The following essay was written when I was just 17. By this time, I had already been thinking and writing about hip-hop for the better part of a year and had identified as a "hip-hopper" for nearly two, although as indicated elsewhere on the blog I had been influenced by hip-hop culture from a very young age.
This was an overly ambitious project that was to be the first chapter in a book called "The Hip Hop Manifesto" which was used for the purposes of building a national hip-hop organization through a website I maintained in the late 90s called "The B-Boy Call E-zine." While I had recruited twenty or so people locally, a few people nationally, and one person from Canada, I didn't have the experience, perspective, or commitment in terms of where to take the organization and how to build and consolidate locals.
I'll expound later in the comments section.
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Saturday, May 23, 1998
This oppressed culture, established circa 1973, will be a key player in the coming revolution. Before this time we must bring order to Hip Hop by discussing our goals and how we plan to work independently as a nation.
I believe first that we must identify ourselves. Who is a Hip Hopper? How does one become a Hip Hopper? There is no traditional way of officially becoming a follower of Hip Hop. There is no ceremony or prayer that is completed. But if we want order and if we want to progress and exceed beyond the four elements that currently make up this culture, we must adopt some form of ceremony that we must all go through to give each of us a better understanding of the intentions of this culture. If not a ceremony then an acceptance of a basic belief system.
How should this belief system be based then? Well, we must first look at how and why Hip Hop started. It started out of ruins of slave ships, Christ worshiping Aztecs, and English-speaking Native Americans. We were brought together by hate and bloodshed. If there had been no oppression, Hip Hop would have never existed.
What system was this culture founded in and who brought us all together? The capitalist United States of America.
So, we must recognize first that this system that we live under is evil and corrupt. We must also recognize that most and maybe all governments and systems inside this planet Earth exploit the masses of people. As Hip Hoppers we must deny any tie we have to these systems and accept ourselves only as inhabitants of the Earth. Any feelings of nationalism should be left behind as barriers from unification with others and a oneness with the Earth and Universe. And since Hip Hop is a multinational and multiracial culture then we must believe that we are all one nation under a move.
We need to be Humanitarians and take care of each other and the Earth. It is not the Earth itself that is bad, it's the systems within it. We must start thinking and acting as Humanitarians. We are all struggling to better Humanity and the masses. We all have our own philosophies and religions and opinions on God, but we all need to live by these basic principles. Peace, Love, Unity, and Revolution.
Peace because Hip Hop became and outlet from negativity. Instead of gunshots being exchanged between individuals who disliked each other, a battle of skills would take place to be determined by the audience.
We must remain humble and peaceful. We must set an example for the rest of the world to see. We must also have love for each other and the Earth. And in the spiritual revolution, love will be the ammunition used against a hateful system.
Unity is mandatory. Hip Hop became a culture because of the unity among the followers. Us sticking together and cooperation amongst each other is what's going to help us advance as a nation. People ask me all the time how I can promote love and revolution at the same time. But what they don't realize is that this system was founded on hate, so love is a revolutionary act.
With these basic principles, some sort of ceremony should take place. If a person is not inspired to practice an element, he or she should find some other form of expression and add his or her own flavor to the culture. As long as you dedicate yourself and strive to better the culture and use it for good it is not necessary to practice one of the four standard elements. Once a person understands the principles and knows their history of this culture, only then should the ceremony take place. There should also be witnesses participating.
This is not an organization, but we must have some organization within this culture. We need more rallies and events to discuss the current issues within Hip Hop and how we plan to address these issues such as the media's interpretation of Hip Hop and how they compare us to gangsters, hoodlums, radical, vandals, etc. We need to discuss how we will react to these false pretenses.
We must start becoming an active movement because we are a movement. We are revolutionaries and we do have a cause. Our cause is to end oppression and exploitation at all costs. We must break this continual cycle of hate handed down from generation to generation. We must keep from happening the same thing that happened to us. We must give these lost clones feeding off negativity an outlet. We must shed our light. Hip Hop was and is a light within the dark.
Hip Hop is very unorganized currently. With what we have and what we know we must organize and prepare for the future and the shift of the people's consciousness. We must move forward and become active with our knowledge and strength in numbers. We must constantly attract future followers. By all means necessary...prepare.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
How I saw hip-hop at 17.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Tupac on Black Struggle
From Advance the Struggle, here comes an old video of Tupac from 1992 talking about the failures of the older generation of black activists and militants, and the new conditions under which black youth must struggle.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Bastards of the Party
Earlier this week Joaquin Cienfuegos posted a pretty insightful documentary called Bastards of the Party on his blog. In the past D&HHP has discussed some of the basis for gangsta rap, and its political and social significance, so I'm re-posting the documentary here as it adds to that discussion.
Here's a brief description of the film from its website:
BASTARDS OF THE PARTY traces the development of black gangs in Los Angeles from the late 1940s, through the charged atmosphere of the '60s and '70s, to the breakdown of community in the '80s and '90s, and the brief truce between the Crips and Bloods that followed the Rodney King riots in 1992...BASTARDS OF THE PARTY draws its title from this passage in City of Quartz [by Mike Davis]: "The Crips and the Bloods are the bastard offspring of the political parties of the '60s. Most of the gangs were born out of the demise of those parties. Out of the ashes of the Black Panther Party came the Crips and the Bloods and the other gangs."
This is probably the first film I've seen that takes up the development of gangs in the U.S. not as a matter of "senseless violence" or bad parenting or "black pathology." Rather it situates gangs in the context of the development of class and racial tensions and struggles during the course of the 20th century, highlighting the relationship of economic underdevelopment of black communities, the capitalist offensive against the black working class especially since the 1970s, racism within the white working class, the decline of the Black Power movement, and attacks by the state on black political organizations. (For one of the few written pieces I've seen to date that makes similar connections, with a focus on the 1992 L.A. Rebellion, see this)
If I had any discontents with the movie, it would be the following. First, I have to ask where are women in this discussion? As is usually the case, the only times you see women in the film (with one exception - the interview with former Black Panther Erica Huggins) are as the grieving mothers/daughters/sisters of male gang members who have been killed. I'd be interested to see more about the story of women actually involved in gangs, and also a serious discussion of women's relationship to political organization (or lack thereof) in communities of color, how neoliberalism has attacked female workers of color, how women have responded to and fought those attacks, and the other political dynamics raised by the film.
Second, the majority of the film is able to maintain a social analysis, or in other words to look at gangs as a social phenomena and not a question of good or bad individuals. But towards the end of the film when the question of "what next?" comes up, the film resorts to individualistic responses (gang members should be better people, should stop saying nigga, etc.) to what are societal problems. Perhaps that reflects the inability of the director to envision a collective political struggle among people of color to confront and change the social relations and institutions that nurture gang violence. Whatever it reflects, it was a somewhat disappointing end to what was a pretty good documentary overall.
Anyways, for your viewing pleasure.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Notes on Hip-Hop, Radio, and Honduras
I apologize in advance for the notes format. I presently don't have the time to work this out in a more presentable form and need to get this up so it can be digested and expanded further. This was off the back of a recent phone conversation with mlove over at Gathering Forces, a blog project I am a part of.
A return to C.L.R.'s American Civilization and a further study of culture and mass communications will be necessary, but that will have to come at a later time.
Hip-hop is reflective of the self-movement of the working class and its myriad particularities and subjectivities (people of color, women, poor white folks, college kids, etc), meaning it moves on by its own logic and not by the force of external factors (bosses, cops, capitalists, repression, climate change, etc.) even if these have influence.
Hip-hop on the radio is only a partial expression of the whole of hip-hop, but it has its own totality and self-movement and the music still found on radio has validity. This much we have said before.
It's partiality is due to the limitations of the radio medium not only technologically, but in its monopolization and standardization--which is, consistent with the growth of capitalism. This is a fact I have not given enough credence to. It was an attempt to guard against conservatism and the "external factors" issue, but it must now be more explicitly acknowledged.
Where the patriarchy and barbarism of hip-hop surface, D&HHP has consistently opposed making those things exceptional to hip-hop, but in opposing we do so as the hip-hop generation and in actual struggle not by calling for non-patriarchal hip-hop. This latter point isn't exactly new. What has been more recent is our more integrated understanding of the complexity of the fight. What we don't do is make synthetic arguments for how hip-hop "used to be."
In the late 80s and early 90s hip-hop was not more balanced, it only appeared as such because of its limitation to traditional mass communication (radio, TV, print). These forms were then able to capture a larger totality, but hip-hop has grown larger and radio has grown thinner (not necessarily proportionately, for radio has its own self-movement). The radio then had not experienced the monopolization it went through ten years later.
The reaction to this change has been conservative: either conclusions are drawn about hip-hop itself; "radio killed hip-hop" (which is not altogether unrelated but a distinct part no less that does have an effect on hip-hop) or about the need to return radio to what it used to be which was, in the real, no more democratic and related to the particular forms of hip-hop then. It's imposing the form (a pre-monopolized radio) separate from the content (a more developed hip-hop).
Typical half-hearted conclusions have meant liberal approaches, (letter-writing, boycotting, picketing with aim of democratizing radio) or establishing "liberated zones" of culture and communication like the Hip-Hop Media Lab folks (who generally have a very sharp and precise perspective on hip-hop as commons, as a social movement, and radio as a worn out, monopolized medium). We've seen some insurrectionary sentiments (usually exaggerated and comic) call for the occupation of radio, or tie up the DJ and play the music the people want to hear (often acted out in hip-hop records since the 80s). On the one hand, some people want to hear what is currently played, on the other hand it stems from a legitimate appraisal of radio's limitations.
The conclusion I have drawn has confounded the problem to some degree. I assumed that when new subjectivities arise, or working class self-activity deepens or generalizes, radio or "popular" (another conflation I'm guilty of) hip-hop will reflect this new activity; that it was profitable to play Ice Cube, Public Enemy, and Arrested Development then, so it would be in the future but with hip-hop in new forms. But this is synthetic cognition. We were right to see hip-hop as moving, but radio has moved too. We can't expect a simple return (even in new form) for two reasons: one, because it is a concrete reality that the radio has been monopolized and its playlists standardized a great deal more than twenty years ago. Two, new mediums have surfaced via Internet that undercut the basis for radio. How many "popular" artists can we think of that are shut outside of that medium? I can think of Charles Hamilton and Asher Roth. There are many more. The Soviet Union didn't restore capitalism as Trotsky predicted, radio won't merely return to playing either a more diverse hip-hop or a more organically and overt political hip-hop as I predicted.
On the other hand, radio can't completely filter out the political character of our generation reflected in hip-hop. The recent "Run this Town" song is a good example. It isn't an explicitly political song even if has explicit political aspects. But radio can't help but narrow it generally. This narrowed hip-hop still reflects contradictions, it can't be free of them, but the contradictions it sends up will still be fragmented, degenerated, and few.
The political hip-hop of the 80s and 90s (as we have said before) wasn't pure. It wasn't free of the contradictions of its time. Ice Cube was called out by Common for "slangin bean pies and St. Ides in the same sentence." On the surface, Cube is a hypocrite, but the truth of the matter is that, as Cube says, "I go where the brothers go." Cube threw up the multitude of tensions flowing through the anti-apartheid/black consciousness/street rebellion of his time. In 2006, Cube said, "I used to be lyrical political, now y'all want it sugar-coated like cereal." Two years later he makes a thoroughly anti-racist political song, "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It." (I encourage y'all to watch it again) BDP and X-Clan had a feud over black nationalism vs. humanism. These debates were happening on radio because they were happening in real life, at black colleges, in black communities, etc.
What has the situation in Honduras clarified for us? And this where the discussion with mlove was pivotal. That when the state turns to repressive measures, it makes a political monopoly of mass communication (even in private, bourgeois forms, for the Honduran oligarchy "owns" the vast majority of comm enterprises and has shut down the rest.) It raises the question for a mass revolutionary movement to seize and overthrow mass comm institutions AS PART AND PARCEL of a general quest for political power. Honduras is different, a movement has arisen in response to a coup with the green light in Washington, despite its language, but there are still lessons to draw. These measures won't be off the table at a particular historical juncture here in the US. The FBI has just arrested a man who helped coordinate G20 demos in Pittsburgh with twitter and police scanners.
This is where we draw the line between the liberals and the liberated zone "new economy" ideas. We believe that in a general power struggle between workers and the ruling-class, the control and self-management of radio must coincide. Of course, that isn't what's being debated. Usually these conversations happen apart from general political critiques. Yet when these conversations do occur, they are political and they are a segue into talking about monopoly capitalism and political struggle generally.
We can expect the not marginal view that "radio is a limited form for hip-hop" to become more widespread and antagonistic. For now, it has been resolved through the opening of new forms of communication. I was wrong for limiting this critique of radio to hip-hop conservatives and backpackers. These claims have a mass character. There is a need to see the relationship between the situation in Honduras and in other recent rebellions where the seizure of radio was on the table (or a necessary task) and the changing attitude of the hip-hop generation towards traditional communication mediums.
What this means is that we must now shatter the liberal illusions and push the "liberated zones" perspective to an actual power challenge (this would be programmatic and strategic; we shouldn't try to encourage this apart from a general attack on and challenge to the State, obviously).
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Hip-Hop Has Saved My Soul (and Spirituality) by BYC
I'm reposting this note that I was tagged in from my Facebook page. It is from a very good friend of mine in Seattle, BYC, who I and LBoogie also collaborate with (among several other good folks) on a new blog called Gathering Forces which I hope all of you will read and participate in too.
This is a very introspective and striking essay that means a lot to me on a very personal level. Personal, because everyone has their own story of how hip-hop has transformed them. In the case of BYC, as a conservative youth evangelist who was repelled from hip-hop due to its apparent violence and patriarchy, to his process of becoming a revolutionary who finds within hip-hop a deep sense of spirituality and struggle and not the cartoonish and proselytizing forms we see with Jin, Toby Mac, or still worse manifestations.
My history and sense of alienation from Christianity as a youth for its missionary vibe, its judgmental predisposition, and its straight-up racism, found legitimation in the lyrics of hip-hop music which many times raged against the contradictions and historical crimes of official Christianity. Through it I've found that hip-hop has sent up, in an uneven and contradictory way, the from-below tradition of spirituality (including within Islam, NOI, 5% NOI) that saw saving one's soul as engaging in the fight against injustice. Over time, as my own politics and perspectives matured and deepened, hip-hop went with me expressing a vast range of conflicting ideas and sensibilities and each time I found a way to make it relevant to my specific place in life.
Read and digest this essay carefully for it is one of the most original contributions to hip-hop that I have ever read.
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I know this is long but I hope everyone tagged will read this and forward if they want.
As insomnia kicks in, another profound post (I hope) is produced. I only get exciting ideas to write about in the middle of my sleep- surely, it’s divinely inspired. It’s like the Tupac line from Ghetto Gospel, “Never forget, that God isn’t finished with me yet//When I write rhymes, I go blind, and let the Lord do his thing.”
I dedicate this entry to all my friends and family from Seattle Chinese Alliance Church. It’s hard to write this and not think about the past five years of what could have been had I continued ‘growing in Christ’ with you all. I ask that you will be patient as you read this, as I’m sure much if not all of this note will provoke some kind of offense, and genuinely welcome and encourage your comments at the end.
A second audience I want to address here are some of my progressive friends who do listen to hip hop, but intentionally limit their listening to ‘underground’, ‘political’, and ‘socially conscious’ rap—artists like the Blue Scholars, Immortal Technique, Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Mos Def.
I think the title of this note is really fitting, because I wish to say that hip hop, in its entirety, including its most violent incarnations (i.e. gangsta rap, horrorcore), has rekindled my spirituality when I had completely abandoned God by providing me an alternative conception of Christianity and faith that was understood and embraced by people struggling against a system that had marginalized them from the political process and from economic opportunities. Hip hop has also taught me so much about the world and has given me so much purpose to what I do as a community organizer.
Recently, I’ve become very annoyed with Jin the emcee. I used to love him in his battle rapping days on BET’s 106 & Park and followed him closely when he moved to Hong Kong and rapped in Cantonese. In fact, he was the only rapper that I could listen to with my family (not to mention my grandparents too), as he produced a lot of family-friendly, humorous tracks innocently portraying the landscape of HK or touching on lite-themes like dim sum dishes. Recently, though, he’s abandoned all of this and turned pretty staunchly into an evangelistic ‘Christian’ rapper. I won’t be surprised if his next album hits Christian stores alongside established ‘Christian’ rappers like Toby Mac, John Reuben, Grits, and T-Bone (whom I think is probably the only technically sophisticated ‘Christian’ rapper) or played on spirit 105.3 (actually, I would be surprised if Jin got airtime, since spirit 105.3 likes to play white artists). Jin’s latest two songs, “The Light Club” and “The Best”, really capture an aspect that I really hate about Christianity and Christians today. The dominant notion of Christianity today says that if you want to be identified and accepted as a Christian rapper, there are certain moral and thematic parameters by which you must abide. Jin captures this sentiment very well in “The Light Club,” with lyrics like “you want raps about pimpin’ killin’ snitchin’ ballin’?//You won’t get ‘em from me, naw that’s not my callin’//God Almighty reached out I mean this sincerely//He spoke to me like Morgan Freeman did to Jim Carey.”
The former me relates a lot to this sentiment of morality. Let me backtrack a bit. For those who don’t know my past, back in my high school days, I was almost ‘militantly’ Christian. I evangelized everywhere I went, helped establish our high school’s Christian club, and even preached to a congregation in Mexico. Kids at high school hated me for this, but I saw it as a challenge from God and accepted the mission of evangelism quite humbly. Without ever explicitly admitting this to myself because the rhetoric of church forbid Christians from judging others, I did actively judge others on a daily basis, based on the promiscuous activities that I saw and coarse language I would hear. It was subconsciously built into my system that those activities were evil, sinful, and ‘hell-sent’ (to ironically quote a song title from my favorite gangsta artist, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony). I’ll spare you the long story of how I drifted away from being this evangelist, being this type of Christian, why I left the church, and ultimately why I abandoned God (although if anyone really wants to hear it, I would be happy to lay out all the reasons in person).
One of my biggest qualms about the mainstream/dominant version of Christianity is that it makes all these indictments against activities that are commonly associated with youth of color. Growing up, probably the biggest reason why I never listened to ANY rap (let alone gangsta rap), was I heard from so many sources- my parents, my pastors, my youth counselors- that rap music was promiscuous, that it was sexist, that it was violent. Much like how I approached evangelism as a high school Christian, the church itself makes no attempt to contextualize or see youth of color according to where they’re at. Instead, evangelism itself becomes a tool of colonialism, of ‘civilizing’ the barbaric tendencies of the ghetto.
Never mind the structural inequalities of gentrification, the overcrowding of low-income people of color into a small unsanitized neighborhood, the rampant unemployment, and the homelessness that impelled the creation of hip hop in the 1970s. Never mind the structural racism that prevents youth of color from any chance of formal success in the forms of college education and high-paying jobs. With the economic crisis today and the exponential increase of tuition in universities across America, youth of color will only be further marginalized from access to colleges, pushing more and more to identify with the messages of hip hop culture. Never mind the police brutality and racial profiling that institutionalize colonial thinking among mainstream society one the one hand, and fear and resistance by victims of such on the other.
When Christians do engage the ghetto, communities of color, and the homeless in their limited way, it’s almost always in a patronizing form that reinforces white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, capitalism. Growing up, I was repulsed by gay people. Whenever I met someone gay, I had to force myself to talk to them by telling myself it’s not the people you hate, it’s their ways. And the typical conversation would end up with me telling them to follow Jesus and he would give them the power to rectify their sexual orientation.
I distinctly remember that one of the ‘social justice’ activities I participated in with my high school youth group was to go to Capitol Hill and feed the homeless for one night. No real connections need to be made, just give them food and hopefully they’ll take a track or listen to us attempt to proselytize them for a few minutes. It’s this shock therapy multiplied a few times with monetary and racial privilege that characterize mission trips today. Let’s go into a third world community of color, tell them (implicitly of course) that their gods are weak and poor by providing them with foreign aid and English instruction, show them the love of God through helping them build their communities, and frame this foreign aid as the outward reaching, selfless ministry of Jesus Christ. I hate to burst the bubble, but oftentimes this type of soft imperialism in the form of nonviolent priests coming into and converting entire communities was used either as a substitute for or a precursor to the violent imperialism of European colonists in the New World. Either by force or Christian/Catholic conversion, though, the natives were ultimately subjected to their own massive Exodus (this word is quite intentional) from their homelands or subservience to European empires.
While Christians busily impose their own Cultural Revolution against hip hop (term is deliberate as what Christians say about hip hop is what Mao said about all non-Mao praising culture when he imposed a massive ban on literature, films, etc) and inner city culture, I have discovered a Christianity and spirituality rising from the streets that more so exemplifies the social critic and revolutionary of Christ than any of the messages emanating from mainstream churches.
Christ was first and foremost a critic against Roman occupation. It was very telling that, in Luke 8:30, when he cast out the demons called “Legion” from the man, he drove them into pigs that rushed down a river bank and drowned themselves. At that time, the only use for the term “Legion” was to describe the Roman army. To needle the colonized Jews who saw pigs as unclean animals, the Roman army frequently called themselves swine. This example and others reinforce the anti-empire, anti-state oppression character of Christ.
In mainstream churches today, though, there is an overemphasis on being ‘apolitical’ and taking no stance on (or in the worst case, sometimes actually explicitly reinforcing the) injustices committed by Western governments and their allies. Sure, widespread abuses of China, Sudan, Iraq, and other countries that the U.S. government deems ‘evil’ can be similarly indicted at church, but when it comes to America’s own oppression and colonization of people of color in the inner city, of its own occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, or when it comes to the state of Israel occupying Palestinians, then churches have to be silent. Make no mistake, silence not only reinforces these injustices by making us complicit in them, it is ant-Christ.
It is in the lyrics of Public Enemy, TuPac Shakur, and Ice Cube that I have discovered the same anti-empire, anti-state tendencies of Christ. It is in rap where I see American injustices called out and America’s hypocrisy exposed. While mainstream Christianity has the privilege of ignoring oppressions and struggles against oppressions happening right around them on a daily basis, the victims of these oppressions have been impelled to use hip hop, among other forms of struggle, to fight. Let me emphasize that ignoring oppressions is a privilege that unfortunately condemns the forms of struggle taken up by the oppressed most of the time. The hypocrisy of the church is glaring. While they focus on misogynistic images in rap videos, they overlook the sexism of the state. While they focus on the violence of gangsta rap, they overlook the fact that the state monopolizes formal violence, from the army to the police, and that these violent actors exist for the sole purpose of securing profit for a minority at the expense of the majority. If Christians are going to condemn these patriarchal and violent tendencies, why don’t they start with condemning the state? In my mind, only when a movement that pushes for a wholesale transformation of the state into one that is truly democratic, truly anti-racist, and truly anti-patriarchal arises, will we start to see forms of popular culture reflect this new reality.
It is within this context of marginalization of and institutionalized state violence against low-income, people-of color from which hip hop arises, and from which we get the ultra-violent forms of hip hop. For many youth of color, gangsta rappers speak to their reality of being caught in the game- not by choice but by the reality of being dark-skinned in America and thereby automatically disenfranchised from opportunities that I myself, other mainstream Christians, and many liberal progressives take for granted. Perhaps my favorite Christian artist, the gangsta rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony (yes they identify as Christian), say it best when they say “I tried so hard, can’t seem to get away from misery//I tried so hard but [I’ll] always be a victim of these streets//It ain’t my fault ‘cause I tried to get away but trouble follows me” (“I Tried” ft. Akon). Another one of my favorite Christian artists, DMX, would immediately be condemned by many mainstream Christians for being overbearingly violent and coarse in his lyrics. To all those ‘Christian’-hatas out there, he reminds you to “Look thru my eyes, see as I see, do as I do, be as I be//Walk in my shoes, hurt your feet, then know why I do dirt in the street” (“Look Thru My Eyes”). In another song “The Convo”, he casts himself in the traditional Christian poem ‘Footprints’ as the man carried on the beach by Christ. He ponders the question of many a youth stuck in the game, “I tried doin’ good, but good’s not too good for me//Misunderstood, why you chose the hood for me,” to which Christ, also played by DMX, replies, “My child, I’ve watched you grow up, And I’ve been there//Even at times you least suspected it, I was there//And look what I’ve given you, A talent to rhyme//I may not come when you call, but I’m always on time.” In spite of the systematic oppression dealt against him, DMX is able to express his faith without being overbearingly evangelistic. Because he comes from the hood, unlike many other ‘Christian’ rappers, he is never judgmental and retains his gangsta persona throughout his albums to remain relevant to youth.
While DMX expressly believes in Christ, TuPac conveys a more conflicted sense of spirituality. Throughout his lyrics, you can see him genuinely struggling between the mainstream conception of Christianity and his fate of thug livin’, which he accurately and poignantly frames as the product of a racist and capitalist system. In songs like “Life Goes On” and “Thugz Mansion,” he attempts to reconcile his gangsta life by creating a heaven for g’s- one that is stress free and one where homies can just kick it. In “Ghetto Gospel,” he challenges mainstream Christianity’s morality and exposes its inadequacy to understand the ghetto by ending the song with the line “Am I less holy, cuz I choose to puff a blunt or drink a beer with my homies?” In perhaps his greatest song criticizing mainstream Christianity, “Blasphemy,” he further exposes the irrelevancy of contemporary church leaders like the Pope and juxtaposes him with figures like Malcolm. He further breaks down church imagery of devils and hell, implicitly asking Christians what they know about each when in the hood, he inevitably fights devils on a daily basis in a living hell, a sentiment similarly echoed years later by Young Jeezy, “Tonight I can’t sleep, I’m livin’ in hell//First they gives us the work, Then they throw us in jail” (“Soul Survivor” ft. Akon).
While the violence in gangsta rap is unfortunately directed against other g’s caught in the game, it validly expresses the extreme anger and frustration of youth who are isolated from the façade of the American dream. As an organizer, while I think much of this frustration needs to be channeled productively into organizations that combat systemic injustices, if you simply overlook and condemn gangsta rap, you would be doing the state’s job of invaliding youth anger due to real injustices rooted in the system itself.
The spirituality I express today is much more in line with the liberation theology of Latin America, the black theology of Africa, the min jung theology of South Korea, the hip hop theology of the American hood, and the non-white Christ who existed centuries ago. Thank you hip-hop for saving my soul by providing me with a spirituality that actively speaks out against injustice. I may not go to the same heaven as some of you tagged in this note (can I at least request “a bottle of gin, in case I don’t get in?” – TuPac in “Life Goes On”), but I’ll be more than content if I can kick it in Thugz Mansion with the likes of Billie Holiday, Malcolm, TuPac, Tech N9ne, and Bone Thugs.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Is Kanye Our Generation's Muhammad Ali?
Ok, so admittedly the post title is an exaggeration, but Kanye's making headlines again and it got me thinking (and I'm not the only one). Apparently, at the MTV VMAs when country artist Taylor Swift was giving her acceptance speech for Best Female Video of the Year, Kanye got up on stage, took the mic and in no uncertain terms said Beyonce had the best video of all time (ergo, Taylor, you shouldn't have won that shit). The audience booed, Taylor looked stunned, and later Beyonce made a conciliatory move and invited Taylor back on stage to give a real acceptance speech.
This marks only the latest occasion in a long series of public, er, shall we say gaffs that Kanye seems quite good at making, and which cause an uproar in the blogosphere and entertainment news world as a chorus of voices chime in on what a nutcase Kanye is, how selfish and immature he is, how he ain't got no sense...on and on it goes.
Now, my point here is not to deny that Kanye does often come off as an arrogant and immature dude, with an inability to see beyond himself. At best, the Muhammad Ali connection is a stretch.
Ali had arrogance and ego galore, but he was also emblematic of a social and political moment and the strength and pride of a generation that stood up to Jim Crow, organized in schools, communities and workplaces, and raised the call for Black Power. The historical context, the social movements, the personal biography, even his own political associations, all make Muhammad Ali a very different figure than Kanye West. But, there's gotta be more to Kanye's repeated abrasive interventions besides ego or insanity. He's a person of color in the public eye, in an industry that is reflective of and reinforces white supremacy and patriarchy in society (from the images and artists it promotes, to the money it exploits out of their artistic production, etc.).
In what seem like countless outbursts on stages and at shows, the recurrent underlying theme has been Kanye's sense that he is fighting for an "underdog" -- whether himself, someone else, or a group of people -- who is hard-working, talented, deserving of more, and constantly being held back and exploited by an elite social and political class. He doesn't hesitate to call people out when he thinks they're getting over, even if it's unpopular or seems rude. In its finer moments, that kind of sentiment can take on a collective character, like when Kanye said "George Bush doesn't care about black people" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. At it's worst, it remains individualistic and atomized, all about Kanye and what he shoulda won.
In a contradictory way, Kanye has elements of what made Ali so great, but he's not able to overcome his own limitations because of the current historical moment we live in. Kanye's arrogance, his braggadocio, his loud-mouth interventions are scattered pieces of an anti-racist sentiment that historically has been a rallying cry for people of color to reclaim what is rightfully ours.
Whether we think Kanye is right or wrong for his actions, there's no getting around the relationship of personality to social context; the relationship of our own strengths and weaknesses to how these are shaped and developed by the activity of the communities around us. Kanye's loud mouth might get him in trouble in a school classroom (or an awards show), but it comes in handy on a picket line. Or, as CLR James wrote in his book on the Haitian Revolution, "Great [humans] make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make."
The Strengths and Limitations of Banksy's Art
We've posted some images of Banksy's art on D&HHP before, and here's a decent article exploring some of the questions that inevitably come up when talking about Banksy or other artists who border the line between subversive political art and co-optation by a reactionary art establishment. What is the significance and consequence of "political art" in a period where there's not yet a mass movement to shape, and be shaped by, that political content? Is there an "authentic" political art that only happens in the streets? Is political art undermined when it is incorporated into doing big gallery shows or selling your work for $500,000 a pop?
This is tangential, but this article about Banksy reminded me of the scene in Frida (the Selma Hayek version) where Diego Rivera gets shit from David Siqueiros, a Stalinist Mexican muralist, for painting a mural for Rockefeller in New York. When Rivera jokingly tells Siqueiros that he paints for the rich because they have good taste, Siquieros replies:
"The rich don't have good taste. They pay someone to have good taste for them. And they don't hire you because you are good. They hire you because you assuage their sense of guilt. They use you, Diego, and you are too vain to see it."
While that's a great scene in the movie, that argument is one-sided and makes it seem like different social forces cannot act out their conflicting interests in the same medium -- i.e. that while Rockefeller was using Rivera for his own purposes, and Rivera was surely using Rockefeller for his own, Rivera's art served yet another purpose for the multitude of working class people who saw and were affected by his work.
From his interviews and own writing, Banksy seems to be well aware of this dynamic and seems intent on maintaining an independent artistic sensibility and politics despite what the wealthy art gallery owners and yuppie or hipster art buyers get out of his pieces. The crux of it is this, as the author of the article below puts it:
"Unlike most of his contemporaries Banksy points to real issues that resonate with wide layers of the population. He calls the art world 'the biggest joke going ... a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.' However, the simple iconoclastic images and one-liner jokes that often accompany them, while offering an angry and healthy protest, are also informed by a certain resigned cynicism. In his book Wall and Piece he writes, 'We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.'...
For something 'serious to happen,' which Banksy and any artist should aspire to, then a serious (not humourless) approach to art is required. Whether Banksy’s work progresses in that direction or whether he is merely co-opted to become another bad boy for the art establishment is yet to be decided."
Britain: The strengths and limitations of Banksy’s “guerrilla” art
By Paul Mitchell
10 September 2009
Over 300,000 people saw the exhibition of works by “guerilla” graffiti artist Banksy at Bristol museum and art gallery this summer. The number of visitors, queuing for up to six hours, approached the total population of the city in the west of England.
Banksy has undergone a meteoric rise to fame. His unknown identity and nocturnal spray-painting activities have all added to the mystique surrounding him. The city’s chief executive Jan Ormondroyd said, “It has probably been the most successful exhibition in the UK. It is more than any of us expected, certainly in terms of putting Bristol on the map. We have to say a big thank-you to Banksy.”
There is a social conscience evidenced in Banksy’s work and a certain dry wit, but there are limitations of both an aesthetic and political character.
Visitors entering the Bristol Museum’s palatial entrance hall were confronted by a burnt out ice cream van playing its plaintive melody. Behind it a life-size Metropolitan policeman wearing a “Metropolitan Peace” badge creaked to and fro on a fairground horse. Close by a classical statue adorned with shopping bags and sunglasses contrasted with her neighbour covered in a ragged blanket—a dog and broken bicycle at her feet.
In a second room, stencils, paint cans and other tools of the trade littered one corner, while right wing radio show hosts ranted over a loudspeaker about graffiti defacing private property. Britannia, the symbol of British imperialism, held her spear topped by a CCTV camera. Riot police ran through the grass holding hands and smelling flowers. An African child with a sign said, “Peaches Geldof, please give generously.”
Further along, copies of old master portraits sported beady eyes or a plastic nose. A beautiful mountain landscape was captioned with the words “Subject to availability for a limited period only.” At the far end of the room hung a huge House of Commons canvas, with Members of Parliament replaced by chimpanzees.
In a darkened third room named “Unnatural History,” cages had been constructed containing lifelike animatronic figures. A hen looked out of her coop at her offspring—chicken nuggets—pecking at a sachet of ketchup, a rabbit preened herself in front of a mirror and a balding Tweety Pie blinked forlornly on his perch.
Elsewhere in the museum various objects such as a muzzled woolly lamb lay hidden amongst the stuffed animals and scientific specimens. In the art gallery hung copies of well-known paintings, defaced in some way.
A video of Banksy installing the exhibition can be viewed on a YouTube video.
Banksy’s surreal and satirical graffiti work has appeared in numerous locations around the world, addressing topics such as war, the power of the state and corporations, environmental degradation and animal rights. Many municipal authorities who once rushed to scrub off what they ridiculed as vandalistic rubbish are having second thoughts as the prices of his works skyrocket.
Banksy’s graffiti first began appearing in the UK in the 1990s. He admits he used stencils because “spray paint’s actually quite hard to use… and I found myself painting embarrassingly bad pictures, illegally on a wall, at 21 years old.”
He claims, “I got politicised during the poll tax, the Criminal Justice Act and the Hartcliffe Riots—that was Bristol’s Rodney King. I can also remember my old man taking me down to see the Lloyds bank—what was left of it—after the 1980 St. Pauls riots.”
Banksy began to produce “subverted paintings” such as Monet’s Water Lily Pond—with its superimposed shopping trolley and traffic cone.
In the Paris Louvre he pinned up a copy of the Mona Lisa adding a yellow smiley face. Similar pranks followed in London’s Tate Modern, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and other institutions.
In 2005, Banksy went to Israel and painted on the security barrier dividing the West Bank. His images included a girl floating over the wall holding onto balloons and children digging through it to reveal a tropical beach on the other side.
“How illegal is it to vandalize a wall?” Banksy asked his critics.
“The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin wall and will eventually run for over 700km—the distance from London to Zurich. The International Court of Justice last year ruled the wall and its associated regime is illegal. It essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open-air prison.”
In 2006, Banksy smuggled an inflatable orange suited doll representing a Guantanamo Bay detainee into the California Disneyland theme park. The following year he painted the Jackson and Travolta characters from Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” above a London Tube station, substituting bananas for their guns. Transport for London ordered its removal, saying it created “a general atmosphere of neglect and social decay which in turn encourages crime.”
In 2008, Banksy marked the third anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster by producing a series of graffiti works on derelict buildings in New Orleans.
As Banksy’s fame spread so did the price tag on his works. When his “Space Girl and Bird” sold for $576,000 he posted a painting on his web site of an art auction with the words, “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.”
Last year Banksy’s pastiche of a Damien Hirst spot painting “Keep It Spotless,” showing a Condoleezza Rice figure sweeping dirt “under the carpet,” sold for nearly £1 million.
Unlike most of his contemporaries Banksy points to real issues that resonate with wide layers of the population. He calls the art world “the biggest joke going ... a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.”
However, the simple iconoclastic images and one-liner jokes that often accompany them, while offering an angry and healthy protest, are also informed by a certain resigned cynicism. In his book Wall and Piece he writes, “We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.”
Elsewhere he says, “To make a piece of art that actually provoked something serious to happen? I couldn’t even dream of that ... but yeah ... I guess that’s the aim.”
This is all pretty passive stuff.
Why reject a priori what Banksy acknowledges should be one of art’s highest aims?
In a corner of the Bristol exhibition, Banksy took a copy of Millet’s 1857 painting “The Gleaners,” renamed it “Agency Job,” cutting out one of the three peasant women labouring in the fields and placing her on the frame smoking a cigarette.
Millet had been deeply affected by the 1848 revolutions and their promise of democracy. He became the first European painter to portray the peasantry, a doomed class impoverished by advancing capitalism, in such a sympathetic and noble manner. His calm imagery, which declares, “Yes, the world can be changed into a better place,” was castigated by bourgeois society and taken up by the emerging socialist movement.
Banksy texted the media regarding his exhibition, “It’s nice to see it’s been so popular but it makes me a bit suspicious. Throughout history all the great artists have been overlooked in their own lifetime and only appreciated once they’ve gone. I’m starting to worry I’m not one of the good guys.”
It is right and proper to ask such questions of oneself and one’s work. For something “serious to happen,” which Banksy and any artist should aspire to, then a serious (not humourless) approach to art is required. Whether Banksy’s work progresses in that direction or whether he is merely co-opted to become another bad boy for the art establishment is yet to be decided.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Deep Thinkers "Burn Em Up"
This is "Burn em Up" from Deep Thinkers, a duo based out of Kansas City. It's a bit of a throwback; I believe it dropped in 2003. There is also a personal relevance as I have known these two cats, Brother of Moses (MC) and Leonard Dstroy (DJ/producer), for over 12 years. Bro of Mo is also a highly accomplished artist who, along with Lenny D, instructs youth at Hip-Hop Academy in KCMO.
Aesthetically this is a great video. Some of the imagery is a bit cryptic and it's hard to deduce a logical direction other than the pictures' inherent political character. I'm not quite sure what it's going for but it works.
Jay Smooth's humorous and critical take on Michael Steele
Contrary to Smooth's argument, Steele shows here just how skilled he is as a politician. Jay isn't wrong about all the reasons he is weak, but in this case he's tactically sharp in defending the Right when they disrupt Democratic speakers and having a quick-witted response to the woman who tries to shout him down for his stance on healthcare.
He won't last as chairman but certainly won't be responsible for any Republican recomposition. This is due not least to his opportunistic appointment, his dislocation with the hip-hop generation, and for the very reason that the Republican Party is a long way from breaking from its white populism. But hip-hop generation activists have MUCH to learn from the tactical edge and militancy of the Right from above and below. Here's just one example.
How is hip-hop being used?
reposted from Rebel Frequencies
The right got their ass in a sling this past Labor Day weekend over Van Jones, who, following revelations of his past political activities, resigned as President Obama's 'green jobs' czar. Fox News' Glenn Beck lead the charge in leading a weeks-long campaign against Jones, who was radicalized by the Rodney King verdict back in '92 and later joined a small Maoist group known as STORM (he left a few years later).
Jones had some impressive organizing credentials for sure, not the least of which was the formation of Oakland's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Baker Center, since its establishment in 1996, has lead some important programs in the Bay Area, including ones against police brutality and the prison industrial complex. The center also hosted the Third Eye Movement, which was lauded as a prime example of hip-hop activism and lead a campaign against California's Proposition 21 (a 2000 prop that would have increased sentences for youth offenders).
It's really no wonder that the right hates Van Jones. The racism was in full-force as they sought to villainize him. One comment on a Fox News message board read 'Proof Positive that you can send a THUG to and Ivy League school and all you get is and slightly educated arrogant THUG. He only got in by using the school's quota system not by merit...'
Jones stepped down just days after RNC chair Michael Steele showed up at Howard University in DC as part of his 'Freedom Tour.' There were more than a few things wrong with Steele's speaking engagement. First, he showed up at a historically black university and had the first row of the auditorium reserved for white members of student Republican groups. He then declared from the front that '[i]nstead of becoming rappers, young people should set higher goals for themselves, such as owning their own record companies.'
Steele has long used street lingo to try to appeal to the hip-hop generation. He's said publicly that he wants the Republican Party to welcome 'hip-hop Republicans and Frank Sinatra Republicans,' and when asked about economic reform stated 'the American people don't have that kind of bling-bling in their pockets.' At this specific event, he attempted to jokingly encourage students to study business using the phrase 'mo' money.' I'd imagine the only people who laughed were the white folks in the front.
This was before he literally turned his back on an audience member whose mother had died because she couldn't afford her cancer meds, then told her that shouting accomplishes nothing and she should listen instead.
That the right-wing can villify a liberal's former street cred while allowing their own party to use hip-hop culture as a fig leaf for their agenda is shameful. That Obama refused to come to Jones' defense is an M.O. that is becoming frustratingly familiar.
It's further proof that hip-hop is safest in the hands of folks at the bottom. Days after Steele left, Howard erupted in a day of raucous protest against the university's cuts in housing and financial aid. These folks are the ones who get it.
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