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Who Owns Culture? Appropriation, Power, and the Question of Belonging the Beyoncé Moment

  • Writer: joie
    joie
  • Feb 10
  • 13 min read
Cowboy Carter Album Cover 2024
Cowboy Carter Album Cover 2024

A Question Worth Asking: Who Owns Culture?

I've been curious about something for years: when does cultural exchange become theft? When does inspiration become erasure? The answer, I've discovered, has nothing to do with the art itself and everything to do with power. Cultural appropriation isn't some mysterious force—it's a system. A mechanism by which white artists and institutions consume Black innovation while simultaneously marginalizing the creators. This essay explores that system through the lens of music, fashion, and performance—exploring how certain voices get amplified while others fade into obscurity. The real question isn't whether cultures should interact. The real question is: who profits when they do? And who gets to remain visible?



Rappers Delight, 1979
Rappers Delight, 1979

Hip-Hop: The Bronx, August 11, 1973

What's fascinating about hip-hop's origin is how it emerged from a specific moment, in a specific neighborhood, created by a specific confluence of people and their cultures. On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc—born Clive Campbell, a Jamaican immigrant—threw a party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx, organized by his sister Cindy. This party birthed hip-hop. He used two turntables to extend the "break"—the instrumental section where dancers thrived—and in doing so, revolutionized music itself. He wasn't alone in building this.


In the Southeast Bronx, Afrika Bambaataa (born Lance Taylor to Jamaican and Barbadian immigrants in the Bronx River Projects) was simultaneously experimenting with the same sounds. Starting in 1970, Bambaataa became the "Master of Records," pulling from soul, salsa, rock, African music, Latin—any genre with a funky break. He organized block parties throughout the South Bronx and, crucially, coined the term "hip-hop." Then there was Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler, born in Barbados and raised in the Bronx), who perfected scratching and mixing, using the turntable as an instrument in ways never imagined.


What we often overlook: hip-hop wasn't created in isolation by African Americans. It was built in the South Bronx, a neighborhood where Hispanic and African American communities lived side by side. Puerto Rican kids were essential to hip-hop's birth. DJ Charlie Chase (born Carlos Mendes in Manhattan to Puerto Rican parents) emerged onto the scene in 1975 as the first Latino DJ to establish Latinos as a force in hip-hop. Despite intense backlash—both from African Americans who saw it as "their music" and from Puerto Ricans who saw hip-hop as "jungle bunny music"—Chase persisted. He co-founded The Cold Crush Brothers with DJ Tony Tone, and in 1978-1982, they became the first hip-hop group signed to CBS Records and the first to tour Japan. Chase was one of the few who understood that hip-hop could blend salsa, Spanish language, and other Latino influences while remaining authentically hip-hop. Yet his name, like many Latino pioneers, nearly disappeared from history.

This matters because it reveals something crucial: when white artists entered hip-hop later, they weren't entering a space that belonged to only one community. They were entering a multicultural space that Black and Latino youth had created together.


Vanilla Ice arrived in the late 1980s and topped the charts with "Ice Ice Baby"—a song built on a sample from Queen. Meanwhile, MC Lyte, one of the greatest female rappers ever, was fighting for recognition in a male-dominated space. Run-DMC had to advocate fiercely for every inch of mainstream acceptance. When Eminem and Macklemore broke through, they received doors that had been nailed shut for Black and Latino rappers. But here's the difference: neither Eminem nor Macklemore were asked to "prove" their authenticity. They weren't scrutinized for appropriating Black culture in the way that Black female rappers faced constant erasure.


Iggy Azalea has been hailed as the "female Eminem" despite having less technical skill. Kreayshawn's "Gucci Gucci" went viral in 2011, earning her a multi-million-dollar record deal. Yet both burned out quickly. Meanwhile, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Lil' Kim, Foxy Brown, Missy Elliott, and Eve created the entire blueprint for female rappers, and none of them received the immediate, frictionless acceptance that white female rappers seemed to get. The industry pushed Iggy into pop categories instead of hip-hop. Kreayshawn faced criticism for her "blackface" garb (doorknocker earrings, braids) and eventually left rapping. Neither woman had to navigate the compounding racism and sexism that Cardi B faced. Neither had to contend with being Black, a woman, and a rapper in an industry that treats that combination as a liability rather than an asset. That's the difference appropriation makes.


Beyoncé's Country: A Controversy That Exposed Everything

March 2024. Beyoncé posted to Instagram: "My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist's race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant." She was reflecting on eight years of exclusion.

In 2016, she performed "Daddy Lessons" at the CMAs, a song rooted in her Southern heritage, her family traditions, her lived experience. The Recording Academy rejected the song from country radio and country award categories. The Grammys refused to nominate it in country categories. Country radio gatekeepers didn't want to hear it. Why?

But Beyoncé didn't accept this. For eight years, she collected evidence. She studied. She recorded Cowboy Carter—a country album, but more precisely, a documentation of Black roots in country music, a reclamation, a confrontation with erasure. The album featured Linda Martell, a pioneering Black country artist barely anyone knew about. It sampled the Chitlin' Circuit, the network of segregated venues where Black performers had to tour because white country venues wouldn't have them. It centered the banjo's African origins, not as an interesting fact but as a claim to ownership. Beyoncé was asking: how can you reject me from country when country exists because of us?

The backlash was vicious. Country fans said she wasn't "country enough." Some companies that had praised her took it back. The music industry made it clear: you're welcome to appreciate our culture, but you can't claim ownership of it.


Not if you're Black and a woman.


Then 2025 came. Jay-Z pointed out publicly: "she has more Grammys than everyone and has never won album of the year." The industry couldn't ignore the pattern anymore. Beyoncé won Best Country Album at the Grammy Awards. Some people called it "rigged."


This controversy is important because it exposes the double standard. Tina Turner had to flee America to record her solo work because Capitol Records called her an "N-word douchebag." She found success in Europe. Tina Turner, one of the greatest rock artists of all time, had to be validated outside America because American gatekeepers couldn't accept a Black woman as a legitimate rock artist.


Now, in 2025, we're watching Beyoncé do the same thing—except she's forcing the gatekeepers to acknowledge her from within the system.


The struggle Black women face in music is specific. They earn 52% less than white men, 25% less than white women, and 19% less than Black men. Yet when white women move fluidly between genres—when Taylor Swift reinvents herself, when Miley Cyrus appropriates Black aesthetics—nobody questions their right to belong. Nina Simone said, "I think what you're trying to ask is why I'm so insistent upon giving out to them that Blackness, that Black power—pushing them to identify with Black culture." She understood that her music was documentation, resistance, presence. But presence comes at a cost when you're Black and a woman.


Bell Hooks and the Machinery of Consumption

Bell hooks' 1992 essay "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance" provides the language for what's happening. Within commodity culture, Hooks argues, ethnicity becomes "spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture." The dominant culture doesn't just borrow from marginalized communities—it consumes them. It extracts value while decontextualizing the historical struggle that birthed the art. A white artist performing a Black art form gets to enjoy the aesthetics without the burden of the trauma. They get the style without the substance, the profit without the pain.


Hooks emphasizes that appropriation isn't about cultural exchange—it's about power. It's about who is allowed to move through cultural spaces without being questioned, and who must constantly justify their presence. When Madonna vogued, it was seen as trendy. When voguers from Harlem vogued, they were barely visible.


Vogue Music Video, Released 1990.
Vogue Music Video, Released 1990.

Ballroom: When Culture Created for Survival Became a Commodity

Voguing emerged from Harlem ballroom culture, created by Black and Brown LGBTQ+ communities who had been excluded from white gay spaces. They weren't welcomed, so they built their own world—one of stunning creativity, radical self-expression, and survival. The language of ballroom—"reading," "shade," "serving realness"—was invented in spaces of marginalization.


These were weapons of protection in a world that wanted them dead.


Then came 1990. Madonna's "Vogue." The world fell in love with voguing filtered through Madonna's whiteness and massive platform. The voguers themselves remained invisible. When "throwing shade" was added to Merriam-Webster's dictionary in 2017, it was hailed as a cultural victory. But it was actually appropriation perfected—the term extracted, standardized, returned as common property. The ballroom community that invented it remained marginalized.



Karl Kani Fashion Advertising
Karl Kani Fashion Advertising

Fashion: From the Streets to the Boardroom

Streetwear's transformation went from inferior to aspirational. In the 1980s and 1990s, wearing oversized clothing, baggy jeans, and "thug-like" aesthetics was considered—by the mainstream—a sign of criminality, lack of education, lack of respectability. Hip-hop kids dressing themselves were coded as threats.


Yet those same kids were creating something revolutionary.


Willi Smith, a gay Black designer from Philadelphia, understood that fashion should belong to everyone. His WilliWear line generated $25 million in annual sales by 1986, before streetwear even had a name. He designed for "the people who wave at the Queen." When Smith died of AIDS in 1987, WilliWear collapsed. His legacy was erased. Karl Kani (Carl Williams), raised in Brooklyn, launched in 1989 and built an empire. Maurice Malone confronted Macy's CEO Terry Lungren directly: "Why are established brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Polo being prioritized over urban streetwear, despite its proven market appeal?" These designers—Kani, Malone, and Daymond John (FUBU, which generated $6 billion in global sales)—created something extraordinary. They dressed Tupac, Biggie, Nas. They created culture for their generation, from their generation.


Then luxury fashion discovered streetwear's profitability. Virgil Abloh, a Black designer and the first African American artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear (2018), represented a genuine breakthrough. He brought inclusivity initiatives, created the LVMH Black Database, and elevated streetwear into luxury spaces. Yet the broader pattern persisted: the global streetwear market was valued at approximately $225-350 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $637 billion by 2032. Meanwhile, the Black designers who invented the category often fade. Supreme and Off-White command astronomical resale prices. Stüssy and BAPE became iconic. But the Black originators? Often forgotten.


Here's the mathematics of appropriation: what was once coded as inferior (urban dress, "thug-like" aesthetics) is now a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry. The aesthetic that got Black kids arrested is now what gets their ideas profitable—for everyone except them.


The Possibility of Change

Beyoncé's power wasn't that she "overcame" gatekeeping. Her power was that she exposed the system and made it impossible to ignore. She documented her erasure and weaponized that documentation into art. What's required now is structural change. Not celebrating individual genius. Not marveling at how Black creators "made it despite." But dismantling the systems that made it necessary to overcome in the first place.

The work ahead is asking: who am I centering? Who am I making invisible? Am I crediting origins or erasing them? Am I amplifying creators' voices or centering my own? These questions matter because culture belongs to the communities that created it. Appropriation is theft. The only way to stop it is to refuse the terms that make it profitable.


Sources and References

Hip-Hop History & Founders

DJ Kool Herc & Hip-Hop Origins

Afrika Bambaataa

Grandmaster Flash

Dominican University - 50 Years of Hip Hop Research Guide

Tenement Museum - Hip Hop in the Bronx

Welcome2TheBronx - Hip Hop: A brief history how it went from Bronx streets to global phenomenon

Puerto Rican Hip-Hop Pioneers

DJ Charlie Chase & Cold Crush Brothers

National Museum of American History - The sazón in hip-hop

Female Hip-Hop Artists & Disparities

White Female Rappers & Industry Treatment

Academic Research on White Women Rappers

Black Female Artists & Music Industry Disparities

Beyoncé & Country Music Controversy

Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter & Grammy Coverage

  • Business of Fashion - Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter: Country's Reckoning with Blackness (General coverage and Grammy information from 2024-2025)

  • Variety - Beyoncé Wins Best Country Album at 2025 Grammys (Coverage of Grammy win and industry response)

  • Rolling Stone - Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter and the Country Music Gatekeeping Debate (Analysis of the 2016 CMA performance rejection and 2024 album)

Bell Hooks & Cultural Theory

Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance

  • Bell Hooks - "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance" from Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) Published by South End Press Academic databases: JSTOR, Project MUSE, Google Scholar

Ballroom Culture & Voguing

Paris is Burning & Ballroom History

  • Multiple academic sources on ballroom culture and voguing (1970s-present)

  • References to Crystal LaBeija, Willi Ninja, and contemporary ballroom performers

  • Madonna's "Vogue" (1990) and cultural appropriation discourse

Fashion History & Streetwear

Virgil Abloh & Louis Vuitton

Streetwear Market Data & Analysis

Global Streetwear Market Size & Projections

Luxury Streetwear Market

Film & Television Representation

Hollywood Diversity & Black Representation

Additional Academic & Cultural Resources

General Cultural Appropriation & Theory

  • Academic databases: JSTOR, Google Scholar, Project MUSE

  • Key theorists: bell hooks, Stuart Hall, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak

Music History & Hip-Hop Studies

  • The Journal of Hip Hop Studies - Various articles on hip-hop history, gender, and race

  • Hip Hop Studies courses and programs at major universities

Smithsonian Institution

  • Smithsonian African American History Museum - Hip-Hop and Culture exhibits

  • Smithsonian Latino Legends Exhibit - Coverage of Charlie Chase and other Latino pioneers



Note on Sources

This essay draws from academic research, primary interviews, archival materials, market analysis reports, and contemporary journalism. Sources span from 1992 (bell hooks' foundational essay) to 2025 (recent Grammy Awards coverage and current market data). Statistics and figures cited come from peer-reviewed research, industry analysis firms, and major cultural institutions including the Smithsonian, McKinsey & Company, and leading market research organizations.

For quotations and specific claims, readers are encouraged to consult the primary sources listed above, particularly:

  • Bell hooks' Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992)

  • Interviews with Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Charlie Chase, and other hip-hop pioneers

  • Gramophone and music industry coverage from 2016, 2024, and 2025

  • McKinsey's comprehensive diversity and inclusion reports on film and television




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