"As soccer and hip-hop arc 
romanticized, they become a means 

hy which the disenfranchised can rise 
against oppressive power structures 

and find lasting success, a trope that 
is reinforced hy the traditional 'rags-

to-riches' stories that they spawn." 



M I D F I E L D E R S , M C s , A N D M E D I A S C A P E S 

Soccer and Hip-Hop's Global Hope for the Third World 

A L E X B R A D Y 

A S T H E W O R L D B E C O M E S I N C R E A S I N G L Y I N T E R C O N N E C T E D D U E T O T H E C U L T U R A L 

A N D E C O N O M I C T R E N D S T H A T W E H A V E C O L L E C T I V E L Y L A B E L E D " G L O B A L I Z A T I O N , " 

V A R I O U S L O C A L I Z E D C O M M U N I T I E S A N D T H E I R R E S P E C T I V E C U L T U R A L P H E N O M E N A 

H A V E C O L L I D E D W I T H U N P R E C E D E N T E D V I G O R . T H I S P A P E R E X P L O R E S T W O S U C H 

P H E N O M E N A - T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L C O M M U N I T I E S O F S O C C E R A N D O F H I P - H O P — 

A N D D O C U M E N T S T H E R O L E T H A T T H E S E F O R M S P L A Y I N T H E G L O B A L I Z E D W O R L D , 

B O T H I N T H E I R M A R K E T I N G A N D T H R O U G H T H E V A R I O U S W A Y S I N W H I C H D I F F E R E N T 

G R O U P S H A V E I N T E R P R E T E D T H E M . I F T H E Y A R E T O B E U N D E R S T O O D A S A M E A N S B Y 

W H I C H T H E T H I R D W O R L D C A N T R A N S C E N D L O N G S T A N D I N G S O C I A L B O U N D A R I E S , 

C A N W E T R U L Y S A Y T H A T G L O B A L I Z E D M E D I A I S A C C U R A T E L Y R E P R E S E N T I N G T H E S E 

I D E A L S ? D R A W I N G E X T E N S I V E L Y O N A W I D E V A R I E T Y O F S C H O L A R S H I P C O N C E R N I N G 

B O T H O F T H E S E C U L T U R A L F O R M S , T H I S E S S A Y A T T E M P T S T O C O N S I D E R T H I S 

Q U E S T I O N . 



Consider the following scene: Edward Anyamkyegh, an im-
posing Nigerian native, walks the crumbling concrete 
streets of post-communist Lviv, Ukraine, with Franklin 
Foer, a Brazilian-American journalist. After lunch at the 
neighborhood McDonald's, they retire to Anyamkyegh's 
apartment; he boasts " I have satellite and cable," and 
switches on the television, the centerpiece of his otherwise 
drab apartment. American rap videos, often with Cyrillic 
subtitles, blare from the television, in front of which he, his 
wife, and two-year-old daughter fall asleep every night. 
What is a Nigerian doing in this former Soviet backwater of 
Western Ukraine? And what is the significance of his 
prized television? 

Clearly the age of globalization has eroded the cultural 
boundaries of our recent past, and in the lives of people like 
Edward Anyamkyegh, star forward of Karpaty Lviv, a popu-
lar Ukrainian soccer club, the influence of formerly local-
ized phenomena is explicitly evident. Soccer and hip-hop 
are both cultural forms that have proliferated in this new 
era; their mutual popularity speaks to the universal appeal 
of their romanticized image, namely that of marginalized 
peoples transcending social barriers through music and 
sport. Are these phenomena really working towards these 
ends, or have commodification and resurrected tribalisms 
perverted their purpose? The answer is maddeningly com-
plex and demonstrates the drastically varied effects of glob-
alization, both in American and "international" societies, 
and in the respective "First" and "Third" Worlds of each. 

As soccer and hip-hop are romanticized, they become a 
means by which the disenfranchised can rise against op-
pressive power structures and find lasting success, a trope 
that is reinforced by the traditional "rags-to-riches" stories 
that they spawn. In hip-hop, this notion is unavoidable to 
the point that it has become cliche—every rapper has his re-
spective story to tell about how he "came up" amidst the suf-
focating environs of his background, which is almost exclu-
sively depicted as the poverty-stricken, black and Latino 
populated, "ghettos" of America's inner cities.1 Although 
soccer's manifestation of this concept is less overt, it exists 

T H E ROMANTICIZATION O F S O C C E R P R O D U C E S DREAMS OF 

" R A C S - T O - R I C H E S " S T O R I E S 

on both an individual and national level. Shoeless children 
in the slums of Rio de Janeiro kick a dusty ball around with 
hopes of becoming the next Pele or Ronaldinho, and tiny 
nations like Togo shed their collective inferiority complex 
as their native sons compete in the international spotlight 
of the World Cup. This is the established, idealized image 
of soccer and hip-hop, a globalized version of the 
"American Dream," and is thereby the standard by which 
self-proclaimed purists within these communities meas-
ure the "authenticity" of participators. 

Although both of these phenomena reflect the aspirations 
of a neglected Third World, their histories are very differ-
ent, and the enduring effects of this variance are still visible 
in their current forms. The primary difference is one of ori-
gin. Hip-hop is a home-grown, American cultural form 
that was created by the marginalized people it assumedly 
represents, utilizing and expanding upon forms of expres-
sion associated with their enslaved ancestors; soccer, con-
versely, was the game of the imperialist English, and after 
being adopted and indigenized by colonized peoples, it be-
came a means of subversion and a source of pride. Beating 
the colonizers at their own game was a profoundly sym-
bolic achievement. In their book FIFA and the Contest for 
World Football: Who Rules the People's Game?, John Sugden 
and Alan Tomlinson attest to the significance of soccer in 
Africa as a result of this history. Noting that Nelson 
Mandela, upon his release from prison in 1990, addressed 

E L E M E N T S F A L L 07 



supporters at Soccer City, a huge new stadium, they pro-
pose: 

It was not simply the case that this was the biggest venue 

available in the vicinity. Football was and continues to be 

the black people's game, not just in South Africa, but 

throughout the continent. During times when significant 

gatherings of non-whites were either banned or heavily po-

liced, South Africa's football grounds were one of the few 

places where [blacks] could come together to celebrate com-

mon causes. . .While the context may have been radically 

different in earlier periods. . football had played its part in 

the struggle against various forms of colonial oppression.11 

Given this trend, the authors explain North America's 
rather tepid adoption of soccer in the same terms, attribut-
ing it to an initial "ambivalence towards embracing the cul-
tural products of the former colonial master, " i " 

Interestingly, hip-hop as an inherently American art-form 
has been received with little of such ambivalence abroad, 

RAPPER C E E - L O FROM C N A R L S BARKLEY 

even though many consider the United States to be the cul-
tural imperialists of the modern day—conquering not with 
muskets and cannons but with fast-food franchises and ac-
tion films. This welcoming reception has much to do with 
the perception of hip-hop as the voice of the Third World 
within the U.S., a notion that has inspired people in the fur-
thest corners of the globe to employ this form as a means of 
addressing their own localized injustices in the same man-
ner as the reigning superpower's most neglected citizens 
do. A movement that began in an extremely localized set-
ting—the street corners in the South Bronx i n the late 
1970s—is now "a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a 
tool for reworking local identity all over the world." l v As 
globalization enabled the unrestrained flow of these cul-
tural forms across borders, however, it also opened the door 
to the large multinational corporations of global capitalism, 
which saw the potential financial windfall that these 
beloved forces could reap when packaged as products. 

The commodification of hip-hop and soccer is not a secret, 
and both communities have come to terms with the neces-
sity of a commercialized aspect. Rapper Cee-Lo recognizes 
this inevitable reality in his song " I A m Selling Soul," 
which concedes: 

Everything must go—for a small price you could have 

the heart of me 

There is no part of me that can't be calculated into a 

commodity.... 

So don't get mad—everybody's doin' it 

You know you wouldn't mind a commercial with your own 

tennis shoe in it 

Whether you're sellin' a dream, sellin' a scheme, orplayin' 

a role 

Like it or not we're selling soul. . . v 

This admission, though tinged with an air of lament, recog-
nizes the compromise of a globalized cultural phenome-
non: i f it is to be received on a wide scale, it must be as-
sessed and marketed accordingly. Although hip-hop (both 
its artists and their corporate sponsors) continually cele-

M I D F I E L D E R S , MCs , AND M E D I A S C A P E S 



brates its international appeal, there does not seem to be a 
distinct effort by American record labels to deliberately 
"sell" certain artists or songs to different international audi-
ences. Instead, they focus upon what wi l l be marketable in 
the U.S. and let the streams of global capitalism and cul-
tural imperialism work for them, carrying their selections 
abroad.v l This is Benjamin Barber's "McWorld" in action, 
a place where corporations' customers "are not citizens of 
a particular nation or members of a parochial clan: they be-
long to the universal tribe of consumers defined by needs 
and wants that are ubiquitous...A consumer is a consumer 
is a consumer. " V 1 1 When Edward Anyamkyegh watches 
American rap videos on his satellite television, he is con-
suming them as cultural product in^the same way he con-
sumes his lunch at McDonald's. He is filling a need—not 
to mention flaunting a Westernized status symbol—and 
the powerful corporations of the First World are more than 
happy to supply him. 

The marketing of international soccer, largely achieved 
through The Event Agency Marketing (TEAM) consulting 
group, was directed in a similar "hands-off" fashion: TEAM 
recognized the enormity of the potential audience for 
events such as the Champions League Cup—European 
soccer's equivalent of the Superbowl—and merely needed 
to streamline the broadcast to achieve maximum viewer-
ship. I f this widespread interest was properly harnessed, 
the advertisers would approach them on their o w n . v m Sure 
enough, they did—in droves. The infiltration of major 
sponsors—most notably Coca-Cola—into FIFA before the 
globalized age (1974) actually worked i n the favor of mar-
ginalized soccer communities in Africa and Asia. 
"Developmental initiatives [that] would not have been pos-

sible without FIFA's Coca-Cola monies" funded various 
competitions that would put players from these places "in 
good stead on the larger world stages of the World Cup and 
Olympic Games."1X 

Corporate reinvention in the age of globalization, however, 
is a double-edged sword. Some of the same local interests 
that were furthered as a result of FIFA's initial commodifi-
cations in decades past are today supposedly being stifled 
by similar reforms. In Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains 
the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, the author 
details the way in which "modernizing" renovations made 
to the storied English club Chelsea "came at a cost. The 
new clientele eroded the old, boisterous working class au-
dience." He summarizes one fan's lament as such: "multi-
national capitalism strips local institutions of their local-
ness; it homogenizes, destroys traditions, and deprives 
indigenous proletariats and peasants of the things they love 
most."x Foer's sympathy is limited, however. He notes that 
since the changes, attending a match has become an infi-
nitely safer and more pleasant experience and suggests: 

To be sorrowful about this old culture [characterized by 

rampant hooliganism] requires grossly sentimentalizing 

the traditions and atmosphere that have passed. Indeed, 

this is an important characteristic of the globalization de-

bate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous, 

even when they deserve to be left in the past.xl 

In this way, soccer's commodification is a largely passive 
force, but when intrusive, tends to act i n the mutual inter-
ests of the owners and fans. 

.. multinational capitalism strips local institutions of 
their localness; it homogenizes, destroys traditions, and 

deprives indigenous proletariats and peasants of 
the things they love most." 

E L E M E N T S F A L L 07 



"...it is through [hip-hop and soccer's] respective 'strips of 
reality that these global forces can be adopted, to varying 

degrees, by the localities of foreign' places." 
Soccer and hip-hop were not created with the intent of fi-
nancial gain and their dedicated fan bases understand and 
respect them as such. Modern-day capitalists who seek eco-
nomic gain through the marketing of these forces are, 
therefore, careful not to alter this formula significantly; 
they merely wish to expose it in a favorable manner to a wil l-
ing consumer base. This strategy is visible in both TEAM 'S 
focus upon appropriating the largest possible broadcast au-
dience for important games and U.S. record companies' 
tendency simply to transmit popular American hip-hop to 
the rest of the world. In the marketing of both soccer and 
hip-hop, it seems that corporate sponsors have identified 
the distinct universal appeal that they so emphatically elicit 
and, subsequently, have not substantially manipulated this 
formula. 

I f these are the established practices of commodification, 
and the final product still retains some of the authenticity 
of the "true form" of these forces, why is it such a hotly de-
bated issue? What harm does it pose? The answer is more 
complex than the mere compromise of artistic or athletic 
integrity that many derisively term "selling out." In allow-
ing these phenomena to effectively "sell themselves," cor-
porations do not actively corrupt their ideals, but by pursu-
ing a strategy based on extensive (and consciously selective) 
media exposure, they neglect responsibility for the poten-
tially damaging and divisive effects of the images they dis-
seminate. This is the real threat that global capitalism 
poses to the idealized forms of soccer and hip-hop: misin-
terpretation. 

A fundamental way to understand the commodification of 
these forms and its ramifications is to frame the exchange 
of various cultural ideals and images in terms of Arjun 

Appadurai's idea of "mediascapes." This concept is a valu-
able model through which the adoption and consumption 
of soccer and hip-hop into global communities can be un-
derstood. In his essay "Modernity at Large: Cultural 
Dimensions of Globalization," Appadurai presents the idea 
of "a transnational construction of imaginary 
landscapes"™ as a way to understand the way in which 
modern social realities occur in the globalized era. 
"Mediascapes" are described as follows: 

Mediascapes, whether produced by private or state inter-

ests, tend to he image-centered, narrative-based accounts of 

strips of reality, and what they offer to those who 

experience and transform them is a series of elements 

(such as characters, plots, and textual forms) out of which 

scripts can be formed of imagined lives, their own as well 

as those of others living in other places.xin 

The airwaves of popular media—radio, television, and 
more recently the Internet—are constantly abuzz in today's 
world and have ushered in a digital age that Thomas 
Freidman terms "the democratization of technology." This 
phenomenon is defined by Freidman as the way in which 
"the potential for wealth creation becomes geographically 
dispersed, giving all kinds of previously disconnected peo-
ple the chance to access and apply knowledge." x i v Hip-hop 
and soccer as cultural products are fundamentally depend-
ent upon the ceaseless communication of mediascapes to 
be viable, and it is through their respective "strips of reality" 
that these global forces can be adopted, to varying degrees, 
by the localities of "foreign" places. 

The case of Negu Gorriak, a musical group of Basque na-
tionalists who have modeled themselves on politically 

M I D F I E L D E R S , MCs , AND M E D I A S C A P E S 



charged hip-hop icons like Public Enemy, is a prime exam-
ple of the way in which an explicitly African American art-
form has become a relevant means of addressing similar is-
sues of marginalization and injustice i n very different 
cultures. Jacqueline Urla describes the band's discovery of 
this music and the inherent value they collectively saw in it, 
asserting that, " In militant rap and its denouncement of 
North American race relations, these young Basque radi-
cals found a new and potent language of protest."xv Negu 
Gorriak's insistence on using only the Basque language in 
its music is a means of 
reclaiming their her-
itage and voice, an ef-
fort that they identified 
with certain black na-
tionalist efforts i n the 
United States. In trib-
ute to this perceived 
mutual struggle of cul-
tural reclamation, they 
modify James Brown's 
famous chorus in their 
anthem "Esan Ozeki," 
declaring (in their tradi-
tional tongue), "Say it 
loud: I 'm Basque and 
I 'm proud!" 

Although members of 
Negu Gorriak address 
their experience by mir-
roring it with African 
American history, they 

have conspicuously retained their Basque identity. Urla 
points out that they "are not pretending they are black. Nor 
are they saying, Our struggles are identical." Rather, their 
local subversion is achieved through a "shared identity of 
passions" with American hip-hop, crafting a "strategic de-
ployment of signifiers that affords youth a window into 
their own situation and what it shares with that of racialized 
minorities."X V 1 The songs and videos of the "militant" 

TWO H I P - H O P INSP IRED H O P E F U L S IN T H E AC Ej UN LE C 

N IGERIA E M B O D Y T H E MUSIC 'S UNIVERSALITY 

strain of political hip-hop that blossomed in the late 1980s 
and early 1990s were transmitted to the founders of Negu 
Gorriak as a distinct cultural image, and in applying it to 
their own causes in their own language (while simultane-
ously acknowledging its specific origins), they can be said 
to have indigenized hip-hop wholly as a relevant part of 
their culture—or as it may be, counter-culture. Negu 
Gorriak's adoption of hip-hop culture to their own localized 
issues is a testament to the ability of mediascapes to display 
cultural forms authentically to the point that these forms 

can be absorbed in their 
"true form" and 
amended accordingly. 
In this way, hip-hop as a 
globalized proponent of 
Third World defiance is 
alive and well; when it 
is understood in its 
proper context, it can be 
used effectively as a vo-
calizing social tool. 

Hip-hop's universality, 
however, has notable 
limits. The images pro-
liferated by the ever-in-
creasing traffic of global 
mediascapes is subjec-
tive at best—suscepti-
ble to the misinterpre-
tations inherent in 
cultural divides. In 
her essay "Fetishized 

Blackness: Hip Hop and Racial Desire i n Contemporary 
Japan," Nina Cornyetz explores the way in which commod-
ified mediascapes have been received in a nation notorious 
for its tendency to adopt Western, and especially American, 
fads voraciously. Some Japanese youths' response to the 
idealized hip-hop image stands in stark contrast to that of 
groups like Negu Gorriak. Instead of indigenization based 
on the recognition of a shared identity, these youths affili-

E L E M E N T S F A L L 07 



ate themselves with the hip-hop images presented to them 
by rendering them as "an African American symbolic pres-
ence symbolized by fetishizing black skin and 
hairstyles."XV11 Practices such as the darkening of the face 
with make-up, using particular slang, and mimicking hip-
hop clothing fashion are all means by which this subset of 
the Japanese hip-hop community identifies its affiliation 
with this art-form, and in doing so, displays a fundamental 
ignorance of its true tenets. 

Cornyetz stresses that the comparisons to the infamous 
"blackface" tradition in the history of American entertain-
ment are unfounded; she claims that these youth "seek to 
mask the Japanese self with a realistic black visage,"™ 1 1 

rather than caricaturize or parody African Americans. 
Although they intend to display an admiration and affinity 
for hip-hop culture by these practices, their fascination 
seems to stem from prevailing and ultimately damaging 
stereotypes, namely the conception that "hip hop style is di-
rectly identified with phallic empowerment for both men 
and women, a consequence of Japanese racial attitudes to-
ward American blacks."X1X It is not surprising that hip-hop 
has not been indigenized in Japan, a society well-known for 
its extremely homogenous and relatively wealthy popula-
tion. This is a place in which the conditions that foster "au-
thentic" hip-hop—namely, social injustice perpetuated by 
racial and class disparity—simply do not exist to a signifi-
cant extent. The Japanese do not see themselves in the im-
ages that the corporate-driven mediascapes deliver to them, 
and hence consume this product as utterly foreign. 
Although their disturbing, "fetishized" notions of black-
ness and the sexual stereotypes affixed to this idea are not 
intentionally malicious, they do, i n effect, work against the 
social equalities advocated by "true" hip-hop by reinforcing 
potentially damaging stereotypes.xx 

Although the Japanese failure to indigenize hip-hop cul-
ture certainly has much to do with their demographics and 
the racial taboos so intertwined with their traditional cul-
ture, the deliberate "exoticizing" of commodified American 
exports like hip-hop imposed by corporate marketing 

schemes must also be accounted for as a partial factor. Hip-
hop originated under conditions and among people from 
which a vast majority of its audience are utterly alienated, 
and marketing has capitalized upon this lack of familiarity 
as a sales tactic—"selling" various artists via an emphasis of 
their differences, both racial and cultural. Ultimately, it has 
proven successful. The "exotic" appeal of rappers—impos-
ing physical presences, colorful and sometimes indeci-
pherable vernacular, and flamboyant fashion sense—is es-
pecially pronounced outside of the U.S., where this image 
can ultimately result in the sort of culturally-confused igno-
rance seen among some Japanese hip-hop communities 
(and in some of the hateful reactions this same music and 
style have provoked in White America). 

This same marketing tactic is visible in the mediascapes 
that bring international soccer to an American audience, 
and that audience's failure to indigenize this sport is just as 
evident as the failure to synthesize an authentic strain of 
Japanese hip-hop. Unversed in the various traditions 
within the sport, and lacking a significant national history 
of it (Sugden and Tomlinson's idea of the cultural rejection 
of the colonizer's sport applies here), many Americans can 
find the chaotic world of soccer to be an utterly bizarre spec-
tacle: wacky celebrations, raucous singing i n the stands, the 
general grandiose pageantry of the game and its fans, and 
the fervent hooliganism that this zeal sometimes prompts. 
This inherent "foreignness" causes those Americans who 
are willing to consume soccer at all to do so on a superficial 
level, "like a fine slab of imported goat cheese;"™ that is, ap-
preciated in an exoticized sense, but as an entirely foreign 
phenomenon that is kept at a comfortable distance. 

The final chapter of Foer's book, entitled "How Soccer 
Explains the American Culture Wars," portrays participa-
tion and support of the sport as another issue through 
which "the split between 'red and blue America'"™ 1 is 
maintained. He elaborates upon this idea in the scope of 
the broader world of soccer in its romanticized form— 
Sugden and Tomlinson's conception of "the people's 
game"—identifying: 

M I D F I E L D E R S , MCs, AND M E D I A S C A P E S 



. . .a more fundamental difference between American 

youth soccer and the game as practiced in the rest of the 

world. In every other part of the world, soccer's sociology 

varies little: it is the province of the working class...The 

United States...inverts the class structure of the game. 

Here aside from Latino immigrants, the professional 

classes follow the game most avidly and the working class 

couldn't give a toss about it. " x x i i i 

Americans are not merely divided along the cultural lines 
between supporters and non-supporters; there is also a very 
vocal faction of non-supporters that, as Foer documents, 
"actively disdains the game, even campaigns against it ." 
This virulent strain of anti-soccer sentiment is seen in fig-
ures such as former conservative congressman Jack 
Kemp—a former star Buffalo Bills quarterback— and his 
public denouncements, such as the 1986 request to the 
House of Representatives that "a distinction should be 
made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soc-
cer is a European socialist [sport] . , , x x i v Such extreme con-
tempt for the supposed "intrusion" of a foreign cultural 
form can be read as a verification of a prevailing sense of ex-
ception and cultural anxiety in American society; as the ad-
ministrators of cultural imperialism, we lack the ability to 
indigenize externally-imposed cultural forms truly. 

In the globalized dichotomy evident between the U.S. and 
the rest of the world's respective capacities and willingness 
to adopt and indigenize cultural forms native to other 
places, a partial affirmation of Barber's concept of cultural 
imperialism can be seen through the "McWorld" phenom-
enon. Many parts of the world are indeed becoming stan-
dardized and Americanized by the powerful winds of 
global capitalism, but the mediascapes that market their 
commodified images are not necessarily working exclu-
sively against local interests. As examples of successfully 
indigenized hip-hop groups such as that of Negu Gorriak 
show, American cultural exports can, in fact, work in favor 
of the localized cultures and interests that Freidman collec-
tively terms the "olive tree." The assumed direction in 
which cultural imperialism flows—from the U.S. to the 

rest of the world—is also challenged by these forces. 
Although this unilateral American exportation does seem 
to be the case with hip-hop—Mitchell concedes that its 
"flow...continues to proceed hegemonically, from the USA 
to the rest of the world, with little or no flow in the opposite 
direction' , x x v—the American adoption of soccer (by a cer-
tain class) as a foreign product demonstrates that corpo-
rate-driven cultural imperialism, though certainly more in-
clined toward Americanization, does indeed work both 
ways. 

The same mediascapes that disseminate the romanticized 
images of soccer and hip-hop sometimes display a much 
darker side of these cultural forms, namely perversions of 
their respective ideals by the reemergence of traditional ha-
tred and tribalisms played out through these phenomena. 
American mainstream hip-hop is certainly no stranger to 
violence, as sometimes its depiction of the depraved life of 
the marginalized is understood as an advocation and cele-
bration of such a violent lifestyle. The responsibility of the 
rapper for a certain extent of this tribalistic bloodshed is un-
deniable, but it also speaks to the often tragic consequences 
of misinterpretation. Tupac Shakur, himself a victim of the 
violence he so often depicted, explains his lyrics' actual in-
tent as follows in an interview featured in the documentary 
Tupac: Resurrection, 

ANTI -RIOT P O L I C E LINE T H E F IELD AT A C H A M P I O N S H I P 

FOOTBALL MATCH IN FRANCE 

E L E M E N T S F A L L 07 



It's like you've got the Vietnam War, right? And just 

because the reporters show us pictures at home of the 

Vietnam War, that's what made the Vietnam War end 

when it did, or the shit probably would have lasted longer 

... .But because we saw the horror, that's what made us 

stop the Vietnam War. I thought, "That's what I'll do as 

an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the graphic details 

of what I see and my community, and hopefully they'll 

stop it—quit. 

Misunderstanding of hip-hop's true objective continues, 
however, and is not confined to American borders. Even 
Negu Gorriak, despite their evident zeal for their cause, are 
unabashed separatists who share an ideology and sympa-
thize with militant Basque terrorist groups such as ETA, 
who until a supposed "ceasefire" enacted this year, rou-
tinely carried out assassinations and car bombings. In this 
way, the usually metaphorical militancy of hip-hop's im-
agery can be brought to fruition in a literal sense, and this 
art-form can serve not only to organize defiance but to res-
urrect tribalisms. 

One does not have to dig very deep to witness the same res-
urrection of tribalisms in international soccer; the lunacy 
and hateful implications of hooliganism are all too familiar 
to both U.S. and foreign audiences. Anti-Semitism, 
racism, and any and all subsets of ethnic and religious ten-
sions are continually visible in the actions of hooligans, 
considered by some to be the sport's biggest fans and advo-
cators. Perhaps the most memorable and chilling story of 
tribalisms absorbed by soccer rivalries is that of Red Star 
Belgrade, whose fan clubs were organized under Zeljko 
Raznatovic—known widely as Arkan—into the Serbian 
paramilitary forces that slaughtered thousands of Croats 
and Bosnians in a genocidal attempt at "ethnic cleansing" 
throughout the 1990s. Many times, tribalized hatreds are 
the means by which such intense rivalries and their con-
stituent fan bases are maintained, as can be seen in the case 
of the storied Rangers/Celtics rivalry i n Scotland, where, 
Foer explains, "the clubs stoke ethnic hatred [between 
Protestant Rangers fans and Catholic Celtics fans], or make 

only periodic attempts to discourage it, because they 
know ethnic hatred makes good business sense.' , x x v l The 
"hands-off" corporate approach, therefore, is not always 
taken in recognition of the inherent appeal of these cultural 
forms, but also as a way of ensuring continued tension— 
and thereby sales. In the same way that soccer and hip-hop 
can reflect the beauty of the world's underclass struggle for 
social equality, they can also be a window to the more dam-
aging and tragic elements of these communities. In the 
new tribalisms that these forces have resurrected we see an 
inevitable consequence of their mass proliferation and an-
other means by which the "authentic" achievement of their 
social aims can be suppressed. 

How exactly are we to understand these cultural forms? 
What is the reality that exists between the extremities by 
which soccer and hip-hop can be construed simultaneously 
as a means for the Third World to transcend social barriers 
and a modern-day forum through which ancient hatreds 
are perpetuated? Ultimately, the answer seems to involve 
the various manifestations of the "First" and "Third" 
Worlds that have surfaced. In the age of globalization, 
forces like soccer and hip-hop have enabled people to mo-
bilize between social classes, but the same mediascapes 
that have made this proliferation possible have padded the 
pockets of the First World's global capitalists, ensuring that 
the power structures defied through these forms remain 
firmly in place. This is the compromise and paradox of con-
temporary globalization. The interests of localized places 
and marginalized peoples can be furthered by the accessi-
bility of cultural forms and ideas that may benefit them, but 
the providers of this accessibility are working toward con-
trary ends; consequently, these movements are inherently 
crippled by the financial potential of their own dissemina-
tions. The "olive tree" of the Third World has found a way 
to survive amongst cultural imperialism and American ex-
ceptionalism, but unless its mediascapes are appropriated 
by the people they represent, the romanticized dream of 
soccer and hip-hop wi l l remain exactly that: a dream. 

M I D F I E L D E R S , MCs, AND M E D I A S C A P E S 



E N D N O T E S 
i . This established cliche is being increasingly challenged i n 
contemporary hip-hop, as groups such as Nappy Roots, Cee-Lo, 
and Cunninlynguists, and many others—all of whom are from 
Southern rural backgrounds—continually remind listeners that 
such blight is not relegated to urban centers. 
i i . Sugden and Tomlinson (127) 
i i i . Sugden and Tomlinson (n) 
iv. Mitchell (2) 
v. Green 
vi . This is not to say that they do not consider what w i l l be popu-
lar in certain places and modify their releases there accordingly; 
this practice is very common. Rather, there is a primary 
concern for what American audiences want to hear and a pre-
vailing assumption that it wi l l thereby have global appeal 
(which is more often than not the case). 
v i i . Barber (23) 
v i i i . Sugden and Tomlinson (76) 
ix. Sugden and Tomlinson (88) 
x. Foer (96) 
xi . Foer (98) 
x i i . Appadurai (31) 
x i i i . Appadurai (35) 
xiv. Freidman (51) 
xv. Urla (175) 
xvi. Urla (181) 
xvii . Cornyetz (113) 
xvii i . Cornyetz (114) 
xix. Cornyetz (115) 
xx. It is important to note that the following depiction of 
Japanese interpretations of hip-hop is not representative of all 
Japanese youth—merely a significant portion. I n Ian Condry's 
essay "A History of Japanese Hip-Hop: Street Dance, Club 
Scene, Pop Market," he acknowledges that the commercialized, 
party-centered "J-rap" that Cornyetz studies is a dominant force, 
but he also credits more indigenized subsets of this movement, 
who condemn the way in which many youths "forsook the op-
positional stance at the root of hip-hop culture in favor of a su-
perficial pop song wi th a distinctive rap style" (233). Despite the 
existent of such sentiments, however, Japanese hip-hop can cer-
tainly not be considered to be indigenized; the mere existence 
of the practices described above demonstrate that hip-hop is 
still largely consumed as a foreign product, wi th some notable 
exceptions. 
xxi. Foer (246) 
xxii. Foer (240) 
xxii i . Foer (238-239) 
xxiv. Foer (241) 
xxv. This idea is particularly visible in Urla's description of 
Negu Gorriak's disenchantment wi th their former idols Public 
Enemy upon attending a concert in Bilbao in which they 
proclaimed "Hello Spain!" and failed to address the struggle of 
Basque nationalism. This dismay was heightened wi th the 

group's comments that they would have rather played at the 
U.S. army base in Madrid i n front of what they would perceive 
as a less "white" audience. Urla notes the remaining cultural 
disparities that are illustrated by this incident, arguing that "For 
Public Enemy, race solidarity proved to be the stronger of the 
bonds. For Negu Gorriak, i t was hard to understand or sympa-
thize wi th the race and class politics that drive many African 
Americans into the enlisted ranks of the army" (188). Despite a 
shared affinity for social protest through their musical genre, i t 
can be seen that these groups were still largely divided by their 
respective cultural scopes, 
xxvi. Foer (39) 

REFERENCES 
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Disjuncture and Difference in the 
Global Cultural Economy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 
Press. 

Barber, Benjamin J. 1995. Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's 
Challenge to Democracy. New York: Ballantine Books. 

Condry, Ian. 2001. A History of Japanese Hip Hop: Street 
Dance, Club Scene, Pop Market. I n Global Noise: Rap and Hip 
Hop Outside the USA (see below). 

Cornyetz, Nina. 1994. "Fetishized Blackness: Hip Hop and 
Racial Desire in Contemporary Japan." Social Text 41:113-139. 

Foer, Franklin. 2004. How Soccer Explains the World: An 
Unlikely Theory of Globalization. New York: HarperCollins 
Publishers Inc. 

Friedman, Thomas. 2000. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New 
York: Anchor Books. 

Green, Cee-Lo. 2004. " I A m Selling Soul" on Cee-Lo Green is the 
Soul Machine. CD: Laface Records. 

Mitchell, Tony. 2001. Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the 
USA. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. 

Sugden, John and Alan Tomlinson. 1998. FIFA and the Contest 
for World Football: Who Rules the People's Game? Cambridge, 
UK: Polity Press. 

Tupac: Resurrection. 2004. DVD. Directed by Lauren Lazin. 
Paramount Studios. 

Urla, Jacqueline. 2001. "We Are A l l Malcolm X!" Negu Gorriak, 
Hip-Hop, and the Basque Political Imaginary. I n Global Noise: 
Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (see above). 

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