Keep The Masters: A Reflection on the Dominion and Control of Black Art in the New Music Industry

When I was twelve years old, I played my first ever rock and roll show at the Roxy in Overland Park, KS. The Club, sandwiched between a Dunkin Donuts and a Dollar General in one of Overland Park's extensive strip malls, was everything to me in that moment. To me, the fact that a real music club would deign to give my band thirty minutes of stage time during the prime time 2:30 slot on a Sunday afternoon signified a new value in the hobby with which I had fallen in love.

I grew determined to learn the ways of the industry and spend as much time on that stage as I could. A determination so strong that, when a promoter at a different club told me that my band needed to sell 25 tickets at $25 a pop before we could even get on stage, I didn’t question the proposition any more than I had questioned the unseemly and unfamiliar smells embedded into the Roxy’s green room couch, or the whisperings of routine shootings that occurred at the club. I never questioned which artists were on the radio, and why, but rather resolved to figure out the nature of the beast and join it.

This is the lawless nature of the Music Industry: a disembodied machine that consumes dreams, art, and expression for profit under the guise of “the way things are”. A grand and age old battle between youth and its passions, and dejected dreamers seeking to grab profit. Its wars are waged on stage, but also in the musty backroom of a strip mall nightclub, begging to be paid a fair share- or paid at all. Its laws, deals, and contracts, like most, are implanted to legitimize forms of exploitation while protecting against transparency. Simply put, stage time is earned by compliance, power, or the affective connection and ticket buying power of an artist's community.

As I write now, the exploitation of my youth, my naivete is apparent to me, and I have seen its iterations across my work. Venues pay their basic expenses out of ticket prices paid by the Artist’s core fans, before even paying a cent to the Artist (while making hefty cash through back end liquor sales). Multinational conglomerates levy enormous market shares against those same venues to ensure artist reliance, and then charge fans exorbitant ticketing fees while skirting any legal scrutiny. Streaming services may arbitrarily claim $40 million in revenue that otherwise would have gone to art they claim does not fit the standard for compensation.

Indeed, the Music Industry writ large is predicated on the lawless exploitation and commodification of bright eyed Artists by leveraging their art and dreams to create a power imbalance. For most artists, even those with means and access to the law, the nature of control and power in the industry creates a huge incentive to ignore exploitation in hopes of becoming one of the chosen. For those with less access to both, the inconvenient subordination of an artist's status in the industry becomes something much more insidious.

In regards to black art, this lawlessness is manifest in a revival of antebellum south sensibilities. The lawlessness of the music industry empowers an anti-black motive that commodifies the artistic expressions and aesthetics of black folks, while separating the Artist from their art or the spoils thereof. The Music Industry’s voyeuristic relationship with black art and its artists is as old as the industry itself. In his electric 2024 novel Blacksound , scholar (and concert violinist) Matthew Morrison traces the history of the industry from the legacy of blackface minstrelsy and analyzes the way the industry’s modern relationship with the aesthetics and logistics of black art have evolved to reflect similar sentiments. Here, I seek to build on his scholarship to note how the legacy of minstrelsy and exploitative practices shape the modern music industry through black artist’s access (or lack thereof) to ownership of their own aesthetics, artistic identity, and financial production. Despite magnanimous claims of racial progress and equity, the modern music industry is aesthetically and legally founded on the same type of desire, dominion, and disdain that pervaded the post civil war south. Through the industry’s deployment of the law and selective adoption of black aesthetics dependent on said aesthetic’s convenience, the industry continues a longstanding tradition of separating black folks from their art, while simultaneously holding them accountable for the consequences thereof.

The Serviceability of Black Art

The year was 2012 and eager anticipation of a post school Call of Duty Zombies session raced through my head as my Mom drove me from school to our Johnson County home. Eager to find reprieve from the Mcmansions and strip malls that hallmarked our daily route, I turned up the radio- Mix 93.3- Kansas City’s Number One Music Station- a true staple that had lent it’s services to my 6 am alarm for most of that year. They were spinning “Payphone”- a certified carpool banger by Maroon 5, set apart by its legendary feature from rap legend, Wiz Khalifa- except this time, something was different. As Adam Levine rounded the second post chorus, something terrible happened. Wiz’s verse was nowhere to be found, with a four measure bridge of levine hopelessly begging the listener “don't hang up” added in its stead. Wiz’s lush imagery and syncopated flow, once a defining characteristic of the song’s appeal was erased just as the song reached its ultimate success as a top 40 pop hit. At the time, I thought that this erasure was a strange incident, but it just kept happening. Kendrick Lamar’s Bad Blood verse was lost to the radio edit. California Girls dropped Snoop’s verse like it was hot. Jason Derulo’s ode to travel based sexual innuendo quickly replaced it’s 2 Chainz verse with another repetition of it’s trumpet motif. Time and time again, successful black artists are screened from white spaces and audiences when their art does not conform to dominant notions of “what pop audiences want”. In navigating the music industry’s relation to their art, black artists must be constantly aware of how their art may either be co-opted or rejected by dominant narratives and as such inhabit a state of double consciousness.

While the duality and disposability of black art and its aesthetics relation to dominant narratives and culture was surely a novel idea to my middle school experience, it is precisely that relationship that has influenced mainstream audience’s access and relationship with black art for decades. The messaging in the removal of the rap verses listed above is as transparent as the radio stations that root their slogan in “No Rap, No Crap - that black art is disposable when not serviceable. Through these erasures, industry institutions make transparent that black artistry may be welcome in the culture when salacious and delectable, when it fits their need for new art and authenticity, but it may just as quickly be deemed vagrant: a trespass of aesthetics marked with criminality and quickly devalued to preserve the peace of the neighborhood.

Hip Hop on Commercial Radio: Co-option, Theft, and Backlash

The duality of the industry’s relationship to black art is apparent in the history of hip hop’s relationship with pop radio. While it would be reductive to limit my characterization of black art to hip hop, the introduction of MC’s to the pop culture zeitgeist provides a vibrant example of the precise types of commodification, theft, and violence projected onto black art and artists by industry tastemakers and popular music culture as a whole. The introduction of rap music to top 40 radio spurred an industry wide shift to consume and reproduce the salaciousness of the art form in a way that would maximize shareholder value and render it inoffensive for marketing audiences across America. Concurrently, the introduction of rap music to a larger white audience led to a cultural backlash against black aesthetics and the ascription of criminality to hip hop.

In the early 1970’s, radio stations, once standardized and therefore requiring mass appeal, became substantially more specified. With the availability and capacity for more stations, networks specialized and catered to specific audiences, and therefore marketing demographics. These demographics, primarily separated by race and age, became a large part of the mechanic that effectively “segregated sound”, as radio stations assumed an economic motive to exclude music that might be “distasteful” and dissuade the potential audience of a marketing campaign. It was from this financial landscape that the top 40 rose.

Primarily focused on assuaging white families that they were up to date on the most recent happenings in popular music, the perceived meritocracy of the top 40 was based, not on record sales, but on the current offerings that best fit the perceived needs of the viewing audience. By the late 1970’s top 40 radio had zeroed in on its target demographic: white married women. Advertisers found that campaigns were most successful when targeted at the woman of the house because women were typically responsible for the household budget and therefore able to influence decisions that could put money in the pockets of advertisers. Due to the financial motives of advertisers and the popular consensus on what the stakeholder would like to hear, the democratic top 40 radio became heavily focused on creating a space for white women and using that space to sell them things.

Anyone who is familiar with history will note that the journey of black aesthetics and art into traditionally white spaces is not traditionally one marked by the ease and cooperation of those with dominion over said spaces, and hip hop’s emergence to pop radio was no different. Borne out of the unexpected “thousands and thousands” of calls received after a New York station played “rapper’s delight” as a joke The commercial demand for hip hop was undeniable even before the sugar hill hit was even pressed to a full vinyl record. Despite reaching #36 on the Hot 100 chart within days of it’s debut, “Rapper’s Delight” left many programmers anxious for a way to appease the mass desire for hip hop while assuaging the negative perceptions and concerns of their advertisers. The labels, ever the pragmatists, had just the thing.

Rap’s new wave of popularity prompted the industry powers to take a whack at creating “safe rap” for the purposes of commercial radio. Run- D.M.C.’s “Walk This Way” found substantial success through its incorporation of Aerosmith to gain the approval of white audiences. This approach launched the duo’s career in an entirely new market and continued DMC’s next release “Rock Box” featured a version with guitars and one without in order to grant their label wide discretion in marketing campaigns to both white and black audiences. Influenced by DMC’s success, Rick Rubin’s Def Jam records found wild success replicating it with white artists- and thus the Beastie Boys were born. In a complete rip of DMC’s rap-rock style, the Beastie Boys found incredible commercial success, as stations finally had a version of rap that they were comfortable with.

Suddenly, marketer-friendly rap became a hot commodity within the industry, as each label bent over backwards to create a record that embodied the aesthetics of black art and its performance while sanitizing any aspect that might be threatening or nonconforming to the white suburban listener. Black artists were told to keep their stories light and with a good sense of humor if they wanted to sustain radio play. At the behest of such demand, white artists who were wholly out of their depths began to attempt their own raps to tap into the viral demand for hip hop. This embarrassment reached new heights in 1989 when George Michel debuted “Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)” where he talked about his identity as a soul boy and street credibility. The record, in all of its glorious ignorance, is Michael’s call to action for people to quit their jobs and enjoy what they do, and it features a programmed bass line evocative of George Clinton's playing in P Funk. His bastardization of hip hop won the Favorite Male Vocalist award in the soul/R&B categories of the AMA’s demonstrating just how desperate the music industry was in its search for an embodiment of the culture and aesthetics of black art, absent the perceived threat of black performance. The commercial success of this new brand of soul music acted as proof that the industry’s attempt to separate the desirability of black art from its originators could be successful and allow for existing prejudices and standards to remain in place.

Concurrently, black artists and communities suffered heightened scrutiny due to the meteoric rise of hip hop. In 1986 CBS published a special report about the troubles of black families with a sociologist claiming that rap had a negative influence on young folk’s behaviour, leading to larger bogus public debates about the nature of criminality in black culture. The public fear mongering regarding rap’s aesthetics set the stage for NWA’s 1988 release of Straight Outta Compton to be reviled as a “genuine threat to the social order” . New channels, called “Rock 40s” ,spawned with the express purpose of being a top 40 station- without rap. Such stations found extensive success in the midwest and frequently featured slogans disparaging rap. As Queen Latifah put it at an industry panel in 1991, these slogans marked rap as “some form of disease” and signaled to listeners that the channel would allow them to avoid a form of black music.

The story of Hip Hop’s rise and fall effectively traces the way that the music industry responds to any novel black art or artist. After ignoring years of its prevalence in sub cultures and communities, the industry begins to grapple with a new mode of expression, new ideologies, and new musical identities purely to evaluate the profit that might be contained therein. After ascertaining which values might provide mass appeal to an existing audience, executives and labels throw their “support” behind similar versions of the same sound that are curated to service the pre-existing audience and limit challenges to existing beliefs. Typically, this process fundamentally changes the nature and character of the art in order to avoid disturbing the traditional audience- rather than disrupt existing structures, the industry seeks to legitimize existing structures of genre and audience expectations while also profiting off of the artist's expression of communities that have historically been excluded from such stages. At this stage, the art is commodified and reduced to its pure utility without regards to the original intent of the artist.

In fact, the artists never truly has autonomy over their creative work, in its character or in its performance, because the industry will simply move on to a version of their art that is not so troublesome. In Blacksound, Morrison notes that this lack of ownership is codified by the racialized nature of copyright law and the public domain. He states, as is relevant here, that intellectual property law originates from Jim Crow South statutes that focused on a complete written work as the signifier of a completed copyrighted work in order to exclude folks who could not read or write. Thus, copyright law did not include any protections for inventions in genre or performance style. The result of said laws far exceed the american history of literacy as the oral traditions, and performance of black folks were subsumed into the “public domain”, and made available for use- ie: stolen from its original creators.

Copyright law is complicit in many thefts of this nature throughout American Music History. The blues scale, with its american originations in the deep south through work songs, is accredited to Jamey Aebersold - a white saxophonist who merely decided to write it down. Little Richard died poor, despite inventing rock and roll. From syncopation to call and response, the contribution of black Americans to the musical vocabulary of popular music and the theft therof is death and taxes: an inevitability, and a function- not bug- of the larger exploitative system. It follows naturally, therefore, that when labels say they will simply move on from nonconforming artists, the threat behind those words is real.

Morgan Wallen, and “Hick Hop”

While black artists must contend with the commodification and theft of their art by industry executives, they must also be aware of the danger posed through the co-option of their styles from communities that may be antithetical to those form’s purposes. In the wake of Hip Hop’s meteoric rise to popularity, and consistent with the industry’s tendency to promote music from anyone but it’s originators, the historically white commercial genre classification of “pop country” (not to be confused with the legitimate musical classification of country- of which it’s origins are largely from black artists) has adopted hip hop grooves into its musical vocabulary to create resounding hits to the tune of billions of dollars. While imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, the adoption of the aesthetic creations of black artists into a genre from which those artists are historically excluded is undoubtedly a kind of theft. The ramifications of allowing white artists to package black aesthetics for consumption by a crowd that frequently does not engage with black art are concerning especially when considering the nature of those aesthetics's deployment.

Morgan Wallen, for instance, continues to climb both country and hip hop charts with his recent foray into rap features and production styles. The 2021 single, “Broadway Girls” from black artist and renowned rapper Lil Durk featured a verse from Wallen, and peaked at number 14 on the hot 100 . On the track, Wallen assumes the aesthetic sensibilities of contemporary hip hop stars to sing about how attractive the women on Broadway Street are in Nashville. While the face value of a crossover hit between country and hip hop may seem like a unique and convenient method to introduce black culture and aesthetics to rural folk who may not otherwise encounter such cultures, the context imbues the collaboration with a more pernicious intent. Wallen’s collaboration with Durk came on the heels of a national moment that exposed Wallen for casually using racial epithets. This crossover did not exist as an isolated instance of togetherness and unity, but rather the desperate attempt of a racist white artist to avoid accountability for his actions. Through this collaboration, Wallen did not attempt a sincere reconciliation between himself and the community that he hurt, but dons their aesthetics in an insincere claim to togetherness.

While Wallen’s embrace of black art and aesthetics was facetious at best, some country stars have unabashedly co-opted hip hop aesthetics in service of a patently racist agenda. Members of the new wave of country rap, lovingly dubbed “hick hop”, employ historically black performance, art and aesthetic in furtherance of the racist backlash that characterizes the MAGA agenda. White rappers, appealing to small town sensibilities, fly confederate flags and wear shirts that parody NWA slogans with white erasure conspiracy theories. In communities like these, the commodification of black art dispenses with any artists’ claim to ownership over the genre, its history, and its legacy in order to use the format for their own pernicious purposes.

Folk Heroes and Villains: The expectations of Black Artists

In addition to concern over the theft, co-option, and negative perceptions of their art, black artists that are able to retain “ownership” of their work must contend with how mass consumption of their art creates false perceptions and crushing expectations of their artistry. Pop culture is quick to switch up on artists that assert their needs or burnout due to the narratives crafted around them, and being able to contend with the nature of that consumption is essential to navigate the landscape of the industry. While black art and aesthetics may be separated from black artists through the process of commodification and commercialization, black artists may never be separated from the way that the mass consumption of their art contends with their identity. Rather, black artists, in yet another form of additional invisible labor needed to navigate the industry, must constantly contend with the interaction of their identity and their audience in order to keep up their image and attain success.

In some cases, that image may be purely physical. In 2005, R&B and Soul legend D’angelo left virgin records after a horrific car crash and a burgeoning alcohol problem. On its face these were indicators of a man that had made poor choices, but upon interrogation such a moment was the natural and tragic culmination of the intense scrutiny and objectification that D’angelo faced. The singer’s rapidly declining mental state could be explained clearly through the words of his friends and family.

D’angelo’s first breakthrough hit came with the 2000 release of “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” off the critically acclaimed voodoo album, but this hit became known for more than just the jams. In the iconic music video, D’angelo appears to be entirely naked, with the camera tracing his hips and the lines towards his groin while he makes direct eye contact and sings. The video employs these stylistic choices toward a voyeuristic effect that makes the viewer immensely uncomfortable- at least, that was the intent. In effect, the video achieved something entirely different.

Upon its release, the music video generated broad visibility, not for the statement it made on audience desire for false intimacy- rather the general public was in awe of D’angelo’s body. Public reaction to the music seemed to focus more on the nature of D’angelo’s abs rather than his art, and this reaction slingshotted the singer to sex symbol status overnight. The only problem was that he genuinely did not want it. Members of his band note that the RnB star was incredibly reserved and would rather play video games than embark on a crazy night out.

Nonetheless, his newfound status as a sex symbol characterized his art from that point forward. D’angelo’s former trumpet player (and bangin artists in his own right) Roy Hargrove notes that “(they) couldn’t get through one song before women would start to scream for him to take off something”. He continues to note how the comments about D’angelo’s body vastly outnumbered questions about his music. This disparity caused a deteriorating effect on the artist. “He’d get angry and start breaking shit” remembers another former bandmate, “the audience thinking, ‘Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass!’ made him angry.” .

Placed in this context, D’angelo’s fall from grace is unsurprising. The broad consumption of his art completely removed his autonomy in its portrayal. To him, each supple musical movement drowned out by catcalls positioned his work as a thing to consume, rather than a genuine expression of self. In Blacksound, Morrison writes of the audience’s reaction to Master Juba, a black man who appeared in the minstrel troupe in blackface as well. One witness to such performances wrote in awe of Juba’s “ mobility of muscles, flexibility of joins, boundings, slidings and gyrations” . Undoubtedly, the objectification of D’angelo’s art at the hands of white women echoed similar sentiments of ownership, fetishisation and control. While many were surprised at the star’s “fall from grace”, it is not surprising that, when faced with abject control and violation of one’s art and their body’s expression of it, one would feel helpless and suffer as a result.

While the music industry requires substantial invisible labor from black artists to merely survive in such an unseemly landscape, its biggest theft occurs on the bottom line. Through disparate dealings and compensation schemes rooted in the Jim Crow south, the music industry effectively separates artists from the fruits of their labor and forces them into indebted servitude

360 Deals and Peonage

The vast majority of record deals disparately benefit the labels through inadequate access to representation and deal terms rooted in debt and a credited repayment model. Most artists have several revenue flows emanating from their music, with each having a royalty attached to it. Every time that a song is bought, published, performed, or used in conjunction with film or tv, a royalty is due to the artist. Most major label deals occur under 360 deal terms, which entitle the buyer to ownership and control of the full scope of an artist’s works, while allowing the artist to retain a percentage of their royalties after certain conditions are met.

Under a standard record deal, the label fronts the cost of making a record, on the condition that the artist will forfeit all proceeds from the record until such costs have been repaid, at which point the artist will receive a small percentage of the record’s royalties. Typically, the label will deposit a lump sum of cash (“the advance”) directly to the artist’s bank account. Upon receipt, the artist may use the advance at their discretion but generally use it for the cost of producing and touring a record. Even with magnanimous advance sums, the sheer production cost of a record can reduce an artist’s payout below that of a living wage. Generally an artist will have to cover the cost of : session players for their record, mixing and mastering, any additional producer or feature payouts etc. Some cost of production and touring a record may be initially borne by the label, and then later subject to repayment through the artist’s royalties and net profit (“Recoupable Costs”). These costs, added to the initial advance payment, creates the amount that the label will expect to recoup from the artist’s royalties. When all is said and done, the label will, through the artist’s economic output, recover the cost of their artistry as well as perpetual percentages of income that said artistry generates.

In the context of the industry’s long standing mistreatment of black artists, this financial model already has a name: debt peonage. Incorporated across employment in the reconstruction south, peonage is a form of compelled labor that requires a worker to pay off a debt (read: advance). One must not look too far to find how such a system interacts with black artists. In 1937, Jazz musician Chester Jones wrote to his mother from a small jail cell in Ruston, Louisiana describing in full detail the nature of their capture. A nightclub owner, Dewey Helms, in El Dorado, AK, had invited Jones and his brother to work at his bar, and slowly began to advance portions of their pay . First, he bought their car, and then their instruments, and when the brothers tried to quit their work, Helms reminded them of the advance on their pay, which he claimed required them to work continuously with no regard to the fairness of future payment. The men remained working at their debt for two years before they escaped.

Similarly, musicians under standard record deals may tour and promote their records for years before ever seeing a single penny of the income. While Labels “gift” generous advances to artists, they also get crafty with the bottom line, including small line item expenses such as dinners that the label was supposed to pay for, and the cost of upgraded transport that had been sold as a simple, costless, upgrade.

Through shady dealings as detailed above, labels can balloon their recoupable costs and ensure that artists never receive their meager split of royalties as promised under their deal. In this way, label deals map along similarly exploitative practices of debt peonage and create yet another burden to be borne by black artists that seek to traverse the hostile landscape of the music industry.