Like hip hop, reggae can produce many black millionaires

DIANE ABBOTT

Sunday, May 01, 2011

PEOPLE of colour have been style leaders in the field of Western popular culture since the first slave transported from Africa composed the first Negro spiritual. But for generations they made no money out of it. At best they had to see their music stolen, without acknowledgement by pop idols like Elvis Presley. At worst they died in poverty, addicted to drugs.

But in the past decade, a completely new breed of black musicians has emerged. Not only have they kept a hold of their music and broken it into the white market largely unsanitised, but they have made themselves rich. The key is that they have enriched themselves rather than merely making money for some white agent, record producer or promoter. And it is American rappers and hip hop stars who have made this crucial break-through.

Hip hop emerged in the late 1970s as a strictly black music phenomenon. It was not invented by some music marketing men. Instead, it came out of two of the grimmest black ghettos in America — Harlem and the South Bronx; both in New York City.

These were outlaw communities associated with abject poverty, crime and violence. So rap and hip hop were seen as outlaw music which mainstream companies initially would not touch. Hip hop was forced to generate an entrepreneurial culture. A music that no one could prettify, it was forced to develop a business model to survive.

For half-a-century other black musical forms had been adopted and championed by the big record labels (with or without the black originators). But hip hop was virtually ignored until 1979, when Rappers Delight became an international hit. Then, in the mid-1980s there was a big step forward when Columbia records gave a distribution deal to Def Jam, a small label based in New York. This label quickly became a huge player in the hip hop world.

The progress that hip hop made was extraordinary. In 1979, there were only two black artistes in the top 10 of the American singles chart. By 2002, in the same week all ten top artistes in the charts were black.

But because they kept control of their music and were so fiercely entrepreneurial, hip hop has created a string of black millionaires. They include: Sean 'Diddy' Combs, who built his fortune through his clothing line Sean John, the Bad Boy record Label, Ciroc vodka, acting, live concerts and TV shows; Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter, who sold his Rocawear clothing label for over US$200 million, signed a deal with Live Nation, has shares in restaurants and the New Jersey Nets basketball team; Andre 'Dr Dre' Young, who helped build the careers of Snoop Dog, Eminem and 50 Cent, expanded with Aftermath record label, Beats headphones and HP laptop computers and Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson who has a clothing line, markets video games and made US$100 million from the sale of shares in Vitamin Water.

We know that Jamaica has produced world-conquering reggae music. Now, all it has to do is adopt the entrepreneurial methods of American hip hop stars, and reggae could produce some Jamaican millionaires to match the financial achievements of the hip hop stars.

Sean 'Diddy' Combs (left) and Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter are among a string of entrepreneurial hip hop artistes who have become millionaires.