PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

Rigo Andino

In an interview with Raquel Z. Rivera by David Muhammad entitled “Rican-structing History,” Rivera expresses her frustration with the way rap music was received in Puerto Rico. She states: “even though rap music was very popular in the island, it wasn’t being taken seriously” (http://www.allhiphop.com/features/?ID=558). This overall frustration led her to document the youth cultural scene in Puerto Rico and the prejudices that surrounded rap music on the island. According to Rivera, one significant prejudice was connected to the notion that rap music is foreign to the island, which, in turn, led to its unpopularity there. In any case, Rivera sought to quiet the critics by looking at Hip-Hop’s history and realized that New York Ricans were an integral part in the formation of Hip-Hop. Clearly, Puerto Ricans, African Americans and other Afro-Caribbean participants in Hip-Hop would not disagree that Puerto Ricans were very instrumental in the formation of Hip-Hop. However it is very possible that many would probably disagree with turning Puerto Rican participation in Hip-Hop into a “Latinidad” thing. (Latinidad is a cultural expression linked to a heterogenous linguistic community that finds itself demonstrating a presence not simply in “Latin” America, but a range of other realms outside its formal borders.) Nevertheless, Rivera’s interest led her to write this pivotal book. The book clearly illustrates Raquel Z. Rivera’s personal self-valuation within Hip-Hop because she claims it is a fragmented element of Puerto Rican history, which, as she states, “is my history.”

Raquel Z. Rivera’s New York Ricans from the Hip-Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2003, 288 pp.) is a provocative portrayal of the participation of Puerto Ricans in the formation of Hip-Hop. The book starts out by historically implanting Puerto Ricans within Hip-Hop by highlighting their contributions to the historical Afri-Diasporic musical genre that arose in the 1970s during one of the darkest periods of New York City’s ghettos. In addition, the book clearly emphasizes the apparent cultural exchanges made by those who inhabited these notorious, globally renown and economically ignored urban spaces as well as how they were instrumental in the formation of Hip-Hop. However, the author’s book, amazingly, is more interested in supplanting the notion of Latinidad into Hip-Hop than looking at how these spaces provided a vibrant cultural exchange between the numerous Afro-diasporic groups that lived in the structurally decrepit and skeletal edifices that stood as the symbol of “social death” in the 1970s. Furthermore, the lack of importance given to space, how these spaces were racially configured and why they were configured in that fashion, illustrates Rivera’s lack of understanding of how Hip-Hop in fact came to be.

While she constantly makes reference to the shared cultural exchanges between the numerous cultural Afro-Diasporic participants in Hip-Hop, when it comes to the historically inclusive or perceived exclusive nature of Hip-Hop, she relies more on the so-called tensions between those termed “Latinos” and those termed “African Americans.” Apparently, by interrogating that false dichotomy between Black Americans and Puerto Ricans, Rivera wants to argue that Puerto Ricans (i.e., New York Ricans - Latinos and not necessarily Latinos) are a defining element of the historical construction of Hip-Hop, the Black musical genre that flourished and became a global phenomenon. She does this by exploring Hip-Hop’s perceived division of labor. In this case, she rightfully portrays this so-called division as a false notion because every Afro-Diasporic group participated in each of the elements (i.e., break dancing, MCing -and/or rapping, Graffiti, DJ-ing) of Hip Hop. That being said, the book still has several problems concerning the participation of Puerto Ricans in Hip Hop.

Before Raquel Z. Rivera delved into the participation of Puerto Ricans in Hip-Hop, she should have first described both how and why the cultural phenomenon arose. Secondly, she should have discussed, on the one hand, the racial discourse in Puerto Rico itself and/or its historical racial hierarchy; and, on the other hand, New York Ricans’ racial hierarchy and the various racial positionalities of Ricans in New York. Furthermore, notwithstanding the racial and cultural confluence in the Puerto Rican and New York Rican communities, Rivera should have seen how several of these racial conceptions that permeate the way Puerto Ricans self-valorize and are valorized by those outside the culture play a role in how she elaborates on the so-called tension between “Blacks” and “Puerto Ricans” in Hip-Hop. Rivera does this while pushing the envelope when it comes to Latinidad. Another problem extremely evident is her deconstruction of the “Butta Pecan Rican,” under the rubric of the concept of “tropicality.” Last but not least, the main problem in New York Ricans from the Hip-Hop Zone is Rivera’s constant back-and-forth concerning Puerto Ricans’ cultural inclusion or participation in the African Diaspora while constructing a Latinidad that in many cases contradicts that connection.

The history of Hip-Hop is a complex narrative, which has been misrepresented by many scholars who have written on the subject. For one, Hip-Hop is neither entirely “Black American” nor “Latino.” It was always African in its roots and its articulation. Hip-Hop was a quintessential Afri-Diasporic form of expression that had its birth in New York’s most notorious so-called “slums.” It was an anti-dominant cultural expression of the ’70s with its African elements. In the section of the Rivera’s book entitled “IT’S JUST BEGUN: The 1970s and Early 1980,” she begins to unfold a narrative of one of the first cultural exchanges between “Blacks” and “Puerto Ricans” within Hip-Hop. The amazing point she alludes to in this chapter is that gang tensions between “Puerto Rican” gangs and “Black” gangs primarily formulate or structure the tone of the rest of the narrative. However, somehow Rivera plays both sides of the dichotomy she constructs: while claiming that Puerto Ricans are part of the African Diaspora, she is also making an ethnic differentiation between the groups she illustrates as participants in the formation of Hip Hop. Rivera ignores Hip-Hop’s historical construction; in fact, like many so-called Hip-Hop historians, she does not acknowledge the racial and class element within Hip-Hop. This is where Rivera fails to address the dynamics of how Hip-Hop is a musical genre that flourished within spaces that were economically disparaged. These economically disparaged zones in New York City functioned as cheap labor. This cheap labor force (i.e., peoples of African descent) had and still has a racial underpinning. Hence, one can hypothesize why Puerto Ricans were relegated to these racially specific cheap labor zones (via the U.S. “one-drop” rule). Rivera could have made an argument that positioned Puerto Ricans and other Latinos into the spaces that this musical form flourished. Instead, Rivera chose to position Puerto Ricans as the dominant group in the South Bronx, thereby giving them an automatic presence in the formation of Hip Hop.

Here is where Rivera goes wrong. Many of the Puerto Ricans who were creatively involved in the musical genre did not see themselves as being different from the other Afri-diasporic participants in Hip-Hop. Clearly, not every Puerto Rican that lived in the South Bronx or in any of the other cheap labor zones of New York City was involved in Hip Hop, in the same fashion that not every other person of African descent in these cheap labor zones was involved in the formation of Hip-Hop either. Hip-Hop was an expression of counter-culture, an expression of dissonance against the two dominant cultural expression at the time, “Rock and Roll” and “Disco,” and to a lesser extent, Rhythm and Blues (which was functioning, in some senses, as the voice of commodified Black cultural expression at the time). R&B singers like Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Nina Simone and many others sang about the politics and socio-economic realities of Black people in America. Puerto Ricans, on the other hand, had several singers in Salsa (an Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican musical genre) who also sang about the socio-economic realities of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in New York. Apparently, both groups share an element of musical style linked to the call-and-response process embedded in African-derived music. Rivera does do a good job of illustrating how several of the Afri-Diasporic participants in Hip-Hop have song-and-dance elements that are directly linked to Africa.

Like many other Afri-Diasporic musical forms, Hip Hop flourished out of the historical construction of these racialized enclaves. Interestingly enough, these ethnic enclaves sprouted up and out by accident for Rivera. She does not see the connection between space and race because she situates the Puerto Rican connection to Hip-Hop only within its cultural dynamic, without explaining this racial and spatial dynamic. Yet race and space became defining elements of how New York Ricans help structure Hip-Hop. The various positionalities New York Ricans assume have a racial component, within both the U.S. context and its external Puerto Rican island context. Some Puerto Ricans who articulated themselves within “whiteness” articulated two positions in New York. New York Ricans who articulated themselves outside the African Diaspora articulated an assimilationist pattern of trying to integrate themselves into white popular culture. One can therefore see how Rivera’s oral interviews illustrate various opinions by New York Ricans concerning Hip-Hop. Her process of ignoring the racial dynamics in Puerto Rico and, in same fashion, ignoring the racial dynamics among Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland demonstrates how she fails to fully understand how the historical participation of New York Ricans in Hip-Hop occurred. So, as previously mentioned, Rivera’s misunderstanding of the racial and class elements which play a defining role in how New York Ricans participate in Hip-Hop produces a cultural discourse that in one fashion links Puerto Ricans as part of the African Diaspora and in another fashion constructs them as being quintessentially connected to Latinidad.

The question is why is Latinidad integral to her narrative or, rather, why is she constructing a cultural differentiation between Blacks and New York Ricans? Is she claiming that other Afro-Caribbean populations are easily assimilated into Black culture? Or, is she claiming that other Afro-Caribbean cultures are more connected to the African Diaspora than Puerto Ricans? According to Rivera, West Indians and even Black Puerto Ricans are closer to “African Americanness.” This explanation provides a racial link to the African American rather than a cultural link that arose with the confinement of these econo-racially specific spaces in New York City. Rivera constructs as quintessential a Latino(a) Puerto Rican that she self-identifies with herself. For instance, before she goes into a discussion of the “Butta Pecan mami,” she outlines her racial ambiguity as a Puerto Rican woman. Rivera explains how her Black boyfriend’s mother treated her indifferently when they first met; however, after discovering that Rivera was Puerto Rican, when they encountered each other a second time, the mother greeted her with a gracious smile. Apparently, Rivera asked her boyfriend why his mother changed her disposition toward her; he told her that his mother had thought she was white. When the mother found out that Rivera was Puerto Rican, she approvingly and wholeheartedly accepts the relationship. To Rivera’s dismay, she finds out that by virtue of her Puerto Ricanness, others were darkening her. This destroys her pseudo-white girl conception of herself. For this reason, one can see why Rivera, continuously and throughout the book, constructs “New York Rican” as being (racially) different from African Americans (with the exception of black Puerto Ricans, who remain an exception).

Rivera constructs a quintessential Puerto Rican as being a somewhat dark, not quite black, “tropicalized mami” which fits right into her own self-valorization as a Puerto Rican. This is why she is able to claim that Angie Martinez (who, according to her, epitomizes that quintessential Puerto Rican/Butta Pecan mami) is readily accepted into Hip-Hop’s exploitation of the tropicalized mulatta mami, whereas Hurricane G falls out of the Butta Pecan mami construct because of her Blackness. According to Rivera, Hip-Hop’s exploitation of this construct is related to the sexualization and exoticization of a woman who epitomizes hyper-sexuality in Hip-Hop. Meanwhile, Hurricane G is translated as a masculine figure that has no sexual/exotic qualities; and, as a result, this apparent masculinity puts her outside the Butta Pecan mami construct. According to Rivera, Hurricane G.’s Blackness puts her on a different plane when it comes to Latinidad; and Angie Martinez falls right into the perceived essence of a Puerto Rican or New York Ricans. Unfortunately, much to Rivera’s dismay, Hurricane G. is as much Puerto Rican or New York Rican as is Angie Martinez. What Rivera fails to confront, or rather what seems to be her overriding problem, is this construction of a quintessential Puerto Rican or New York Rican that is more or less linked to the African Diaspora but, at the same time, is differentiated from those who are explicitly linked to the African Diaspora historically. Therefore, one can clearly see how Rivera can naturalize a fictive (ahistorical) tension between “Blacks” and “New York Ricans” as a whole. Her articulation of the Butta Pecan Rican illustrates how she refuses to understand that New York Ricans are not so culturally homogenous a community within the United States.

In conclusion, Rivera writes a strong argument that fashions New York Ricans as participants in the early formation of Hip-Hop. However, she contradicts her arguments by setting New York Ricans as members of the African Diaspora and then separating them from the African Diaspora by emphasizing their link to Latinidad. In fact, Rivera sets her argument within a cultural dynamic as opposed to a racialized (and cultural) one. One rapper in particular on the island who debunks most of what Raquel Z. Rivera posits is Tego Calderon. Throughout his raps, Tego Calderon describes himself as a Black man who has much in common with New York Ricans and other peoples of African descent. Lyrics like “Yo soy Zulu como Chaka” (I am a Zulu like Chaka Zulu) and “Tengo orgullo por mi Negruda” (I am proud of my Blackness), not to mention many others, illustrate how Hip-Hop for him is an arena to self valorized his Blackness. In the November 2003 issue of Vibe magazine, Rivera writes an article entitled “Native Tongue,” where she introduces Tego Calderon, his success on the island, and how he will be recording Rap and Reggaeton (i.e., Puerto Rico’s reggae) music for the English market now. She never, ever mentions Tego Calderon’s racial disposition or his socio-political understanding of Black Puerto Ricans on the island and abroad! Several other representations of rappers in the U.S. context would completely debunk Rivera’s introduction of Latinidad into Hip-Hop and its history. For instance, a rapper like AZ of Dominican ancestry would emphatically counter Rivera’s notion of Latinidad in Hip-Hop; and, like Hurricane G, he would probably not fit into Rivera’s typical “Latino” construct. Clearly, Rivera interviewed those persons who she perceives as “quintessentially” Latino, those who fit her self-valorization of herself, those who according to her could not be confused for “Black” or “African American.” And interestingly, many of those so-called “quintessential Latinos” would probably disagree with her taking New York Rican participation in Hip-Hop as a Latinidad thing.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 3, 2004