how diverse the audience was, they couldn't ignore its commercial potential," Forman said.\nThe distinct hip-hop genres gave consumers the choice of gangsta artists like N.W.A. and Public Enemy, who blended violent and sexual verses in their music, or mainstream artists like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, who mostly performed dance beats. Today, because of the success of artists like Eminem, hip-hop's popularity has soared in white suburbia.\nAccording to the Recording Industry Association of America, hip-hop has grown to the second most preferred style of music, constituting almost 14 percent of the market share in 2002. In 2001, 75 percent of hip-hop record buyers were white.\nFernando Orejuela, a lecturer in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology who teaches a class on hip-hop culture, said the purchasing increase from a white audience has been a major factor in hip-hop's influence.\n"(Today's youth) is a generation of former rock 'n' roll kids, and rock 'n' roll is not rebellious enough for this generation. Hip-hop is," Orejuela said. "It's the new music of rebellion for the middle class and the mainstream radio listener."\nIn addition to an increase in a white audience base, Orejuela said that historically black music has consistently attracted the most attention.\n"African-American music in the U.S. has been the popular music in America, starting with jazz and rock 'n' roll and now hip-hop," he said. "It's growing toward a trend of American music being African Ameri-can music."
Out of the Bronx and into commercials\nWhile the increasing influence among white listeners has been an important step in hip-hop's popularity, Forman said the development and emergence of a financially stable hip-hop media allowed marketers with a more viable outlet to pitch their products to a larger and newer audience. Publications like The Source magazine gave major corporations immediate access to hip-hop culture and became an important source of development for corporations like FUBU, Phat Farm and Sean John.\nThe media outlet also served as an important vehicle for the commercialization of hip-hop culture, which continued to influence marketing campaigns despite the rapping Doughboy disaster. \nIn recent years, Forman has noticed a trend among corporations to portray a more realistic and natural representation of hip-hop culture in advertisements. He said Sprite's "Obey Your Thirst" ad campaign is one of the most successful since Run-DMC rapped about "My Adidas" in 1984. Sprite's success stemmed from its efforts to connect its product to urban culture, he said.\n"Urban consumers are much more intelligent than most people want to give them credit for," he said. "Companies can't fake it. They have to tap into their lifestyle; otherwise they'll never reach them. (Sprite) reached a new market by latching onto hip-hop, but they did it in a way that didn't cheapen the culture"\nSimilar to product placement in films, rap artists like Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg continually made references to some of their favorite products in their music early on their careers. Shakur rhymed about Hennessy and Courvoisier, while Snoop couldn't get enough of his Tangueray in "Gin 'n Juice." As a result, sales for the products these artists repeatedly referred to boomed.\nBut rather than signing on as spokespeople for these companies, hip-hop artists recognized the endorsement potential of their music and began to branch out into businesses outside music. Sean "P. Diddy" Combs launched the clothing line Sean John, rap artist Jay-Z is a co-owner of Armadale Vodka, and both purchased their own record labels.
Preserving the elements\nThe commercial success has not arrived without negative consequences as a few hip-hop artists have become sellouts in the eyes of some fans. Still, others see the commercialism as an unavoidable step in gaining more influence.\n"Of course a bite's been taken out (with the increase of hip-hop culture in commercials)," said Aaron Berkowitz, Head of the IU Hip-Hop Congress chapter. "That started whenever (hip-hop) expanded past the bridge and into Manhattan and Queens. But that's the price you pay if you want to be heard and express yourself."\nBut for the hardcore hip-hop fans, Orejuela said the commercialization has not hurt the aesthetic nature of hip-hop.\n"There's always going to be an underground scene," Orejuela said. "There's always emcee battles, and there's always those kids who are not yet famous."\nHip-hop purists attribute four elements as the foundation of the culture -- graffiti art, break dancing, the emcee and the D.J. But in Forman's personal list of elements, he includes the commercial promoters and entrepreneurs as integral components to hip-hop as well. \n"Hip-hop has been commercial from day one, if only on a very low-income level, but it has always been sold," Forman said.\nBerkowitz, however, prefers to keep the art and economics of hip-hop separate.\n"You can't include business as an element," he said. "The elements deal with the artistic expression of the culture."\n-- Contact features editor Colin Kearns at cmkearns@indiana.edu
