USAID & The Rap Game (Part 1)
Check this video out. If you been reading for a minute like I have, I remember back in the day checking books like Behold a Pale Horse, or even the first time I seen Dr. York’s pamphlets, those little yellow booklets sitting in the corner of Jamaica train station in Queens.
This cat was hustlin’ selling them as soon as you came down the escalator side. I remember the flyers the Black Hebrews used to hand out. The 5 Percenters, you name it. The stuff we used to read and politic about before YouTube and online was a thing.
So now these days, nothin’ really surprises me.
I remember when I had a conversation almost 20 years ago with the real Rick Ross about the music industry. Being a true underground head, I was hip way before the Myspace days LOL. Do you remember the infamous note about the prison system and rap going viral?
Before woke was a word. Jeru been done told y’all about Diddy. Way before all these Trap and Drill kids grew up and started saying hip hop, to be correct RAP was bad because all the big name artists they like are either strung out, in prison, or dead.
It’s like this, what you put in is what you get out. What goes up must come down. Chickens come home to roost. Karma’s a bitch. And on and on. It’s like common sense ain’t common no more.
Nuff rambling. About this video, dude put some serious research in..
USAID & The Rap Game (Part 1)
In USAID & The Rap Game (Part 1), former State Department official Mike Benz gets into the connection between government intelligence, foreign policy, soft power and the music industry.
He looks at how major record labels, streaming executives and U.S. foreign policy programs can all cross paths, and he lays out his argument that hip hop and other underground genres have been used as a way to influence people and culture outside the United States.
The video gets into programs connected to the State Department, including the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative and the American Music Mentorship Program (AMMP). Benz argues that these programs are not simply about sending musicians around the world to share music and culture, but can also serve as a form of soft power, using music and culture to influence how people think, organize and respond to political issues.
Then he starts connecting some of the major names in the music business to this bigger picture. Lyor Cohen, global head of music at YouTube, and Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, are among the executives Benz discusses while laying out the connections he sees between the major labels, streaming platforms and government-backed cultural programs.
One part that really caught my attention was Benz’s discussion of what he calls the “Industry Plant” pipeline. He argues that certain international artists can come through programs involving embassies and NGOs, receive mentorship, exposure and distribution, and eventually become part of a much bigger machine for pushing certain social or political messages.
Now, whether you agree with Benz’s conclusions or not, this is where it gets interesting for anybody who came up in underground hip hop. Because we already know music has influence. That part isn’t exactly a secret. Hip hop has moved people, created movements, crossed borders and given people a voice in places where they didn’t have one before.
Benz also gets into soft power versus hard power, pointing to programs like Next Level and OneBeat, along with Mark Katz’s book Build The Beat. He talks about the idea of using music instead of missiles to encourage political reform, dissent or civil society movements in countries such as Bangladesh and Nigeria.
Think about that, music instead of missiles.
That doesn’t mean every artist involved in these programs is a government plant. Benz’s arguments deserve to be looked at for yourself. But if governments understand that music can influence people, build communities and move across borders, why wouldn’t they try to use it?
That’s really what makes this video worth watching. It’s not just about hip hop. It’s about who controls the platforms, who controls the money, who gets the push, where the funding comes from and what happens when a culture that started outside the system becomes big enough for the system to want a piece of it.
By LaMont
