Mickey Hess's Argument Analysis

Mickey Hess looks at the use of multiple identities by rap musicians to obscure the conflicting contradictions between authenticity and marketability. Hip hop, having budded from a culture of oppression against African-Americans, grew as a medium of resistance. Hess cites Tricia Rose’s words, stating that hip hop, in the context of resistance, wages an “ideological warfare with institutions and groups that symbolically, ideologically, and materially oppress African Americans” (pp.298). Therefore, the experience of oppression and life in the projects is central to most rappers’ identities as hip hop artists. Hess states that most scholars theorized “the performance of authenticity as necessary to establishing credibility as an artist within hip hop, which values a discourse of lived experience, and has roots in oral traditions of testimony and bearing witness” (pp.297). This contradicts with marketability in a culture growing more and more endeared to pop culture. Therefore, Hess argues that rap artists obscure their identities by forming ‘masks’; split personalities used in the course of performance which enables them to mitigate the conflict between authenticity and marketability. He argues that hip hop’s resistance staged through play, can take the form of a mask itself, as rap artists obscure, confuse, or split their identities to subvert
This is because pop music and pop culture are directly aligned to modern marketability; therefore there is no need to build separate obscure personalities in order to mitigate authenticity and marketability. Such a conflict does not exist. In essence, pop music did not arise from any form of oppression, which means that there is no cultural, or indeed consumer, pressure for authenticity to a foundational occurrence. Therefore Applause, being pop music, cannot be confined to the theory that Hess puts