The music business case for diversity: Multiculturalism,pop music and the 1990s

Abstract

This research analyzes the impact of multiculturalism discourse on the popular music industry in the 1990s. It argues that the movement of Black and Latinx artists into the center of pop music was the realization of what was, in effect, a music business case for diversity. In a neoliberalized quest for market expansion, multiculturalism and crossover became the tools to acquire new listeners and articulate a new vision of popular music. After historicizing this period in popular music, contextualizing the role of its industrial dynamics and theorizing neoliberal multiculturalism in the creative industries, I examine three artist case studies: (1) torch singer Whitney Houston, who offered prospects of horizontal integration and pop colorblindness, (2) Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana, whose collaborative output was self-evidently ‘crossover’ and (3) Lauryn Hill, who effectively diversified diversity by nuancing hip-hop for pop audiences. By unpacking their strategies and the responses to their work, this work offers a deep analysis of the discursive location of multicultural difference within popular music, offering scholars a critically ambivalent examination of the industry during this time period.