Why Do Good Girls Have to Be Bad? The Cultural Industry's Production of the Other and the Complexities of Agency

The political economy of popular culture often overlooks the ideologies that determine how identities are commodified. The commodification of what is reductively known as black music is unique because the commodification routinely intersects with historical constructions of blackness and black gender identities. Therefore, any analysis of the relationships between black musical artists and the cultural industries and the subsequent production of performative identities must take into account America's exploitation of black music genres and black sexuality. This article examines the tension between record labels' construction of young black female performing artists, focusing on Atlantic Records' unwillingness to market teenage singer Keke Palmer over her refusal to be "urban." Drawing from Ryan and Hesmondhalgh's definition of the cultural industries, Negus's idea that culture produces industry, and Toynbee's explanation of artistic agency within cultural production, the article shows the conflicts that emerge in the commodification process while arguing that the cultural production of black womanhood in popular music continues to be predicated upon historical constructions of Otherness.