Pancho McFarland has earned his status as a Chicano hip-hop head. With a keen ear, he listened, examined and interrogated Chicano rap for 17 years. The result is a multifaceted portrayal of a subgenre that has received scant treatment in academia until now. ‘Chicano’ is a political term that refers to people of Mexican and Mexican-American descent in the United States. ‘Chicano rap’ is then used throughout the book to refer to this musical subgenre produced by Chicanos and Chicanas in Los Angeles and other major Chicano regions in the US, such as San Diego, San Francisco and northern California.
The core of McFarland's argument revolves around the idea that the social, economic, political, racial and cultural environments in which Chicanos/as live can be heard in Chicano-rap lyrics. In other words, rap emerges in a specific context and thus it provides a window through which group realities can be observed and analysed. This argument might appear simple at first sight. Yet the author recognises the complexity of such an approach and acknowledges the diverse variations in Chicano rap. Gangsta and oldschool are two striking examples of contrasting rap styles that transmit distinct messages and values. McFarland looks at two themes – violence and gender – found in Chicano rap during a period he calls the ‘postindustrial barrio’.
This concise work is based on an analysis of more than 470 songs, four years of Internet and chat-room monitoring and a first-hand investigation of Chicano patterns of consumption, mainly films and mass media. Chapters 1 and 2 lay down the social, economic and cultural contexts in which Chicano rap emerged and evolved. More specifically, the author discusses the postindustrial-barrio era in terms of a ‘patriarchal dominance paradigm’, a phrase borrowed from bell hooks that refers to the dominant notion of manhood in the US.
Young Chicanos are bombarded by a popular culture that espouses violence as a critical expression of manhood. This is due in part to a competitively minded and corporately controlled US culture; but the influence does not stop there. Young Chicanos also learn to be violent through a historical culture that is specific to the Mexican oral tradition. The corrido, for example, is a deeply entrenched form of expressive culture in greater Mexican society and, like many folk-ballad traditions, it is steeped in violence. Moreover, Chicanos internalise these influences and rap becomes a means to express their manhood and the violent reality in which they live.
Young Chicanos are further influenced by black American culture, and a mutual identification with rap music no doubt establishes cultural proximity among Chicanos and black rappers and listeners. I presume, too, that similar social and economic backgrounds are yet more shared terrain, but McFarland also discusses the uneasy relationships and the high levels of animosity between these two groups. He maintains that it is a combination of these three influences – the dominant US culture, Mexican oral tradition and black American culture – that shapes young Chicano rappers, who are in large part characterised as misogynist and violent.
Chapter 3 addresses the representation of women in Chicano rap. Following the main argument developed throughout the book – which is that ‘Chicano rappers are products of their environment’ (p. 76) – McFarland gathers evidence that sexism is inherent to dominant society, and consequently to Chicano rap. Typically good women (meaning quiet, dependent and tamed) are represented by the images of the mother, the wife and the sister. In contrast, women as lovers are usually represented as sexual objects or bad in relation to men. Chicanos, on the other hand, are dominant, violent and hypermasculine.
Chapter 4 develops two main forms of sexual agency adopted by Chicana rappers. For example, JV raps about sexual and personal empowerment; she claims agency, subjectivity and power. Ms Sancha, on the other hand, epitomises the gangsta bitch by presenting women through the patriarchal gaze. Even though the author argues that eroticism can be a form of empowerment and that some female rappers such as JV develop alternative ways of representing women and gender relations, they are still, in the end, trapped in a discourse and an ideal governed by patriarchal values. In other words, Chicana rappers do not escape the dominant gender paradigm in North American society. This argument encourages the author to question whether rap truly is a liberating form of art. He suggests that a new system of language and symbol is required to break with established norms and values conveyed in society. Yet he also admits that such a project is difficult, if not impossible, to attain.
The next chapter reinforces this idea in showing that Chicano rap, characterised by a violent discourse, does not contest dominant values. Chicano rappers do not propose any substantial changes; they simply envision a new social order in which they are the ones in power. In other words, they propose a new ethnic empowerment within an already established hierarchical system of power.
Characterised as organic intellectuals by the author, these rappers provide a valuable and alternative critique of globalisation and capitalism. However, they are not necessarily proposing a constructive alternative; rather they articulate an ‘armed-with-words type of response’, mirroring a reaction that they observe in the post-industrial barrio. These organic intellectuals, or ‘leaders of a movement for justice’, express what endemic poverty means for young people who live in dilapidated areas often neglected by government policies. But is this the seedbed for social transformation? The author does not provide an answer.
In the concluding chapter, McFarland explores the alternative messages adopted by Chicana feminists – Xicanistas – and proposes to use their vision as a potential base for a pedagogy of empowerment. There is indeed the potential for combining socially conscious rap with youth culture to create a force for change. In using a form of expression and a language they respect, combined with an alternative vision of gender and violence, Chicano rappers may create a new sense of self that challenges unjust values in society.
The articulation theory, as approached by McFarland, provides a flexible base of analysis by recognising the power that environments have on behaviours and discourses. Yet after a short and too-simplified introduction to the theory of articulation – or the ‘theory of context’, as it is so reduced – in chapter 1, the reader is left with the impression that rappers are abandoned in the hands of Big Brother. Agency is not sufficiently addressed, nor is the role of Chicano rappers in the conscious transmission of cultural patterns with which they identify, patterns that are obviously criticised by the author. Such patterns include masculinity, hypermasculinity and femininity as weakness.
Uneasiness with the use of articulation theory is further evident when McFarland writes that the ubiquity of hypermasculinity and misogyny in Chicano rap ‘mirrors’ what is transmitted in the media. Yet, following this argument, the author argues that Chicano rappers ‘combine’ and ‘rearticulate’ values found in dominant popular culture and patriarchal black and Mexican cultures and traditions. McFarland does not sufficiently explain how this process of re-articulation takes place, how this contributes to the construction of alternative views or how he situates this re-appropriation in relation to his main argument, epitomised by the mirror metaphor recycled throughout the book.
McFarland's view that women and indigenous wisdom are crucial to the development of a pedagogy of empowerment among youths, mainly young Chicano rappers, is something of a cliché; but more troubling is that it positions ‘traditional’ types of values against globalisation and capitalism, a black-and-white dyad in urgent need of being deconstructed in the academy when youth popular cultures are approached. Nevertheless, this work provides a rare and unique window onto Chicano rap, and it further enriches our understanding of how young people are creatively responding to the vicissitudes of the postindustrial barrio.
