The Use of ‘Urban’ In The Music Industry & Why I'll Continue To Use It
the term ‘urban’ has haunted my thoughts for the past few weeks, specifically as a black woman music blogger who uses the term.
There has been an issue with the use of the term for a while, but it has become a bigger issue during the past month. During the past few weeks, Republic Records decided to ban the term ‘urban’ in order to “not adhere to the outdated structures of the past.” The Recording Academy also announced the change of the “Best Urban Contemporary Album” category name to “Best Progressive R&B Album” a few days after Republic’s change.
I understand that many people are upset by its use. There has been history around the term that makes it uncomfortable for many creatives and Black industry employees to use. Historically, ‘urban’ has been used to define the musical works of black music creatives, specifically in hip-hop and R&B. Unfortunately, it became a way for labels, some industry executives, and more to underfund and devalue the creativity of black music creatives.
There have been various hip-hop and R&B platforms that have risen and declined over the years because of improper treatment and attention by major labels. Some of our labels, which have come about because of urban art, have been swallowed into major labels, becoming a distant memory (other than to the historians and students of the craft). Along with it, we’ve seen a lack of executives that look like us with experience in hip-hop and R&B (as an anonymous executive passionately wrote about in this letter and Latoya Lee, VP of Creative Services at Atlas Music Publishing, alludes to in her tweet). It has also been a way to mislabel the work of black music creatives — there are black artists whose music are labeled urban that are not quite urban.
However, I think that there can still be strength for black hip-hop and R&B creatives in the term, depending on how it is used. Jamel Smith, a creative that I follow on Twitter, asked if ‘urban’ is an offensive term, especially for black people and individuals in the industry. I responded by saying that because of my intentions in using ‘urban,’ I don’t believe that there is a problem in using it. You may notice on Transcending Sound that I use the word. I use ‘urban’ as a short descriptor for hip-hop, R&B, and sometimes jazz. My purpose in using the term is to let creatives know that they have a platform that is specifically for their art. My hope is to never offend a creative by using this term.
Other than the issues of representation in the music industry, the issue that I have with ‘urban’ today is how many people define the term. ‘Urban’ has become a way to define all black music artists when all black artists don’t create the same genres of music. So, if we define ‘urban’ as black artists in hip-hop and R&B, which is how I’ve known to define it, we are not placing all of our black artists in their correct music genres. If a black artist’s music has pop elements and they label their music as pop, then they should be labeled as a pop artist. This is why I use ‘black and urban music creatives,’ or solely ‘#urbanmusiccreatives’ in some cases, as a descriptor for Transcending Sound…and my plan is to continue to use the term in these phrases.
My fear in the erasure of ‘urban’ is that hip-hop and R&B, the genres that black creatives spearhead, will slowly no longer be dominated by them. Erasure of the term, because of its current use to represent most black artists, can possibly lead to the erasure of black artists and knowledgeable black executives in those genres. This depends on how labels are set up from this point on. This also causes some real concern for me in terms of traditional R&B artists, like Edward Bowser mentions in his piece on the Grammy’s R&B award name change, as well as traditional hip-hop artists because of their slowly dwindling voices in the industry. Many artists may be forced to create a sound that isn’t true to them in order to be more relevant, more mainstream. Other artists’ work will get lost. My hope is for that to never happen.
With a clearer definition of ‘urban,’ more black representation in reference to executives and visionaries that are knowledgeable in urban genres, and the correct labeling of artists, the phrase wouldn’t be as big of an issue as it has been.