Update for 2012

Hey folks,

So though the blog has been more or less idle for two years or more, I have some new writing in store for it; a review of albums and mixtapes from this year, a reflection on Hip-Hop Occupies, and, most importantly, a new and major revision of "Theses on Hip-Hop" written back in 2006 and last updated in 2007.  This last one I'm really excited about dropping on the world and I hope it generates good discussion and gives me and maybe others some new categories to work with.  My time is limited with much of it spent on organizing and political education and self-development, but Democracy and Hip-Hop will see new activity in 2012.  I'm super excited about it.  So check back with me soon!

--R.E.B.E.L. (new "bacronym" TBD)

Hip-hop latino y Frantz Fanon

Funkdoobiest

Latinohiphop.org es un blog que tiene videos hip-hop en español. ¡Yo miré tres videos anoche y fueron muy buenos! Mi grupo favorito latino es probablemente Cypress Hill, pero la mayoría no se piensan que ellos son hip-hop latino. Ellos fueron parte de la tradición de boom bap.

Latinohiphop.org is a blog that has hip-hop videos in Spanish. I watched three of them last night and they were really good. My favorite Latino hip-hop group is probably Cypress Hill, but many don’t think of them as Latino hip-hop. They were a part of the Boom Bap tradition.

So I know Cypress Hill did incorporate some Spanish references into their lyrical styles, but they didn’t deviate too much from the boom bap style (but in the last ten years or more they have begun to switch things up). Same goes for Beatnuts, Funkdoobiest (who were Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Lakota Nation), Lighter Shade of Brown and others who most don’t see as making specifically Latin@ hip-hop, though they were Latin@ themselves.

Latinohiphop.org really reveals the breadth of Latin@ hip-hop forms. While on the blog I watched a few videos from Chingo Bling, Choquib Town, and Sabor de Centro. It is clear that these artists have enlarged the content of hip-hop by giving it specific forms which correspond to their own regional and national cultures, yet it is also hip-hop proper insofar as it is consistent with rhyme and beat patterns that make hip-hop what it is.

The Latin@s who were part and parcel of hip-hop in the States in the 1990s helped to develop a kind of hip-hop known as boom bap, but why it it that we don’t think of boom bap as specifically Latin@? Why not all hip-hop for that matter since Latin@s were indispensable to it since its inception? Why is it submerged into the generality of hip-hop? Why is it that when they are cast within the specificity of Latino hip-hop it is done only because of their identity?

This question is complicated when we think of how much American Latin@s embraced black culture, most evident when hearing them use the word “nigga” as their own.

Cypress Hill is hip-hop, yet is also Latino hip-hop. Likewise, Chingo Bling is Latino hip-hop, but also hip-hop.

This dynamic makes me think of Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks who saw the limitations of embracing blackness to the extent that is predicated on negating whiteness. But to become fully human this negation must happen because the only other choice is to be white which is something black people can never become even when they try. So while blackness must eventually be transcended, it can never be in a world were human beings are branded black and others white.

It would be great to hear from my Fanon reading friends if the above narrative is consistent with the text and with Fanon’s dialectical method.

Viva Hip-Hop

Said, from La Haine

I have been inspired by an onslaught of new blogs and blasts of creative energy by friends and comrades and it is so soon having its contagious effects. It has spoken to my own need to write and to claim my own independent and semi-public space for reflection and creativity. After all, I gave up that creative aspect of myself when I traded in my turntables and beat machine for…whatever it is that militants use. Laptops? Books? Pencils? Notebooks? Not that being a militant can’t be creative.

For a few years the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project (D&HHP) was a space for myself, LBoogie, Rob, and others who contributed to think about the relationships of political struggle and organizing to that thing which holds so much fascination for our generation and for which we are indissolubly a part: hip-hop. The result has been a nice collection of notes and thoughts on questions that concern the meaning of hip-hop itself and I encourage others to look over some of it. At its best it was parlayed into student organizing where hip-hop was a form of presentation through flyers as well as a reference point in conversation with folks and how through it they interpret their lives and give expression to their resistance.

I’m currently studying Spanish at Austin Community College. I’m hoping it can help me find decent work as well as allow me to organize with folks who mainly speak Spanish. Spanish speakers have made very fundamental contributions to hip-hop, whether it be the immigrants or descendants of the Caribbean in America’s East or Chicanas and other Latina people on the Left Coast. It would be ideal if Militante de la generación de hip-hop could help facilitate some of that through writing.

I would welcome it, because the last two years I have experienced a disconnect with that part of myself that has shaped so much of who I have become. A lot of that has to do with being a campus organizer at UT-Austin where I have been in isolation from those sections of militant working class youth who took classes at Delgado Community College in New Orleans and where my partner LBoogie and I spent a lot of our time. Don’t get it twisted–the last two years have been the richest organizing experiences of my life. I have grown by leaps and bounds in relationship with some of the most dynamic young organizers I have ever met; folks I have built what I think will be lifelong friendships and many of them I straight-up consider family.

But there is a part of myself that needs expression and that can’t always find an outlet through those specific friendships.

Since there has been a lull in activity at UT around budget cuts and immigration, which I and folks I have organized with have put our collective energies toward, I have a bit more time to think about what it was I missed about Delgado, slow and drab as it was at times.

I miss debating the necessity of queer liberation through the lens of Bounce music, a form of New Orleans hip-hop where openly queer and transgender artists have fought and shed blood to carve out a space for themselves and their identity. I miss talking about the philosophy of Lil Wayne and about black liberation as it was understood by the generation which took part in the L.A. rebellion of 1992. I miss the communication and pedagogy that hip-hop can be. At at time when I wore my own “conscious hip-hop” blinders (which meant hating on other forms) a then-homie of mine corrected me, citing Common Sense, “but black music is black music and it’s all good, I wasn’t salty she was with the boys in the hood.”

I also just had a different relationship with folks at Delgado, not just because I was a student there but because I felt like there were common experiences students shared. I’m not a student at UT nor do I plan to be, but that isn’t the reason why I haven’t felt quite the same toward UT students (not that I think all UT students are inherently backward or middle class).

At UT, a lot of the folks who have been swept up in the struggle against budget cuts and defense of ethnic and gender studies oftentimes understandably base their relationships with hip-hop on specific artists and forms which are consistent with their own codified and systematized politics. And they want a hip-hop which affirms that. But with that comes a major misstep with what most other hip-hop means for folks who don’t think of themselves as political: its profound exposition of the conflicts and tensions within our very society.

This is nothing new and a good section if not the bulk of this blog has been focused toward these questions. I don’t wish to revisit those things–that work has been done. Rather, in my own transitional period into new areas of political work, I’d like to use this space to help me segue back into what I hope will be something more explicitly hip-hop in orientation. I don’t know if that will be a hip-hop community organization as such or if it will mean more informal methods for employing a hip-hop ethos into ostensibly non-hip-hop organizing.

Because being hip-hop isn’t largely about being a DJ or a dancer, it isn’t about being a technician or having a skill. Hip-hop is an activity which can’t be narrowed to someone with a CD with their name on it (although that is a valid part of it)–it is about how folks think and express their very struggles, sometimes open, usually passive or in retreat. As such, it lives with those of us who aren’t skilled or aren’t artists (in the formal sense at least).

But something happens when we consciously put hip-hop toward fighting and destroy white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. It becomes an aid in a critical kind of practice, a practice that critiques itself and improves itself. As I have said before, rarely do I turn to KRS-One for philosophical insight, but someone who thinks as much about hip-hop as he does is bound to get some things right. I’ll close for now with a quote from his song, “Hip-Hop Lives.”

‘Hip’ means to know, it’s a form of intelligence/
To be hip is to be updated and relevant/
Hop is form of movement/
You can’t just observe a hop, you gotta hop up and do it/
Hip and hop is more than music/
Hip is the knowledge, hop is the movement/
Hip and hop is intelligent movement/

GCL1 on History of Seattle Struggle and Hip-Hop Organizing

Just read a bio from hip-hop activist/organizer GCL1 from the blog Sheepskin Camo after he left a comment on Gathering Forces in regards to organizing street youth of color. I'm very, very impressed with his breadth of knowledge, experience, and perspective as it relates to hip-hop in particular and hip-hop organizing.

http://sheepskincamo.blogspot.com/2009/04/seattle-hip-hops-minister-of_10.html

D&HHP?

After four years since the blog began, never has it been this idle. We've always run into the very objective problem that we are first and foremost organizers. Though when Rob and I started the blog, we were taking a break from organizing to assess our political perspectives. Under such conditions, there's time to focus on cultural questions and being that we were both part of a local hip-hop "scene" and considered ourselves as part of the hip-hop generation (and still do) we were partly trying to validate a broader hip-hop that we felt was misunderstood by this scene and that had implications for the political content of a future movement. We thank C.L.R. James for that.

LBoogie's subsequent partnership with the blog two years ago helped to steer the blog in a more politically coherent direction, and as I began to organize again with her, as a place to consider the relationship between culture and organizing.

On both accounts, I think we've made our point. We have proven (not in words but through practice) the contradictions of conscious hip-hop, the value of popular hip-hop, that the contradictions of hip-hop music taken as a whole express the contradictions of our generation and that a change in the music MUST be based in actual organizing and movements, not by making radical hip-hop as the hip-hop Feuerbachians postulate. Yet, we have (or maybe I have) broken with the entertainment industry as completely subordinate to the will of the masses, that it is propelled forward by its own internal impulses and that those who dis "the industry" are simply conservatives, but are legitimately critiquing monopoly capitalism.

While we're both too busy these days to both keep up with the debates within hip-hop and to try to flesh them out in writing and, after all, it isn't really a blog when it only gets updated once every two months, fundamentally I feel like we've satisfied what it was we set out to do.

So, while I won't say we'll never post anything again, what I will say is don't expect anything. As it is, it can serve as an archive or resource for others who are thinking about what hip-hop means, who the hip-hop generation is, what are its politics, and what does hip-hop politics (not political hip-hop) look like organizationally?

On a personal note, I'd like to see less cultural revolutionaries and radicals and more organizers. Cultural work is important but it cannot be a substitute for building fighting organizations and campaigns. Those existing hip-hop organizations are too tied to foundations and the Democrats and so their politics are painfully liberal. Ironically, they are actually doing more than those that are making political hip-hop music. The other kinds of organizations are purely cultural, perhaps tacking on "social awareness" or a type of political education to teaching the arts of hip-hop.

There is not a damn thing wrong with that. It reflects a larger problem of a politically demobilized people. So while I hope to see hip-hop political organizations that forefront organizing and building campaigns and putting forward demands on bosses and college administrations, right now I'm trying to build with anyone who's willing to fight, whether they identify as hip-hop or not.

I love and have always loved hip-hop. I don't think hip-hop is dead. BUT, if hip-hop does "die," I will be the first to acknowledge it. For there is no culture but a culture born out of resistance to oppression and hip-hop's death will only make way for a more richer cultural form if hip-hop is proven to be incompatible with the social movements of tomorrow. But I'm not gonna sit around and wait for that to happen. I'm gonna seize the time and be a part of that which will be the basis for such a form.

"Mainstream" Lyricism

Proof that "mainstream" artists can be lyrical heavyweights. Everyone here comes sick. And as a new artist, Drake hasn't come weak yet. I love this cat.

A few links while folks are waiting

Two recent links on Ernesto Aguilar's new blog about two different hip-hop films are worth checking out. At least one of them, anyway. Dirty States of America, a throwback to 2003 looks at the roots of Southern hip-hop music. I'm a little disappointed that I'm so late discovering it, but I'm excited that a documentary like this is available. For those on Netflix, its available for instant viewing.

A previous post is for a more recent (I believe) documentary that looks at the relationship of white folks to hip-hop, Blacking it Up. I gotta say, I'm not one bit impressed with either the concept nor the trailer. For one, its a bit of an afterthought. About 25 years after. Two, implicit through the trailer is that white folks are co-opting hip-hop music, an analysis as unsophisticated as it is disingenuous. It becomes all the more clear when two of the personalities who are interviewed are Amiri Baraka and Paul Mooney. Now, as much as I have a historical respect for these two, they are probably the most ideal people you can find who are completely out-of-touch with our generation's politics and sensibilities. In short, it looks to be a film that wants to lock white folks into their whiteness and very likely lets racist black and white intellectuals and pundits--who hate on all hip-hop and use it to point to black folks' supposed depravity--off the hook. And I thought Byron Hurt's documentaries were weak.

Marc Hall jailed for angry 'Stop-Loss' Hip Hop song

Technical Note - In making some technical modifications to the blog an unforeseen consequence changed all of the individual links to our blog posts. So if any folks have run in to broken links lately, that is the reason.

D&HHP

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Marc Hall jailed for angry 'Stop-Loss' Hip Hop song

Please donate to the Marc Hall Free Speech Defense Fund at couragetoresist.org/marc

By Courage to Resist. Updated December 22, 2009

Stop-lossed Army Specialist Marc Hall (aka Hip Hop artist Marc Watercus) was placed in the Liberty County Jail Friday, December 11 for speaking out against the continuing policy that has barred him from exiting the military, including recording an angry and explicit song. Servicemembers do not completely give up their rights to free speech, and certainly not when they do so artistically while off duty. However, the military intends to hold Marc in the county jail for months of pre-trial punishment before court martial. This could become a precedent setting case for boundaries of dissent within the ranks. Free Marc! Free speech! Free the troops from Stop Loss!

Jay Smooth on Larry Johnson and the Stonewall Riots

Very good video blog from Jay Smooth that challenges the heterosexism of KC Chiefs Running Back Larry Johnson who calls one of his many haters on Twitter a "Christopher Street Boy." As Jay explains, Christopher Street in New York City was the site of the Stonewall Riots, a rebellion against police brutality experienced by queer people of color in 1969. Jay rightly disputes anything associated with queerness as weak since these folks valiantly fought off police attacks. By Johnson's logic, he might as well have called this person a "12th Street Boy" which was the location of the Great Rebellion of 1967 in Detroit, MI.

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How I Understood Hip-Hop at 17

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.