In the summer of 2005, I entered an internship with Damon Dash that came about through a series of fortunate events as a young, aspiring musician attending Barnard College in New York City. Earlier that year, I had made various connections in the entertainment industry, one of which was with Logan Coles, a Howard-educated, television producer working on short- and long-form television for one of Nickelodeon’s specialty networks. We first met when I participated in a Black History Month segment on The N, and we kept in touch over the following months.
That summer, I was back home in Memphis, Tennessee, feeling a strong sense of FOMO from being away from New York. I reached out to Logan, and he mentioned an internship opportunity on a BET show called The Ultimate Hustler, starring Damon Dash. The job was mine if I could get to New York. Determined to seize the opportunity, I contacted Vivian Taylor, one of my deans at Barnard College, who swiftly arranged summer housing for me and even secured a job in the Dean of Studies office. With those logistics handled, I booked a flight and returned to New York to begin my internship.
For several weeks, I worked on the production crew of The Ultimate Hustler, alongside notable industry figures like Datari Turner and a production company called Hulk Films. Much of the production took place in Harlem, where Dame Dash was from, and the experience gave me a deep understanding of the neighborhood’s history—particularly the enduring reverence for 1970s gangsters and drug lords like Nicky Barnes and Guy Fisher. Their legacies remained embedded in the consciousness of many young African Americans in Harlem, serving as cultural reference points in the world of hip-hop.
My work on The Ultimate Hustler led to another opportunity—working directly for Dame Dash as an intern in his office. His assistant, Texanna Watts, hired me, believing I would be a good fit for the team. One of my tasks that summer was assisting with Rocawear, the clothing brand headquartered in the same office building.
The Rocawear Culture: Black Entrepreneurship and Streetwear as Cultural Capital
Being part of Rocawear meant immersing myself in a fast-paced, Black-owned company run by young, ambitious creatives who were using fashion as a vehicle to push Black culture forward—and they were succeeding. I was just a cog in this bustling machine, but I was grateful to be there.
One of my more unusual tasks that summer was picking up a second set of books for Boogie Dash, Dame Dash’s eldest son. He attended one of the most prestigious and expensive private schools in the New York City metropolitan area, and the extra set was a backup in case he misplaced the originals.
This simple errand made me realize something profound: Dame Dash, the hip-hop mogul who publicly represented the streets, was investing in the best education possible for his son. He was not encouraging him to run the streets, sell drugs, or wield guns—activities frequently glorified in mainstream hip-hop at the time. Instead, he was positioning his son for a future of privilege and opportunity.
This contradiction struck me deeply. It became clear that for most people in hip-hop, the genre was a business. If you wanted to know what these moguls truly valued, you needed to look at where they sent their children to school. The glorification of street culture—its gangsters, its codes, its rules—was not something that these industry leaders reinforced in their personal lives. Instead, hip-hop functioned as a means of commerce, a way to capitalize on cultural ideals and monetize them in pursuit of private aspirations that often had nothing to do with the streets.
The Entertainment Industry’s Debt to Minstrelsy
At the same time, I was taking classes at Barnard College as an Africana Studies student. My coursework in critical race theory and Black theater made me keenly aware of the historical relationship between Black art and commerce. One concept that particularly resonated with me was minstrelsy—an art form that originated in the early 19th century, in which white performers donned blackface and portrayed Black people as lazy, unintelligent, and comically inferior and gathered much of its source material from slave and plantation culture. These performances reinforced racist stereotypes and played a foundational role in American entertainment.
Bert Williams, a fair-skinned Black entertainer, was one of the highest-paid performers on Broadway in the early 20th century—despite having to perform in blackface. He epitomized the contradictions of racial performance: while he presented himself on stage as a downtrodden, shiftless Black caricature, in reality, he was an elegant and highly intelligent man who navigated an industry that demanded racial mimicry as its currency.
Modern Forms of Minstrelsy in Hip-Hop and Pop Music
Minstrelsy remains alive today in modern music, though it has evolved beyond blackface makeup. Instead, artists across racial and cultural lines adopt the vocal stylings, aesthetics, and narratives associated with Blackness—particularly Blackness as imagined through the lens of poverty and urban struggle.
Hip-hop is a primary site of this phenomenon. A$AP Rocky, a Harlem rapper, gained prominence in the early 2010s, in part because he rapped with a Southern drawl reminiscent of Bun B and Pimp C of UGK. Similarly, Drake—who hails from Toronto—has been accused of code-switching and shifting his vocal and physical persona to mimic the cadence and mannerisms of Black Americans from the South. Kendrick Lamar, though no longer residing in Compton, continues to invoke the imagery of Bloods and Crips in his visuals and lyrics, reinforcing a version of Compton that no longer demographically exists as a Black-majority, gang riddled city.
In the hip-hop sphere, we must also consider the proliferation of artists sporting the “Lil” prefix—names like Lil Skies, Lil Nas X, Lil Uzi Vert, and many others. This naming convention finds its roots in Lil Wayne’s moniker, which derives his name from a Black colloquialism meaning “little man” or “junior.” Rather than being known as Wayne Junior, the moniker “Lil Wayne” signifies him as the smaller version of a larger figure—a nuance steeped in cultural meaning and tied to notions of lineage and paternal legacy. When emerging artists adopt “Lil” solely as a catchy stage name, they risk stripping the term of its deeper significance, reducing it to a colloquial tag devoid of its historical and familial connotations. In doing so, this trend not only minimizes the power of the original designation but also severs its inherent connection to fatherhood and generational legacy within the Black community.
On the pop side, artists like Sam Smith and Ariana Grande exhibit more vocal qualities associated with Whitney Houston than many contemporary Black artists do. Houston, born in Newark, New Jersey, honed her craft at New Hope Baptist Church. Her mother, Cissy Houston, was a trained opera and gospel singer, a founding member of The Sweet Inspirations, and a backing vocalist for Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin. Whitney’s voice carried over a century of Black gospel tradition, deeply rooted in the spiritual and musical lineage of the Black church.
Yet, in today’s industry, artists are able to adopt the sonic characteristics of Black gospel, replicate its melisma, and strip it of its historical and cultural weight—all while achieving massive commercial success. They inherit the techniques but erase the origins. As Wendy Goldstein, Republic Records Co-President, admitted in an interview in Billboard Magazine in 2015, “You could cut the exact same songs with a black female singer that I cut with Ariana, and they would be nowhere as big.” The music industry has long favored placing R&B and soul music on mainstream pop stars, often yielding greater commercial success. While, in the same article, Goldstein acknowledged this issue and the need to find the next Lauryn Hill, she stopped short of outlining any concrete steps to drive change—highlighting an industry mindset that prioritizes profit over equity.
Modern Minstrelsy in Global Pop Culture
The same patterns exist beyond American music. K-pop, for instance, is a billion-dollar industry in which South Korean artists perform R&B and hip-hop under the banner of “K-pop.” Groups like BTS and BLACKPINK produce music heavily influenced by Black American musical traditions, yet their success is rarely framed within the context of Black cultural contributions.
Even country music, which has deep Black roots, is experiencing a modern iteration of this dynamic. With the increasing use of 808s and hip-hop production techniques in country songs, the genre is quietly acknowledging its Black musical heritage—without always crediting it.
Conclusion: The Blueprint for Success
Minstrelsy and its modern forms are not just relics of the past; it is the blueprint for success in modern music. It is an industry-wide practice that extends across genres, racial lines, and national borders. Whether in hip-hop, pop, K-pop, or country, artists are still adopting the stylings of Black culture for mass consumption. The medium has evolved, but the formula remains the same: Blackness and its performance are commercial assets, and the industry continues to profit from its replication—while erasing its origins.
And by no means is this essay an indictment of artists who make a living off such practices—modern-day Blackface or modern-day minstrelsy. What I am saying is that it might be the only way to succeed. It is not just a practice within the business; it is the business. It is the very foundation upon which our current entertainment industry was built. From its earliest iterations to its present-day manifestations, minstrelsy is not an anomaly—it is the blueprint. So this is not a critique of the artists themselves. They are playing a game according to the rules that have long been established. To fault them would be like criticizing a player for using a football in a football game. Minstrelsy is simply how the game works. Damon Dash, through his pioneering ventures and savvy business acumen, embodied this blueprint, demonstrating that these practices are integral to the industry’s structure.
Furthermore, imitation is a form of flattery, and perhaps that is precisely why so many artists adopt and emulate Blackness in their work. Black expression, particularly in musical art forms, has long been synonymous with excellence—a brilliance that endures despite repeated attempts by propaganda to strip it of its richness and core values. In spite of the socioeconomic challenges many Black people face, the quality of musicianship and creative excellence has emerged as a kind of divine grace, countering negative narratives and revealing the enduring truth of their true anointing. People are naturally drawn to this excellence because it embodies a universal truth that shines through in music and entertainment—one of the few commercial arenas in the American economic system where Black creators have historically encountered fewer barriers to entry. Thus, the replication of Blackness serves both as an homage to its transformative power and as an acknowledgment of the undeniable impact and timeless standard it sets in the industry. In Damon Dash’s work, this replication was not mere mimicry but a strategic harnessing of cultural capital that paved the way for new models of success.
After that formative summer, I headed to Africa in the fall for a study abroad program—eager to further explore the roots and global resonance of Black cultural expression.