Even critical use of rap music is still deeply rooted in the capitalist framework that disrupts artists’ ability to oppose white standards

The critical school’s writing about advanced capitalism and the domination of the culture industries provide the theoretical base that explains hip hop’s operation within the culture industry. Marcuse (1964) presents the culture industry, as termed by Adorno and Horkheimer (1972), as an oppressive and entrenched societal machine. Marcuse (1964) views popular culture entities as creating false needs such as the need to “relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements” (p. 5). He also suggests these needs or values become internalized but ultimately are still the product of the dominant society and its views. For rappers that view themselves as raging against the system, Marcuse would feel they have internalized capitalistic views and the structure of their industry is such that it is a willing arm, a popular culture clone of capitalism. 39 Marcuse theorizes that dominant society and culture accomplishes its goal by preconditioning members of all classes of society to have essentially similar needs, wants and purchasing goals. He supposes that this system is so effective that dissent is reduced to proposing oppositional ideas within the existing system, as opposed to truly challenging the system itself. This is what is occurring with rap music. Even artists attempting to propose somewhat oppositional ideas within the popular culture are functioning in a subsystem whose framework is deeply capitalistic, augmenting and even propelling the larger system of capitalism many of the artists decry. A great many rappers have accepted the values handed down by the elite and espouse fervent consumerism, cutthroat business savvy and traditional patriarchy, but the other rappers are still essentially helping to perpetuate those beliefs. Marcuse’s evaluation of society characterizes the typical citizen as one inundated with the ideals created and perpetuated by society, so that even a person’s impulses are an attempt to seek the path that the culture industry has set out for the person long in advance. Marcuse (1964) quotes fellow critical school theorist Theodor Adorno in providing the observation that “advanced industrial culture is more ideological than its predecessor, inasmuch as today the ideology is in the process of production itself” (p. 11). Marcuse says that “the productive apparatus and the goods and services which it produces “sell” or impose the social system as a whole” (1964:11). The framework of each element of the hip hop subculture, most notably the rap element, is distinctly capitalistic structurally. Marcuse’s argument suggests that rappers operating within the structure of the hip hop subculture function as salespersons for dominant society and the mainstream social system, whether they attempt to present themselves as oppositional to mainstream culture and values or not.