Some Thoughts On Being White In Hip Hop

Sometimes middle class white people look me dead in the eye and go, “This is the type of Hip Hop I would listen to,” as I play them a song.

I’m never fully sure what they mean by that but I believe I can add words to a feeling they couldn’t. The way I rap is really white and comfortable. The topics I choose represent a familiar pallet of spice they find digestible. 

Basically they are often saying that whatever I bring to the table is wildly different than what they expect from rap normally.

Usually what they are not saying, or even aware they are saying, is that if the music is too hood, they don’t like it.

I don’t think it’s inherently a race thing, but a cultural thing.

They feel the middle class corpo in what I do, the same way a lot of my peers are turned off by it.

It made me realize how delicate the position of being a guest in this culture is, and the responsibility of representing it properly when encountering certain moments. 

When I started rapping I saw this as a tactical advantage

Back in 2010-2012 while I was forming my early musical identity, I did not understand Hip Hop beyond the music I heard.

High key I lived pretty ignorant. I came from the Montreal version of white trash and while I grew up with some diversity, I wasn’t aware of my privilege in life until much later. For a long time I fought the idea that I even had privilege because I grew up on welfare and had to fight so hard to get anywhere in life.

I recognized right away that white, middle class demographics preferred this softer, more judeo-christian values driven music. This was something I understood having gone through one of those brainwashing at church adolescents. 

Pretty much right away I started getting praise from people who liked rock for my lyrics and pronunciation of words. At the same time, I’ve always struggled to resonate with a Hip Hop centric audience. I did a lot of shows where people stared at me blank faced.

It was never like, this shit is trash, but more, why is this white boy white boying here?

In the 2012-2014 performing run I had, once I started at the punk show venue my fan count really started to go up. 

All this led to a very cringeworthy song I wrote about trying to find my place in a culture that didn’t seem to want me.

Still, back then I didn’t understand the systemic evils of life, then I learned. 

Inevitably I discovered systemic prejudice was real

As uncool as this is to admit, I used to be one of those honkeys that believed minorities exaggerated racist claims.

Then I’d go commit a bunch of microaggressions like an asshole on my quest to be funny and deal with low self-esteem. 

One day I came across this thankfully not archived article that told me my last name gave me a definitive advantage in the Quebec job market. I had a few jokey moments where the police let me off without a ticket where my black friends pointed out that would never happen to them. Those moments did not teach me about prejudice as much as data pointing to my last name as being superior in the eyes of old rich Quebecors..

If it was so bloody hard for me, coming from poverty’s social norms, to adapt. Imagine if my last name was not Roy. Literally a lady in the Longueuil Municipal Housing department corrected my pronunciation of my name to my face just last week (she’s wrong, my name is pronounced English-like). 

But the fact is, I did get more job opportunities because of my name.

Without going into details, I’ve witnessed racial profiling in hiring practices. It’s a real ass thing. Ironically, the groups that were originally profiled against, performed better than the favoured groups.

I was left with this feeling that maybe leveraging my whiteness as a differentiator was racist. The implication is my white behaviour is superior to the heathens making other kinds of music. You can’t convince me that most of these middle class white boys rapping about how different they are mean anything else. 

I used to be one, I can smell it a mile away.

Macklemore getting in trouble opened my eyes to how other people felt

I loved The Heist by Macklemore, back when it won the Grammy and the choice made perfect sense to me.

Now I understand how ridiculous that sentiment is. When that happened Macklemore released his text to Kendrick to the Gram for clout. This opened a whole Pandora's box.

It wasn’t lost on me that there was a wrong way to win with Hip Hop. 

I kept performing verses I wrote and I wanted the approval of the veteran rappers so bad. While I could win over strangers and fans, I could never win the support of my community. Given I called a project “Is This Hip-Hop?”, we could all see I had no idea where I belonged.

A lot of the Behind That Suit journey is actually me publicly studying Hip Hop and doing my homework. The early episodes are just white people sounding ignorant. We literally discuss who “Jake” is on the Nas Illmatic review.

Many folks in hoods all over America enjoyed that one.

After years and years of learning, inevitably the ignorance sheds. 

Culture vulture extraordinaire DJ Vlad was out there sparking debates on what a culture vulture was.

My understanding is a vulture takes from the culture and a guest will contribute. 

I try and use what I’ve learned to explain 

Sometimes people confide in me their moral disgust of people who rap about “immoral” topics. 

Usually I can at least give some context to things they’ve never thought about. 

I remember having this epiphany when I covered one of the 38 Spesh albums for a review. 

Since he clipped this segment and shared it to the Gram, I assume he cosigned my interpretation of his intent.

Basically I realized that literacy rates in certain parts of America are really bad. Literacy is defined as being able to read competently enough for work. It does not mean you can apply critical thinking skills while reading.

Up here in Canada, we have wild high literacy rates. We get taught critical thinking in high school. When it comes to reading and understanding we do pretty good.

This is not a shared experience globally.

Sometimes people live a certain lifestyle due to circumstances. Maybe that person isn’t book smart, but is otherwise super intelligent. Maybe if that person can hear a song about a successful entrepreneur navigating dangerous terrain, they can learn from the stories and apply better tactics and strategies.

Literally that’s what The Bible does. 

Anyway, someone told me recently my blend on rap was what they were looking for. The way they phrased it made me feel it was more about me being white, then a good rapper. Or maybe this is all in my head.

Either way I just felt weird and wanted to get it out into the world.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone