Here's the content:
"Freedom Summer: A HipHop for Justice Concert featuring politically conscience [sic!] hiphop, information such as: how to file a police complaint, Know Your Rights and Cop Watch trainings and spoken word and visual art from from the Young Scholars for Justice Network. All ages are invited.
WHEN: Friday, July 11, 2008, doors open at 7pm. Open mic, youth poetry and spoken word from 7-9pm. Speak outs, networking and deejay music will follow with HipHop acts/Know Your Rights trainings from 10pm-2am
WHY: To entertain, educate and organize members of the community around issues concerning police misconduct, racial profiling and the impact of the war on drugs and the war on youth (via programs masquerading as anti-gang/anti-graffiti efforts)."
Here's the breakdown:
Despite the problem that "politically conscience" is a phrase containing an adverb that precedes a noun, we at the D&HHP don't get stuck on grammar.
I just couldn't help exposing the irony that as "conscious" hip-hop parades itself as self-evidently intelligent, its protagonists sometimes reveal it to be just what it is: ignorant as hell.
This hip-hop show, like thousands of others like it, are gonna "teach" us how to file a police complaint. Well folks, if that's all "conscious" hip-hop has to offer us, we need to tell it, "Peace."
Now, I certainly realize that my insignificant rant is not gonna make this elitist cultural hangover disappear; that I will "educate" people on how to file a complaint to the hip-hop 5-0 (who would that be, the Temple of Hip-hop or the Zulu Nation?) about the wackness of this synthetic, bourgie phenomenon called "conscious" hip-hop and the same handful of rappers who get boxed into to this unfortunate category, and that it will somehow dissipate.
Let me tell you what hip-hop heads back in the day did (who mainly get remembered for everything BUT what they actually DID) for themselves without some external vacuum music culture pushing them to do so: when the police beat Rodney King nearly to death and were given a free pass by the State to keep it up, the people of L.A. burned and destroyed the centers of wealth, power, and exploitation ($1,000,000,000 worth. Yes, billion.) and all the cops could do was stand on the sidelines. Why? Because their complaints got them jack shit except more violence. Because a white supremacist institution's only function is to sustain and perpetuate the permanency of those who rule us.
When the next outburst of American anger and determination comes, it's going to unleash such a creative force that it will make Ice Cube and Public Enemy look like child's play (let alone Talib Kweli and his "revolutionary entrepreneurialism"). The next surge of violent creative potential will be from all those hip-hop heads that the "conscious" crowd dismiss in their veiled middle class racism. It will be those cats Black, Brown, and White, with gold fronts, gold chains, saggy pants, and cocked hats who throw off the old society and give us something worth living for. Why? Because they know there is no alternative WITHIN the present arrangement. They know that those who rule are unfit to do so and no amount of diversification of the rich and powerful can prove otherwise.
They know "rights" don't mean a god damn thing.
There are certain rights that we have on paper that we don't actually have. But there are certain rights we don't have on paper that we DO have. The right to rebel. That's what the fuck hip-hop is about.
In the 1960s it was cultural nationalists that sold out the black movement because they found their freedom in political patronage, in dashikis, and in middle class values, all the while workers in factories and lumpen in the streets were getting the shit beat out of them by cops, by union bosses, and by politicians.
Now the cultural nationalists are these phony backpackers telling us that real hip-hop means being peaceful and being philanthropists and supporting Obama. Well hip-hop has never been about that.
I used to say it. I used to say the exact opposite. I was the DJ at the backpacker hip-hop shows, handing out "know your rights" cards to the audience thinking that was the most militant shit ever. But that's not how movements happen.
A great MC who gets chained to the "conscious" label once said something profound. "Things change when people get a sense of their value." Most definitely.
So keep wearing out Common Sense's Resurrection, keep thinking People Under the Stairs are the dopest hip-hop in 15 years. The rest of us, and the most of us who make up this hip-hop generation will pass you by like the Pharcyde.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
All hip-hop is conscious except for "conscious" hip-hop.
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14 Props/Disses:
you make some good points - i think there are definitely issues with "conscious" hiphop talking down at others (and kweli..havent really felt him in years). but, i still wear out my common sense tape. it's a great album! :) and i wouldnt say 'resurrection' is that "conscious" of an album anyway.
i do often make sarcastic comments all the time about "hiphop activism," and corny spoken word sessions. but while learning how to file a police complaint is probably a waste of time, knowing your rights isnt - more knowledge about the corrupt system is always better, imo, then nothing. and watching police is important - we need more witnesses to police brutality, not less. look at the recent rebel diaz case.
i guess i just feel like shit is multi-dimensional - i don't think it's necessary to dis something totally just cuz some of it seems annoying or stupid. the la rebellions and doing know your rights are connected and both important - it's not one or the other. at least, i dont see it that way.
i also think it's dangerous to make general statements about what "most of us who make up this hip-hop generation" think. it sounds like politicans who talk about "what the american people really want." i don't think you meant it that way but i'm just sayin, it came off like that to me.
anyway, trying to build, not destroy. no disrespect. my two cents.
Ian,
Thanks for your post man. And I appreciate the criticism. Sometimes it takes such extreme statements to make a point and get a response. But that post was more prose than it was actual logic.
And for the record, I love Resurrection. I probably have the entire album memorized. You know what I keep asking myself? When is NO I.D. gonna drop another album?
As a matter of fact, the next morning on my way to work, after publishing the blog, I was bumpin "July 3rd" by People Under the Stairs, immediately after dissing those who hold them up as the truest expression of hip-hop music. If you noticed, I didn't diss any artists, I dissed the ideas that somehow Common and his ilk are a more advanced expression of change. I disagree with that contention to the death.
I completely agree with you about the need for ordinary folks in the community to control the police. Without a doubt. I'm not arguing for the maximum program (socialist direct democracy) or nothing at all. But I still think that a community that is self-actively asserting its autonomous power is different than a holier-than-thou hip-hop artist "educating" people on their rights. This system is completely unresponsive to the bullshit rights we supposedly have. The contention that people knowing their rights will mean less police violence and corruption is half-baked liberal drivel. An alternative could be community tribunals or police protection committees that are popularly elected or supported. So while that isn't exactly a manifestation of the maximum program, it is still a form that posits the independent activity of people on the ground.
I feel that knowing your rights and the L.A. rebellion are connected as well. But they are linked only in the sense that the rebellion was a testament to the thin veneer of our so-called rights. The acquittal of the officer who murdered Sean Bell is a testament to the decay of an institution that pretends to protect and serve. So trying to teach folks to know their rights is almost an insult the sentiments of the L.A. revolt.
Now sure, if a community determines to organize itself in such a way that aims to deter the police and simultaneously increase the power of the community itself, part of that process might mean knowing what it can and cannot do legally. But there is a certain point where legality becomes meaningless and folks must make a choice to fight or fall. There was an instance like that in Louisiana back in the mid 1960s where a bunch of black children attempted to swim in a white pool and the fire department showed up to hose them down. An armed civil rights organization called the Deacons for Defense showed in full regalia and warned the cops and the firemen that if the valves open, there was gonna be some killin. No one can tell a community what to do or guess at what forms of independent organization it will create in times of social breakdown.
You'll have to forgive my generalizations, for I knew the response it might get and the stretches I was making. But I think you confused my point on "most of us in the hip-hop generation". I don't proclaim to speak for the whole or most of the hip-hop generation, but I do identify with a certain pole within it. And that pole, while multidimensional as you correctly put it, does have some general characteristics. And I think generalizations are different from absolutes.
So my rant, as I wrote in the post, is not attempting to deter these marginal groups from trying to inject their own limited politics into their music. That's something I can't control. What I'm saying is that there's a reason why people bump Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, and Crime Mob, why we say 'fuck the police', why we "don't care" about "politics" (which means precisely those liberal notions such as knowing your rights for its own sake), etc. yet at the same time, on any given day, we're fighting with the cops, with our bosses, with our previous generation over our apparent "cynicism", etc. but in isolated and fragmented ways. Movements undercut this isolation and link the individual threads of rebellion into a means for attaining power.
I am hip-hop, that's how I identify, but I don't identify with the "4 elements" hip-hop fundamentalist crowd, even though contradictorily, I came out of that limited social existence. I think its safe to say, honestly, that MOST of this generation has grown out of those antiquated forms. And that is because those forms can't express the new content of society. Only the new forms can express it precisely because it isn't hindered by synthetic notions of what's "pure" hip-hop.
It needs to be said and so I'm gonna say it. Like Bill Stephney said that the hip-hop generation was not just a middle finger to white society, but the previous black generation as well, so we need to give the finger to those like KRS-One who can't accept hip-hop today on its own terms.
But yo, thanks for your input and perspective. I largely agree with you, with some nuanced differences of course.
Peace,
Krisna
How can you say the Black power movement sold out but hiphop currently has not?
Has hiphop not become caught up in rhetoric, appearance and performance over substance?
Has hiphop not promoted a narrow kind of blackness?
Has hiphop not diverted black peoples rebellious energies in to styles of dress and "macho" poses?
I never said "black power sold out." What I made a parallel to was how a segment of the black power movement (certainly not the totality), the cultural nationalists, bought in to the predispositions and ideas of the middle class. 'Conscious' hip-hop in many ways reflects similar sentiments.
Furthermore, black power was a political movement. Hip-hop is a cultural movement, albeit one that is much more universally political than previous popular culture forms.
The problem with your criticisms is that you're raising hip-hop above ordinary people (hip-hop has done this, hip-hop has done that). But where are the ordinary folks who shape it? Like Mos Def said, hip-hop is not some giant in the sky that comes down to visit the townspeople. We are hip-hop.
We determine the forms it takes, so if hip-hop reflects machismo, it's only because machismo is a real thing. However, most of the hip-hop that gets dissed for machismo and materialism has more substance than we allow credit for. If you want to struggle against patriarchy, cool, but do it where it counts.
Sure, you got cats out there defying that element, but you know what? All they are and ever will be is a form that struggles to be a pure opposite of something else. It will never have a positive logic of its own.
My bottom line is this. Until people start acting, until they break out of the routine of cynicism and barbarity (which much of their individual and some collective activity reveals here and there, but only sparsely) hip-hop will not change.
Hip-hop is a reflection of us. Hate it or love it. You can't make hip-hop something other than what is happening on the ground.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
Peace.
Krisna.
This is interesting.
Birkhold wrote a piece last week about hip hop as a corporate commodity.
http://www.marclamonthill.com/mlhblog/?p=5552
I also wrote on Patriarchy and Hip Hop Here.
http://modelminority.blogspot.com/2008/06/if-you-want-to-change-society-close.html
If you want to struggle against patriarchy, cool, but do it where it counts.
where do you think it counts?
you are lenient on misogyny. i think it is intolerable.
Two comments eight minutes apart. I guess you felt you first question didn't suffice, huh?
No problem.
Let me give a point to you. In the heyday of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which grew out of the spontaneous sit-in movements throughout the South and was the organizational basis for the transition from Civil Rights to Black Power back in the early to mid 1960s, many of the women in the organization felt that although they were engaged in meaningful and important work in the fight against white supremacy in the form of Jim Crow, they were relegated to mundane office work and chores and were not looked at as leadership within the organization. It was in this context that Stokely Carmichael, later the recognized spokesperson of Black Power, stated with much infamy that the proper place for women in the movement was "prone".
The women took it upon themselves to write up a sort of theses on the sexism both implicit and explicit within the organization and present it to men. This predated and in many ways precipitated the women's movement that was to take shape in the early part of the 1970s.
One integral part of this movement and one of its principal international figures were Selma James and the Wages for Housework campaign. James saw women not only as being paid unequal wages for equal work, but were paid nothing for the work done in the home which was vital to the reproduction of the labor-power of their husbands. Capitalism depended upon the replenishing of labor-power both in the subsistence needs of men and in the actual procreation of future wage workers in order to create surplus value leading to profit.
In this international campaign women fought for both the validation of housework as valuable work and for the autonomous control over the work itself.
Women for a thousand years have struggled against patriarchy in a variety of forms, sometimes victoriously and at other times not. But nonetheless, they have struggled against it.
Steamrolling over hip-hop CDs by liberal opportunistic middle class women and men, pointing to poor black people and the so-called depravity of black culture for the "perpetuation" of misogyny (the only kind of patriarchy the middle class cares about) so that they can continue to destroy women's families, homes, and communities in the name of "progress" is a pretty unprogressive and perverted way to fight sexism.
Championing Common who has written songs such as "Heidi Hoe" and "Retrospect for Life" (a nicer version of patriarchy that alludes again to the "proper" place of women) doesn't work either.
I say all this to say that fighting against patriarchy is a long and complicated fight and many times can turn into its opposite. Look at the women's suffrage movement of the nineteenth and early 20th century who propagated their right to vote in the name of white supremacy.
We can either fight for the top-down repression and censorship of hip-hop and pretend patriarchy doesn't exist or we can actually fight it.
Now, what do you want to do?
Hey someone,
We've tried to explore the significance of patriarchy in hip-hop on a few blog posts, see an example here: Patriarchy and Hip Hop Part I and here: Patriarchy and Hip Hop Part II. The posts could use an update but we'd be interested to hear if that answers your question and what you think about the perspectives offered there.
Thanks for checking the blog,
LB
Furthermore, I'd have the commenter do a query on patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, etc. on the blog and see the many other posts where we've taken up this question quite seriously.
Thank you.
Since you're so very curious.. yea, I thought I'd make the point of view for my question known. I think it's so incredibly easy not to listen to misogynistic music and I think not listening is a valid front to fight on. Thanks for the link to the "Patriarchy and Hip Hop" posts. Repost it, I see no comments.
Also, in response to your two part investigation: How can you presume to say no other music form/subculture is challenging and discussing this? It's totally untrue. Just as you can't know that rappers "labeled" conscious are simply trying to be "opposite."
I realize there are thousands of hip hop acts rapping about all sorts of interesting things. It would be nice if this blog could give them some play cause they're hard to find. Seems to me that many can't find good production; I find a lot of underground rap boring, no matter how much I feel the lyrics. I guess when you say we can pretend patriarchy doesn't exist or fight it, you're talking about latent, institutionalized sexism. Why can't we fight that and the tangible, blatant everyday sexism. I don't want to sensor top hip hop acts, I'd like them to "repressed" below hip hop that I like.
I agree with most of that article, or see no reason to argue minor points of difference. I disagree with whole lot of this post I'm now responding to, but a lot of that is probably just my politics. I can't get into all of it, but I think disenfranchisement is a lot more complicated, cosmopolitan than your class stereotypes. Also, I reject the notion that anyone sold out the black movement. The movement was brutally repressed. They built why they destroyed and they used the many forms of wealth they had to leave a legacy.
I applaud these concert organizers. Offering what they can and giving people a chance to rap to each other in five workshops (maybe more; as they say "such as"). Knowing their rights will, everyday, keep scores of people out of the "legal system." That's no small thing. They're just working a different front from you on this blog.
p.s.:What's this?: "some external vacuum music culture"
p.p.s.:Fuck Common. Fuck Corporate Television.
someone,
I take it you're not a fan of Common and "corporate television"? :)
First, let me say that this is EXACTLY the kind of conversation that folks need to be having about hip-hop. I really like that you've taken the time to give us your REAL perspective. Thank you. We want this blog is less a presentation of ideas and more of a forum to actually engage those ideas with each other.
It is through this forum that we have come to the position we have and while we may share some programmatic points with other folks out there, we have not yet found another who is taking up hip-hop in this way.
We are different in form from others in that we are not a gossip rag, a news source, a promotional service, a personal diary, or a think tank for hip-hop, although at times we weren't always clear about what we were. There are plenty of other blogs and sites that give exposure and play to old school, backpacker, political, and conservative underground hip-hop. That is not what we do, at least, that is not what we do now.
What we are is a very small group of hip-hop heads who share a particular perspective for how hip-hop reflects and forefronts the struggles of working folks, unemployed, lumpen, and especially people of color. We have no agenda or sectarian principles of our own that we want to inject into it, we make no mechanical distinctions between "real" and "fake" hip-hop, for we accept it completely on its own terms and in all its forms.
Whether or not we agree with you, you're at least getting to the meat and bones of the subject in terms of what hip-hop means for us and what our real relation to it is. Are we simply external consumers of it or are we actual subjects who collectively shape what it is? Is hip-hop, as Mos says, a giant that lives in the sky or are WE hip-hop?
We take the latter position.
This is why we disagree with the liberal position that by ignoring, not listening, or even worse, censoring and destroying the tangible aspects of hip-hop, that we are somehow making a positive step towards eliminating patriarchy. This idea has its origins among the middle class who fight to preserve the institutionalization of patriarchy, while appearing to fight it by chastising black women for wearing risque clothing.
But before we can make conclusions on hip-hop we have to take up the question of what is art and culture and what is its role? Mechanically changing art from above is and always will be rejected by people. Hip-hop is a reflection of them, who they are, and all their contradictions, the good and the bad. Hip-hop can only change as people EN MASSE change. This can only happen through mass activity, movements, and revolutions. Making futile appeals to keep it real, keep it right, do it for the children, and other conservative values, is nothing but lip service.
Also, we don't view hip-hop as a "subculture" or a genre that exists side-by-side with Rock or Jazz, but as an all-embracing cultural form that has implications for the totality of civilization itself. It is something that lives from below, in the daily activity of ordinary people and is not just a collection of artists and "scenes" and movies and lyrics.
You'' have to bear in mind that the two-part series on Patriarchy and Hip-hop is two and a half years old and we've grown immensely since then. But I don't believe I ever made the claim that hip-hop is the only genre fighting patriarchy. Again, we don't see hip-hop as merely a "genre" because a "genre" can't change concrete social relations like patriarchy. Secondly, even if it is just a genre, it isn't combatting patriarchy so much as it is sending up the conflicts of men and women.
And we CAN fight patriarchy in both forms, institutionally and in its daily variety. The question my friend is how, where, and on what terms. This warrants a post of its own and it isn't something I can go into now, but we should definitely have this conversation.
In terms of your point on the black movement we don't take the view that its dissolution was a result of sellouts in the movement and/or the repression of the State (even if these played a role), but by its own internal contradictions. The black movement as you know what not homogeneous, but had a multitude of different class and political tendencies. One such tendency was pushing for reconciliation with the State by establishing black patronage networks in particular cities. The ideas behind this middle class view was that all ethnic groups in the United States got their "slice of the pie" by being allowed into city government, union hierarchies, school boards, as police chiefs, etc. This was a middle class black power from above, it was the peculiar experience of CAP, the Congress of African People, not the black power of the Revolutionary Union Movement in Detroit, or SNCC and the Deacons for Defense in the South.
In fact, this new black middle class acted as a brake on the rest of the movement. It in effect told them to abandon the struggle for control of work by workers themselves for better representation in official society. Why fight for community control of policing like the Panthers were doing when we could simply have black police officers and police chiefs? But all this new middle class did was become a buffer between the revolutionary struggles of workers and the ruling elite. It substituted class struggle for identity politics.
This view ignores the class struggles between Irish and Italian workers and bosses throughout American history. The black working class today, although sporadic and without much organization, is and has been rebelling against this new Rainbow Coalition for a generation now.
We want to avoid what you call "class stereotypes" and I think we do that pretty well, but that doesn't mean liquidating class analysis, for it is the real, material relations among people that all questions find their bases.
Hope this is a worthwhile response. Thanks again.
Are you saying I'm "liberal" for "not listening" to the "tangible aspects of hip hop" and that I got this idea from the middle class who as you say "fight to preserve institutionalization of patriarchy while...chastising black women for wearing risque clothing" That sounds like nonsense (what are the "tangible aspects of hip hop"). How is that at all parallel to me saying I want to fight latent institutional patriarchy and I want to hear non-misogynistic messages that will not promote misogynistic behavior?? Sprawling red herring attacks like this make you difficult to respond to and give me a headache.
People do not need to form a movement and change in order to get misogynistic music less play. Deciding what to promote has nothing to do with "changing art from above." Decisions about who gets on the limited radio rotation or gets the video spot are completely arbitrary. It has nothing to do with what people at the grassroots want. Big rappers are hardly "rising through the ranks." Furthermore, if change can only happen through activity, movements, and revolutions WHY calling appeals in language "lip service?" Is talking futile? And is this whole blog lips service?
You wrote: "...but the sum total of hip-hop is compelling all folks alike to deal with the problem of sexism. Nowhere in America, and no where in any other music form, will you find such honesty and a willingness to discuss." I responded, "It's totally untrue." Can you concede nothing?
I had trouble understanding your last three paragraphs. Your response seems unaware of the class backgrounds of people in the organizations you listed. This article, in many ways, stereotypes both your "working class" and "middle class." I don't know how you define class struggle and identity politics or what makes them mutually exclusive or what makes the latter any more assimilationist. You think "working class" blacks with identity politics, workshops, and school board spots are "acting" middle class?
Call my questions rhetorical if you like.. change the subject. Can't volley here any more.
I think we've misunderstood each other and that we're getting off the subject at hand. I really appreciate your feedback, but I think many of these misunderstandings could be cleared up by familiarizing yourself more with the blog as well as becoming a more consistent reader and participant.
I hope that you'll continue to read and contribute through your comments in future posts. Thanks
Peace,
Krisna
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