In a recent video, I briefly alluded to something I called felt power – something I discovered in Max Stirner’s work. This is somewhat similar to a kind of delusional confidence or what they nowadays call ‘main character vibes.’ However, the difference here is that it is disconnected from external validation and any kind of idea of positivity or self-improvement.
In 2015 I wrote my bachelor thesis on the history of empowerment and protest or personal vs cultural liberation themes in rap music.
In this essay, I will try to connect Stirner’s felt power to, specifically, West Coast rap music and its correlation with individualistic liberation.
In the philosophical realm, what I mean by felt power is basically a kind of delusion of grandeur that stands in relation to individual agency and self-expression. I attribute this concept to the philosopher Max Stirner, whose work The Ego and Its Own published in 1844 challenges pretty much all common notions of power and authority. He, himself, never called it felt power though. Stirner's philosophy explores individual agency as a way to achieve a state of felt egoistic power, which is basically shielded from the world’s influence through its obsessive scrutiny of the world and its bs.
In the context of rap from its origins in the East to the beginning stages of the West coasts influential reimagining of rap, there is a noticeable dichotomy, which I explored during my studies.
In this context, felt power serves as a lens through which to understand the thematic underpinnings of West Coast rap. This genre has historically emphasized themes of self-empowerment, individual agency, and the assertion of personal identity. In contrast to the protest-oriented themes often associated with early East Coast rap, West Coast artists in the late 80s and 90s frequently articulated narratives of self-determination and personal liberation.
The Concept of Felt Power
Max Stirner's philosophy, as articulated in The Ego and Its Own, presents a radical opposition to traditional notions of power and authority. Central to Stirner's conception is the idea of the ego, or the unique individual self, as the ultimate source of agency and autonomy.
At the heart of Stirner's philosophy lies the concept of der Einzige, translated as "the unique one" or "the individual", but also meaning “the only one.” Der Einzige represents the unbounded and unconstrained self, free from external constraints and societal norms.
In this context felt power emerges as a silent methodological component of his philosophy, which is very much encapsulating by the way he expresses himself. If you would like to know more about that, I will link the video for my literary analysis of Stirner’s very specific linguistic approach down below. This was a conference paper held at the second Max Stirner symposium. And it outlines in more detail how this kind of linguistic approach is achieved.
For now, I will simply summarize the key components of this approach and how it related to what I call felt power.
Felt Power is a concept which serves as an alternative to the traditional notion of the legitimacy of authority. While traditional approaches may rely on external validation or formal consent to legitimize actions or beliefs, "felt power" is an affective experience of authorizing one's own actions or beliefs.
It's a deeply personal and internalized conviction that doesn't rely on external validation or procedural consent. This concept of "felt power" highlights the subjective nature of power dynamics and suggests that individuals can assert their own authority or legitimacy based on their internal convictions rather than external validation.
The way Max Stirner expresses this in his work is by utilizing several key components:
1) Rejection of fixed meanings and interpretations:
Stirner's approach involves mocking strict definitions and interpretations, and thereby refusing to adhere to conventional linguistic norms that impose fixed meanings and categories. He does this by using language as a force of self-expression and authenticity.
2) Emphasis on the ego and self-assertion:
Stirner's philosophy centers on the individual ego and the assertion of one's own desires and interests. Language, within this framework, becomes a tool for self-assertion and individual expression, which aids the individual in rejecting societal expectations and norms. He does this by spending a great deal of energy talking about his own desires and interests.
3) Critique of collectivist language and discursive practices:
Stirner engages in the subversion of collectivist language and discursive practices, by using language in a way that pleases himself rather than conforming to dominant ideological narratives or power structures. He does this by inventing new terms or changing the meaning or definition of terms etc.
4) Resistance to essentialism:
Stirner's linguistic approach rejects not only specific imposed identifications but also the broader concept of legitimacy and identification altogether. This rejection aligns with an anti-essentialist perspective, which emphasizes the fluidity and multiplicity of subjectivity. He does this, for example, by mocking other philosophers, using humor simply to amuse himself or speaking as if in a direct conversation with an imaginary other.
Overall, Stirner's linguistic approach in The Ego and Its Own can be characterized by its focus on individualism, rejection of fixed meanings, and subversion of dominant discursive practices in favor of personal expression and self-assertion.
Felt Power in 90s West Coast Gangsta Rap
Now, let’s talk about rap music.
What is it?
Well…first of all…Rap merges music with language to convey a feeling. Adam Bradley’s analysis of the materiality of the rap ‘vibe’ in the prologue of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, asserts that rap has the potential to invoke feelings of presence and unity:
“Hands reach for the sky. Heads bob to the beat. The crowd is a living thing, animated by the rhythm. It can go on like this for hours.” (Bradley 2009 x)
This highlights rap’s ability to simultaneously merge and focalize style by fusing the use of language and music with lyrical content, working together to convey a momentary feeling, which can differ in functionality, but certainly discusses and portrays concepts of protest and empowerment: Brown University Professor Tricia Rose describes rap’s aesthetic and cultural function in her 1994 essay A Style Nobody Can Deal With: Politics, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop, as being “inscribed in hip hop style, sound, lyrics and thematics”, the function of it being representative of an
“[…] Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression within the cultural imperatives of Black and Caribbean history, identity and community.” (71)
Although rap music had initially positioned itself within a spectrum which Rose, in her 1991 text Fear of a Black Planet: Rap Music and Cultural Politics in the 1990s, calls “apolitical party music with limited social relevance”, it quickly developed into a politically charged platform of expression which is heavily involved in negotiations of cultural and political relevance to this day (267).
Rap can be understood as resistance which translates into internal and external protest of those forces which seek to subjugate:
“Developing a style nobody can deal with – a style that cannot be easily understood or erased, a style that has the reflexivity to create counterdominant narratives against a mobile and shifting enemy – may be one of the most effective ways to fortify communities of resistance and simultaneously reserve the right to communal pleasure.” (Rose 1994 85)
Rose’s statement points out that rap’s foundation is based on the binary relationship of protest and empowerment.
Vernacular, Poetics and Musical Style in Rap Music
Now I will illuminate rap’s vernacular, poetics and lyrical content, as well as their relevant function in relation to the concept of felt power.
Vernacular
Slang is the vernacular of rap. Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois describe rap’s language as “a vivid vocabulary, stylish and often explicit” (Bradey & DuBois xxxv). It has distinct functions: Firstly, slang can be an aesthetic marker for historical movements (Bradley & DuBois xxxvii). Oftentimes, a slang terminology develops out of a culturally relevant discourse representative of a protesting of oppression in a certain timeframe. For instance, the term po-po (Urban Dictionary 2003), explicitly referring to the police department and its officers, can be understood to hold a deeper meaning: Representing a disliking for police officers patrolling Black neighborhoods in the 1990s the term expresses an adversarial view, fueled by the mistreatment of individuals in Black neighborhoods by police officers.
However, slang terminology does not necessarily have to reflect an explicit protest mind state. Exemplary of this would be the term bling-bling, which signifies accessories, used to accentuate appearance and status. However, it is possible to read the slang term bling-bling as an empowerment-tool. This is a slang technique which is common to 90a West coast rap. Often representing stylistic devices marking an over-accentuated self-image, this type of slang terminology speaks to the artists identity as well as their community status. (Bradley et al. 2010 xxxvii)
Secondly, being subject to region-based linguistics, slang can also be a representation of location: For instance, the previously discussed term po-po finds its origins in California. Alluding to police officers who patrolled neighborhoods and wore jackets with the letters ‘P’ and ‘O’, while frequently appearing in twos, the term was adopted by several rappers and came to express a disliking of the frequent mistreatment suffered at the hands of police.
Region-specific slang is also representative of regional identity. For instance, the term def (Urban Dictionary 2003) as an abbreviation, but also expressing a liking of some kind, finds its origins in 1980s New York City and is less frequently used in West coast American slang. Commonly referred to as the original location of Gangsta rap, the West coast developed a very specific vernacular, frequently referred to as hardcore, meaning, provocative and excessively offensive in nature.
Miles White criticizes the neglect of hardcore rap terminology in academic analysis, in his 2011 book From Jim Crow to Jay Z: Race, Rap and the Performance of Masculinity by saying that
“Postwar linguistics and its focus on the theoretical, abstract and, thus, cognitive nature of language has largely ignored non-cognitive side aspects of language such as the ‘objectification of emotional experience’ [1] in which language regenerates its emotional power through artistic expression.”
Further stating that “Black popular music has always employed the vernacular of the disadvantaged and dispossessed” (56), White highlights another function of rap vernacular, specifically slang: To protest external forces by making language region-specific and illegible to outside influences, thereby creating a language within.
Eithne Quinn states, in the first chapter of her 2005 book Ain’t Nuthin but a “G” Thang, that the Black experience, embodied in Gangsta rap and its vernacular captures a critique which dramatizes “how and why, young disenfranchised people fall short in their […] protest strategies” (15). Excessive use of provocative terminology common in West coast rap can therefore also be read as a tool to elicit reactions from adversarial outside influences (White 56).
Conclusively, slang is a tool of representation. A way to mark place, time, and identity. Gangsta rap, and its use of vernacular, specifically, functions as illumination of the contradiction of the Black experience:
“At once embodying and traveling between both responses, Gangsta rap tends to represent false consciousness and at the same time reflect on it.” (15)
In summary, this analysis has isolated three major functions of the use of vernacular in rap, as well as some being particularly prevalent in West coast style rap: Slang can be 1) a tool to mark a historical timeframe and its political climate, which often ties it to a particular time of Black protest, 2) a marker of identity, connected frequently to expressions of empowerment and a kind of inner-city aesthetic, 3) representative of place, in that it creates not only a region-specific slang, but also an inner-city language.
Poetics
Bradley and DuBois assert that “[r]aps are lyric poems” with rhyme patterns being their most prevalent rhetorical marker (Bradley & DuBois xxxi). At times, rap is even amalgamated with aspects of spoken word poetry, regardless of their very different historical backgrounds. Rap originated in 1970s South Bronx while spoken word poetry, also referred to as slam poetry, appeared first as judged competitions in 1980s white, working-class bars. (Bradley & DuBois xxxi- xxxii). Consequently, both forms of creative expression have their own varied aesthetic but have also become fused in “creative cross-pollination” (xxxii).
Rap embodies the creative use of rhetorical devices and mixing styles. Making use of poetic forms such as word-play, rap is closely linked to general poetic expression. However, rap has also invented some of its own forms of rhetoric, such as signifying.
Word-play, specifically metaphor and simile, is used heavily in both rap and poetry. In his 2005 essay Metaphorical Conceptions in Hip Hop Music, Scott Crossly describes early use of metaphor as being a useful tool to express that which is only limitedly conveyable in common speech, aiding in creating a language that is community based and, most of all, allowing the speaker to express a distinct experience via emotionally-charged language (501-502). This phenomenon is also described by Adam Bradley in his Book of Rhymes:
“Rap is finally less about those words whose meanings are obvious and more about those words whose meanings are not readily apparent.” (91)
Simile shares these functions with metaphor, in a more explicit way, which is likely why it is used more frequently in rap and less frequently in poetry (Bradley 94).
Signifying, or implying self via freestyle-battling, is also a common technique utilized in rap poetics, employed frequently in rap and poetry. Improvisation as a skill set is foregrounded in this technique (Bradley 176-177). While signifying is commonly understood as taking place between two parties in a competitive setting, it is also exemplified in the metaphorical battle between the rapper or poet and the words themselves (Bradley 177). However, rap battles are often highly confrontational, even if the addressed party is not physically present. A common theme in rap battling is the signifying of one’s own superiority and the denigration of another, and, thereby, highly antagonistic in nature. (Bradley & DuBois xxxi).
The aesthetic qualities of rap poetics are largely guided by Black identity. Employing a fusion of street language, heavily conflated with a mix of adversarial profanity and poetic word-play, rap projects a complex linguistic field with the potential of “changing meanings and intentions, texture and sound” (Bradley 2009 89).
This is one of the distinct functions of rap poetics: a binary objective which encompasses both protest and empowerment. Adam Bradley quotes New York rapper MC Lyte in his Book of Rhymes:
“The government can’t stop it. The devil can’t stop it. It’s music, it’s art, it’s the voice of the people. […] And it’s helping to change things…it’s definitely uplifting the ghetto and giving the ghetto a chance for its own voice to be heard.” (87)
Bradley asserts that one of the functions of rap poetics is the simultaneous protest and empowerment of Black people, the use of profanity being highly representative of a discontentment with unmet needs and persecution. As for Black poetry and its connection with rap, it is important to note that it was utilized as a form of protest in many counterculture movements such as the Black Arts Movement and Black Panther Party rallies:
“Poetry was, and still is to some degree, viewed as art of the people, for the people, and by the people. In this sense, poetry was viewed as a democratic art form that possessed the ability to empower the artist in an era when the refrain “Power to People!” could be heard at Black Panther Party rallies.” (Coleman 3)
West coast Gangsta rap employs the common rap aesthetic while adding a style which specifies its function as a marker for identity-empowerment and region-based protest, symbolized by its radicalization of poetics.
The Gangsta poetic style is marked by its “rich, dramatic storytelling in the first person” (Quinn 6). As a region-based marker for identity, metaphors such as LA and Compton do more than just remind people of location. It self-proclaims its authenticity and originality as the center of Gangsta rap, and it alludes to a radical rap identity, which is fed up with the mistreatment of Black individuals, and answers to this mistreatment with an individualistic and survivalist attitude (Quinn 6).
Consequently, it could be claimed, that Gangsta rap radicalizes the poetics of rap, to protest and empower Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles. While early east coast rap was highly representative of protest as the main agenda, West coast rap engaged in an empowerment-protest which was heavily founded in “the need and desire for profit and the entrepreneurial basis of pop-music” (Quinn 5).
While New York rap group Public Enemy was highly opposed to ‘selling out’, West coast rappers proclaimed their ability to ‘keep it real’ while exploiting themselves and thereby the mainstream media’s desire to profit from Blacks creativity. This binary relationship of empowerment and protest is exemplified using radically provocative language and explicit thematizations of ‘real life’ and the struggles that come with it, often in the form of self-exaggerated portrayals of the ‘Gangsta lifestyle’. In his essay Off the Gangsta Tip: A Rap Appreciation, or Forgetting about Los Angeles, Tim Brennan describes the aesthetics and function of Gangsta rap poetics as
“[…] demand[ing] […] an attentiveness to the specific scene or sites of its consumption not only in, but of, space where it makes relations between pacified public and newly active private territories dissonant.” (Brennan 672)
Once again, rap’s nature, with a focus on its poetics and relationship to poetry, represents three functions: Protest, empowerment and the binary relation of the two aspects.
Lyrical Content
The lyrical content of rap is closely tied to its genesis as a genre. It evolved out of a need for an alternative identity formation status within society; a reclaiming and re-defining effort to counteract the denigration, denial and misrepresentation of young Black individuals (Rose 1994 78-79). This effort is confronted with various contradictions which it manages to negotiate as inherently tied in its artistic approach:
1) Individualism / Collective Uplifting:
The first differentiation to be made should be between protest and empowerment lyrics, in general. In her introduction to rap music and street consciousness, Cheryl L. Keyes outlines the genesis of rap’s political voice:
“Rap music emerged as a new site from which to protest [a] growing negativity and -at best- apathy toward inner-city youth of color” (Keyes 4).
Influential in this process was 80s East coast DJ Afrika Bambaataa. Previously involved with the South Bronx based Black Spades gang and inspired by a trip to South Africa, Afrika Bambaataa became enamored with the history of the Zulu warriors who fought the British. Afrika Bambaataa became a community organizer, spreading self-awareness and positivity for Black individuals (Bradley & DuBois 15). In this way, he was a community activist, which became particularly apparent when he managed to unite opposing inner-city gangs to form the Universal Zulu Nation. Likewise, Afrika Bambaataa was a protester of political magnitude, even if his lyrics did not reflect it. However, in terms of protest, it was not until the enormous success of Public Enemy, that the topic gained relevant popularity: Perhaps the most politically engaged rap group of the era, Public Enemy made the protesting of the struggles of Black neighborhoods their priority, focusing “largely on public matters of political import” (Bradley & DuBois 248). The storytelling technique highlighting the neglect and disadvantages of Black communities is exemplified in the song Fight the Power (1990):
“Our freedom of speech is freedom of death /We got to fight the powers that be”
(Public Enemy, Fight The Power, 1990)
Protest was the primary focus of East coast rap while the West coast extended and redirected the concept after its rise to fame: The graphic lyrics of Gangsta rap caused a “moral panic among conservatives” which led the way in a new kind of protesting effort (Keyes 4). Exemplary of this is Los Angeles rap collective N.W.A. Their album Straight Outta Compton (1988) designed the archetype of the Gangsta, and moved rap’s strongest voice from the East to the West, with lyrics such as:
“Here’s a little something ‘bout a […] like me / Never shoulda been let out the penitentary / Ice Cube would like to say / that I’m a crazy motherfucker from around the way.”
N.W.A, Straight Outta Compton, 1988
N.W.A, and after its disbandment, members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, emphasized the Gangsta lifestyle as a counterpoint to white supremacy by offering a blueprint for the establishment of an empowered, male Black identity which rejects the social norms dictated by white upper-class America. (Bradley & DuBois 233).
2) Keeping it Real vs Excessive Materialism:
Commercial exploitation as an external force and the temptation of wealth as an internal struggle for empowerment are frequently discussed in West Coast rap. The wide-spread success of rap has led to the “capitalistic courting of [its] massive audience” (Boyd 41).
There is a space in rap’s lyrical content where the political discourse protesting commercialization and expression imploring a sense of empowerment from the reality of financial dependence, collide. [2] This space was met by Gangsta rap with a reclaiming effort of fame:
“Gangsta rap has come to prominence because of its unwillingness to do so” (Boyd 63).
In this way, as a countermovement to commercialization, West coast rappers took over the business (64). Lyrically, the struggle became exemplified in its binary, reflexive stories of ‘not wanting to sell out’ and ‘keeping it real’, which found its merging philosophy in the “rejection of the collective protest strategies and the embrace of a ruthless drive for profit” (Quinn 16).
The reclaiming of profits was often exemplified by lyrics glorifying a glamorous lifestyle. It can be claimed that Gangsta rap utilizes themes of excess as a radical notion, where the acquiring of material possessions is a conquering act.
While N.W.A, and later Dr. Dre and Ice Cube engaged in the glorification of the entrepreneur, it was not common for lyrics to explicitly reflect a protest mind state against the commercial exploitation of rappers. The protest was subtle and internalized. The internal protest and the promotion of self-made success as a rapper were a radical but still implicit form of protest against the white domination of the music industry:
Still got it wrapped like a mummy / Still ain’t trippin, love to see young Blacks get money / took some time out the hood take their moms out the hood / hit my boys off with jobs / No more living hard / BBQs every day, driving fancy cars / still gon’ get mine regardless.
Dr. Dre, Still DRE, 1999
Another rapper who aligned themselves with the West coast after starting out on the East coast is 2Pac who expressed discontentment with the commercialization of rap. Packaged as part of his message of uplift, 2Pac exposed the troubling similarity of fraudulent authenticity in ‘representing’ and ‘fronting’, while unapologetically pointing fingers at upper-class white America for using Black art to turn a profit while continuing to neglect issues such as poverty and unjust imprisonment. In this way, he attempted to point out the contradictions of a racist and opportunistic American society.
“I see no changes, all I see is racist faces
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races […]
I made a G today," but you made it in a sleazy way
Selling crack to the kids
I gotta get paid!", well hey, but that's the way it is”
(2Pac Changes 1998)
Gangsta rap used the image which was imposed on Black individuals and turned it into a profitable market for itself. In this way, rap engaged in a kind of internal protest to counteract the forces which were seeking to exploit Black artists for financial gain. Quinn describes the simultaneous self-commercialization and oppositional mind state to upper-class wealth as “common subversions of authority predicated on a history of discrimination [which] offers a highly commodifiable brand of youth and race rebellion” (23).
3) Systemic Violence / Inner-City Conflicts:
There are two enemies here which are frequently explored as themes in rap music: the external enemy of police brutality and systemic oppression as opposed to region-based inner-city violence as a result of the arming of Black neighborhoods. After Afrika Bambaataa’s activist approach to rap protest, Public Enemy promoted the return of Black radicalism in the form of Black unity to counteract white domination with rap lyrics (Chang 252). Songs such as Fight the Power and 911 is a joke, outlined both the internal inner-city experience and the external forces of institutional racism on Black neighborhoods:
“A no-use number with no-use people
If your life is on the line then you're dead today
Latecomers with the late coming stretcher
That's a body bag in disguise y'all, I'll betcha”
(Public Enemy 911 is a joke 1990)
On the West coast that mind-state continued to reign: The discontentment with the police as a state institution was turned into a militarized ideal for the Gangsta. N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” is an anti-police violence cultural statement:
“Fuck the police coming straight from the underground
A young nigga got it bad cause I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
they have the authority to kill a minority”
(N.W.A Fuck Tha Police 1988)
The public outrage caused by the anti-authoritarian perspectives in N.W.A’s narratives fueled their success. While N.W.A’s fictionalization of protest clearly followed a straight-forward approach, the theme of inner-city violence was fictionalized and glorified in the midst of nihilistic sentiments as well, but only minimally made politically relevant in the rap collective’s lyrics. However, the finger is still pointed outward at the force which caused Black communities to get caught up in inner-city violence in the first place:
“You want me to kill a mutherfucker and it's done in.
Since I'm stereotyped to kill and destruct -
Is one of the main reasons I don't give a fuck.”
(N.W.A 100 Miles and Runnin 1990)
Highlighting, once again, Gangsta rap’s ability to turn fiction into identity-based resistance, the lyrics reflect a protest-empowerment flux which uplifts by means of rebellion. 2Pac engages in this flux as well, while explaining the causes for inner-city violence:
“Bye bye, I was never meant to live
Can't be positive, when the ghetto's where you live
Bye bye, I was never meant to be
Livin' like a thief, runnin' through the streets
Bye bye, and I got no place to go...
Where they find me? 16 on Death Row
Dear mama, these cops don't understand me
I turned to a life of crime, cause I came from a broken family”
(2Pac 16 on Death Row 1997)
2Pac manages to illuminate yet another previously unmentioned hypocrisy of society: While social forces stayed on the sidelines of Gangsta rap’s tendency to glorify images of inner-city violence, the mention of killing police officers sparked outrage. Quinn asserts that
“[t]his provides dramatic evidence of the state’s demobilization of black rebellion, the redirection of black expressive aggression and race-conscious lawlessness away from public figures and police officers onto the marginalized themselves.”
Much of the lyrical content of rap has focused on protest, which even had some social significance, as the 1992 Los Angeles riots were largely fueled by a discontent mind-state illuminated by political and Gangsta rap (Martinez 268). For example, it is largely believed that both the political and non-political form of rap had an influence on the resistance mind-state of Black people in the early 1990s. So…while the externalized protest of East coast hip hop sought to ‘take down the symbolic man by storming the symbolic castle’, Gangsta rap’s internalized protest builds its own symbolic castle in order to free itself from clutches of white power. It engages in the re-claiming and re-definition effort, which implies a familiarity and reorganizing of pre-set societal structures in its own terms and on an individual basis - which, interestingly, adds to cultural liberation by means of expression.
Felt Power and West Coast Gangsta Rap: A Comparative Analysis
So let me sum up…West Coast rap music in its early G
ngsta rap stages employed a kind of egoist reinvention of rap music. It did this by engaging in egoistic linguistics and lyrical methods which can be found in the work of Max Stirner as well.
1. Critique of Collectivist Language by Using Slang and Poetics:
West Coast rap often employs slang terminology as a means of asserting identity and empowerment. Slang terms serve as markers of regional identity and cultural affiliation, allowing artists to express their individuality and connection to their communities. This use of slang can be seen as a form of egoism, as it emphasizes the uniqueness and authenticity of the rapper's identity through an expression of felt power.
Remember: “He does this by inventing new terms or changing the meaning or definition of terms etc.”
2. Rejection of Fixed Meanings and Interpretations in External Narratives:
Many West Coast rap lyrics contain narratives of self-empowerment and overcoming adversity. Rappers often depict themselves as resilient individuals, addressing their opponents as if in a boxing match and who won’t bow down to external categorizations. This focus on self-empowerment reflects an egoistic perspective, emphasizing the agency and autonomy of the individual.
Remember: “He does this by focusing on individual authenticity as a way to eliminate fixed notions.”
3. Rejection of Authority and Conformity:
West Coast rap often expresses a rejection of authority and conformity, advocating for individualism and self-expression. Lyrics may critique societal norms and institutions, emphasizing the importance of staying true to oneself and resisting external pressures. This rejection of authority aligns with egoistic principles, as it prioritizes the autonomy and freedom of the individual.
Remember: “He does this, for example, by mocking other philosophers, using humor simply to amuse himself or speaking as if in a direct conversation with an imaginary other.”
4. Emphasis on Inner Struggles and Triumphs :
West Coast rap lyrics frequently explore inner struggles and triumphs. Rappers reflect on their own experiences of hardship and perseverance, offering insights into the complexities of human emotion and identity. This introspective approach to lyricism reflects an egoistic perspective, as it centers on the individual's internal world and subjective experience.
Remember: “He does this by spending a great deal of energy talking about his own desires and interests.”
So, something that West coast Gangsta rap shows us is that egoistic felt power has the potential to create change. West Coast rap has had a huge influence on youth culture, and its voice remains strong - especially with artists like Kendrick Lamar who masterfully merges all elements of rap culture and its potentials.
So what am I trying to say?
Well…maybe egoistic approaches to liberation aren’t as bad as people make it out to be. Maybe, individual self-liberation isn’t going to end in chaos and destruction…and, to be honest, even if it does - as West coast rap and the brilliant philosopher Frantz Fanon teaches us…
Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the “thing” which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself (Fanon 1963: 36-37).
or in the words of another great philosopher:
“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”
― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew from Concrete