‘New Forms’: Towards a Critical Dialogue with Black British ‘Popular’ Fictions

Abstract

The term ‘street culture’ has become shorthand for an urban, black or black influenced culture — raw, uncompromising and ‘authentic’. That a white Brummie, Mike Skinner, could name his act The Streets and rap his way to critical acclaim and success in 2002 without being accused of wanting to be ‘black’ highlights the ways in which British youth culture has been so influenced by black styles and themes. Yet the terms ‘urban’ and ‘street’ are complex ones, often presented as simplistic shorthand for a ‘black’ culture that is debased, commercialized, unrealistic and compromised of themes and tropes, offering little more than a mythical, exaggerated view of life. Adrift from any significant engagement with mainstream culture or forms of political representation, street culture is seen as a marketing ploy, with a cynical eye cocked towards the success of the mainstream African-American forms derived from hip-hop culture. However, I would like to argue that street culture has a distinctly political role that can be traced back to the issues of representation, protest and identity politics that arose in the 1970s and 1980s. Rather than just a coded term denoting a form of popular culture or shorthand for ‘black’, the street is one of the most dynamic sites for the development, negotiation and contestation of a sense of black Britishness in the face of an often hostile reception from white Britons.