Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 75

Rap Music Resisting Resistance

10

71

These subject positions may also be articulated as part of many
different discourses (Laclau and Mouffe 114-22).
Gates parenthesizes the "g” to indicate when the word "signifying" is
the particular African-American term and not the traditional English.
For the word "signification". Gates capitalizes the African-American
tom.
"Whereas signification depends for order and coherence on the
exclusion of unconscious associations which any given word yields at
any given time. Signification luxuriates in the inclusion of the free play
of these associative rhetorical and semantic relations" (Gates 49).
Gates makes clear that signifying is not limited to language when he
notes that signification takes place within jazz improvisation (63-4).
Lead rapper Chuck D publicly apologized for anti-semitic remarks
made by Professor Griff, another member of the group. Public Enemy's
biggest controversy came in May of '89 when group member Professor
Griff was quoted in the Washington Times as making anti-semitic
remarks (see Christgau). The negative publicity which followed this is
addressed in "Welcome to the Terrordome." However, instead of
quelling t he controversy, this song only created more, in particular
with the lyric: "Crucifixion ain't no fiction/ So called chosen frozen/
Apologies made to whoever pleases/ Still they got me like Jesus." This
lyric could be read as anti-semitic even if, as rapper Chuck D claims, it
was not intended to be. On the other hand, the support given to the rap
group Third Bass, whose co-leader is Jewish, by other rap groups
including Public Enemy, opposes the idea that rap music is largely antisemitic. White rap groups are rare and even more rarely receive respect
within the black rap community. For a discussion of Third Bass's
reception within the black community see 'Two Funky White Boys"
(Benjamin, 1990). In general, this type of bigotry is least common to rap,
primarily coming from its indirect association with the Nation of Islam
and Louis Farrai^an.
This last quote refers to the former network commentator Jimmy "the
Greek" who made remarks to the effect that blacks were not capable of
being football coaches, thus the song signifies on football again.
The various messages of the Nation of Islam are complex, I do not
intend to go into them in any detail. For an excellent discussion of
Louis Farrakhan and his popularity among black youth see Benjamin
(1989). One finds the ideals of self-sufficiency that I discuss expressed
in the Nation of Islam's newspaper The Final Call in which is
published a description of the separatist black (capitalist) nation
which is their goal.
See Baker's discussion of the Trueblood episode in The Invisible Man
(172-79).