In defense of hip-hop | Roland Fryer
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What do hip-hop and economics have in common? In this talk, Harvard economist Roland Fryer shares that while hip-hop often gets blamed for controversial lyrics, the genre is uniquely primed to reflect on deeper societal issues. Using the tools of an economist, he analyzed hundreds of thousands of songs— uncovering how the genre can offer a voice to the unheard, and if we're willing to listen, shed light on the complexities of race, class, and opportunity in a way few other mediums can.
Do you remember where you were when you first heard the Sugarhill Gang? Now what you hear is not a test. I'm rapping to the beat. And me, the groove, and my friends, we're going to try to move your feet. Okay, you kind of remember it? Okay, I'm a professor, so here's your quiz. Everybody say hotel, motel. Okay, stop that, stop that. We can't have that kind of fun.
What do hip-hop and economics have in common?
I work at Harvard. I first heard that song, it's like 1985. It was a block party in Daytona Beach, Florida.
How does hip-hop reflect societal issues?
And people were moving in ways I'd never seen before. Now, I'm not talking about my friend Man Man. I'm talking about my grandmother. She was doing stuff I can't unsee. She was like down in here. And I was like, whoa, grandma. That was 40 years ago. And hip-hop has taken over. It is the most popular music genre in the world, particularly among young people. Its effect on music, on language, on clothing, on social media, even to a data nerd like me, is immeasurable. But somehow that's all obvious, right?
What data was analyzed to study hip-hop's impact?
It didn't really dawn on me until a few months ago. I'm a Peloton addict. And I went to New York for the live ride. And I'm in the studio. We're 35 minutes in. I don't know how to simulate. I was thinking about this. How do you simulate the bicycle? Here we go. I was 35 minutes in. I peeped the person next to me. And her handle is rider.2000. and they get us up out of our saddles, 35 minutes in, and on beat, she gets up out of the saddle, she starts screaming and pounding the handlebars, kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder.
Scared the crap out of me. In that moment, I realized two things. Number one, Hip-hop done made it, y'all. There is a middle-aged white woman from Charleston, South Carolina, talking about murdering somebody in public. And number two, according to some of y'all, because of those lyrics, she's likely to murder someone this afternoon. And I'm selfish. I want to know who. Hip-hop is everywhere. I collected data, we collected data, a team of us collected data on every radio station in America. And for every radio station, we know the genre of the song. Now, to collect the data, first, we went and got literally every radio handle. And for every radio handle, we have the broadcast frequency and range from each one of them.
And then we have the genre. And then for some of the radio stations, we actually have the playlists that were on the radio. And for those playlists, of course, we have the songs. We analyzed every lyric that has been played on many radio stations in America. Now, it took a team of us to do this. And with the advances in AI, we made more progress in the last six months than we made in the first 10 years. Now, you can imagine having research assistants sit and listen to a bunch of hip-hop and score it all day long. AI has been much, much more helpful. We've looked at the evolution of the types of hip-hop played on the radio over the last 40 years. The bottom is what I call alternative, or what they call alternative or experimental hip-hop.
Think outcast. It's a small portion, but this is the kind of hip-hop that pushes boundaries. The second is conscious or lyrical hip-hop. Think Kendrick Lamar, who was brilliant enough to win a Pulitzer Prize for his lyrics. That's the next sliver. The big part is mainstream hip-hop, the type that's played on the radio most of the time. Think Jay-Z or, I'm a little older, Run DMC. Now, at the top, that's where the controversy is.
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