Starkey: The chaps have become black

David Starkey: "destructive, nihilistic gangster"

Is historian David Starkey right? Is everything untoward currently occurring in British society due to white people becoming black? Intrigued by Starkey’s description of a “destructive, nihilistic gangster culture” into which the trendy white youth of today is irresistibly drawn, I set out to investigate the phenomenon by attending a gig by that most notorious of white rappers, Mr B. the Gentleman Rhymer.

The retro opulence of the Voodoo rooms, a thriving venue of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: beyond the sweaty crowds amassed in this popular multi-storey watering-hole, in what is labelled the Ballroom, a stage has been erected. Upon this and to one side stands an antique desk with a cut-glass decanter of golden liquid. Centre-stage, a microphone stand. Then Mr B emerges, impeccably dressed and coiffured, brandishing his trademark banjolele, with his neatly styled moustache glinting in the limelight. Below the hems of his trousers, immaculate white skater shoes revel in glorious anachronicity.

His set, a mixture of hip-hop, techno and reggae lovingly parodied and delivered in exaggerated R.P. to a mostly white, middle-class audience, is funny, energetic and entertaining. This is chap-hop. There is no incitement to violence, no reference to gang culture, although at one point the Gentleman Rhymer threatens to defy the smoking ban by lighting up his vintage pipe. A wry song about developing a crack cocaine habit to gain press attention and further one’s pop career is his take on gangster rap’s preoccupation with hard drugs and its “get rich or die tryin’” mentality.

Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer

Mr B’s is a voice which extols the cultural achievements of what is known as ‘music of black origin’, while being gently critical of its current themes. His own preference is ostensibly for tea and cricket rather than guns and crime, reflecting the sentiment pithily expressed by the T-shirt slogan “Make Tea Not War”, and his call for more ‘Kissing in Porn’ can be read by charitable feminists as a rebuke to the objectification of women often associated with hip-hop (and pop music generally). But his message is in the medium of black music; it’s not a travesty of hip-hop, but an intelligent, sympathetic homage – a parody in the best sense of the word.

‘Culture’ is a suit that can be worn by anyone for any purpose. European and Christian cultures have been the dressing for actions as vandalistic and violent as any in history. Evil has been done systematically by institutions in the name of white culture (you shouldn’t have to think long to think of an example) and unthinkingly by individuals merely imbued with it. To judge it by the actions of many of its adherents, we should have abandoned ‘white culture’ centuries ago, and thrown Michelangelo, Beethoven and Shakespeare in the bin in despair. But we don’t, because we recognise that institutions and individuals are responsible for the evil they do, not imaginary cultures defined loosely on the basis of skin colour.

The reason why the youth on the simmering streets doesn’t dress and talk white today, regardless of its own ethnicity, is because it’s unfashionable to do so. But you can't blame black culture for civil unrest just because it happens to be cool at the time.