Black stars clean up in charts

Black artists have filled all top ten spots on this week's American Billboard singles chart for the first time.

Nine of the 10 are rappers, while this week's No 1 is Baby Boy, a joint track from R&B singer Beyonce and reggae star Sean Paul. Other artists featured in the list include P Diddy (the rapper also known as Sean Combs), YoungBloodZ and Black Eyed Peas.

The clean sweep of black artists is an indication of the popularity of rap among teenagers, both black and white, and is a rare instance of black dominance in US society, where African Americans still struggle with negative stereotypes associating them with a crime-ridden urban underclass.

Silvio Pietrolongo, who manages Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart, said he was not aware of black acts having swept the top ten before.

"We assume this is the first time," he said. "We went back through our lists to the mid-1990s when R&B was the hot thing. But even then there were always some pop and rock acts in the list as well."

In Britain, DJ Mike Anthony told BBC Radio Five Live: "It was just a matter of time." Attributing the rise of black music to the boom in the video music industry and other marketing outlets, he added: "There are so many new avenues out there, we had drum'n'bass, then UK garage, which affect the youth - and it's the youth that lead the way. Now it has become really popular."

Singles charts do not hold the sway they once did, since the switch to digital technology has marginalised them and refocused industry attention on CD album sales, and music experts said part of the reason for the dominance of rap in the Hot 100 chart was that it was one musical form where singles are still showing some signs of commercial life.

There is no doubt, however, that rap is the dominant musical language of teenage culture in the United States. The much publicised East Coast-West Coast rap "battles" of the 1990s, with their attendant trail of violence and death, did much to publicise the form, even if so-called gangsta rappers made up only a fraction of overall sales.

The bad-boy image was largely responsible for broadening rap's appeal from the urban ghettoes where it originated to the bedrooms of white suburban teenagers. That appeal accounted for the rise of the white rapper Eminem, who in turn helped publicise the black artists who had inspired him.

- INDEPENDENT