Democracy & Hip-Hop

Update for 2012

2011-12-18T23:54:00.001-06:00

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

2011-06-03T22:44:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-02T22:35:00.000-05:00


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

2010-07-26T20:19:00.000-05:00

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?

2010-03-02T00:29:00.000-06:00

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

2010-01-26T03:01:00.002-06:00

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

2010-01-26T00:07:00.005-06:00

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.

Anyhow, these film trailers contrast well. One, an attempt to understand the very real divergences within hip-hop and another that posits hip-hop as a monolith. I could be wrong, y'all, and I'd be happy to hear what others think.

Lastly, a recent book review from Rebel Frequencies on Mark Reeves' Somebody Scream. This quote alone piqued my interest:

The value of this is more than meets the eye. As a music journalist, I’ve encountered countless young activists over the years who, when describing their musical tastes, feel the need to qualify their interest in rap—“as long as it’s ‘conscious’”—a distinction they don’t make with other genres like rock, punk or electronica. Somebody Scream! cuts against this unintended elitism, forcing those who believe that music has a role to play in social movements to think twice before being so dismissive toward rap’s most marketable elements—and instead view them in a context.

I'm just as quick to call out the false dichotomies folks make for hip-hop, but I haven't thought about it on these terms; that we don't feel the need to impose the same rigidities in other music. Just another way that white supremacy has shaped how those who identify as hip-hop understand their own culture.

An excellent review for what appears to be an excellent book. It is on the Amazon wishlist.

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

2009-12-28T21:33:00.005-06:00

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

--

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!

"Stop Loss" by Marc Hall (aka Marc Watercus)

Marc Hall is the self-professed "first Hip Hop President of the World", with the issue of ending the Army's "Stop Loss" program being at the top of his agenda. On a music website, he explains, "I am a political artist. I rap about real issues in life in hopes to recover a solution. Life is based on decisions we make. So we should make decisions that will make us better in the future and fully aware in the present."

He was shipped off to jail after talking to to his Ft Stewart, Georgia commander Captain Cross about not wanting to redeploy. The military currently intends to keep Marc in pre-trial confinement until they court martial him months from now for a violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which covers "all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline" and "all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces." In other words, for an angry song entitled "Stop Loss" that artistically expresses some of his frustrations.

Send letters of protest to Marc's commanding officer:
CPT Cross, Commander, B 2-7 INF BN, Fort Stewart GA 31314.

Marc is being represented by civilian Washington DC lawyer Jim Klimaski.

On a posting on his website (http://marcwatercus.com/stoploss.html), Marc co-authored and published the following statement regarding his situation:

Specialist Hall is a soldier in the US Army Schedule to leave the ARMY February 27th 2010. He is in a Unit that's deploying back to Iraq some time in November, December of 2009 or early next year. That's right before he get out. There's a possibility that the ARMY want's to have its cake and eat it too. With the ARMY all ready meeting its numbers the ARMY don't want to let go used troops. After explaining Specialist Hall's situation with Congress and the Pentagon , and his company commanders and Sergeants at 1st BRIGADE B-CO "2-7 IN" and 1st BRIGADE F CO BSB at Fort Stewart Georgia about his inability to perform this deployment operation this time around-- showed little encouragement; But once again they don't take heed to the warning signs of soldier's morale when it came to them being effected in dangerous ways when it came to the "Stop Loss", "Stop Movement" and or "Fenced In" policies. The Army can call the Stop Loss Policy a different name But it all means the same thing--"Stop-Loss". Specialist Hall's wish is to get out the ARMY on time like his Active Duty contract states- Three years and 28 weeks of Active Duty. His ETS Date is as stated "February 27th 2010". By the will of God he said to our editors he shall be release back to his life as a civilian and a father. The way a Father should be there after serving the people of the United States of America.

Jay Smooth on Larry Johnson and the Stonewall Riots

2009-11-29T18:43:00.005-06:00

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.

--

How I Understood Hip-Hop at 17

2009-10-17T17:01:00.002-05:00

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.

--

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.

Tupac on Black Struggle

2009-10-13T21:35:00.004-05:00

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.

Bastards of the Party

2009-10-08T00:27:00.007-05:00

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.

Honduras, Hip-Hop, and the Radio: some notes

2009-10-06T23:27:00.014-05:00

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).

Hip-Hop Has Saved My Soul (and Spirituality) by BYC

2009-09-26T01:06:00.008-05:00

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.

--

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.

Is Kanye Our Generation's Muhammad Ali?

2009-09-14T17:50:00.015-05:00

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.

MTV Shows

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

2009-09-14T15:33:00.009-05:00

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.

Deep Thinkers "Burn Em Up"

2009-09-10T04:08:00.005-05:00

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

2009-09-10T03:32:00.005-05:00

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?

2009-09-10T03:18:00.006-05:00

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.

'Run this town'

2009-09-08T02:07:00.003-05:00

reposted from the Duke Chronicle column by Michael Stauch

"Only thing that's on my mind / Is who's gonna run this town tonight"-Rihanna, on Jay-Z's "Run This Town."

Since October 2008, the world has undergone an economic crisis on a scale unknown in over half a century. With it, all the accepted wisdom of textbooks, of professors and school administrators, of public figures great and small and of official society more generally, has been thrown out the window. Never in our lifetimes has there been a crisis so total.

Everything is up in the air, and everyone is searching for answers. How will society be governed? According to what economic principles? Based on what social contracts, between whom and with whose consent? Most importantly and succinctly, who is gonna run this town tonight?

All around us, forces both left and right are emerging and, in the wake of the collapse of official society's legitimacy, providing answers to these questions.

In the streets of Iran this summer, a democratic movement of students, workers, white-collar professionals and others brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the authoritarian Iranian regime to its knees. Recently in the rainforests of Peru, a militant movement of indigenous people forced Peru's Congress to repeal its efforts to privatize the Peruvian Amazon. On the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique this spring, lengthy general strikes won significant concessions from the French government. More locally, laid-off Latino workers occupied the Republic Windows factory in Chicago, winning severance pay from Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, and highlighting the hypocritical logic of a government bailout that saved huge banks from bankruptcy while threatening ordinary folks with destitution.

Although these struggles seem random and unrelated, they are embers of a common fire, flung far and wide by years in which the flames of freedom have been trampled on. Together, they suggest one answer to the questions we face today-a society organized from the ground up, committed to justice and freedom and ready to fight back.

But victory is by no means certain. The forces of darkness are also on the march, and they have answers of their own. In recent elections to the European parliament, far right and anti-immigration parties made historic gains at the expense of liberals and social democratic parties. Two members of the conservative British National Party in the U.K. were elected to the European Parliament. A right-wing nationalist party in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' "Party for Freedom," took second place in national elections. In Hungary, the far right Jobbik party is organizing a right wing militia with insignia reminiscent of the uniforms World War II era fascists wore while sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to death camps.

In the U.S., right wing violence is on the rise against immigrants, abortion rights advocates and Jewish people, or simply those that like to visit Holocaust museums. Just down Tobacco Road, the nationalist student group Youth for Western Civilization has also revived fascist-era symbolism-the Italian "fasces" on which the word "fascism" is based-in their logo, while also bringing anti-immigration speakers like Tom Tancredo to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's campus. Somewhat further afield, the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement is planning a national conference in Greensboro, N.C. this weekend, seeking to draw in fascist supporters from across the U.S.

Although by no means a complete picture, these developments also suggest an answer to the problems facing our society today. That answer represents not a vision of a new society, a new social order, but the continuation of the status quo, a ratcheting up of the barbarism of the world we've known so long, a reversion, even, to the bloodiest and most violent era in human history-the 20th century, a century that knew genocide on a greater scale than any other, and a time when the greatest of human achievements were applied not to the advancement of human freedom but to the greatest destruction of human life.

And yet, we live in a time of great promise. People are questioning the old order on an unprecedented scale.

In an era when the old visions of social order have come crashing down, the question before us is, "Who's gonna run this town tonight?" The answer is up to us, and depends on our actions today.

Michael Stauch is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in history. His column runs every other Friday.

So long, New Orleans. Hello, Austin.

2009-09-01T13:04:00.011-05:00

Last month, LBoogie and I relocated to the Austin, TX area. We've been busy with numerous other projects which has necessarily taken away important time from adding new content to the blog. Making the transition to a new city also requires becoming familiar with not just its local hip-hop, but the nuances of Austin and Texas in terms of how it sees itself, what it has developed out of, and the independent contributions it is making.

Related to this, a couple of weeks ago, I met an MC by the name of James Price who attended the Citizen Review Panel held by the Austin "rainbow coalition" for the slaying of Nathan Sanders and near-fatal shooting of Sir Smith by Austin police last May. When it was James' turn to speak he spit a rap about the racism of the ATX police and police in general, the tradition of black revolt, and the need for people of color to unite in struggle against white supremacy. I've included the video from it below. We spoke for a few minutes afterward and I look forward to building with him more.

One point worth noting that you'll hear in the video is James referring to J. Edgar Hoover as a "homo." While Hoover's sexual orientation has historically been questionable at best, I raised the point to him that queer people of color are both murdered by pigs and fight against them. A successful struggle against white supremacy can't be waged without queer folks. Anyhow, James Price's rhymes speak to the natural intersection of political struggle and hip-hop.

After some initial observations living here for a month, the tensions between the police/city gov't and the black community are as aggravated and as tense as I had seen in New Orleans, if not more so.

And here's the dash cam murder of Sanders and shooting of Smith. Heads up, it will make you fuckin sick.

I.N.D.E.P.E.N.D.E.N.T - what does this mean?

2009-07-20T14:34:00.006-05:00

This post is based on a recent conversation LBoogie, myself, and a couple of friends had recently about gender. It is written by contributing writer "Easy E."

~R.E.B.E.L.

The image of women today is very different from that of thirty years ago. Gone is the idea that women MUST stay at home, that her only worth comes from her ability to cook, clean and take care of the children, that she has no capability in the workplace. Today’s woman is INDEPENDENT. Yet what does this actually mean for women? What is it to be an independent woman? In our culture today we have different messages about who is an independent woman, and perhaps more importantly who can be an independent woman.

One of the most prevalent ideas of what makes a woman independent are those found in television shows or magazines. From Cosmo to Sex and the City, these media perpetuate a very clear and narrow vision of women. The women that populate the magazine pages and our television screens are heralded as independent strong women. But what is this vision of women really saying about women? Yes, these women are independent but in what way? This vision tells us the independent woman is a woman who has a job, pushes off marriage and having kids in order to have a career and she is someone who “demands respect in the workplace” from her male peers. However, this vision of women is bankrupt. These women are supposedly strong, independent, career driven (by this is meant upwardly mobile in their job) wearing their Manolo Blahniks but…they are miserable. In every single issue of Cosmo or Marie Claire or whatever magazine, in every episode of Sex and the City, Grey’s Anatomy, or Desperate Housewives (hello? Desperate is in the TITLE of that show), the women have careers but are still moaning, and whining, and complaining about their lives and how they’re “incomplete”. Why? Because they don’t have MEN. Or the men in their life are making them unhappy for a variety of reasons. Take your pick. These women are not badass. They’re just sad. Is this really the vision of woman we want women to idealise? I think not. These women claim to be independent but at the same time see men as necessary to their own happiness. Without a man, they cannot be happy because a man makes them feel fulfilled, makes them complete. AS IF. As if a woman NEEDS a man to feel complete. As if a woman cannot be whole person without a man in her life.

I see a difference between this image of women and the image of women in hip-hop. When we hear about independent women in hip-hop, these women are TRULY I.N.D.E.P.E.N.D.E.N.T. I remember when Webbie came out with this song celebrating independent women a few years back and man, was that my jam. Here is a vision of women I can get down with because when I think of an independent woman I think of a woman who can take care of herself. As Webbie says “I don’t think she’ll never look/In a man face standin’/waiting for him to take care of her/She’ll rather go to work and pay the bills on schedule”.

The women in this song or a song like “Miss Independent”, as Ne-Yo says, are the “kinda women that want you but don’t need you”. They have their own money, pay their own bills but more than this materialistic sense of what it is to be independent, is that women’s self-worth isn’t based on any man. If they want a man in their lives they’ll have one, but for no reason do they need a man. It’s their free choice. Being with a man adds something to their life but not being with a man takes nothing away.

I reject the idea of independent women as thrown down by mainstream media like Sex and the City and Cosmo. It is very clear in this image of the “independent woman” who actually can achieve this. The reality is that this image tells us that only middle class and upper class women can achieve independence. It is an extremely narrow vision that shows us that being independent is equitable to having a closet full of designer clothes, hundreds of Manolos, and having an upwardly mobile career as a lawyer or doctor or magazine writer. Where are the women who work two, three jobs, who, as Webbie says, “leave the club kinda early ‘cuz they gotta go to work”? Where are the women who bust their ass providing for themselves and having to make sacrifices to do so? The women of SATC are as glossy and airbrushed as the models on the cover of Cosmo. Yeah it’s great that women are CEOs and partners in law firms but these women are not the only ones who work hard to provide for their own. I’ve have never seen on these shows or on the magazine covers (or even inside) a story celebrating a working-class woman. This is why working class women get down with hip-hop and not with Sarah Jessica Parker. Because her idea of an independent woman is fake to us. The vision of independent women in hip-hop celebrates women as autonomous agents with a full sense of self-possession, autonomy, integrity as full, complete human beings on their own, who make the free choice to be with someone not because she needs him but because she wants him. This woman is truly independent. Holla.

Alex Billet on Michael Jackson

2009-07-09T18:38:00.007-05:00

We have to apologize for leaving this blog idle for longer than two weeks. We're in the middle of a move and have had to place blogging on the back burner for the present moment. No worries; we will return before the whirlwind; unless, of course, the whirlwind comes within the month, in which case we'll be delighted to be proven wrong.

Over the last couple of weeks, Alex Billet from Rebel Frequencies has written a series of posts on the late Michael Jackson. These writings attempt to embrace the totality of an artist and a human being that is beyond the scope of mainstream discussion. His narrative of not only Jackson's musical contributions but their social and political significance is sorely missed and warrants broader discussion.

Alex Billet on Michael Jackson

Real Live "The Turnaround" 1996

2009-06-02T23:39:00.003-05:00

“The Turnaround,” Real Live’s (K-Def and Larry-O) one and only album, is a brilliant slice of mid-90s New York Boom Bapism. It would easily be dismissed with the generic “gangsta rap” label by liberal white racists and even those who walk the uneven line between classic rap and “conscious” rap, uncomfortable with its violent disposition.

It probably had little to do with promotion and more about Boom Bap’s descent into obscurity that Real Live’s album never garnered significant attention. Of course, we’re talking about a very short period of two to three years; after all, Biggie’s “Ready To Die” has to have been the most sought after and notable Boom Bap album ever–and it was released in 1994. But we should remember that by late 1996, when “The Turnaround” debuted, the East Coast was losing it’s homogeneity both due to the rise of producer Swizz Beatz who broke with every convention of traditional New York hip-hop, and the ascendency of New Orleans rap which, while taking some influence from West Coast G-Funk, eventually absorbed it.

Real Live unfortunately caught it on the down slide.

“The Turnaround” plays like a noir film; the beats are dark and congruous with the lyrics which revolve around gun play and substance distribution. Larry-O hurls visceral and articulate lyrics that are as cold as a Charles Dickens novel in winter and would make any Carlton urinate himself. “I’ve seen dice games turn into Helter Skelter.” His voice is deep, but he has no need to yell. K-Def’s ominous but rich compositions makes ironic the typical musical simplicity of Boom Bap beats. So complete yet so consistent. One would think he was producing from a lectern–”cue the violins, cue the bass drums”–instead of a producer’s chair.

My introduction to them came the same way I was introduced to most artists of that era: Rap City. It was too bad that I never got to hear their entire album until last week, when my partner Luke mailed me a copy.

They will remain as obscure as they were when they surfaced, for reasons chiefly beyond their control, but this album is a must-listen. This isn’t post-Boom Bap Boom Bap that insists on calling itself Boom Bap and where, as K’Naan says, “underground rappers rap about rapping.” The stories are familiar, but they are told in a way that clearly makes the distinction between a story teller and one who tells stories. Larry-O is the former. K-Def proves that Boom Bap production is an art, not just a few audio tracks behind an MC. These two artists are complementary; they mutually nurture each other.

Hip-hop’s greatest strength is its democracy, but democracy isn’t antagonistic to talent. And talent is clearly the red thread through “The Turnaround.”

"Catch Dat Beat" Review

2009-05-27T14:06:00.007-05:00

A few weeks back, we posted info about a play debuting in N.O. called Catch Dat Beat. Here is a review of the play recently written by Jordan Flaherty, local activist, journalist, and editor of Left Turn Magazine.

Catch Dat Beat
A New Play Celebrates Bounce Music and New Orleans’ Culture
Big Freedia, A Gay Rapper who is one of the City’s Rising Stars, Leaves Crowds Screaming for More
By Jordan Flaherty

Catch Dat Beat, a unique, only-in-New-Orleans theatrical event, played for one weekend last month at Ashe Cultural Arts Center. It sold out its several hundred seats every night and will re-open in June at a bigger venue, a 900-plus seat auditorium at Walter L. Cohen High School. The play, directed by music producer Lucky Johnson, features several local Hip-Hop performers and has left crowds screaming for more. An up-and-coming rapper named Big Freedia steals the show in the lead role.

Tall and self-assured, Freedia is a powerful performer and brings an undeniable energy to the play. During rehearsals, says Lucky, “when Freedia comes in, the cast lights up, and everyone does their best.” Freedia is best known as part of a community of gay rappers self-identified as sissy bounce artists. She rejects that label, saying, “I’m a gay rapper, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no such thing as separating it into straight bounce and sissy bounce. It’s all bounce music.”

Bounce is the name given to the style of New Orleans Hip-Hop recognized for a distinctive beat and call-and-response lyrical style that owes much to Mardi Gras Indians and other local cultural traditions. Although not widely listened to outside of the south, bounce dominates New Orleans clubs, and is so identified with the poor neighborhoods of the city, it’s sometimes called “project music.”

“When you hear bounce,” says Lucky, people in a club go wild. “They just forget about it. They throw their hands up in the air, they catch the wall.” However you label Freedia’s music, she is one of several gay rappers who have broken down barrier after barrier to become some of New Orleans’ most popular musicians.

Spreading New Orleans Culture

Catch Dat Beat attempts to spread the love of bounce, and it proves infectious. The play advertises that it has no profanity or “obscene body gestures,” (a challenge, when capturing the bounce experience, which often involves a lot of both). Lucky Johnson is a cousin of popular director/actor Tyler Perry, and like a Tyler Perry script, Catch Dat Beat has positive characters and an accessible story. The basic story follows a hair stylist (played by Freedia) who throws a block party to show a visiting cousin how New Orleans gets down. There are moments of conflicts (will Freedia’s grandfather, played by Lucky, accept her sexuality? Will police break up the block party?) but the show is really about celebrating local culture. Lucky also acts in the play, along with bounce trendsetter Tenth Ward Buck

The second act of the show recreates a block party on stage, and features short appearances by many of the biggest names in bounce. During the opening weekend, the crowd rose cheering to their feet as stars including Ms. Tee, Gotti Boy Chris and Katey Red took over the stage.

Lucky wants Catch Dat Beat to help popularize bounce and New Orleans. He structured the play around a block party to show that New Orleans celebrations are really about building community and supporting your neighbors.

“Growing up in less fortunate neighborhoods, your parents would have card games, or suppers,” explains Lucky. “Say Miss Carol across the street’s light bill was due. Miss Carol would have a supper. Everyone in the neighborhood would buy a plate to help her pay the light bill.” In other words, continued Lucky, the block party comes from this tradition, and is ultimately about “how a people are able to come together in a time of need.”

Lucky has produced many of New Orleans bounce hits, and sees producing as a way to support positive work. “I can’t sign a hip hop gangster rapper,” he says. “I don’t advocate killing and drugs or slap that bitch. I’m not into that. I’m not gonna put my money behind it. If you come to me with something that says ‘get on the dance floor and have a good time,’ then I can support it.”

He is excited about all of the play’s actors, heaping praise on the accomplishments of Tenth Ward Buck and Freedia. “Buck was the first in so many ways,” he says of his star, listing his accomplishments. “The first to speed up bounce, the first to take an R&B track and bounce it out.” Through more than ten years of albums, plus a film, an upcoming book, and his dedication to working with youth, Buck has earned the praise.

As for the star of the show, “Freedia is outstanding,” says Lucky. “Every time he’d get the mic, he’d just light up the room.” Buck also Is quick to praise Freedia. “As Freedia was coming up, a lot of people tried to drag him down,” Buck says. “And he didn’t care about what they said, he kept moving forward. I don’t care if you straight or what, everyone is bouncing to Freedia’s music.” In fact, the sissy bounce community that Katey Red birthed ten years ago with her album Melpomene Block Party has rejuvenated the form, and gay rappers like Freedia have gone from a novelty to a central part of bounce culture.

Conquering Obstacles

Bounce music faces many obstacles on the way to national popularity. It is in many ways so distinctly New Orleans, with most songs featuring neighborhood-specific references, that it’s hard to imagine a bounce party in any other city. However, elements of bounce have appeared in songs by national acts like David Banner, Mike Jones and Beyonce.

Here in New Orleans, bounce artists bring lines around the corner when they perform. Freedia believes bounce will keep growing, and isn’t worried about any potential obstacles. She has struggled in a sometimes-homophobic music scene and become one of the leading stars – gay or straight – in New Orleans. “We been working really hard all these years of getting people to accept us,” she says. “Maybe get throwed at and screamed at, but over time all that has changed. All the hard work has finally paid off.”

With a show at this year’s Jazz Fest by Big Freedia, Katey Red and Sissy Nobby, as well as a photo spread in hipster music magazine XLR8R, the music form is clearly reaching new audiences. “For me it was the determination to change the people and make them love what we do,” says Freedia. “And that’s what my job was. When I became a gay bounce rapper I said that I was going to change it and make people love me, and make them love gay people.”

“People say negative things,” about gay rap stars, acknowledges Lucky. “I don’t care, at the end of the day it’s about the message. People who are homophobic, it tells me about that person’s character, because god loves us all no matter what.”

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans shared a journalism award from New America Media. His work has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now. He is also co-director of PATOIS: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.

More about Catch Dat Beat: http://www.myspace.com/catchdatbeat
Big Freedia: http://www.myspace.com/bigfreedia
10th Ward Buck: http://www.myspace.com/10wardbuck
Bounce Mix: http://www.xlr8r.com/podcast/2008/09/dre-skull-sissy-bounce-mix
Ya Heard Me, the definitive Bounce Film: http://www.yaheardmefilm.com

John McWhorter and Where Hip-Hop Has Never Been

2009-05-24T14:47:00.007-05:00

John McWhorter, author of Losing the Race fame and All About the Beat, responded recently to a roundtable happening at The Atlantic. The roundtable, which doesn't offer much aside from a few notable comments from Hua Hsu here and here, proposes to discuss the state of hip-hop today and the significance of hip-hop's entrance into state power (in the form of Obama, Jay Z and Russell Simmons).

McWhorter takes to task some of the main arguments raised in the roundtable. Among them, he disagrees with the Atlantic contributors who argue that hip-hop has been a "dispatch from the ghetto" showing white people in the suburbs the problems faced by black folks in the cities. Implicit in that "dispatch" argument is the idea that somehow hip-hop has really been about raising the awareness of "outsiders" to the realities faced by communities of color, as if hip-hop is some liberal re-education camp for middle and upper class suburbanites. That hip-hop is now global is less about "outsiders" opening their eyes to the dispatch and more about folks in other communities around the world being able to relate to, and build upon, the experiences and sentiments expressed in the music and culture.

McWhorter also argues against the idea of a "hip-hop revolution", or in other words the idea that hip-hop alone can be a political tool for oppressed communities if only it was injected with revolutionary politics. He's onto something with this point, because it will take work and organizing and activity to create any kind of movement, but the fact that he says hip-hop is just music is over-simplified and telling of his own narrow perspectives on what is politics, what is culture, and what is the ever-developing relationship between the two. Is culture only entertainment? Is it only a repository of non-political expressions? Is politics only expressed when people go to the voter booth, write a letter to their senator, or attend a protest?

While I don't agree with McWhorter's conclusions, he raises some important questions for consideration.

****

Where Hiphop is "Going" and Where It Never Was
by John McWhorter

The roundtable on hiphop over at the Atlantic is interesting. A discussion on what's new on the hiphop scene? That'd make perfect sense to me - but then that alone would fall somewhat outside of the Atlantic purview and be more like a piece by Sascha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker.

No, the roundtable participants are musing over hiphop as something Potentially Important. It is this treatment of the music that has confused and bemused me for years. When I wrote a book explaining why, a common response (to the extent that there were any!) was that the whole idea that anybody thinks hiphop is more than just good music was a figment of my imagination.

But bookshelves groan with work describing rap as "prophetic" and breathlessly exploring the possibility of a "hip hop revolution" and its potential to "motivate" young people. This Atlantic roundtable is cut from that cloth. Whence this idea that music, rather than effort, can change things politically?

For example, the participants look back fondly on the days when more of the music was "political," with Alyssa Rosenberg opining that it's unrealistic to decree that musicians follow our bidding and be "constructive." But this whole wing of the discussion presupposes a hypothetical possibility that hiphop could serve some kind of purpose beyond being just entertainment, that it is at least worth discussion whether rappers have some kind of "responsibility." Gautham Nagesh even thinks that way back, rap actually did play a crucial part in making people aware of ghetto life ("rap has played a key role in raising awareness of issues such as urban poverty").

The question here is: what is the purpose of this supposedly politically important rap supposed to be? Let's even say consciousness is raised: now that Scarsdale Chad knows what it's like growing up in the ‘hood, then what? What does Chad do besides walk down the street lurching and mouthing along to Tupac or whoever it was he learned this from in the early nineties? The consciousness was raised - and what legislation did it create? In a history book 100 years from now, we will see it written that "Because of hiphop raising consciousness of ghetto poverty starting in the late 1980s, _______." Fill in the blank. Note the difficulty.

My sense is that my even bringing up this issue of purpose is seen as somehow beside the point, but that very impatience, the grouchy feeling that my asking this means that there is something I don't "get," is revealing of a serious problem with what we have been taught to think of as politics. Namely, we assume that it is meaningfully political to strike poses and say things rather than do things.

Few are aware of it, but this traces back to the way smart people have for decades been misinterpeting Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political theorist. The key text would seem to be The Prison Notebooks, where he argued that the ruling class creates ideological structures, such as educational systems, that support their interests while obscuring the evil underpinnings of society. Subordinate ("subaltern") groups accept these ideas and end up oppressing themselves. Thus they must counteract the "hegemony" through attempts to revise cultural conceptions.

So, under this analysis, which starts with intellectuals and spreads outward to the general consciousness, rappers are presenting a new Cultural Paradigm, with their academic celebrants as conduits of that new "message" to the ruling class. Poor blacks are the subalterns; Washington, DC, William Bennett, and suburban whites who don't "see" blacks and preserve their "white privilege" are the Hegemony, and so on.

But Gramsci himself would be surprised to see how his ideas have been recruited for the subtle and complex race situation in America of the late twentieth century. He was a practicing Communist who wrote The Prison Notebooks from, well, prison, where he spent the last ten years of his life. He wrote in reference to working-class and peasant folk for whom the barriers to advancement were concrete and required no careful indoctrination to understand in the way that the black victim orthodoxy does today.

And the problem is that in black America and beyond, as historian David Steigerwald puts it, "the more the intellectuals have analyzed cultural hegemony, the less real political effect their radicalism has had." He notes that "Where the hard and gradual work of organizing revolution is dreamed away and the Left becomes willingly content with ‘cultural resistance,' the best radicals can hope for is directionless, feeble, and scattered opposition to the state of things."

Gramsci did not mean that striking anti-authoritarian poses on pop recordings, videos, and posters was meaningful sociopolitical activity. This is how modern academics have distorted his argumentation, and is the source of the idea that hiphop's "subalterns" have accomplished something sublime because their lyrics disrespect authority.

What these roundtable participants don't seem to quite understand is that this is all even political rap could ever do. It is the DNA of the form to be confrontational - whether about politics, women, social pecking order (i.e. the in-your-face bling, etc.) or anything else. Rap that was about solutions, as Rosenberg calls for, would be about as plausible as opera about physical fitness.

Take Cam'ron's "I Hate My Job," which I have commended for even broaching the very real problem of getting a job as an ex-con. There are solutions a-plenty, as I have also blogged here about: but how many of us can really imagine a rap about getting an apartment, waiting for a driver's license, or holding down a job? It's a meaningless issue. As Nagesh notes, when rappers have tried to just sit back and celebrate that Obama is in - i.e. nothing to be mad about - they don't quite know what to do.

I really like the new idea floating around that hiphop may have helped elect Barack Obama. Once more, that impulse to see hiphop as something other than fun. If one must speak of hiphop and Obama in the same breath -- beyond noting that he, rather unsurprisingly of a black man under 50, listens to some - then what Obama has shown us is what a real revolution is, as opposed to the kind written about with 20-dollar words in books.

To wit: after decades of people wondering when the Great Hiphop Revolution might be coming -- tell me no one was waiting for that since Public Enemy and explain stuff like Vote or Die and Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network well into this current decade - Obama strode in and galvanized exactly the demographic in question with real political organizing, with inspiration that was about something other than having your middle finger stuck up, with, in a word, work.

It is unclear to me that hiphop played a significant part in making Obama president. Certainly it brought some people to some concerts where people registered to vote, but that very thing made no difference in the 2004 election and I am unaware of evidence that it tipped the scales to Obama this time. A thought experiment: if hiphop didn't exist and Obama had come along anyway, I see no reason to suppose that Obama would not now be President.

Nagesh seems to think that hiphop moguls like Jay-Z helped get white people used to the idea of black authority figures - but that revolution in thought started long before. There has been a general "browning" of our culture that has accustomed all of us to blackness as mainstream that Leon Wynter, in a book that never got enough attention partly because it was published around the first anniversary of 9/11, dates to 1980, in the commercial where Mean Joe Greene tossed an admiring white boy his jersey.

Politics is work. Hiphop is music. Hua Hsu seems to get this, although it's less that it's "unfair" to expect rap to be "constructive" - implying that it could be -- than that it is purely illogical. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever "going," we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn't "concern" us in the least.

How Hip-Hop Was Viewed in 1981

2009-05-17T01:15:00.011-05:00

Shout out to Oliver Wang at Poplicks.com who linked to this 20/20 special from 1981 covering hip-hop music. If y'all are like me you will get a lot out of it.

I think what struck me most is the way they portrayed hip-hop; as a valid and democratic street music that spoke to the social conflicts of its time. In fact, the show is quite visionary in its predictions and historical lens. "Hip-hop will be around for years to come." That's pretty gutsy for a mainstream news show that many white Americans watched who would have said that rap was a fad. Of course, there is also the claim that rap was "an overnight phenomenon." You might could say this at a certain point, but not by '81.

Today, you can't see anything in the press or blogs that isn't either making hip-hop responsible for social conflict or perpetuating it. Hip-hop, apparently a thing above people, divorced from them, and that they have no say in, makes them violent (violent in the abstract, of course; as if direct conflict with the police is a bad thing), makes them patriarchal (because the State is anti-patriarchal; after all it is liberating Middle Eastern women, right?), and makes them materialistic (ah, because otherwise we live in a socialist society!).

What's clear here is that even in 1981 hip-hop had a very broad reach and was already being capitalized on by business outside of the recording industry. Not only that, but hip-hop was "rocking the vote" as we see from the Boston rap commercial. "They say your vote doesn't count, but that's a bunch of jive!" Damn that sounds familiar. Hip-hop was being used to teach history; which it does organically, but already then the State was using it to teach the "right" history.

For historicity, the linkages to black oral tradition is on point. One claim I tire from hearing is hip-hop's supposed African origins when there's about a 500 year disconnect; a claim not present here. But mostly, in saying that, it's the assumption that folks can't create anything new. I will say, however, there's definitely a prior experience that hip-hop developed in that this special broadly captures.

I think we should be happy to say that hip-hop, through all its changes, has grown to be ever more democratic and universal and that whatever we don't like about hip-hop, it's the reality we shouldn't like, not its aesthetic expressions.

Sabreena da Witch on Israeli Apartheid and Fighting a "Personal Occupation"

2009-05-15T16:52:00.013-05:00

Sabreena da Witch recently wrote this poignant post on her blog that I'm reposting below. For those who don't know, Sabreena da Witch, aka Abeer Alzinaty, is a Palestinian hip-hop artist and was featured in the documentary Slingshot Hip-Hop. I won't say much about the post as it speaks for itself. It definitely resonated with me based on some of my own experiences as a black woman with patriarchy and racism. It's a reminder of the need for young women to stay defiant, to persevere despite the odds and break out of the confines that our families and society try to impose on us. For many of us, hip-hop has been an important source of community for such "personal" struggles which should never be fought alone. Yet, as Abeer's experience shows us, we still have a long way to go even in hip-hop.

Men from the west GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR LANDS, men from the east GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR MINDS!

Israel celebrates today 61 years of Independence. It's sad how so many people can celebrate the independence they built on the bodies of freedom fighters they have murdered.
As if there is a universal permit for some specific people in this tragic world, to occupy others and call it a fight for independence.
you would think that as a Palestinian I would be out there, demonstrating against Israel's brutal, bloody independence. But I'm after all just a WOMAN! Occupation is suppose to be all I know!

So many people will fight for Palestine and never mention it's women. So many people will fight for Iraq and never mention it's women. So many people will fight for Africa and never mention it's women.
So many people will fight for freedom; become famous and rich for their fight; become heroes; icons on t shirts all over the world and never mention the women they oppressed on the way to stardom. Just like a million and a half Israelis will celebrate freedom right next to a huge concrete wall separating them from other people.

Here is a timeline of my personal occupation from the years I can remember ;

When I was 12 I went to the mall alone for the first time with my friend. She said we should speak in Hebrew so people wouldn't know we were arabs. When I asked: what about everything else like our names and accents?
She said : salesmen don't care about names!

When I was 13 my mom told me I cannot be in love unless I'm engaged. Since I was too young to get engaged, I automatically lost my right to have any emotions for boys until I was older. When I asked -what do I do with the butterflies in my belly?
My mom said : society doesn't care about teenagers' stupid feelings!

When I was 14 I was expelled from school because I refused to stand respectfully on memorial day for Israeli soldiers who died in wars against the arab world. I had no idea what it meant to be a Palestinian yet, but to stand silently for a whole minute for a man who died in a war after he was trained to go to war did not make sense to me. When I asked -what about the people those soldiers went to kill?
my teacher said: Israel doesn't care about other people and that's the way it is. We have rules to follow!

When I was 15 I had my first boyfriend. He said I shouldn't tell other people we were together and that he loved me, but he didn't care if I said I loved him.

When I was 16 my father said that I couldn't go to demonstrations against Israeli soldiers who shot 13 Palestinian men inside of Israel and so many more in the West Bank and Gaza. He said he knew that I was going to meet boys.
I tried to explain that I did not plan to meet anyone there, and I was going only to express my feelings about violence and injustice.
He said : I know YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT THAT!

When I was 17, one of my classmates said: Palestinian "Muslim terrorists" should stop using Christians churches to hide from the Israeli army.
I said : but the Palestinian christian priest cares for his Palestinian land too, and is helping Palestinian freedom fighters to survive.
He said : We christians do not care about lands; we want peace, you should learn something from us and stop being a greedy muslim!

When I was 18, a girl I knew from school was killed for honor. I collected all the newspapers with articles which included the conclusion of investigations into the murder; that the killer was one of the girl's brothers. I took the articles to school to talk about the incident with other people. Sadly the sister of the victim was in my class. She saw the papers,and began to cry and curse me. I apologized to her for bringing the paper with me and she said she didn't care about the newspaper. It was me who should have just shut up and stayed out of it.

When I was 19, after years of fighting with my parents to be able to do Hip-Hop music, I was scheduled to go on a local tour. My participation was canceled because my relatives said they would shoot me if I stepped on stage. When I asked the male artists involved: what about my part of the song?
They said : who cares about that, the important thing for you is to stay alive.
They all went on that tour, and another tour in Europe a week later. They had pre-recorded playback for my part and I did not sing publicly for 4 years.

When I was 20 I was fired from MacDonald's after 3 years of work. My supervisor said I spoke Arabic way too much during my shift and that it was bothering other employees and customers. According to their policy, Arabic was not even allowed, so I had gone way past the line. When I said: what about Russian being spoken all the time?
He said : The company doesn't care about the Russian language, it's just Arabic.

When I was 21, in my third year of Film school at Tel Aviv university, I had my first cigarette. one of my classmates told me it was not attractive for women to smoke. I said: I thought it would be health issues to cause people not to smoke. He said he had been smoking for 15 years and he was fine, so he didn't care much about that anymore, but when he kissed a woman who smoked he felt like he was kissing an ashtray.

When I was 22 I went to Bethlehem to do some creative workshops at a refugee camp. Just before leaving Jerusalem we were stopped by what is called a "Flying Check point". Two Israeli soldiers boarded the mini bus and checked everyones IDs, Passports and permits. Four people were asked to get off, two of them women. They started crying right away to the soldier (probably their eleventh attempt to go to Bethlehem that day alone). They cried that their mother was very sick and might be dying and that they just wanted to say goodbye. They had not seen her since getting married 10 years ago. They also said that they had tried countless times to get permits but they were never approved because their names on the birth certificates do not match the names on the IDs! The soldier said he didn't care about reasons, all he cared about was doing his job. we continued on without them!

When I was 23, in my second year in Photography school at Bezalel art Academy in Jerusalem, I hung on the wall photos I had taken during my first visit to Baltimore. The teacher asked for a "new experience" project. All my photos showed black kids I had met at a block party.
The teacher said he could not accept this project since it was not produced specifically for the assignment, and the photos were taken on a summer vacation.
I insisted on getting feedback since I had gone through a new experience and met new people from a completely different community. My classmates said the project wasn't relevant and that they didn't care if it was my first visit to Baltimore or to the Americas. They said i had dark enough skin to walk in that hood, and because I am an arab I probably wasn't scared to be in what they decided was the ghetto; and therefore there was no new experience. Nothing was said about the photos themselves.

When I was 24 I had my first public performance after 4 years of not being on stage. People said I was good but not professional. That I didn't have enough energy, the songs were not mixed, and the quality of the sound was bad. I responded: I'm very aware of that. I never had the chance to work on my music professionally. I was told: NOBODY CARES, you just need to get better now that you can; stop complaining and start working!!

I am 25 now, and I'm fucking sick and tired of being the victim; but what else am I. What else can you fucking be when you are all the time OPPRESSED! If it's not an Israeli soldier in my way, it's my neighbor who is worried for my good name!
It seems like Israelis and other zionists want me to never complain about my experience as a Palestinian!
and It seems like men and other chauvinists want me to never complain for my experience as a woman!!
It is as if I'm supposed to naturally shut up every time somebody tells me I can't do something because I am a Palestinian and I am a WOMAN!!!

61 years under occupation and Israelis still do not understand what we Palestinians are fighting for. Zionists act totally surprised when they hear criticism of Israel and lash back with responses like: what's your problem?
BITCHES! You are our problem. You took over our lands, our homes, our streets , our history, our dignity, our passion, and you even took over our culture too, adding insult to injury. You call it all your own when you never worked hard for it. WE DID!!

From me personally, on top of everything listed above, you occupiers took my right to complain as an oppressed woman. Every fucking bastard who is comfortable enough in this man's world, thinks I should shut up about women's rights, so the West won't jump on the scoop! and so the East can fight the western evil occupation without being disturbed by another fight!

Women are not less important!! Equality is Equality everywhere !!
and
OCCUPATION IS OCCUPATION no matter how pretty you try to make it look!
Although you do not care about my anger and my frustration, and although you wait for me to make a mistake, so you can criticize me , I fight for freedom, I always will, inshalla for another 61 years to come and forever more!

FUCK YOU!!!

[Original post here]

Riot Music, for Austin

2009-05-15T16:51:00.001-05:00

On Monday, East Austin nearly rose up in a rebellion after police there shot two young Black men who were sleeping in a car in an apartment parking lot, killing one Nathaniel Sanders who was 18 years old. The police of course claim that Sanders reached for a gun, and the media has made it a point to bring up his past arrests, because arrests = criminal and a criminal is supposedly deserving of police violence because, after all, he must've been up to no good sitting in that car with his friends. Black folks in the surrounding community responded angrily and crowded the nearby streets yelling at the cops and throwing rocks and other things at them. It got bad enough that the police department called out SWAT and additional officers in riot gear.

Some of the news reports on what happened in East Austin remind me of responses to the Adolph Grimes murder here. In New Orleans a few months back, some acted surprised that there were expressions of outrage after the murder of Grimes. Not long after that, a white woman was shot and killed by two black teenagers in the French Quarter, and white folks living there went crazy, demanding increased police patrols and complaining about the wild "thugs" and uncontrollable Negroes that are threatening the civility and sanctity of French Quarter (elite) life. Police at the time were quoted as saying that they didn't understand why "those" black folks were upset every time the police did their job in the community. The officers wondered why black folks didn't respond like those respectable white folks who welcomed the police with open arms. The implication was of course that black folks are not only naturally violent but also resent any attempts by the state to civilize them.

This makes it all the more reason to point out that growing anger in response to continued police violence and murder of men and women of color is not only to be expected, but necessary and legitimate. The rebellion in January in Oakland was likely a preview of what we may see more of, especially if the economic and political crisis deepens. What is yet to be seen on a wider scale are effective strategies and political perspectives that can shape such rebellions into more sustained organizing and direct action. Folks in Oakland faced their own obstacles to doing just that, like an older community leadership that attempted to draw the anger into "safer" forms of protest, but such leadership is increasingly becoming irrelevant as police violence and racism in the judicial system continue unabated (Sean Bell, Adolph Grimes, the countless women who are beaten and sexually violated while in custody but don't make the evening news...).

We'll stay tuned to what develops in Austin. In the meantime, here's some music for Austin, or any other city, to riot to.

Eminem Will Fly Laid Off Workers to Jimmy Kimmel Show

2009-05-14T14:41:00.010-05:00

Just saw on Davey D that Eminem is planning on flying out 200 laid off autoworkers to the Jimmy Kimmel show on May 19. I guess the point is to publicize the layoffs (and his new album) which is cool, after all Em was a factory worker himself for a brief period (which was dramatized in the film 8 Mile), but can we get these folks who gave us proof that workers can be self-governing a little more than that? Damn.

Detroit and other rust belt cities have been the frontlines for restructuring which will put the finishing touches on the ruling class's attack on the concessions wrested from them by working folks. The next generation of Big Three (or is it the Big Two now?) autoworkers can expect to make $12 to $14 an hour which puts them on par with workers in Southern auto plants like Toyota. And while that might seem a lot for those of us making minimum wage, it comes with a larger cost with little to no healthcare and a racist union that won't do shit. Back in 1970, General Baker of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers said, "UAW means 'U Ain't White.'" But today it might as well stand for U Are Worthless (they're still racist cracker motherfuckers, of course).

Some folks are hating hard on UAW workers, calling them spoiled and all that. A lot of that is because they confound the UAW leadership with the rank and file when the union is essentially an extension of plant management and State bureaucracy. The average folks and the ones who came before them are partially responsible for not only improving living standards among the working class, standards now in sharp decline, but for creating some of the most revolutionary forms of working class organization, like the sit-down strike, but also other informal types of struggle that bucked the UAW and the company-instituted work speed-up. This self-organization reveals the workers' capacity to run the plants (and hence society) independent of management. We can't hate on them because we are them. And we're going to share in their fate.

White Rappers vs. Rappers Who Are White

2009-05-12T13:49:00.010-05:00

So this Asher Roth thing has been debated for a minute and I wasn't really planning on taking it up, simply because the "white rapper" debate has seemed stale for the better part of the last 15 years now. But Roth's interview with The Wall St. Journal last month is telling for what hasn't been said in this most recent round of debates about white rappers. That is, that there’s a difference between a white rapper and a rapper who’s white.

Roth comes out in the interview saying, “Unlike Eminem, I'm classic white. I'm talking about yoga and yogurt covered in fruit. I represent more of a suburban middle-class lifestyle.” Roth is contrasted with an artist like Eminem for good reason, but could also be compared to someone like Bubba Sparxxx. Eminem may have a largely white fan base, but he can make songs like “White America” precisely because his image represents in many ways a threat to traditional white identity under white supremacy in this country. It’s partly the street element he has to his persona, it’s partly the working class experience that fills out his lyrics, it’s partly his own association with people of color in hip-hop, that had so many media hacks, politicians and middle class parents scurrying to keep their white children from Eminem’s mischievous influence. While Eminem could potentially encourage white youth to identify with people of color, Asher Roth hardly presents that same threat if what he raps about only speaks to the experiences of white middle class suburban youth.

Bubba Sparxxx or Paul Wall is the type of artist that even go beyond Eminem. There was hardly any debate about them being “white rappers” precisely because nobody mistook them for white, in the political or social sense of the label. In fact, most white people didn’t even pay them any mind nor make up the majority of their fan base.

Some of the blog posts I’ve seen criticizing Asher Roth (see an assortment here) don't take up this dynamic, focusing instead on connecting him to all the other “white rappers” that appropriate and exploit black music. That’s too simplistic an explanation. Whether we like it or not, hip-hop is broad enough and has generalized across society (and the globe) in such a way that there will inevitably continue to be people like Roth or Slug or others who are white rappers doing the college kid, suburban hip-hop thing. But what’s relevant and more compelling is looking at how some artists take hip-hop a step further toward breaking down conventional racial identities and open the door for white folks who don't identify as white to instead identify with the social and political struggles and experiences of people of color, on terms defined by the latter.

Here is the WSJ interview from last month.

Just Asking… Asher Roth
By JOHN JURGENSEN

By rhyming about his suburban roots, Asher Roth has carved out a niche for himself in rap music and scored a hit with the song "I Love College." We spoke to the 23-year-old rapper about rejected stage names, why he left college and his strategy for answering questions about another white rapper, Eminem.

The Wall Street Journal: At a recent listening party for "Asleep in the Bread Aisle," you introduced your album saying it was bringing together people from all walks of life. Is that something that's missing from rap music?

Asher Roth: Especially now. Originally, the whole thing was about uplifting and enlightening people and having a party. When it became all about selling records, it really got tainted.

Asher Roth performs at the 2008 mtvU Woodie Awards in New York City.

WSJ: How exactly are you bringing people together?

Mr. Roth: It's hip-hop music, so it's not like we're out there holding hands. But it's forcing people to talk and get a lot of things off their chest. Unlike Eminem, I'm classic white. I'm talking about yoga and yogurt covered in fruit. I represent more of a suburban middle-class lifestyle. If we can start in hip hop and accept people for who they are and what they're talking about, rather than the color of their skin, we can turn it into a global thing. Hip hop is a beautiful place for asking more questions.

WSJ: For years people have been saying that the majority of rap fans are people like you -- white kids from the suburbs. If that's the case, why have there been so few to break out?

Mr. Roth: Besides the white guys who sell it and push it, hip hop is black music. But it got to the point where they were targeting us, the white people in the 'burbs. We got brought up on it, but suddenly when a 23-year-old white kid who's been inspired by Jay-Z starts rapping, it's a bad thing? C'mon, those [rappers] were talking to us the whole time. It's interesting to see what this is turning into. I was just this punk kid rapping to the laptop in my sophomore year in college. That's what hip-hop has turned into.

WSJ: At what point did you feel like you had become a professional rapper? What was the first major test of your skills?

Mr. Roth: The first time that I feel like I really passed a test was when I was on [influential DJ] Drama's radio show freestyling. People put a lot of stock in freestyling -- they've all seen the movie "8 Mile" -- but it's really hit or miss. Sometimes your brain isn't working, and I can be a pretty anxious kid. I don't like to have a verse ready in the back of my head, but on the show people were laughing and enjoying themselves, and I was like, damn, freestyling is easy when you're not too worried about it. I had another obstacle on [BBC DJ] Tim Westwood's show when he was playing a bunch of Eminem beats for me to rap over.

WSJ: On your album, you address comparisons to Eminem with the song "As I Em." Why did you write that song?

Mr. Roth: It's a bummer that that's the song everyone's going to be talking about. But I was never going to be able to ignore it. I can't comment on someone I've never met in my life, but in every interview I get asked about him. It came to a point where my album was done, but it felt like something was missing.

I'd been given that beat. It's one of the only songs on the album with a sample. It's a Joe Jackson sample [from the song "Geraldine and John"]. I was with my boy, hanging out in the Honda Civic, and I'm going through the CD cases and that one was right next to an Eminem CD. There's stuff like that that goes down in life, and you know it has to happen. So the song is the story of my relationship with Em. Now, when I get asked, I can say, "Refer to song 8. Conversation over."

WSJ: After you signed your recording contract in 2007, you spent a few months in Atlanta, writing and honing your skills. Can you set the scene?

Mr. Roth: We darted down there -- to a neighborhood with a bunch of newlyweds with their dogs -- and there was our ratty house with me and three of my homies from school. In the basement we put up a wall and a microphone and we hung out there and drank Trader Joe's wine and Miller Lite, and that's how we honed the craft. I wasn't making music with Big Daddy Kane and KRS One. I was just hanging out with my friends, kicking around ideas.

WSJ: Did you ever experiment with stage names other than your own?

Mr. Roth: When I was 16 and 17, it was like, what are you going to put on a CD? For a while it was Renaissance. Or AKA, like "also known as," because I couldn't come up with anything else. Or Grade A, like the eggs. Or Young Ash -- throw a "young" in your name and you're good.

WSJ: You perform with a band. Why did you go from rapping over tracks to working with a live sound?

Mr. Roth: I knew I wanted to have a live element. I was never interested in just watching a guy on stage rap about how great he is. I'm not the first -- the Roots really inspired me for that very reason. I've played with a full band a few times, but for the most part I perform with a live drummer and a DJ -- that's what I come from. I used to play drums until my dad made me practice with the practice pads on; then I was done.

WSJ: Did anyone encourage you to keep rapping when you were in high school or college?

Mr. Roth: My parents weren't like, "Pursue a rap career! Drop out of school!" But at the same time they didn't discourage me. It was more like, "Are you coming home for dinner?" Nobody is going to push me more than I will myself.

WSJ: How did your parents feel when you told them you were dropping out of college?

Mr. Roth: It came at a good time. I was in school just to be in school. My grades were dropping and it was so obvious that I really didn't care. My dad was helping with tuition, and he told me he wasn't going to waste his money. But it definitely wasn't success over night. I had moved to Atlanta after I signed the deal, and I was living on my advance, which disappeared quickly. I delivered pizzas. This wasn't the second coming of anything, but that whole process was very important for me

WSJ: What other kinds of music are you listening to?

Mr. Roth: Right now, and every day for the most part, I listen to a lot of [Bob] Marley. Especially in the morning, the vibe sets my day. On the planes, some James Brown. Today I was listening to Lykke Li and Pac Division. Some of their stuff is really dope.

Obama's Swagga and CNN's House Negro

2009-05-09T06:24:00.006-05:00

Hip-hop may have popularized "swagga", but that don't mean it's for everybody.

Does anybody else feel like this dude is one reason why white liberal racists believe themselves when they say, "I can't be racist, I have a black friend"? CNN must be so proud they found a spokesperson to translate "black culture" for them...

On a more serious note, this reference to Obama having swagga has to be added to the archive on the rise of new layers of leadership in communities of color that claim a sort of hip-hop legitimacy (see here and here for starters on Obama's hip-hop legitimacy). Whether we agree or disagree that Obama has swagga, the fact that he gets discussed on those terms has real significance for the legitimacy he gives to the white supremacist institutions he now manages.

Rapper K'Naan on Somalia and the Real Pirates

2009-05-09T04:22:00.014-05:00

Thanks to Mamos for a heads up on this. Following up on a video we posted here a few weeks back, we're reposting an insightful article by hip-hop artist K'naan about the highly debated and too often over-simplified situation of piracy off the coast of Somalia. K'naan gives a good overview of how and why folks have taken to pirating the waterways, illustrating the backdrop of "post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks." It's important to take notice of the fact that much of the coverage of Somalia has been either lightly-veiled or not-so-lightly-veiled racism that would have us believe that the current piracy originated not out of impulses for community self-defense and direct action against neoliberalism, but instead out of the supposedly backwards nature of the African (cuz "they" are all the same, right?) masses. Luckily, voices in hip-hop and elsewhere expose this logic for the bull it really is.

Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates
by K'naan

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery?

Well, in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated.

The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast with such
lop-sided journalism, that it's lucky they're not on a ship themselves. It's true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective.

But according to so many Somalis, the disruption of Europe's darling of a trade route, is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don't believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And although its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some-odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels, were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It's as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe.

A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It's because of this disagreement that we've seen one of the most decomposing wars in Somalia's history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.

But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore, a good clan -based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid's men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and re-selling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard.

But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Achair Parterns, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they were to dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, whereas to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.

In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, Cadmium, Mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters. The UN envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to burry our nation's death trap.

Now Somalia has upped the world's pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western Vessels, and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.

It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is truly a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice.

As is apparent these days, one man's pirate is another man's coast guard.

K’naan is a Somali-Canadian poet, rapper and musician.

Below are links to the interviews we did with Knaan a couple of weeks before all this drama unfolded.

In the first clip he talks about Somali Pirates. In the second clip he talks about the US attempts to classify Somalis here in the US as Terrorists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrwgiprDBtA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i67euACNhmA

[Originally posted here]

Hip-Hop Republicans: What Do They Represent?

2009-04-22T10:39:00.014-05:00

Hip Hop Republican, a blog I've been trying to read more, posted their very intriguing "'Hip-Hop Republicanism': A Manifesto" yesterday. This is a trend I've been noticing for the past two to three years: a very thin layer of hip-hop generation folks who represent a minority left tendency within the Republican Party. They, like Michael Steele, recently elected RNC Chair, embrace hip-hop and oppose the mainstream old school racism of white Republicanism that relegates hip-hop to violence.

I haven't given this phenomenon a lot of thought, but from what I can tell it is a result of two things; one, the fact that America itself is becoming more hip-hop and that hip-hop as such is becoming more diffuse throughout mainstream society, and two, the growth of hip-hop as an industry, or to use the Republican lexicon, as a "job creator."

What we've often referred to as "Hip-Hop Conservatism" is distinct from Hip-Hop Republicanism. Back in '97 when I was still a b-boy in a Kansas City-based crew called The Circuit Breakers, a friend and fellow dancer remarked, "Rebel (my hip-hop moniker of the time), you're like a hip-hop republican." Of course, he was talking about my hip-hop cultural conservatism as I was politically left. I, like other cultural conservatives then, was railing about the need for hip-hop to remain true to its so-called essence.

Hip-Hop Republicans aren't necessarily cultural conservatives (as indicated by their identification with the artists below), but are a logical extension of this conservatism into politics. The difference is that they aren't explicitly loyal to any one form of hip-hop, just as we at D&HHP aren't.

Their proof of hip-hop's positive force is in (surprise!) its entrepreneurialism. Everyone from Russell Simmons and Jay-Z to T.I. and David Banner are championed as a testament to hip-hop's commitment to free markets and as a provider of jobs for people of color and poor youth.

Part of how the neoliberal platform of the Republican Party has been packaged in terms of social spending has been its replacement by the encouragement of private funding and charity. Tax money has been cut from the wealthy, appropriated from the poor, and used to fund American geopolitical interests and war on people of color. This bankrupt philosophy has proved itself unable to fix what in reality will take a massive reinvestment into infrastructure and social institutions. The "golden era" of American capitalist expansion (1946-1973) meant a historically unprecedented investment in the "social wage" and even that was not enough to stifle working class rebellion from the black community to the women's movement who were fighting for direct democratic control of workplaces, schools, and communities.

The mainstream of the Democrats and the teabag crackers believe that this is what Obama is doing. He is not. Forty-five percent of Obama's stimulus has been tax cuts. The money supposedly earmarked for infrastructure development won't create jobs with livable wages, but will go to contractors who will make beaucoup dough relying on ultra-exploited undocumented labor. Obama is no FDR. And FDR's New Deal is no model for change anyhow.

The "Urban Republicans" ensure us that they aren't anarchists or right-wing von Mises Institute-type libertarians who oppose the State, but rather, like Republicans generally, support "small government." This kind of disingenuous language is supposed to gloss over the fact that the Republican Party has been intrinsic to the enormous growth of the federal government in the past thirty years. The "small government" talk was used to justify undoing government regulation of capital, but to impose the greatest amount of regulation on labor with ever more laws and labor department appointments that aimed to repress working class organization.

But Urban Republicans don't ever look to become the dominant force in the Republican Party. Many Republicans are demanding Steele resign which indicates how closely rooted in old school white supremacy the GOP is. Of course, we're not naive enough to think that the Democrats are any kind of legitimate opposition to white supremacy within official society. On the contrary, they represent its advanced wing. Not only that, but Urban Republicans aren't a viable enough hegemonic opposition, let alone numerical, to overcome the Party. They hope to push the GOP to the left and supplant themselves for what can only be popular control from below.

For those wanting to stay abreast of how Urban Republicans are orienting to the hip-hop generation, check out Hip Hop Republican.

Free Mumia

2009-04-22T00:42:00.008-05:00

In continuing with the theme of mid 90s hip-hop, I'm posting the lyrics to a KRS joint from '95 with the group Channel Live. I particularly like its slam of C. Delores Tucker, Jesse Jackson, and the Rainbow Coalition. We don't exactly see C. Delores Tucker, Jesse Jackson, and Colin Powell as House Negroes. Jackson in particular is a more advanced justification for white supremacy who embodied the language and dress of black power. The House Negro phenomenon is indicative of pre-Black Power politics and is all but superseded by a relatively new multiracial ruling class. These aren't sellouts but folks who have a vested class interest in white supremacy and in denial of people of color's self-governance.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has little to do with the song other than to underscore the hypocrisy of the civil rights leaders for joining with official society in an attack on people of color and a boycott of WEA (Warner, Elektra, Atlantic). Mumia is a clear and iconic example of State repression of Black people and in the 90s radical youth were organizing to free him. KRS' essential point is that the State, not hip-hop artists, is the real threat to people of color. "Warner, Elektra, Atlantic equals WEA, instead of fightin them why don't you go Free Mumia?!"

Knowledge, where the people at?
Free Mumia!
Channel Live! (KRS-One, come and represent)
(The wisdom)
Hah hah hah hah hah hahaha!
Free Mumia!

Everywhere I look there's another house negro
Talkin about they people and how they should be equal
They talkin but the conversation ain't goin nowhere
You can't diss hip-hop, so don't you even go there
C. Delores Tucker, you wanna quote the scripture
Everytime you hear nigga, listen up sista

Verse One: Hakim, KRS, Tuffy

I met up with this girl named Delores, a prankster
I said I MC, she said, "You're a gangster"
But she was caught up, she hit the floor like a breakdance
Wrapped her up like the arms in a b-boy stance
Recognize moms I'm one of your sons I'm hip-hop
in the form of Channel Live and KRS-One
Representin MC's across America
She said, "You're the one who be causin all that mass hysteria"

Wisdom shall come out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
But you blinded by cultural ignorance and steady judging
But judge not, lest ye may be judged
For the judgment ye judge ye shall surely be judged, you gets no love

She said, "I like it, that's why I jock it"
Then I said, "You only on my back because I fill brother's pockets"
Got em drivin Benzes Jeeps and Rolls Royces
Attackin me will leave youth with no voices
The choice is yours not mine hang with me
I'll have you freestyle and bombin graffiti
We can cut it up like like wax
Claimin I cause violence but America was violent before rap, FACT

Chorus: KRS-One

Warner, Elektra, Atlantic equals WEA
Instead of fighting them why don't you go free Mumia
(repeat 2X)

Verse Two: Tuffy, KRS, Hakim

Wild recital, I kicks the vital, like the Final
Call as I watch, Babylon fall
I had to Rush Limbaugh, get that pig with an axe
Tuffy dips to the side, buckin cannons that's phat
Because he censors the uses of the metaphor
You can get the dick bum up
Because it's you that brings the, real horrorcore
Expenditures forgettin, gut from the poor

Why sure! Back before we were born they sold us out
Yeah J. Jackson we know what you about
You's a Slave Mason, not a Free Mason
Before long the Goddess Tiamat through hip-hop you'll be facin
Don't start me, cause I be the, lyricist
At the nineteen ninety-nine millenium party held at Giza
Sayin he's a, fraud, oh my Goddess
Never in your life should you disrespect an artist
Instead, focus your attention on astronomy
And the up and coming, shift in the economy
If you can't do that, then heed the final call
To free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Hate to be so rough, it could be the White Owls
House niggaz are full of crap, like my Colin Powell
Kickin vowels, is how we relieve the tension
Until we start to bounce white people like suspension (revolution)
You paint the pictures, the black man on the corner
But tell me, who blew up Oklahoma?
The City, ain't no pity, for the beast
It's Hakim that voice from the East

Chorus

Verse Three: KRS, Hakim, Tuffy

Buck buck! Buck buck buck!
It sound like gunshots but it could be the plot
of a chicken, definition, is what you're missin and
listen to your children instead of dissin em
Senator Dole doesn't understand the young people
Like they be sayin want to, but we be sayin wanna
They gettin dumber every summer as they walk the rope
Maybe because they cannot understand the quotes

Word, in actuality, this Norman Bates mentality
always seems to represent, minus three-sixty percent
For degrees full circle, dead from the purple
rays of the sun I gots melanin so check it
Bag your nuts quick or get sick from being naked
Suspect it, was it a means for the end
For just a few to drive the Benz while you eat the pigskins
Turned you into mannequins, cause the trick of technology
A revelation, revelations
Sensation gives me inspiration of revolution
That's my solution, there will be no sequels
I'm audi hundred forty four thousand with my people

From Caligula to Hitler, now it's Schwarzenegger
A lust for the violence is the science of their behavior
Who enslaved ya (it's the Devil) but the God of virtuosity
And of the world created, could it be mental sodomy
Got my mind twisted like the blades of fonta leaf
I sit in disbelief as he crawls underneath
the rock cock back the glock, cause I don't trust
the Devil I rebel until Babylon is dust

Chorus

Hip-Hop vs. The Rainbow

2009-04-20T23:43:00.007-05:00

I recently read this excerpt from Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop and thought I'd share it. I think it's a good look at some of the historical attacks on hip-hop and how the Rainbow Coalition (a collaborationist outgrowth of Black Power) became the new justification for white supremacy. On the flip, we see the emergence of a new layer of militant youth who clearly identify as hip-hop and are waging a fight against the racism of a multiracial official society. This was one of the earliest forms of resistance our generation mounted against the new Rainbow Coalition rulers and it is an ethos still alive today, though uneven. In the 1990s, we didn't view C. Delores Tucker as a black leader, but a straight up parasitic and opportunistic racist. Despite attempts to gloss over that legacy today and while this specific generation might not know of her, we continue to buck the idea that black liberation has meant having a black face in State power.

--

The Great Divide

If the arc of hip-hop generation's cultural revolution was bowing toward difficult issues of engagement and exploitation, its political revolution was just taking flight.

Born in 1965 to prominent civil rights organizers in North Carolina, Angela Brown had been a child activist, leading campaigns to free Black women political prisoners. But her life changed in 1982, when the state of North Carolina decided to put a toxic waste landfill in the middle of a nearby working-class Black community. Brown and other teenage girls lay down on the road to prevent trucks from bringing in PCB-tainted soil for the landfill. That battle in Warren County became known as the opening shot in the environmental justice movement, a struggle that combined anti-racist and environmental activism.

A decade later, Brown was on the staff of the Atlanta-based civil rights stalwart, the Southern Organizing Committee, where she formed the Youth Task Force to organize youths from ten states and eighty-five universities into the environmental justice movement. She began to realize that a sharp, traumatic generational divide was emerging. Elders called her generation apathetic, but Brown saw a fundamentally different politics.

"The way in which they built their movement was around the 'lunch counter'— SNCC and others coming down to the South to challenge segregation on the lunch counter," she says. "We didn't have a single lunch counter.' We have had many 'lunch counters.' Our fight has been a constant barrage of struggles." No longer was there a single Movement, but dozens of movements—civil rights, education, environmental justice, AIDS, prisons, the list went on. But Brown noticed that where the dialogue really collapsed, where the generation gap was deepest, was over the question of hip-hop culture and rap music.

It was a divide that a fading Black Pennsylvania politician named C. Delores Tucker tried to exploit. Born in 1929 and raised in northern Philadelphia, Tucker inherited twenty-four tenement buildings from her parents and by 1966 had been singled out by the local newspaper as one of the city's worst slumlords. Her buildings were all soon boarded up, taken over by the city, given to charities or simply abandoned.

Tucker's failures as a property manager did not stop her from seeking the civil rights limelight. She marched arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and became a close ally of Jesse Jackson. She became a rainmaker for the Democratic Party and was appointed Pennsylvania's secretary of state in 1971, the highest-ranking Black woman official in the state's history. Six years later, she was fired by the Democratic governor for allegedly using state employees to write personal speeches and collecting kickbacks from charities.

In 1984, Tucker formed a lobby group called the National Political Congress of Black Women. Two years later, she became the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Black Caucus. She then embarked on a series of unsuccessful runs for lieutenant governor and Congress before fading back into obscurity. In 1993, her friends Dionne Warwick and Melba Moore gave Tucker an opportunity to climb back into the spotlight when they approached her about having the NPCBW take up the fight against gangsta rap. Reverend Calvin Butts had already been steamrolling rap CDs in Harlem. They wanted in on the action.

Tucker repeated the same critique that hip-hop feminists had been leveling at media monopolies and rap misogynists for years. Corporations were not taking responsibility for the images they were distributing, and ducking serious discussion by hiding behind the First Amendment. But there was something disingenuous and opportunistic about her attacks.

Tucker won over both the liberal and conservative wings of her party by courting Senators Carol Moseley Braun and Joe Lieberman. Yet she also avidly welcomed the support of cultural conservatives like prominent Reagan/Bush cabinet member Bill Bennett. As the presidential election season rolled around, she joined with Republican candidate Bob Dole. Together, Bennett, Dole and Tucker made Suge Knight, Death Row Records and Snoop Dogg into clay pigeons for their culture war.

Tucker was enormously helpful to white cultural conservatives. In interviews, she compared herself to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and made an explicitly racial appeal that insulated white cult-cons from criticism. Tucker was also mouthing the most extreme fears of many disillusioned, middle-class, middle-aged people of color, the very same civil rights generation elders who felt they had given everything in struggle for their kids, only to see them turn out to be spoiled, anarchic, value-free ingrates. She attracted Blacks who supported police crackdowns and strengthening juvenile-crime laws, the very same elders with whom Angela Brown was having anguishing arguments. To the cult-cons, Tucker was mobilizing fresh troops for further attacks on youths of color.

In early 1994, Tucker prevailed upon Moseley Braun to convene an unprecedented Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gangsta rap, an inquiry into "the effects of violent and demeaning imagery in popular music on American youth." Tucker was the star witness. Echoing right-wing backlash architects like James Q. Wilson, John Dilulio and James Alan Fox, she called for a broadening of the War on Youth:

As we have seen in the last thirty years, increasing law enforcement and correctional facilities have not reduced crime. These short-term fixes will do nothing to improve the lives of children like the nineteen that [sic] were recently removed from a home in Chicago because of parental neglect and abuse. Because of the lack of positive influences, their minds will be fertile and receptive ground for internalizing the violence glorified in gangster rap. Children such as these, our most neglected population, will become a social time bomb in our midst. Being coaxed by gangster rap, they will trigger a crime wave of epidemic proportions that we have never seen the likes-of. Regardless of the number of jails built, it will not be enough. Neither will there be enough police or government programs to contain the explosion of crime. We as a Nation must act now and we must act decisively.

The Return of Hip-Hop Activism

Brown and the Youth Task Force had heard enough. Not only had Tucker committed the political equivalent of taking a family argument public, she seemed to be calling down the wrath of the government on the hip-hop generation by arguing that sweep laws, new prisons, and profiling were inadequate, that youth culture also needed to be regulated. Not just bodies, but ideas needed to be contained. By articulating a broader basis for the politics of containment, Tucker had turned the debate over hip-hop culture misogyny and violence into something much worse—she had mobilized the elders to turn on their children, to join their enemies in a broad political and cultural attack on youth of color.

The Task Force reacted by organizing the Atlanta hip-hop community. They initiated a series of forums to defend hip-hop and constructively critique it. The forums brought artists like the Goodie Mob, Tupac and Afeni Shakur, and Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz together with elders, lawyers, scholars, activists, and poets. The Task Force catalyzed an active response in activism, the arts, and the record industry. Many now credit their work as laying the foundation for Atlanta's leap to the cutting edge of both the rap industry and hip-hop activism by the end of the decade.

Around the country, hip-hop heads took similar stands. These activists were not trying to stifle or chastise the artists Tucker-style, they were trying to create a sense of community and responsibility, and to define a new praxis of politics and culture. The aim was, as Maxine Waters had put it during the gangsta rap hearings, to "embrace and transform rather than to confront, isolate, and marginalize." They were dealing with a unique paradox—a generation that had greater access to the media and culture than any other in history remained as politically scapegoated and marginalized as any in history. They called themselves "hip-hop activists" because the term spoke to the way culture and politics came together for them, and because it was a way to reclaim and define their generational identity.

In fact, the hip-hop generation was at least as, if not more, politically active than the civil rights generation. In 2001, the UCLA Freshman Survey—the definitive documentation of college-age youth attitudes since 1966—found that nearly half of all freshmen said they had participated in an organized demonstration during the past year. That number was three times greater than in the inaugural survey, conducted at the peak of the civil rights movement.

Civil rights may have fixed an image of "The Movement" as picket-waving masses on the National Mall listening to Dr. King. If the youths weren't there in D.C., elders figured, nothing must be happening. But hip-hop activism largely took place below the national radar. Capitol Hill's diminished powers, big-money lobbying and campaign financing, and symbolic politics made it a less likely place than ever to go to get a problem solved. From Watergate to Monicagate, national politics often seemed just a lesser form of entertainment. Why bother marching on Washington?

The life-and-death struggles were happening at the local level, where hip-hop activists were busy fighting in the streets, neighborhoods, school boards, city halls, state legislatures and corporate offices. This time, the whole world would not be watching; global media monopolies could make sure of that. But the hip-hop generation was pushing forward in a complicated world, in more sophisticated ways than previous generations ever had.

Most visibly, Russell Simmons was assembling his hip-hop army, forming the Hip Hop Summit Action Network to bring together rappers, academics, music industry leaders, civil rights leaders, and politicians to push for social change. But the most compelling work was happening at the local level, outside of the traditional institutions. In Chicago, Brooklyn and Oakland, hip-hop activists used graffiti, b-boying, and DJing to educate and organize around education, gentrification, and juvenile justice issues. In Louisville, they fought book bans and youth curfews. In the Bay Area and the Bronx, they organized to stop the expansion of the juvenile detention facilities. In Albuquerque, they tossed out city council members who supported the building of a highway through sacred Native lands. On campuses across the country, they fought for labor unions, living wages, and against sweatshops and companies that invested in the prison industry.

In introducing The Future 500, a ground-breaking study of five hundred U.S. hip-hop activist and youth organizations, William "UPSKI" Wimsatt wrote, "Young people are noticing that the only thing that can't be bought, sold, co-opted or marketed anymore is substantive political organizing and dissent."

"...if you want more class struggle in hip-hop, you need more class struggle in society first."

2009-03-28T23:53:00.005-05:00

We're not going to add our own commentary on this as we think it speaks for itself. What stood out to us was UK rapper Comrade Malone's perspective on the very dialectical connection between hip-hop and reality.

"Class struggle and hip-hop: interview with Comrade Malone, 2009" from libcom.org.

Hip-hop has seen artists with social and political awareness. Rarely, however, has there been hip-hop fused with unashamedly class struggle, libertarian politics. 22-year-old Comrade Malone attempts to buck that trend with his album The Spontaneous Revolt LP.

Ed Goddard from libcom.org caught up with him to talk about life and politics in music.

Tell us a bit about your life growing up and how you got into politics.
I grew up on a council estate in north-west London and lived there for the first twenty years of my life. I’m not from a political background and didn’t really pay attention to politics until my late teens. In 2003, when the invasion of Iraq began, there was a massive walkout at my school with students blocking roads and making their way to go and protest outside parliament. At the time, this was just a day off school which let me go and get stoned with mates in the park. But it did have an effect and I started thinking a lot more about how shit things are. I questioned things a lot more after that, to the point where I was questioning the overall nature of capitalism, which I started to see as the root cause of all these problems.

When I was 20, I left home and lived in a homeless people’s hostel for a year. Throughout my time there, I was unemployed, on benefits and getting more pissed off, as were the boys I shared facilities with.

That hostel was a trap. The only way you could leave and get into social housing was by being referred by the staff there, which meant submitting to their rules and keeping up to date with the weekly service charge you'd pay from your benefits. My money would go fast on food and transport I'd use to look for work. When I got into service charge arrears I was threatened with eviction twice. Serious bully business from a housing 'charity'! You could get on the council list, but it’d take a few years to build up enough points for a flat and even then your chances are ultra slim.

Why did you call the album The Spontaneous Revolt LP?
We made the album in about two weeks and I wanted that to be reflected in the name, as well as reflecting it’s political content. Spontaneous Revolt refers both to the nature of the album and the way in which it was made.

Tell us about your experiences so far within the UK hip-hop scene.
I got into the scene by grabbing the mic and turning up for free studio time any time I could. I recorded a cheaply made track at a music college which got passed around on copied CDs and ended up on pirate radio. I got invited to do live shows on air and eventually got a phone call from Kemet Entertainment Records, who I signed a recording contract with in 2006. Whilst on Kemet, I worked with some quality producers such as Baby J, Joe Buddha, and DJ Flip, and was getting a lot of shows.

Sadly, UK hip hop had its own little economic collapse, with nights like Kung Fu in Camden and Speakers Corner in Brixton closing, Itch FM shutting down, Low-Life records closing, and Kemet as well. There's no green shoots here and no one’s bailing us out! We're all redundant rappers now; last year I was in a quality studio off Harley street, and now I'm in DJ Downlow's flat eating fried chicken with ghetto-flavoured mayonnaise.

As a class struggle anarchist, you’re quite different from a lot of other socially conscious rappers. What are your views on the prevalence of nationalist, religious or pro-Obama views in hip-hop?
They’re just a reflection of opinion in America. Politically, some of those opinions might be to the left, but if you want more class struggle in hip-hop, you need more class struggle in society first. Hip-hop reflects what’s already there, whether its street violence, political consciousness, or ‘Vote Obama’ feeling.

What radical traditions/movements do you take inspiration from?
The movements that inspire me most are always working class grassroots ones, and often, but not always, those with libertarian principles. Learning about what the CNT-FAI achieved in the 1930s, contributed to the confidence I have in the possibility of a self-managed society on a large scale. Hungary 1956 is another good example. It's hard to hear conscious American hip-hop without reference to the Black Panthers. What's inspiring about them is that they were a street-level organisation and their survival programs made a big positive difference to the lives of people in the community. These days, there's often focus on organising in the workplace, but not enough on dealing with community issues. Right now, I'm also inspired by all the shit kicking off in Greece.

What do you think of the anarchist movement's ability to engage working class youth such as yourself?
The anarchist movement needs to start holding Skins parties with free booze and drugs, and a strict dress code of hoodies, caps, and trainers only! But on a serious level, it’s about communicating with people in the right way. People in political groups might be experienced and knowledgeable but young working class people often feel they lack that experience and knowledge to be active. Most people don’t know the definition of anarchism. The anarchist movement has got to let people know what it’s all about and show people that there are no intellectual entry requirements.

What are your plans for the future?
I’m gonna be recording and releasing more free material. For most of the time, I’ll be working alongside DJ Downlow, my partner in crime in studio and pub. I’d love to do a tour across Europe and I’m thinking about the possibility of doing that, but it won’t happen this year. As for now, I’m just gonna keep releasing free music.

Spontaneous Revolt Free Download - www.sensei.fm
Comrade Malone official myspace page - www.myspace.com/comrademalone

Hip Hop Congress reposts Kitwana op-ed on Obama cartoon

2009-03-27T19:04:00.005-05:00

This editorial by Bakari Kitwana and reposted on the Hip Hop Congress website got me thinking about the discussion on Obama and race. While the immediate context is the cartoon printed in the New York Post and rightfully dubbed racist by Kitwana and a host of others, it should serve as a basis for talking about the way Obama has chosen to respond to questions of race in America.

I want to point y'all to a couple of other blogs where we've taken up this question. The first is a contributing blog from Matt Hamilton called "Hip-Hop, Obama, and Black Power" and the second is an interview we did with Alex at Rebel Frequencies.

We oppose the cartoon, but we also oppose Obama's own justification for white supremacy. I explain this a bit further in the comment I left and I encourage others to chime in as well.

Shout out to the HHC.

I wrote:

"Does Kitwana really believe that Obama isn’t a champion of post-race politics, despite his lip service in that speech about not ignoring racial problems? The fact is, Obama intentionally “ignored” that he was being attacked during his campaign (and obviously still is) for being a black man and for having an Arab name. And what is remarkable about that is the degree to which white supremacy has shaped the discussion on race. For if Obama had called it out for what it was, he would be “divisive” or “playing the race card.” Meanwhile the American ruling class owns the deck.

Obama’s reluctance at pointing to the prevalence of white supremacy in our society surely makes him a post-race black politician. Black candidates who rode the waves of black power in the 1970s and into the 80s and who became the basis for the Rainbow Coalition would have never ignored it. In fact, they drew there validity by embodying the language, dress, and some of the ethos of the period.

The problem with the RC, though, is that they served as a break on popular energies. They promised to tame the black nation in exchange for creating a patronage network that was supposed to give black folks a slice of the pie. But they never did. What they did was to actually serve as a more advanced justification for white supremacy.

Obama is not beholden to any popular movement the way the RC was. And because of this, he doesn’t have to talk about white supremacy. But Obama like the RC will continue to prop up white supremacy as police departments continue to attack and murder youth of color, as community colleges scale back on funding that educate black youth, and as local black politicians oversee the destruction of black communities.

We agree with Kitwana that white supremacy prevails, but aren’t so naive to think that Obama and his ilk can substitute for the only thing that can effectively challenge it; a mobilized people of color. Obama won’t be defeated or hamstrung by racism, he’ll serve as a new means for it, whether he sees it or not.

Thanks for posting this."

"Catch Dat Beat"

2009-03-26T14:50:00.006-05:00

Just wanted to plug an event that we're real excited about that's being produced by a homeboy of ours and fellow Delgado student, Lucky Johnson. It's called "Catch Dat Beat" and it is being touted as the first ever Bounce play. The play will feature Lucky, 10th Ward Buck, and one of my favorite hip-hop artists Big Freedia.

Here's the details:

Ashe Cultural Arts Center; April 2-4 at 6PM.

From Brooklyn Beats to Beirut Streets: Upcoming N.O. Events

2009-03-19T15:12:00.008-05:00

If you're in the N.O., check out these upcoming events -- this Friday and Saturday, Palestine Hip-Hop and Spoken Word, and next Friday, 3/27, "Return/Recover/Resist/Rise Up" Liberation HipHop Concert as part of the Patois: New Orleans 6th Annual International Human Rights Film Festival.

Palestine Hip-Hop and Spoken Word

Please don't miss the exciting Palestine Solidarity performances this Friday and Saturday, at 5:00pm by Nizar Wattad, Omar Chakaki and Mark Gonzales. These performers are legendary founders of Palestinian hip-hop in the US, and their performances have captivated crowds around the world.

Friday's performance is a short set, where they will be performing as part of a series of many performers, and Saturday is a complete show.

Omar Chakaki is an architect/Hip-Hop artist born in the Middle East, and the founding member of N.O.M.A.D.S., a Syrian-Sudanese-American hip-hop group.

Mark Gonzales is a poet, educator, and organizer. He has traveled from the refugee camps of Palestine to the streets of Havana to Def Poetry Jam on HBO. He was awarded a fellowship at UCLA to bring hip-hop into the university curriculum.

Nizar Wattad is a screenwriter and hip-hop artist born in the Middle East. He is a producer of Free the P, first nationally distributed Arab hip-hop project.

See more information about the performers at at http://humanwritesproject.org.

State of the Nation Performance Festival
http://www.sonfestival.org

1) Spoken Word | Friday, March 20, 5:00pm
St. Roch Market Neutral Ground of St. Roch Ave. at Marais St.

2) Performance | Saturday, March 21, 5:00pm
The Studio at Colton 2300 St. Claude Ave.

Brooklyn Beats to Beirut Streets by Human Writes Project
Spoken Word
Saturday, March 21
5-6 pm

An energetic, informative and often startling presentation in spoken-word and rhyme, 'Brooklyn Beats to Beirut Streets' traces the artists' development alongside the birth and growth of Hip-Hop, in a reading of the world through their words. This poetic performance is an intersection of cultures sharing space on a stage that gives voice to marginalized histories, challenges the audience to re-examine worldviews, and indicts individuals and institutions for historical atrocities committed in the name of democracy.

Human Writes Project is poet and educator Mark Gonzales (an Alaskan-born Muslim Mexican-American) and hip-hop artists Nizar Wattad and Omar Chakaki (hailing from Palestine and Syria, respectively). Sparked by the demonization of Arabs and Muslims after September 11, Chakaki and Wattad began performing hip-hop and spoken word across the USA in an attempt to counter widespread media bias. They met Mr. Gonzales at an awareness-raising benefit concert, and the three realized that despite vast differences in their upbringings, they were united by a particular world-view, informed by the emerging and rapidly evolving art from known as Hip-Hop.

"Return/Recover/Resist/Rise Up" Liberation Hip-Hop Concert

Friday, March 27, 9:30pm
Ray's Boom Boom Room
508 Frenchmen St
$10

The sound of liberation, from New Orleans to Detroit to New York to Gaza. Featuring: Wise Intelligent (from the legendary hiphop pioneers Poor Righteous Teachers), Invincible (Detroit hiphop star and Jewish anti-Zionist activist), Mohammad Al-Farra (From Gaza's first hiphop group Palestine Rappers), Sabreena Da Witch (The First Palestinian R&B Singer), Truth Universal (Trinidad born, New Orleans based, Afrikan liberation), and Dee-1 (New Orleans conscious hiphop), plus films and guest speakers.

“This city here, They eat off the backs of the poor”: Breakdown FM Interview with Sess 4-5

2009-03-08T14:45:00.003-05:00

This is an older interview, but a good one, that Davey D did back in August 2007 with local New Orleans rapper Sess 4-5, a cat who has been involved with organizing against the demolition of public housing and the lack of affordable housing here. He discusses the recovery efforts in N.O. over the previous two years and how hip-hop has been impacted by and had an impact on that process. He asks some key questions: how is it that such devastation and racism against black folks could happen in a city with a black police chief, black mayor, etc.? What kind of city is the local, state and federal government trying to rebuild? In whose interests? How are everyday folks dealing with and resisting the plans to exclude people of color from returning and rebuilding? Important perspectives on these questions have been discussed elsewhere, including here, but for the sake of this post we’ll let the interview speak for itself.

The Republican Party Needs More than a ‘Hip-Hop Makeover’

2009-03-08T11:18:00.005-05:00

I’ve been pretty entertained recently by the “Hip-Hop Makeover” going on in the Republican Party. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve been missing out. It seems like a faction of the Republicans, in crisis mode since the presidential elections as they attempt to rebuild the party and redefine the party’s vision, has been studying Obama’s popularity among young folks and think hip-hop holds the answer. Michael Steele, the recently-elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, has donned the cape and promises he is the man that will help the party in its soul-searching.

Steele plans to apply the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings” and invoke hip-hop to win over young people and people of color to a party typically known for being lily white. So what does Republican hip-hop look like? Some highlights:

- Steele told a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) audience that they should ‘fess up for their Party’s sins: “Tell America: 'We know the past, we know we did wrong--my bad.’”
- At the same conference, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann cheered for Steele, telling him, “You be da man! You be da man!”
- Steele offered Bobby Jindal some "slum love" for doing a "friggin' awesome job" as governor of Louisiana.

Horrifyingly out of touch, to say the least, but I suppose that’s what passes for diversity among those circles. That’s not all, though. Other recent efforts to merge hip-hop into the Republican Party include the “Hip-Hop Republicans” and the Republican Rapper.

I feel pretty strongly that the Republicans will never be able to fully hijack hip-hop – because of the racist character of the party itself, but also because the political content of hip-hop is diverse enough and rebellious enough that it cannot fit the narrow confines of official society without a serious overthrow of those very elements that make hip-hop what it is today. But there’s another reason why this “Hip-Hop Makeover” merits some attention.

These attempts among the Republicans actually represent a wider tension that is also facing the Democrats. Both parties are at an impasse because of the economic and political crisis. The old methods of “fixing” the economy (lower interest rates, pile on more credit to reinflate consumption, etc.) are not working. More importantly, the old ideas of justifying the neoliberal economic order have rapidly lost whatever legitimacy they once held. For the Democrats, they have been pretending to be the party of Civil Rights, the party that cares for people of color and labor. Yet it - alongside labor union bureaucrats and a new layer of people of color elected officials that arose out of Black Power and the upheaval of the 60s and 70s - demobilized that very constituency over the past 3 decades so that today, any pretense to having a base rooted in social movements is mere rhetoric. Further, the Democrats have been complicit in implementing neoliberalism on a global scale; Clinton completed the Reagan Revolution and Obama is (for now) following in his footsteps.

The Republicans, on the other hand, do have a base, and the recent presidential elections showed that it can be mobilized around a white supremacist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. At the McCain/Palin rallies towards the end of the campaign, there began to appear serious elements of white supremacist mobilization with people shouting out to “Kill Obama!” But a funny thing happened: McCain, being pressured by other officials and leaders in Washington, had to pull in the reigns on those rallies. The party leadership didn’t want those angry crowds to turn into angry mobs. This wasn’t out of any genuine anti-racist sentiment among Republicans, rather it seems the Party wasn’t ready for, nor did it want, a truly mobilized base. It only wanted a base that was sure to turn out to the polls. It is this rightwing of the party, represented by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, whose own racist visions for the party are running up against Steele’s (still racist) vision for a hip-hop makeover.

Today, with the deepening of the recession, grassroots forces on both the left and the right are moving in ways that may quickly go beyond the confines of either party. The Democrats and the Republicans are not blind to this, but neither has been able to offer a coherent vision that can climb out of this crisis and keep in check the anger and frustration from below. The enthusiasm and historic turnout in the recent presidential elections indicate that across the U.S., people recognize the stagnation of the old ideas and are seeking a change, a new basis for society. Hip-hop is in a unique position to reveal that very impulse and what a new basis could look like, which is why it makes sense that both the Democrats and Republicans have sought, in different ways, to coopt elements of hip-hop. Luckily, the hip-hop generation is not so easily impressed as to buy into the nonsense of a Republicans “Hip-Hop makeover.”

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Michael Steele Gets Served

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
Joke of the Day

Music Break

2009-03-08T11:10:00.003-05:00

For your listening pleasure.

Their Crisis, Not Ours.

2009-02-25T18:30:00.004-06:00

On campuses around the world, a wave of occupations and militant organizing has been underway to fight undemocratic administrations that are using the economic crisis to push through racist policies that disproportionately target people of color. This has included community college students in New York, students across England and Italy.

Many of us recognize that public education in this country has long been a disservice to those of us who need it. There’s a reason why Kanye West can make hit songs that clown college degrees. But this recent round of attacks on education is about more than just classrooms and textbooks. It’s about our right as people of color to decide what kind of education we deserve, and how we want to use it .

In Louisiana, we are facing serious cutbacks. So far, we know:

- All of Louisiana's four-year universities and technical and
community colleges face an 18-30% cut

- For Delgado, this could mean cuts between $6 and $11 million affecting students, faculty and staff

- General Education will be the first area cut, which means few choices and fewer opportunities for students of color

Why is education under attack in Louisiana? What type of cuts is Delgado facing? Who will these affect? How are students of color responding at other community colleges? One thing is certain: people of color all over are making it clear that the recession is not our fault, it is the fault of the politicians, bankers, and elites. This is their crisis. Not Ours.

Join the Ella Baker Organizing Committee
Monday, March 9
in the Dolphin Den
in the Student Life Center of Delgado City Park
from 1:30-3:00pm

for an Open Discussion about the crisis in our education and what we can do about it.

The Ella Baker Organizing Committee is a campus-based organization animated by the principles of democracy and anti-racism. For more information, email us at ellabakeroc@gmail.com or join us on Facebook at “Cuts for Them, Not Us”

Tech N9ne and My Tentativeness / Opportunism

2009-02-18T18:35:00.012-06:00

Alright, so this is a little opportunistic on my part, but in my Music Appreciation class I was required to write a two-page paper on my "favorite artist." Thing is, I don't really have a favorite artist. I don't even have a favorite five or ten artists. Sure, I'll give you a short list of some very solid lyricists or producers, but that doesn't necessarily make them my favorites. My personal taste is too broad and too versatile.

Anyhow, the opportunism is due to the need to say something about Tech N9ne on this blog. Yes, long the hell overdue. But it's long overdue, for one, because he's a KC artist and I'm from KC. Two, he's one of the most elusive and complex rappers out there, both in terms of his style and his audience, and that warrants some things said.

One other thing worth mentioning. There could be some inaccuracies in terms of Tech's popularity and/or sales, general biographical information, or others. If anyone feels the need to offer corrections, by all means do so. I definitely don't want to do an injustice to the man or the genre.

Without further ado...

* * *

I wasn’t always a fan of Tech N9ne. Today still I’ve never been to a Tech show, although I have seen him freestyle at an open mic/battle and on a couple of different occasions I ran into him at random locations in Kansas City, where he is from, and where I spent a good chunk of my life.

No, when I first came into contact with Tech’s music, I had been captivated by what I’ve called a “b-boy revivalism” and Tech unfortunately fell outside of that milieu which sprang up in the early 1990s and was an attempt to emphasize the totality of the culture of hip-hop against the apparent egoism and “rappercentric” form of mainstream hip-hop then. But no matter where I was at on the broad and universal hip-hop radar, I don’t believe I ever denied Tech’s lyrical ability that easily leaves one’s mouth gaping. While there are other rappers who can be broadly compared to Tech in terms of the pace and rapidity of their flow; Twista and Bone Thugs to name a couple, none of them have the versatility, the eccentricity, or the entertaining persona of Tech N9ne.

Several attempts were made to break out of the relative obscurity in which he labored. Through a mutual producer, QD3, a son of Quincy Jones, Tech had the opportunity to collaborate on a song with 2Pac, but was forced to do the song posthumously once 2Pac was murdered. A year later, he was featured on the “Gang Related” soundtrack, a film in which 2Pac starred, with the song, “Questions” where Tech raps in his characteristically erratic style, “Can I get some, can I spit some, which one? When am I gonna get off this trip? / Can I take another pill? Why do I feel like I'm a sick individual in the room poppin’ off at the lip?”

In 1999, Tech N9ne released his debut album, “The Calm Before the Storm” with the single, “Planet Rock 2K” which was a hit on Kansas City radio. There wasn’t enough fanfare, however, for Tech to break the glass ceiling of local hip-hop and to catapult into the mainstream. This was a fate to follow him for several albums following.

Lucky for Tech and his off-the-wall personality, he managed to build up quite the cult following in other cities around the country and simultaneously elude both Kansas City skeptics and fans alike. Eventually, he found community with the “Juggalos”, a largely white, working class group of Midwest hip-hoppers, but with a growing base of people of color, that are noted for their clown make-up and apparent lyrical nihilism. It’s merely apparent, because a deeper listen will reveal a sense of alienation from the oppression and mediocrity of modern society.

The lyrics from the song “Diemothafuckadie” by notable Juggalo group, Twizted, read:

“Actin’ belligerent on a daily.
Hoping that somebody can save me, but I guess I’m dead wrong.
All by myself.
Fuck everyone else I’m in a hole.
And I can’t breath, my lungs swoll.”

The listeners and sympathizers with whom these lyrics resonate have witnessed a consistency in Tech N9ne’s own bipolar raps which has increased his popularity among them. But Tech, as a Black rapper, has also introduced a component to Juggalo hip-hop which has validated and broadened its base among people of color. In Tech’s “Riotmaker” he raps about being denied a gig in Hawaii because the concert promoter said it would incite the Samoan community there to violence. Tech lashes out at the white supremacy of the concert promoters by both validating people of color’s desire to rebel against racism and the illogic of the argument that hip-hop makes people violent.

Tech is like other mainstream rappers today in the sense that he reflects certain implicitly political but popular sentiments that are set in motion by official society and it’s calls to make sacrifices and to find happiness and mobility within a decaying system. He is not considered a political or “conscious” rapper who stands above the crowd and has to inject his or her own sectarian views into the music. Rather, Tech is like most of us who are torn between the values of the barbarism of modern society and the hope for completely new and free relations among human beings. The difference is that he has an ironic way of playing with those antagonisms and places them center stage in his music and performances. And this is why I am a fan.

"I'm a Punk Under Pressure."

2009-02-18T01:51:00.008-06:00

Sissy Nobby dressed to impress

So it's been kinda dead here at the D&HHP. I believe I've said this before, but LBoogie and myself aren't just bloggers, we're also organizers and are working on a project at Delgado Community College here in New Orleans around the white supremacist character of the Louisiana education cuts. The hip-hop generation, in our opinion, is the subjective force that must fight and destroy white supremacy, and in this case, the education cuts and press for democratic control of the school by the students. New Orleans, and Louisiana in general, has very unique political and cultural traditions that we draw a lot from and which has been inspiring to us.

Of the more recent of those traditions has been hip-hop culture in New Orleans. Most outside the city are quite familiar with the sounds of Master P, Mystikal, Mannie Fresh, Juvenile, and Lil Wayne, and all of those cats deserve their dues for their contributions to a New Orleans sound and style. But a lesser known aspect of NOLA hip-hop, and because it has not become generalized across the US, is Bounce.

This is not the first time we've discussed Bounce. For the litany, check out a review of the film on Bounce, "Ya Heard Me?", a note on 10th Ward Buck's upcoming book to be released next week, and a post on Alison Fensterstock's article from the Gambit Weekly on Sissy Rappers.

This music reminds one a lot of Miami Bass because of its highly repetitive and uptempo beat where the rappers are closer to hypemen than they are MCs. In Bounce, rappers are more dependent on the music whereas the standard today is quite the opposite. Bounce goes as far back as the mid 80s so it is anything but new and damn near as old as hip-hop itself. For those who want to get acquainted with it, check out a local blog NOLA BOUNCE.

Even lesser known and far more controversial (but gaining in popularity) within Bounce are the "sissy rappers." These are queer and transsexual/transgender artists who have asserted the validity of a queer identity in hip-hop long before any others have. Katey Red's "Melpomene Block Party" (after the Melpomene projects, still standing!) first debuted in the late 90s.

It isn't enough to say that sissy rappers have carved out a place in hip-hop because queer folks are also people of color and have always been hip-hop. The point and power of sissy rappers are that they have made LGBTQ identity consistent with hip-hop; that it is okay to be queer and be hip-hop, and they have undermined the prevailing white supremacist logic that hip-hop is ultra homophobic.

We've mentioned before how the "Ya Heard Me?" film and Fensterstock's article have captured the tensions within Bounce with some being okay with sissy rappers for economistic reasons--because it brings out the ladies--while others think it has made Bounce synonymous with gay music. Regardless of the reaction, the struggle against heterosexism on a cultural level is being played out in the New Orleans hip-hop generation like nowhere else. On any given night, you'll find those who may not be completely comfortable with the sissy rappers, bangin out to their music when they perform.

Last Saturday, February 14, LBoogie and myself celebrated our Valentine's Day at a Sissy Rapper show in the Quarter with Katey Red, Big Freedia, and Sissy Nobby. We weren't quite aware of the hipster dive this place was, but the good thing is some black folks eventually showed. However, this wasn't no spectator shit; these hipsters were lovin it! L claims it was the livest hip-hop show she has ever been to. While I would dispute that (one of the livest for me was Cypress Hill back in 1996), I am obligated to say that it was off the fuckin hinges. Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby especially were some of the best live entertainers I've seen.

Katey Red performed last and ended the night with her classic joint, "Punk Under Pressure." The song isn't lyrically complicated and is essentially about the struggle of being queer, of being transsexual, but its mostly an angry embrace of that identity best exemplified in the line, "[call] KATEY RED IS A...[response] DICK SUCKA!" It's blunt, it's crude, and it's every way in step with the hip-hop tradition. And I yelled it until I was hoarse.

This post is not meant to elaborate a full perspective on queer identity, but I did want to write a couple of paragraphs about it specifically. Queer identity has a revolutionary quality (and history!) in its critique of the white supremacist State. The State has created a standard in terms of what it considers a valid relationship which is white, middle class, and hetero. It defines a family as an institution that doesn't exist en masse the way more unofficial family forms exist: single parents and children, LGBTQ couples, unmarried straight couples, friends, communes, and others that are based on mutual aid and cooperation and when taken in their totality constitute the majority. Being queer is not necessarily the opposite of being straight, and in this sense, all those who aren't white, middle class, straight couples (like those unhappy crackers in Mad Men) are queer. It means I'm queer because I don't fall into that bullshit category.

There is a sexual component to queer identity and I don't want to dilute that essential aspect. But queer identity is neither purely sexual nor is it a binary thing: you aren't either gay, straight, or bisexual. Its a fluid gradation of sexuality, masculinity, and femininity. It isn't something fixed or rigid, but is as varied as are personalities.

The reality is that queer people in the strict sense are an oppressed category of people and they have a long tradition of struggle. We've seen this most recently in the passage of Prop 8 in California which denied marriage rights for same sex couples. True indeed, a lot of those in support of it were white, liberal gay couples who are trying to prove their loyalty to the white supremacist State. This privileged strata of gay folks have seized the slogan of a black tradition, "civil rights", which rightly pissed off a lot of black folks (including queer blacks) who saw that as pure opportunism. They're okay with co-opting civil rights language, but they won't compromise their loyalty to white supremacy when the police murder black youth. There is obviously a class/racial tension with the queer community at large just as there is in the community as a whole.

Wherever people fall on this, Bounce is bringing folks together that otherwise might be in opposition. This is a fly in the face to those Northern elitist progressives who look upon the South as backwards. Clearly we're doing something right down here.

Just Another Day

2009-02-04T22:18:00.004-06:00

I was watching this video of Queen Latifah’s “Just Another Day…” tonight and it reminded me of a conversation I had with someone a few weeks back about the decay of New Orleans before and after Katrina, and particularly the struggles in the last few years protesting the destruction of public housing here. She was shocked that anybody who has ever lived in public housing would ever want to defend it – as many did last year when the City Council was voting to demolish the majority of it. Her thinking was that the projects are so horrible, they’ve been kept in poor condition, they’re full of violence and drugs, and they’ve been made into damn near war zones the way the police inflict all means of harassment, intimidation and violence among their residents. Why would anybody want to save that?

In “Just Another Day…” Queen Latifah has a line saying she hopes there’s a hood in heaven. That line is part of the reason why I disagreed with the conversation. These weren’t just empty brick buildings that were being torn down; they had communities in them. There were families, relationships, love, strength and solidarity, living and breathing within those walls. Now, granted, the person I spoke with had a "Talented Tenth" thing going on and was looking at it like, damn we need to save our people from their own backwardness, they don't even "want" to get out of the projects. If you focus on statistics about crime rates, drug abuse, unemployment, with no context at all behind those numbers, then it’s easy to equate projects with bad, and their destruction with good. (It also helps disguise the real issues behind the attacks on infrastructure, housing, and healthcare that are going on, but I digress…)

We are not a backwards people. Our communities are not fucked up, we’re just living in a fucked up society. It’s sad that there’s even a need to say that, to defend our own humanity. The beautiful thing is that most people don’t buy the "Talented Tenth" argument that assumes an “Untalented 90th”, as my friend J likes to say. When hip-hop glorifies the “hood in heaven”, the “Thugz mansion”, etc., it’s not because people embrace poverty or the problems of public housing. It’s celebrating the mere fact that people are even building community amid the conditions that decades of cutbacks and impoverishment have forced many into. If that’s not a testament to our own strength, I don’t know what is.

Fred Radtke: Graf Writer or White Vigilante?

2009-01-24T22:51:00.010-06:00

The Iron Rail blog has a compelling post dating back almost a year on Fred Radtke aka Gray Ghost, who is notorious for painting over New Orleans spray can art and other forms of graffiti as well as conventional signs and posters.

It was signed under the pseudonym, "the mighty d-block" and is written under the assumption that Radtke himself is a "writer" who "gets up". While this is certainly a rather unconventional way to think about Radtke, d-block fails to realize that one can't apply graf writer categories and logic to an activity that is in opposition to the basis and politics of graffiti and graffiti art. This should be obvious, and for a blog with anarchist sensibilities I'm pretty surprised to see an individual endorsement of what we would consider as antithetical to anti-racism and is instead an activity that is complicit with the State and essentially white supremacist if not outright fascist.

For those interested in our general appreciation of graffiti, check out LBoogie's post from last March. LBoogie writes, "graffiti has been the megaphone for working class youth, and all they need is a can of spray paint and a blank surface (and sometimes not even that)." Youth of color were at the forefront of a specific form of graffiti in NYC in the 70s that eventually had a global spread. This was more or less consistent with the growth of hip-hop and its corresponding ethos of opposition to neoliberalism, white supremacy, and the coming to power of the Rainbow Coalition.

While we would disagree with those who have tried to mechanically fit graffiti into explicit attacks on the State and capitalism, we still would argue that implicit in graffiti (and sometimes explicit) is a rejection of official society. More importantly than its negativity (negation) is its reclamation of individuality in a society that has sought to destroy any vestige of such in the name of value production and State power.

What the individual writer thinks of his or herself is unimportant; our consciousness is a contradictory thing. Some writers are not able to articulate why they get up. It is a compulsion they feel. But when taken as a totality with all other forms of graffiti, we see a critique and an expression of alienation. Who knows where Radtke's real sentiments lay. I'm pretty confident that he would be in good company with the Algiers Point white community who during Katrina murdered at least a dozen black men with impunity. The State has yet to investigate, let alone charge anyone with the murders. But perhaps Radtke is a dude that generally has no problems with black folks. After all, he is pretty indiscriminate on what he chooses to paint over. However, Radtke is not an island and we have to situate him in a historical context in order to understand what he and his actions represent.

We know how the State has continued to respond to graffiti in explicit attacks on people of color. This goes back as far as Orange Crush. But it was not the only organized force to respond to graffiti. There has also been a history of white vigilantes responding in their own ways. Of course, white vigilantes have been doing more than just responding to graffiti, but have a long history of attacking people of color under the guise of "fighting crime".

Like the racist Katrina shooting deaths, Radtke gets a free pass by the State to continue his political crusade, Operation: Clean Sweep. "Sgt. Joe Narcisse with the NOPD previously said they have no intention of stopping Radtke or charging him with destruction of private property.

'What he’s doing is work that the city would be doing itself provided we had the resources and manpower,' Narcisse said. 'He’s not doing anything that we aren’t asking him to do.'"

I'm not sure which is more frightening, the fact that the white supremacist State turns its head from Radtke, or that it says it doesn't have the resources to remove graffiti itself.

Radtke's activity is more consistent with white vigilantism. He's determined, because the State is unwilling, to fight the depraved colored hordes who have brought us down from national greatness. He is an "Omega Man" that locates the decay and barbarism of the world not in the attacks on the working class and people of color, but on people of color themselves. That is an instinct towards fascism.

To support Radtke for "getting up" isn't breaking the holy laws of hip-hop graffiti. I could give a fuck about that. But to frame Radtke as a graf artist, or to argue that somehow what he is doing is compatible with the general ethos of graffiti, is like confounding the murder of black men by those crackers in Algiers Point as fighting crime. I'm not trying to bait d-block, but just because Huey Long railed against capitalism, that didn't make him anti-racist.

Hip-Hop in the Era of Barack Obama

2009-01-23T00:05:00.001-06:00

D&HHP readers and community:

This post will contain a series of articles that take up the campaign, election, and inauguration of President Barack Obama and its relationship to hip-hop culture and the hip-hop generation. It is to help forge a dialogue for not simply hip-hop as music or art, but the political circumstances and challenges that face us as a generation. I hope that everyone who reads this post will take the time to read one or all of the articles and leave their thoughts in the comments section. After a couple of weeks of exchange, we will respond with a statement on the articles and the conversation.

Is Obama's presidency the change hip-hop needs?

We are the post hip-hop generation

New anti-gang legislation targets hip-hop generation

The hip-hop generation in decline

Breaking Free: The Politics of the Hip-Hop Generation

Barack Obama, Hip-Hop Candidate

Revolutionary Hip-Hop: a Mini-Manual for Hip-Hop Organizing

2009-01-21T02:08:00.008-06:00

I'm still not even sure I should post this. Immediately I can think of two reasons why it would be necessary to share this nearly six-year-old manuscript; to indicate a line of march in my own understanding of hip-hop as well as my political development and to confront the fundamental weaknesses of the piece that, while being marginal in terms of more of its formal politics, still conveys what plagues most of the popular internal and external reaction against hip-hop culture.

The first thing is that the MS had a functional purpose: to propose ideas on ways to "bring back" and "educate" working class youth on the "fundamentals" of hip-hop. But perhaps it is better to talk about certain a priori assumptions that existed before the MS was written.

First, there was the hip-hop fundamentalism expressed in terms of the emphasis on the "four elements,"; that modern hip-hop, at least in its popular form was bankrupt and a bastardization of the "true school." Second, it contains the still persistent myth that early hip-hop represented some lull in innercity violence, that early hip-hop was "positive," a term when used in that context today makes me cringe.

Ironically, I devote a section of the MS to cultural nationalism to say that hip-hop for its own sake is backwards. So even though I was willing to break with hip-hop as it was, it was only in service of revolutionary change, which leads me to my next point.

Hip-hop had revolutionary value because "at one time" it ran through certain racial divides. This contributes to the myth that there was not racial tension in the early formation of hip-hop. Chang's "Can't Stop Won't Stop" tells of Puerto Rican youth hated on by black kids for trying to be like them, and hated on by other PRs for not acting Puerto Rican.

It was also partly personal experience. I write of other local hip-hop artists and impose moral standards upon them. I talk about the type of folks who come out to "hip-hop" shows. This invariably bears weight on the conclusions of the MS.

Now briefly for the political problems. First, most of the ideas or theory informing the perspective for "Revolutionary Hip-Hop" are an incoherent and eclectic mix of Maoism and Third Worldist Marxism. I have been radically Left my whole life, even as a young adolescent, but my political becoming was not linear and coherently shaped and did not grow out of a specific political tendency. It relied on a combination of many contradicting, broadly Marxist perspectives that were incredibly underdeveloped. Unfortunately this meant that in some places I use quotes without fully comprehending or contextualizing them. My footnotes are not footnotes at all, but are more of a glossary. So there are definitely lots of grammatical and mechanical problems in the writing as well.

What is also striking is how I show such disdain for what I refer to as "individualism," yet this entire MS is individualistic in the sense that politics is mainly a personal activity. It is a cultural revolution for hip-hop where ordinary folks are expected to follow the true way, but with an eye toward political revolution presumably led by some abstract vanguard. I was 22. That's all I can say. But damn, that ain't long enough ago either.

What should be obvious to everyone who reads this (which probably will not be many, if any at all) is that I renounce in full the logic, politics, method, as well as the conclusions of this MS. Although this piece was an important first step in beginning to take a critical look at hip-hop and as such was necessary, it is being republished here in contradistinction to the perspective of D&HHP. So dis it all you want, you ain't gonna hurt my feelings.

Revolutionary Hip-Hop: a Mini-Manual for Hip-Hop Organizing

June 16, 2003

Introduction
We need to step back and view the horizon for a moment. We have been going too long without an assessment of what we are doing and where we are going. Hip-hop needs a new analysis. Not the conventional bourgeois analysis of some elite scholars or the superficial money-driven analysis of hip-hop entrepreneurs, but a class analysis, a study through a class lens. To date, I have been severely disappointed with the traditional views of hip-hop by hip-hop artists and by bourgeois intellectuals alike, so I felt the need to develop my own. One that is constructed by someone involved in the culture, and by someone of the working-class. Though some revolutionary theorists like bell hooks have made excellent arguments regarding hip-hop, I have yet to see a thorough Marxist breakdown, or should I say a Marxist alternative offered.

Now I must explain who I am writing this for. Who is my target audience with this particular manual? It will be hard to make this clear without first explaining my ideas, but basically I am directing this to working-class people who are already acquainted with hip-hop. Some of this is theory, while some of it is the successful practical application of theory. Of course no theory can be proven unless it has been practically applied.

This information may be nothing new to those involved with hip-hop, but it is necessary for me to lay the foundation for my argument first before jumping off into it.

History and Social Conditions
At the peak of the movements including women, labor, civil rights, national liberation, black power, and others, a culture of resistance emerged. In the same neighborhoods where the Young Lords Party and Black Panther Party were organizing young blacks and Latinos to fight against the systematic oppression inflicted upon them, a way of life embodying music, art, and dance was being birthed as an answer to the call made by many revolutionaries of that time. This culture would be hip-hop, a culture that then had yet to assume an identity.

Hip-hop has a history that dates as far back as the late 1960’s. But it had not yet evolved to encompass all of its individual arts or “elements” until 1973 or ‘74. The Universal Zulu Nation was extremely influential in the combination of hip-hop's four basic elements, i.e. rhyming, dancing, painting, and playing and making music, arts that have preceded this culture for thousands of years. The Zulu Nation's pioneers were former gang members who saw hip-hop culture as an outlet from the blight and poverty that was widespread within the inner city. Because the South Bronx and other urban neighborhoods in New York lacked any sort of infrastructure, DJs would have to plug their music equipment into street lights when throwing outdoor parties. When the pigs arrived to break up the party, the DJs would just wait for them to leave and plug right back in. On the album Criminal Minded by BDP, KRS-One said, “Power from the street lights made the place dark, but yo, they didn't care, they turned it out!” A deficiency of technological resources caused people to resort to using whatever tools they had available. Throughout most of early hip-hop music, you will hear a lot of the same themes: institutionalized racism, poverty, lack of jobs, police violence, prostitution, drugs, etc. These social and physical realities were the impetus for hip-hop culture.

Peace, love, unity, but also social awareness was cornerstone to the Zulu Nation's organization and the premise of all of their events. This made them one of the most successful youth-based organizations of their time. Since the commercialization of hip-hop, the Zulu Nation today has neither significance nor focus. It is merely a vestige of something that was once very prosperous.

A Tool of Capitalism
Just like any other culture under the sun, companies have found ways to market hip-hop and thus amass vast amounts of capital. In order to accomplish this task, however, certain characteristics of this culture had to be removed, i.e. its history and social conditions. And thanks to this, hip-hop is probably the most ambiguous term used today. You say hip-hop to one person and they might think of breakdancing, MCs, DJs, and graffiti, maybe. You say it to another and they may conjure up descriptions of Dave Matthews or the Backstreet Boys. You have some who say that hip-hop is a combination of R&B and rap, others who claim that hip-hop is a generation and whether you follow it or not, if you are 18 years old, you are hip-hop.

If you just ask yourself who controls the media, well the answer might be the corporations. If you then ask, what is the purpose of a corporation; your answer should be to accumulate wealth. Hip-hop is only on television, or radio, or any other corporate controlled medium if it profits. The ruling-class will not allow something on the air talking about radical social change because a large part of that means redistribution of wealth unto the people, which counteracts the purpose of the bourgeoisie . So, in order to profit from hip-hop, they have to strip it of its meaning and social context. The same way this system stripped black people of their history. This is necessary in order to maintain the status quo. But I digress...

In order to overcome the racial and class boundaries within hip-hop, we must understand how it is merely a microcosm of society. Society has many different hierarchies divided by class, race, and gender as does hip-hop and most other cultures. I will therefore explain my study of this issue as analytically as possible. It first is extremely important to understand hip-hop's social roots and revolutionary character, the difference between rap and hip-hop (rap being the music, hip-hop being the totality of the culture), and the commercialization of hip-hop provoked by bourgeois society.

Since hip-hop was produced as a corollary to the exploitative conditions fashioned by capitalism, it therefore possesses an immense possibility to develop into a culture capable of changing the system. A revolutionary culture is merely a culture that seeks to change the oppressive environment maintained by a power structure, and to create a society that fosters the true needs of the people. It is also a culture that changes with the people and with the advances in technology. However, this possibility is futile when it is used exclusively as another instrument in sustaining the existing system. The only way that a successful revolution within society can occur, is if it is made by the majority of the people. Hip-hop's initial base was comprised of this mass; people of color and poor whites.

Digital Divide
Because of corporate Amerika's hijacking of rap music and hip-hop culture, it has become just another commodity devoid of any real social value. Hip-hop, in its current popular form, is widely a reactionary, individualist perpetuation of the system. There has been a movement to keep hip-hop's arts and roots alive, but it has no access into the major media and therefore has no “mass appeal”, thus it is forced into an “underground” avenue, an avenue I will herein refer to as roots rap or roots hip-hop. Although most young whites who enjoy rap music primarily listen to mainstream, as with most young blacks, roots hip-hop is largely made up of young, middle-class white people. This is because it is not readily available to people of color and to the poor because first, there has been no solid effort to bring hip-hop back to the streets and second, the lack of access to the roots hip-hop underground avenues, i.e. the information superhighway and university campuses. The Internet has significantly kept the art form alive, but consequently it has served to alienate hip-hop's original constituency. Universities are centers of wealth thus it gives one easy connection into any type of culture or music. But since colleges only attract those which can afford to attend this also aids in alienating others which could be included. And due to this, roots hip-hop is another privilege dominated capitalist culture.

It is not because you are wealthy that you are innately corrupt, but white, male privilege represents a central problem within our society. It's imperative to appreciate, too, that this racial advantage comes as a result of the persecution of people of color. If there was not such a tremendous class polarization, this culture that some whites allege as theirs would never have been. Hip-hop was not formed by the bourgeois elites, but if you look at the demographics within the roots movement, people of color are largely absent which, in the end, intensifies the elusive barrier between race and class.

As long as hip-hop's history and the social conditions in which it was created are recognized—which should then lead to the conclusion that we live in an oppressive state that must be changed—then it only makes sense to, at least, lend support to its cause. It is essential, however, that you not further the unrelenting alienation in this art form, for if you do, then you have just allowed yourself to become a component of this racist, classist, patriarchal, and homophobic social apparatus.

By and large, roots rap is released independently by the artist or by a small record label and therefore, it cannot make contact with the people, particularly the youth. This is not to argue that we should—or even can—promote a culture of resistance through the conventional medium. As with engaging in armed conflict against an occupational power (like the United States), we must use guerrilla strategies. I will expound on some of these strategies later on in this manual.

Art of Resistance
Mao Tse-tung said in 1942, “In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.” Basically, none of our material conditions in life are exempt from the effects and influence of politics and social relations, including hip-hop. With this in mind we must understand how art today, while it is not detached from politics, is used as another form of social alienation. Too often we create art that is divorced from the people. We do not create art for the people; we create it for bourgeois society. The same goes for the musical aspect of art. Roots hip-hop, as an art form, is also removed from the people. The irony is that roots hip-hop is divorced from its roots. It seeks to preserve hip-hop for hip-hop's sake, but certainly not its political characteristics. If those involved with the roots movement were conscious of its politics they would see that what they are doing isn't hip-hop at all, it is consumption.

Nowadays we look at art not from a dialectical sense, but from a reactionary sense. We look at what is hanging on the wall instead of what is really behind the art, whether it is a painting, a piece of music, lyrics to a song or poem, or a form of dance. What we are looking at is a human being's total life experience translated into art. And art, like hip-hop, can be used to galvanize the people into a mass social movement.

Graffiti or spray can art has long been hip-hop's visual art. If you think about it, graffiti is a truly revolutionary art form. It is a perceivable manifestation of our social conditions in the United States. This government spends more money on graffiti removal than it does on art programs for schools. Graffiti is another result of a class society because it is made by the poor. And graffiti is the people's art because it is not consumed, it is not sold, it is displayed always out hi the open, usually in the inner cities, usually on private property. But of course our “free” market system has fabricated ways of selling graffiti; as businesses around the Westport area confirm; another example of how capitalism will take the revolution and sell it to you. Yet, there are a select few artists, like Alexander Austin , who do make art with the intention of moving the people. This is exactly the kind of art the people need; art that is connected to the people's struggle.

Social Contradiction
There are only two ways to become a part of hip-hop. You either lived in the city where hip-hop was being practically applied or you heard about it through the filters of the capitalist media which sold it to you. This creates a dialectical dilemma. Concerning the latter, if this is how you were introduced to the culture, of course you would have no understanding of its social disposition; you were merely the consumer who had an urge for instant gratification. Most youth today are introduced to hip-hop by the same means, including myself. But we, as members of the working-class, who are cognizant of hip-hop's social character, have a prospect of getting people involved with hip-hop firsthand, the way it must happen if we are to alleviate this social contradiction.

If you lived in East Asia where Buddhism is truly a way of life, you would have a high probability of being one. Or at least it would make sense dialectically. But this is because of all the different aspects of that society which have affected one's psyche. But the xenophile who has lived completely outside of that environment becomes Buddhist not because of their social conditions, but because of the lure that our capitalist system gives Buddhism and any other culture that it can present to you in a handsome, glistening package. The xenophile has no culture except that of consuming. John Walker-Lindh was Muslim not because he was brought up as one, but because he could no longer identify with capitalist culture. The petty-bourgeois existence finally becomes shallow and unfulfilling.

Patriarchy and Homophobia
Obviously sexism is rampant within hip-hop, mainstream and underground, as with homophobia. But it is not a problem within hip-hop alone. It is a larger symptom of the great social disorder. We should expect to encounter this in hip-hop, because it has permeated every aspect of our society. However, because of hip-hop's revolutionary character, it does have a latent power to attack this problem. And it must be done openly and directly.

Women, in hip-hop and in society, are expected to be sexually appealing before being socially acceptable, yet if they are open about their own sexuality they are scorned for it. For men, on the contrary, their sexuality is seen as a sign of power and used accordingly. But when women use their sexual prowess in a creative way, they are disdained for doing so.

I am not a fan of battles because I think battles and competition perpetuate individualism and nationalism, but when it comes to women competing, they will win, or lose, simply because of their gender. At this point all equality goes out the window, but the most important piece of that is how it reaffirms and further ingrains, in all of us, women's truly nonexistent ineptness. We are quick to applaud women in hip-hop because we somehow think it is more difficult for them than for a male. The truth is, because of the roles women play in larger society, we do not allow women the same opportunities to involve themselves. We only allow them the role of the supporter girlfriend, the groupie, or the alienated “butch” B-Girl.

It is hard to comprehend an MC spouting openly hostile racism against black people and having a following, even if there were no black people present. Not only is this due to the civil struggles made by people of color in Amerika, but also because of the racial origins of hip-hop itself. In the South Bronx, hip-hop's birthplace, blacks and Latinos were the dominant ethnic groups. As it began to spread to other urban sectors, even white people found a place within the culture. Why is it then, like any other art form in our male-dominated society, women have to play one of the three roles set aside for them? Why do we repudiate [conscious] racism, but condone sexism? Why are we so insecure in our own sexuality that we make homosexuals out to be inferior? Well, if you ask me, I would say that machismo is the problem. Machismo has nothing to do with being strong, but everything to do with lack of confidence. Being strong is the ability to draw on the best, not to thwart any feeling of compassion or empathy. That is the reactionary, Amerikan form of strength. The mindset of men who shun homosexuals are of the same mindset of men who owned slaves: Fear of their own gay tendencies causes men to eschew gay people. White slave owners renounced black people, but fathered black children. The correlation between them is the contradiction between humans' natural inclinations and society's social standards. This problem is an obstruction to our development as oppressed people. Ultimately, we cannot defeat the oppressor by using the devices of the oppressor. Another way we could phrase that is that you cannot use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.

“Gangsta” Rap vs. “Bling-Bling”
We are seeing less and less of “gangsta” rap and more of the “bling-bling” AKA capitalist rap style in the mainstream. This may sound ludicrous to some, but “gangsta” rap has more of a revolutionary stance than the “bling-bling”. This is because “gangsta” rap reflects the dire conditions in impoverished neighborhoods and, generally, wherever people of color are concentrated. While it definitely had a propensity for being very misogynist, it forced white, ruling-class Amerika to take a look at the third world status of our inner cities. This reactionary manner towards “gangsta” rap is prevalent within roots hip-hop. From articles in the Pitch Weekly to hearing it directly from the artists themselves I hear extremely racist and classist opinions; opinions that I was guilty of entertaining at one point it time.

“Gangsta” rap is still very much alive within urban neighborhoods. Because of the evolution of commercial rap music, “gangsta” rap has also been forced underground. Yet, “gangsta” rap artists have successfully been able to rally young, black people, unlike roots rap artists. Why such a disparity? Apparently there is an underground medium for “gangsta” rap artists. Why do more black kids go to “gangsta” rap shows and more white kids go to roots rap or “real hip-hop” shows? The answer? It all goes back to the issue of relevance.

People listen to music that they can relate to. At the risk of sounding rhetorical, whether they relate to it in a reactionary way or a revolutionary way, they still listen to what is relative in their lives. Those who listen to rap that emphasizes materialism and patriarchy do so because whether they have material wealth or not, they still relate to that way of thinking. No matter how much you despise the “bling”, it is how this whole country operates. It is just that the rappers you see in the music videos do it in a very caricaturized way. People of color have been historically disenfranchised in this country. And anyone, whether black, white, or Latino who have lived without material wealth and somehow come into it, will tend to be very flamboyant. In the February 1994 edition of Zmagazine, bell hooks wrote an editorial in the midst of the “gangsta” rap hype. “The sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” I think this states very well that the ideals of “gangsta” and “bling-bling” rap artists are the ideals of American culture.

Now, if this is the mind set of the people, then we cannot really expect them to find relativity in lyrics that are over their heads, art they have no care for, and conspiracy theories that are absurd. Obviously, people who are clustered into ghettoes across the United States are not going to be impressed with calculus and differential equations or how the Masons are using esoteric powers to divert energies when their landlord is not repairing their home, but expecting the rent on time, the police are harassing and brutalizing them, their families and loved ones are filling up prisons faster than they can count, their employers are not paying them a decent wage, but demanding back-breaking work; that is if they even have a job, and sub-prime lenders are taking advantage of their desperation. This is not alienating, empty jargon. This is not conspiracy, it is reality. These conditions created hip-hop. Do you presume that urban youth could not relate to that? It would not matter how “East Coast” your beats sound, if you really spoke to people. We must halt the reactionary attitudes towards Amerika's lumpenproletariat . Poor, black, Latino, and white youth are the effect of the cause and they are revolutionary potential. In the words of Bernard Powell , “Ghetto or goldmine, the choice is ours.”

Racial Divide
The racial barrier within hip-hop ultimately breaks down like this. You have the mainstream which finds popularity among young whites and blacks alike and does not vary at all from city to city. Then you have the underground scenes. When I initially began writing this I realized that it was not enough anymore to refer to roots rap as “underground” hip-hop. This was due to the awareness that there are multiple underground scenes. Kansas City has a white underground and a black underground. The white mainly represents the roots movement. The black is made up of the “gangsta” rap scene. Roots hip-hop is concentrated chiefly in Lawrence and the “gangsta” scene in East Kansas City. Of course there are a handful of isolated artists, including myself and a few others, but I speak in general terms. And I do acknowledge that Lawrence is a city of its own. I have much reverence for its working-class and abolitionist history. And because of that Lawrence is a town that represents political potential. However, Lawrence and Kansas City hip-hop artists of both undergrounds are somewhat mutually dependent of each other’s cities for sales and for shows. There are cities that have been effectively proficient in minority participation within the roots movement, but I still feel that generally this is the state of the nation. Either hip-hop in some cities does not target minorities and the poor or they do, but still lack a class stance. Hip-hop has been polarized, and for good reason, the same good reason this government assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X , Fred Hampton , and Tupac Shakur. Once powerful people begin to talk about and act on multiracial, working-class unity this presents a threat to the power structure. And they will struggle by any means available to preserve their private, free enterprise hegemony, even if that means murdering us.

MCs as the Vanguard of Revolution
I think this speaks for itself. I am no MC. I make the beats or play the records. Yet, I personally refuse to work with MCs who do not convey my political stance. In a way, I am speaking through the MCs I collaborate with. Of what benefit would it be for me to record a song with someone whose views are in complete contrast to my own? How would that be productive? I am certainly culpable of doing this in the past. And of course we all have our inner contradictions because our society is a contradiction. But when will I see an MC who retains a consistent message in his or her lyrics? Why does one speak of educating the people in one song and in the next they are saying women's place in society is prone? Why does one talk about the disproportion of wealth and then says “I'm trying to get rich.”? Why does Ice-T see poverty as a class situation instead of a race situation, but then proceeds to offer entrepreneurialism as a substitute? How can Talib Kweli really call himself a “revolutionary entrepreneur”? Even the most “conscious” of hip-hop's artists and pioneers believe that black people's liberation is contained within the present system. Let me try to make this glaringly clear, you can't defeat capitalism with capitalism! There are countless MCs in hip-hop who threw around the word revolution, whether they really understood it or not, but who eventually caved to Black Nationalist entrepreneurialism. They have convinced themselves that because they were able to squeeze through and achieve some wealth, that anyone can do it just as easily. This not only reinforces capitalist individualism and nationalism, but it also does not take into account the structures and institutions in place to keep people down. You cannot have capitalism where everyone is prosperous because that negates the principle of capitalism. Capitalism is inherently flawed because it only benefits the interests of those who own capital. Over ninety percent of this nation's wealth is owned by one percent of the population. People have worked their whole lives trying to get a piece of the “Amerikan dream”, but in the end, could not even afford health insurance, or were fired so that the company they worked for for fifty years were not required to give them a pension, or wound up in jail because crime is the only other alternative. Sounds like an Amerikan nightmare. Conscious MCs and conscious people, I will hold you accountable because you understand more than most. Use your skills and charisma for empowerment, not for entertainment; not to perpetuate oppression.

From Reaction to Revolution
We have become caught up in thinking that we must use hip-hop for our own benefit. Most of us, who became a part of hip-hop, did so because it mesmerized us. It spoke to us in a way that nothing else has. At least it did for me. None of us, excluding the capitalists, experienced hip-hop and instantly thought of how we could exploit it. Yet when we become a part of it, our drive begins to shift. We begin to consider doing shows and getting a little pocket money. Then that idea graduates into getting signed by a label, corporate or independent. We become capitalists. We want to see our swelling heads on the cover of every magazine possible. We all compete for our group to be featured next in the Pitch Weekly. Every time I open the Pitch to read about what other hip-hop artist is “moving up” and getting signed, or releasing a professional sounding album (class privilege), I realize just how much more difficult it will be to get a music store to carry a CD-R, let alone a cassette tape. I've literally seen people refuse to purchase local music j if it wasn't shrink-wrapped. And the high-quality, state-of-the-art, barcode emblazoned] music is way overpriced, certainly not for college kids, but for the people who have to pay rent. When did it become about the exterior? Should it not be about the content? This roots movement seems to be taking on the characteristics of the reactionary mainstream.

Ask a working person in Kansas City if they go to Lawrence shows regularly. If they say no, it is probably because they do not own a vehicle. And if they do, their car would not be able to withstand the commute. And if it could, their tags are expired. And if you couple that with being black, you would probably want to keep as much distance as possible between yourself and the racist highway patrol. Hell, I am a white male and even I worry about the pigs stopping and harassing me. The roots rap scene is so dependent upon white privilege and class privilege that only those with it can afford to participate.

Organizing Hip-Hop into a Revolutionary Force
With any problem that is acknowledged, a solution must be offered. And I think I may have a very effective one. We need to start redirecting our focus within this art form. We need to rescue hip-hop from its inevitable death; inevitable if it continues on the path it is on. It may very well be that hip-hop in its original intent is already dead. But if this problem is just an interregnum, then it is up to you and me to see that it does not become permanent. Yet this change cannot be made on the Internet, nor can it be made in Johnson County . It has to be taken on actively in the streets of East Kansas City, Northeast Kansas City and the Westside —or whatever the appropriate neighborhood is. It has to be taken where minorities and working-class people are concentrated. We cannot just sit back and allow ourselves to become armchair revolutionaries that spends time endlessly theorizing. We must start actualizing or at least attempting to actuate these theories. Music is just another way to organize people to fight against the system in order to change it. It cannot be changed in the Bottleneck, or the Pool Room, or the Granada because that is not where the people are, that is not representative of the majority.

To sum it all up in one sentence, what I propose that we do is to merge the complete artistic scale of roots hip-hop (MCs, DJs, B-Boys/B-Girls, and graffiti writers) which broadens the opportunities for inner city youth, and the class position of the "gangsta" scene as to create a vehicle for a multiethnic, working-class, revolutionary, aboveground.

We must involve more people of color, more women, and more workers. We must go to them. We must start organizing hip-hop into a revolutionary force that seeks the permanent overthrow and removal of capitalism. We must start speaking in ways that people can relate to. This does not mean permitting ourselves to become condescending or attempting to “dumb ourselves down.” It means gauging your audience and connecting with people. My way of speaking in this manual is only alienating if I speak this way with everyone. Right now it is necessary, but when this theory is being actuated, this is when it becomes inappropriate.

I may be making it seem that I am only contributing to the problem of white privilege, but in order to connect everyday, working-class people we must use a different approach, because if they are ignorant of its history then they cannot see its potential. For those of you who are hip-hop practitioners and also see the need for social change within the U.S., this will be a way for you to actualize this. A responsibility of any leader is to create other leaders, and you do not do this by theorizing alone, you do it by action, or as Huey Newton says, by “observation and participation.”

It has also been important for me to explain my position because several people have asked me why I have extracted myself from this roots hip-hop “scene”. While I have been very frustrated with the so-called scene, I also see great potential among a small number of artists implicated with it. I think it is important to note that I live in midtown Kansas City and I've lived all over the East and Northeast sides. What I have experienced and what I have to say is relevant to people who live in those same neighborhoods because people who live in Lawrence are not directly affected by these social ills. It is apparent that I cannot initiate the tasks of my argument alone, although I will if necessary, so I hope that this manual will give others some clarity and allow them to lend their efforts to creating a wholly different scene that includes all people, not just white, wealthy college students. We must create a scene that is known not only for its art and music, but for its revolutionary stance and activity.

One of the most recent shows where I performed was at a venue in downtown Kansas City. It was a benefit show for a student political organization from a local community college. The student group had an account with AK Press and they sold books about various people and social movements of the past. Political artwork and posters adorned the walls. Literature pertaining to social awareness and know-your-rights cards were made accessible. All of the artists generally stuck to the issues in their lyrics. The DJs played politically minded hip-hop. The host MC kept the people energized and focused on our purpose. This served to create around the audience an atmosphere of resistance.

Another way in which we can get young people in the community to become involved is to start doing workshops and teach-ins on hip-hop. Utilize a library or some other public space. Incorporate political education and make that a fundamental principal. Remember that this political education must be relevant to their position and experience. This is just a cursory glimpse at some of the ways in which we can begin to plant the seeds for a revolution in the United States. If revolution is a process, and it most certainly is, and education is an elemental function, then these are some of the necessary steps required to make the conditions ripe for massive social upheaval.

From Revolution to Evolution
As a Black Panther woman once wrote, “there is no culture, but a culture born out of resistance to oppression.” While hip-hop is a culture born out of resistance to oppression, this does not mean that it should necessarily be conserved. I am not a cultural nationalist. Preservation and tradition especially of reactionary culture is a hindrance to the progression of the human race. To quote Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth, in reference to cultural nationalism, “The [colonized] man who writes for his people ought to use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for hope. But to ensure that hope and to give it form, he must take part in action and throw himself body and soul into the [national] struggle.”

Karl Marx's dialectical materialism is the basis for my entire argument and the method I use for studying any situation. And by this rationale, I only argue that we use hip-hop to unify the multitudes of people and to revolutionize our minds, hearts, and of course, the intrinsically defective economic structure of the U.S., the physical organization of society, the structure which cultivates the political, legal, and social superstructures.

Using dialectical materialism, it is impossible to isolate certain situations. For example, we can look at how black and Latino people are flooding prisons in Amerika. To isolate this means that, well, they just love committin’ some good ole crime. And Pat Buchanan would love for you to buy that. But should we look at the economic disparities present in the United States and the circumstances which led up to this, we see then that there are other interdependent situations which had contributed to the overcrowding of people of color into jails. If we apply dialectical materialism to hip-hop we see that it, too, was a consequence of the intricately exploitive constitution of our society. Capitalism was a result of feudalism, and feudalism was given rise to by the ancient epoch. We see then, using this methodology, that every facet of our society is a product of continuous evolution and change. Hegel's dialectic is another method that can be applied to the revolutionary possibility of hip-hop culture. Capitalism (thesis) + Revolutionary Culture (antithesis) = New Society (synthesis). Out of this new society, hip-hop may no longer have any relevancy; it was simply the vehicle for abolishing the empire of Amerika. In fact, it was purely incidental that hip-hop mobilized the people, it just so happened to be the means that the people determined to employ. This is important to understand. Hip-hop is not our savior; it is not revolutionary in and of itself. It is an opportunity. It must combine with revolutionary culture or become one. While hip-hop is a beautiful culture indeed, its true importance lies in its dormant potential for transforming us and the world.

My History and Experience
For me, hip-hop was an outlet from negativity and my own inner conflicts with being white in Amerika. Hip-hop encouraged me to think for myself and to dispute status quo principles. Hip-hop educated me and taught me about history, politics, religion, and philosophy. There was a time when hip-hop was about style and slang, but these were childish notions within me that had to be played out over time. Five years ago, I wore my cap sideways and addressed everyone as "kid"—which got me in trouble a few times— yet I still believed in its revolutionary potential. I certainly did not grasp the concept of revolution then as I do now, but I have not allowed that to drive me away from the culture, only from my juvenile predisposition. My class history is wrapped up in the white, middle-class, but my class stance is solidly with the workers. Certain situations in my own life forced me into a lower class. But unconsciously I continued to add to the separation within the culture. I listened to “gangsta” rap when I was a young teenager because it captivated me. Everything that was not white captivated me. As a matter of fact, I used to think I was black. As my taste in music began to be refined I listened to more politically oriented hip-hop, but for years I let myself become a cog in the wheel by my reactionary attitude towards people of color. I would have said then that I did not like “gangstas” or “gangsta” rap, but I did not realize, on a level that I do today, the societal conditions and economic inequalities that exist in Amerika that constructs the “gangsta” mentality.

I became immersed in hip-hop in 1995, when I was 15, although I listened to its music since I was very young. I experimented with all of hip-hop's elements, but spinning records appealed to me the most. A couple of years later, I started making beats and recording with some friends in Northeast Kansas City.

Years after its prominence, I became a member of the Zulu Nation, to my disillusion. Initially, I had tried to establish a chapter here in Kansas City, MO, but I was disheartened with the unprofessional, dishonest, and burned-out attitudes of the world council. Therefore, I felt the need to institute something that encapsulated hip-hop culture not only with “social awareness”, but with revolutionary practical activity. Nowadays I am still highly critical of the UZN for their lack of focus and drive, their penchant for ‘pork chop’ nationalism, their ridiculous ideas about aliens and conspiracy theories and even their name. In theory it sounds great. Zulu, which was one of the largest East African tribes, represents strength in numbers, and I really like that. But what bearing do the Zulus retain today to young, working minorities in 2003 Amerika? Two words, absolutely none. Do not get me wrong, I have a huge amount of respect for Afrika Bambaataa as an organizer and as a DJ, but that does not mean I agree with his Farrakhanesque ideals. And the irony in all of this is that most of the ideas I criticize I once held as true. But this was a necessary stage of development to descend through before reaching the point I am at today.

My first tape—yes, a tape—was the Hip-Hop Manifesto, a project which was more or less the soundtrack to this manual that I had attempted to write five years ago. I designed the cover of that tape to look exactly like a version of the Communist Manifesto. This is embarrassing to admit now, but I had not even read the damn thing yet. The HHM was mainly under the influence of the UZN. But now that I have read it, as well as other works by Marx and Lenin and Gramsci, I feel I am in a better position to really evaluate hip-hop. I cannot confidently say that this is a manifesto, because that would mean to say that everyone within hip-hop generally has a mutual stance on where we should go. I wish I could say that. Maybe one day I can. But until then, it is important for me to find out whether these ideas will be put to use or discarded permanently.

My experiences, in the end, were fruitful because it only helped me to evolve and it gave me a deep understanding that hip-hop sorely needs an authentic and consistent analysis of and challenge to capitalism. I implore all of you take a stance against this system so that one day we can create a society free of oppression, exploitation, prejudice, and misunderstanding. All power to the people.

The future will be what we, the people, struggle to make it!

Epilogue

College Town Hip-Hop
Thinking more in depth about Lawrence and the roots hip-hop scene that has been proliferated there, I should point out that Lawrence hip-hop really is not Lawrence hip-hop at all, it is KU hip-hop. I do not necessarily mean the artists implicated with that scene, but the general people who pay to attend shows and buy CDs; the consumers, not necessarily the practitioners. While I would say, too, that there are artists in Lawrence who are not native to Lawrence. College town hip-hop is a national phenomenon, one that is beyond Lawrence. We see then were we can draw the line between those who live there (mainly workers) and those who are educated there (the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie). Therefore, the artists among Lawrence, whether proletariat2 or bourgeoisie (worker or property owner), should be spending their time trying to garner the working-class youth of Lawrence. Lawrence has other prospects, other potential, the Native American (or should I say Bona Fide American?) community. Haskell Indian Nations University isn't an elite school of blue blooded Europeans. Native Americans, the few of them, are not only disenfranchised, but colonized. A lot who are able to attend mainly receive government aide. It is important that people of color have a position in hip-hop culture and this could be a means for Native American youth to become radicalized. They have potential to be a revolutionary vanguard.

Bling-Bling
“Bling-bling” as it has been dubbed certainly is not detached from politics obviously; it perpetuates capitalist ideals and culture, but it is not made for the people, therefore it is detached from the people. If whatever you do presents no challenge to the power structure then it only sustains it. As cliché as it has become it is the simple truth, if you are not a part of the solution, then you are a part of the problem. Commercial rap music has made a qualitative change, and maybe for a purpose. “Gangsta” rap presented much more of threat in that it highlighted vital social issues within the United States. But this does not automatically mean that it challenged the system.

Footnotes
1. bell hooks is author of Killing Rage: Ending Racism.
2. A Puerto Rican organization influenced by the Panthers during the late 1960's and early 70's.
3. The most prominent, militant, revolutionary organization in Amerika probably all together. The BPP created free self-defense, education, food, housing, clothing, and medical programs for the people.
4. By bourgeoisie, it is meant the owners of the means of production and subsistence.
5. Amerika with a 'k' is meant to connote the United States of America. This is to recognize first that America is a continent, not a country, and second we use the term 'American' in the US as if we are the standard.
6. Mao Tse-tung AKA Chairman Mao (1893-1976) was the leader of the Communist Party of China.
7. It is important to denote the difference between personal property (homes, vehicles, churches, etc.) and private property (businesses).
8. A petty bourgeois, artsy, gentrified neighborhood in Kansas City, MO, a neighborhood I despise.
9. Austin is responsible for the murals around KC depicting MLK, Jr., Malcolm X, and other social change themes. He frequently attends musical functions and draws free sketches of people. To me, he is the ideal people's artist.
10. the 20-year-old American who was arrested in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban
11. Literally meaning platinum jewelry, but generally used to describe materialism.
12. a free publication in Kansas City
13. 'East Coast' has been a term loosely used by constituents of the "gangsta" scene for anything standing outside the keyboard influence of the "gangsta" sound. This is probably because "gangsta" rap had its beginnings on the West Coast. Personally, I disagree that the East Coast has a different sound than the West Coast or Midwest or vice versa. It is important to look at each individual artist's influence.
14. Lumpenproletariat is the lowest socio-economic class of a community. It literally means unemployed class or criminal class. This was exactly the constituents organized by the Panthers.
15. Bernard Powell (1947-1979) was chairman of a militant organization called SAC-20 in Kansas City, MO. After he was killed, a statue was erected of him on the corner of 27th and Brooklyn.
16. Lawrence, KS is home to the University of Kansas, a very wealthy school. It is not far west of Kansas City, MO.
17. Malcolm X AKA El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (1925-1965) was killed in collusion with Nation of Islam loyalists and the FBI after calling for racial unity against U.S. imperialist oppression.
18. Fred Hampton (1948-1969) was the 21-year-old charismatic leader of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was later assassinated by Chicago pigs, which took ten years to finally be proven.
19. an LA-based pioneer MC
20. an MC in the hip-hop roots movement
21. Johnson County is an elite suburb on the Kansas side of Kansas City.
22. urban neighborhoods in Kansas City, MO
23. club venues in Lawrence, KS
24. Huey P. Newton (1942-1989) was co-founder and informal leader of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
25. the largest distributor of leftist books in the country
26. Cultural nationalism AKA 'pork chop' nationalism surfaced during the early days of the Black Power movement. It contends that assuming the native African culture is fundamental to saving black people; however, it can take on many different forms. It is reactionary because it seeks to go back in time instead of forward, it presents no challenge to capitalism, it only reinforces it, and it ignores the fact that some African cultures were the direct result of colonization and enslavement.
27. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a 20th century Caribbean existentialist author and Marxist revolutionary.
28. Author of the Communist Manifesto, Marx's ideas were the premise to communist revolutions all over the world; Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea to name a few.
29. Georg Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German social philosopher and dialectician.
30. founder of the Universal Zulu Nation and a highly esteemed pioneer DJ
31. Louis Farrakhan is the pro-capitalist, patriarchal, anti-Semitic head minister of the Nation of Islam, a
religious sect which Malcolm X was head minister of until later renouncing it.
2. The largest economic class of a community, the proletarians are the ones who are forced to sell their labor power to those who own property (capitalists) in order to survive. This creates a social contradiction because the mass are dependent upon the few for their livelihood, while the few are dependent upon the mass in their pursuit to privatize and amass more property.

"Palestine taught me to never back down from any nigga."

2009-01-11T02:30:00.012-06:00

I stumbled on to a couple of videos from two very different Palestinian rappers and wanted to share them with y'all. Both of them pose a good contrast in style and sensibility.

The first joint here is called "Listen to Ma Story." This cat, who appears to MC under the moniker "Palestine," has a smooth, consistent flow over some b-boom, boom, bap drums. Definitely sounds like some early Wu so it ain't exactly Juvenile and Manny Fresh (obviously), but is at least topically relevant. There are messages of "peace" in the video which indicates more of the liberal tendencies of the solidarity movement and not of the ones calling for a new Intifada. In the song, he criticizes money rappers and makes calls to "stay true" to the culture. More of the same tired backpacker rubbish. Nonetheless, as a historic fan of boom bap, I really like the song. But we can't separate the style from the political content. They are intertwined. This brings us to our next example.

"Palestine Rap" from the rapper D.O.N. surpasses in form and content that of Palestine's "Listen to Ma Story". D.O.N.'s flow is rooted in the Houston tradition with its Chopped and Screwed beats and rhymes, but it's obvious that he has his ear to the ground of the political sensibilities of this generation. This is what Palestinian hip-hop will sound like until it takes its own independent life. And it has to just as Southern hip-hop leaned on the West more than the East for its initial movements. But it's crucial to understand that you can't have the political content of D.O.N.'s lyrics in the musical form of Palestine the MC, in boom bap. Again, form and content are symbiotic.

One thing worth mentioning is D.O.N. uses the word "faggot" in his lyrics. I ain't no language police even though I think that heterosexism is antithetical to struggling for a democratic society. Regardless, D.O.N.'s heterosexism is not unique to him; rather it indicates then tension within our own communities towards the old society and the new where queer folks are self-governing. D.O.N.'s lyrics are angry, thugged-out sentiments that underscores the outlook and desperation of our age. "Since I got nothing to lose, I gotta be a winner, Pale' taught to never back down from any nigga/"

Like saying "faggot," his open use of the word "nigga" is gonna have liberals and Rainbow Coalition windbags crying. They can't see the revolutionary implications of such an identification and neither can most of the Left. By Palestinians identifying as "the Black people of the Middle East" as they do in the film "Slingshot Hip-Hop" or as "niggas" says so much about the link between the international black community and the 3arab world. As I said before taking from C.L.R. James, we live in one world, and the hip-hop generation is Subject of that world.

As we discover it, we'll be sure to post up other Palestine-related hip-hop. Until then, enjoy.

Free, Free Palestine!

What do they know of Palestine who only Palestine know?

2009-01-11T01:10:00.012-06:00

I have to sincerely apologize for delaying like this. Toward the end of 2008, we really picked up momentum with the blog and were posting several times a week. But as is the historical precedent, we eventually wound down. There have been some good reasons for this: traveling, for one. The biggest reason, however, has been the latest incursion of Israeli Apartheid military forces into the Gaza Strip in late December. It has both LBoogie and myself (and millions of others) really angry and disoriented.

The greatest part, however, has been the outpouring of solidarity all over the U.S. and the world. We took part in demonstrations in both Kansas City, MO and New Orleans and have close friends who have been a part of a very militant contingent in Seattle. It has been very inspiring and motivating, but it has also robbed us of any motivation to blog.

LBoogie's last two posts, well, her second to last, definitely broke with the precedent we set over a year ago to no longer post explicitly political pieces without linking them in a coherent way to hip-hop culture and the hip-hop generation. But this was different. Something needed to be said.

One of the things I've taken notice of is the Palestinian and 3arab youth who were in many cases at the lead of the protests and marches across the globe. They rock their hats to the side, they wear their clothes baggy; sometimes showing their "draws". Some are MCs, while many others listen to hip-hop music. They are, in every conceivable way, hip-hop. And this identification will bear itself out in terms of the politics that these youth develop in both the Palestinian liberation movement itself and its solidarity counterparts in other countries.

If this isn't automatic, let me make it resoundingly clear. The liberation movement is not a "cause" nor is it an "issue". The liberation of Palestine implicates the entire world as it sits center stage in modern civilization as an outpost of resistance against white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism. It is bound up with the movement of black people in America who are struggling to break free of white supremacy and capitalism. It is bound up with the revolts in Greece, France, and Sweden over the police murder of a Greek youth and the revolutionary activity and aspirations of the European working class. It is bound up with white workers in the U.S. whom history is screaming to break the fragile alliance with white supremacist rulers who can no longer guarantee the old privilege system that protected them from the harshest of capitalist crises.

There are indications of a Third Intifada on the horizon. If indeed this is the case, we must bring the Intifada home. The Intifadas were direct democratic in nature. They were opposed to both Zionism and to the complicity of the Palestinian Authority. They were based on the undying idea that working people are capable of governing themselves. This was embodied in the unofficial committees that sprang up and provided community defense against Israeli military invasions, organized assaults on Israeli soldiers, lead workplace strikes, distributed food, aid, and supplies and carried out general day-to-day tasks. They mobilized the entire nation in a way that makes the so-called socialist kibbutzes in Israel look like child's play.

While the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, seems to have preceded the growth of hip-hop music in Palestine, the sensibilities of the global hip-hop generation were already lain. Today, Palestinian hip-hop takes its place alongside the countless other national manifestations of this international culture.

We are living in one world and the hip-hop generation is the one currently tasked with crushing the decay and barbarism that inflicts us. The hip-hop generation is the red thread that runs through all of these different fronts in the fight for direct democracy. Imagine the potential of a Third Intifada now that hip-hop has become the form to express the struggle and desire for a free Palestine where Palestinians, 3arabs, Muslims, Christians, and Jews live, work, and build together.

We argue for nothing less.

Allahu Akbar!

Free, Free Palestine

2009-01-03T18:11:00.005-06:00

Props to Alex at Rebel Frequencies for throwing up this video of Son of Nun's "Free Palestine."

We Need a Third Intifada

2009-01-03T16:43:00.007-06:00

For a break in our regularly scheduled broadcast. We've all been watching the coverage of the absolutely horrifying Israeli attacks on the proud people of Gaza this past week. Over 400 people have already been killed. Let there be no mistake: this is a massacre. This is what apartheid looks like in 2009. This is the logical conclusion of white supremacy. It exposes the logical reason why we must oppose the Zionist state, U.S. imperialism which props it up, and, by any means necessary, show our solidarity with the struggles of our Palestinian sisters and brothers in Gaza, the West Bank, inside Israel, and in the diaspora.

There's a demonstration being held here tomorrow, so if you're in or around New Orleans please come out. If you know of other organizing and actions happening here or elsewhere, feel free to share the details.

Mass Demonstration!!

Sunday, January 4, 2009
2:00pm - 4:00pm
Starting at Canal Street and Convention Center Blvd.
New Orleans, LA

Rally and March from Canal and Convention Center Blvd to Louis Armstrong Park.

Indiscriminate bombing by Israeli Military forces and prolonged siege of the Gaza Strip, supported and funded by the United States, has led to:

* At least 280 Palestinians, including scores of children and other civilians, brutally murdered in less than 24 hours by the Israeli Occupation Forces
* Over 2,000 Palestinians wounded in mass bombing by the Israeli Occupation Forces
* No medical care in the Gaza Strip for the wounded
* No food supplies
* No fuel

The Israeli Government has promised to continue to escalate its attacks against the Gaza Strip and acts of mass murder against the Palestinian people.

WE SAY NO MORE KILLINGS IN OUR NAME!

Demonstrations against this violence have arisen all over the world but our voices, here in the US, must be heard to demand an immediate end to the massacres and an end to US aid to Israel!

The Israeli military is promising more bombing and killing, and the Bush administration has given its approval - we must say no NOW! For the past year and a half, the people of the Gaza Strip of Palestine have been slowly starved to death by an Israeli-imposed siege on the Palestinians by air, land and sea, bombing all electric plants and hospitals, depriving Palestinians of their existing resources, preventing the entry of any more resources and the travel of the Palestinians seeking food, shelter and medical care, imprisoning the entire Palestinian population as they starved and died of lack of access to medicine.

Rebel Desis of the Hip Hop generation by Shemon Salam

2008-12-16T23:12:00.013-06:00

We're posting an excerpt of an article this week from an Asian political journal, Jalan, written by activist Shemon Salam.

This is an excellent piece in and of itself and the content that it takes up which is essentially the question of the model minority and the tensions in Asian communities between, on the one hand, acting on their history as a specific working class struggle against white supremacy and capitalism and, on the other, towards "assimilation" into American society and thereby breaking ranks from black folks and other people of color who are not allowed the same freedom of social mobility and becoming agents of white supremacy. Their mission, to borrow from Fanon, is to fulfill their freedom of self-government by linking up with other workers of color or betray it by complying the model minority myth and being "the good Asians." There's so many lessons here for white workers too, but the same dynamic doesn't apply.

What I like about the article is that it uses the term "hip-hop" in a broad and flexible way to talk about a particular working class generation of color. It isn't "hip-hop heads" who are the center-piece, though they are a part, but the aesthetic sensibilities of this whole generation as they manifest in popular, hip-hop culture. That part of Asian folks that tends toward solidarity and collusion with black people is a theme that is expressed sometimes implicitly, other times openly, in hip-hop culture. Salam talks about the contradictions below:

"The tragic events of September 11, 2001 were a horrible, but nonetheless powerful igniter for the debate of what America means for many Muslim South Asians. So far, the broader community has handled it in quiet ways, hoping to be good people of color and assimilate into American society. This strategy is running into problems as South Asians are being harassed by the FBI and Homeland Security, often with the help and collaboration of middle-class Muslim leaders. This is hardly a program that will convince youth that they are equals of this country. It is only a matter of time before the dam breaks and sections of the community are fed up with this accommodationist stance. Will this result in new mass movements? How will this mass movement relate to other social problems facing the nation? In the cultural front we see the slow incorporation of South Asians and hip hop with artists such as DJ Rekha and Malabar to name only a few in this growing genre. These artistes rap about the ways in which Brown people in the US are collectively oppressed, and highlight the solidarity that is necessary between Black and Brown people in the US. How these artists will affect broader American society is unclear. In the South Asian community, they represent a force that will not cower before the US state, finding strength and solidarity instead with other people of color here.

My argument boils down to the following: the South Asians might be Americans in the way we dress, talk, eat, and behave, but we are not Americans in our politics, traditions, and beliefs. I am referring to how we conceptualize ourselves; how we concretely see our interests in relationship to other everyday Americans; how we interact with anti-Black racism, class conflict in this country. Oftentimes, we think ourselves to be outside the racial problems of this country. We think we can exist above them or outside them. We claim not to be Black or White, but too often we also end up siding with white supremacy in our political and cultural behavior. We have failed to come up with a South Asian American racial and class identity that is at the same time independent and confident of its own origins, and related to the racial and class conflicts of this country. Instead, we feel we are a social class destined to be doctors and engineers, and ignore the class differentiated societies we left back home. I am not looking for programmatic answers to these questions but searching for what they look like when people are on the move in the workplace, neighborhood, and their schools. What people do is often more important then what they say. On both counts, the verdict is not good at the present moment; however the future is not doomed either."

We encourage all of you to read it all and to check out Jalan and the other great articles there that are taking up Southeast Asian and Asian-American popular struggles. In the spirit of Selma James, these aren't auxiliary struggles or "identity politics," but this is the class struggle today and we welcome it as such.

"Give Them an Apocalypse": Reading on Hip-Hop and Neoliberalism

2008-12-11T01:13:00.020-06:00

There's so much going on in the world that sometimes it's difficult to settle down enough to write something. Props to folks hitting the streets in Greece this week and workers occupying the Republic Windows & Door factory in Chicago. We've been paying a lot of attention to the economic crisis for some time now and recognize that in a lot of ways, hip-hop has been recording the (under)development of the American and global economy since its birth and, what's more, is helpful for understanding this monster called neoliberalism.

Since the 1970s, neoliberal ideology has carried forth a brutal program of devastation in our cities, removing jobs and slashing government spending on education, housing, health care, and infrastructure, meanwhile increasing the militarization and policing of those communities of color left to fend for themselves in urban areas. This program represented an attempt by capital to regain higher levels of profitability while simultaneously demobilizing the social movements that had secured important gains for the American working class in previous decades.

Jeff Chang has gone some lengths to help explain this process, particularly how it affected hip-hop's birthplace in the South Bronx. The following is quoted from his important book, Can't Stop, Won't Stop [1]:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"In 1953, the future of the Bronx could be seen along the seven-mile man-made trench cutting through it. Once an unbroken continuum of cohesive, diverse communities, the trench was now the clearing for the Cross-Bronx Expressway, a modernist catastrophe of massive proportions.

As the gray concrete slab plowed from the east into the South Bronx toward Manhattan, it left behind a wake of environmental violence. ‘(W)here once apartment buildings or private homes had stood were now hills of rubble, decorated with ripped-open bags of rotting garbage that had been flung atop them,’ the historian Robert Caro wrote. ‘Over the rumble of the bulldozers came the staccato, machine-gun-like banging of jackhammers and, occasionally, the dull concussion of an exploding dynamite charge.’ These were the sounds of progress.

Forward in the Expressway’s path, the Irish and Jewish families that had once occupied well-appointed, if not plush, lower-middle-class apartments had been given months to relocate, with a paltry $200-per-room as compensation. In the meantime, as they struggled to find new quarters in a city with few vacancies, they huddled in heatless, condemned buildings. The man responsible for all of this was named Moses. Robert Moses, the most powerful modern urban builder of all time, led the white exodus out of the Bronx.

It began with a master plan designed in 1929 by the New York Regional Plan Association. The business interests behind the master plan wanted to transform Manhattan into a center of wealth, connected directly to the suburbs through an encircling network of highways carved through the heart of neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. Buoyed by a post-World War II surge of government investment, Moses rose to unparalleled power. He saw his immortality fixed in the roads; they were monuments to a brutal kind of efficiency. The Cross-Bronx Expressway would allow people to traverse the Bronx from the suburbs of New Jersey through upper Manhattan to the suburbs of Queens in fifteen minutes.

In engineering terms, it was the most difficult road ever built. Caro wrote, ‘The path of the great road lay across 113 streets, avenues, and boulevards; sewers and water and utility mains numbering in the hundreds; one subway and three railroads; five elevated rapid transit lines, and seven other expressways or parkways, some of which were being built by Moses simultaneously.’ More important, 60,000 Bronx residents were caught in the crosshairs of the Expressway. Moses would bulldoze right over them. ‘There are more people in the way—that’s all’, he would say, as if lives were just another mathematical problem to be solved. ‘There’s very little real hardship in the thing.’

In Manhattan’s ghettos, using ‘urban renewal’ rights of clearance to condemn entire neighborhoods, he scared off thriving businesses and uprooted poor African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish families. Many had no choice but to come to the places like east Brooklyn and the South Bronx, where public housing was booming but jobs had already fled. Moses’s point, one of his associates said, was that ‘if you cannot do something that is really substantial, it is not worth doing.’

In his grand ambitions, high modernism met maximum density. Vast housing complexes were designed on the idyllic-sounding ‘tower-in-a-park’ model, a concept that had been advanced by the modernist architect Le Corbusier as part of his vision of a ‘Radiant City.’ Bronx River Houses and Millbrook Houses opened with 1,200 units each, Bronxdale Houses with over 1,500 units and Patterson Houses with over 1,700 units.

To Moses, the ‘tower-in-a-park’ model was a blackboard equation that neatly solved thorny problems—open space in the urban grid, housing for the displaced poor—with a tidy cost-efficiency. It also happened to support the goals of ‘slum clearance,’ business redevelopment, and the decimation of the tenants’ union movement.[2] So in the New York area’s construction explosion of the 1950s and ‘60s, middle-class whites got sprawling, prefab, white picket-fence, whites-only Levittown suburbs, while working-class strugglers and strivers got nine or more monotonous slabs of housing rising out of isolating, desolate, soon-to-be crime-ridden ‘parks.’

By the end of the decade, half of the whites were gone from the South Bronx. They moved north to the wide-open spaces of Westchester County or the northeastern reaches of Bronx County. They followed Moses’s Cross-Bronx and Bruckner Expressways to the promise of ownership in one of the 15,000 new apartments in Moses’s Co-op City. They moved out to the cookie-cutter suburbs that sprouted along the highways in New Jersey and Queens and Long Island. Traversing the Cross-Bronx Expressway, Marshall Berman would write, ‘we fight back the tears and step on the gas.’[3]

White elite retrenchment found a violent counterpart in the browning streets. When African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Latino families moved into formerly Jewish, Irish, and Italian neighborhoods, white youth gangs preyed on the new arrivals in schoolyard beatdowns and running street battles.[4] The Black and brown youths formed gangs, first in self-defense, then sometimes for power, sometimes for kicks.

Political organizations like the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords competed with these neighborhood gangs for the hearts and minds of those youths for a time, but they soon invited constant, sometimes fatal pressure from the authorities. The optimism of the civil rights movement and the conviction of the Black and Brown Power movements gave way to a defocused rage and a long exhaustion. Militants turned their guns on themselves. Curtis Mayfield, who had once sung ‘Keep on Pushing’ for Martin Luther King Jr. and other freedom archers, now warned of the ‘Pusherman.’ Heroin dealers, junky thieves and contract arsonists filled the streets like vultures. One Bronx cop waxed philosophical: ‘We are creating here what the Romans created in Rome.’[5]

One official told author Jill Jonnes, ‘The idea always was to bypass Manhattan with the ugliness as much as possible. You had public housing and highways in the South Bronx, and then, on top of both of those, which were destabilizing enough, you added a deliberate program of slum clearance to displace the worst. You were then at the point that it all started to go downhill.’[6]

Bad Numbers
Here was the new math: the South Bronx had lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs; 40 percent of the sector disappeared. By the mid-seventies, average per capita income dropped to $2,430, just half of the New York City average and 40 percent of the nationwide average. The official youth unemployment rate hit 60 percent. Youth advocates said that in some neighborhoods the true number was closer to 80 percent.[7] If blues culture had developed under the conditions of oppressive, forced labor, hip-hop culture would arise from the conditions of no work.

When the sound of automobiles replaced the sound of jackhammers on the length of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the fuel was in place for the Bronx to burn.

Apartment buildings passed into the hands of slumlords, who soon figured out that they could make more money by refusing to provide heat and water to the tenants, withholding property taxes from the city, and finally destroying the buildings for insurance money. As one fireman described the cycle: ‘It starts with fires in the vacant apartments. Before you know it, it’s the whole wing in the building.”

The downward spiral created its own economy. Slumlords hired rent-a-thugs to burn the buildings down for as little as fifty dollars a job, collecting up to $150,000 on insurance policies.[8] Insurance companies profited from the arrangement by selling more policies. Even on vacant buildings, fire paid. Groups of organized thieves, some of them strung out on heroin, plundered the burned buildings for valuable copper pipers, fixtures, and hardware.

A fireman said, ‘Every fire in a vacant building had to be arson. No one lives there, and yet when we pull up, the fire’s out thirty windows.’ He continued, ‘People move out. The landlord starts to cut back on his maintenance. When he stops making the profit, more and more apartments become vacant…and, before you know it, you have a block with no one living there.’[9]

Journalists Joe Conason and Jack Newfield investigated arson patterns in New York City for two-and-a-half years and found that insurance agents made commissions based on the number and dollar amount of policies they sold. ‘There is simply no incentive for banks, insurance companies, or anyone else with money to invest in building or rebuilding dwellings at reasonable rents,’ they wrote. ‘In housing, the final stage of capitalism is arson.’[10]

But some argued that the South Bronx presented indisputable proof that poor Blacks and Latinos were not interested in improving there lives. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York’s Democratic senator, was heard to say, ‘People in the South Bronx don’t want housing or they wouldn’t burn it down.’[11] In 1970, he had written an influential memo to President Richard Nixon, citing Rand Corporation data on fires in the South Bronx and bemoaning the rise of radicals like the Black Panthers. ‘The time may have come,’ he famously wrote, ‘when the issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.’

Moynihan would later complain that he was misunderstood, that the memo should never have been leaked to the press, that he never meant to suggest services should be withdrawn from Black communities. But whatever his intention, President Nixon had penciled ‘I agree!’ on the memo and forwarded it to his Cabinet.[12] When it became public, ‘benign neglect’ became a rallying cry to justify reductions in social services to the inner cities, further fuel for the backlash against racial justice and social equality.

When ‘benign neglect’ was inflated into pseudo-science, the results were literally explosive. Armed with unsound data and models from the Rand Corporation, city politicians applied a mathematics of destruction to justify the removal of no less than seven fire companies from the Bronx after 1968.[13] During the mid-1970s budget crisis, thousands more firefighters and fire marshals were laid off. As the ecologists Deborah and Rodrick Wallace would put it, the result was a ‘contagion’ of fires.

Less than a decade later, the South Bronx had lost 43,000 housing units, the equivalent of four square blocks a week. Thousands of vacant lots and abandoned buildings littered the borough. Between 1973 and 1977, 30,000 fires were set in the South Bronx alone. In 1975, on one long hot day in June, forty fires were set in a three-hour period. These were not the fires of purifying rage that had ignited Watts or a half dozen other cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. These were the fires of abandonment.

1977
Not just another summer. The bottom point of the loop between Malcolm X’s assassination and Public Enemy’s call to arms. The year of the snake. A time of intrigue and uprisings, coups and riots.

After dark on July 13, as if an invisible hand was snuffing them, the streetlights blew out. The city had plunged into a blackout. Looters took to the streets in the ghettos of Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Harlem and the Bronx. At Ace Pontiac on Jerome Avenue, fifty brand new cars were driven out of the showroom. On the Grand Concourse, shopkeepers armed themselves with guns and rifles, but for the next thirty-six hours most would be helpless against the rushing tide of retribution and redistribution.

‘That particular night, one thing I noticed,’ a resident would later say, ‘they were not hurting each other. They weren’t fighting with each other. They weren’t killing each other.’[14]

‘It was an opportunity for us to rid our community of all the people who were exploiting us,’ graffiti writer James TOP told historian Ivor Miller. ‘The things that were done that day and a half were telling the government that you have a real problem with the people in the inner cities.’[15]

A thousand fires were set. Prisoners at the Bronx House of Detention blazed up three dormitories. Hundreds of stores were cleaned out….

The Wasteland
Here was the unreconstructed South—the South Bronx, a spectacular set of ruins, a mythical wasteland, an infectious disease, and, as Robert Jensen observed, ‘a condition of poverty and social collapse, more than a geographical place.’ Through the 1960s, the Bronx’s prefix was merely descriptive of the borough’s southernmost neighborhoods, like Mott Haven and Longwood. But now most of New York City north of 110th Street was reimagined as a new kind of ‘South,’ a global south just a subway ride away. Even Mother Teresa, patron saint of the world’s poor, made an unannounced pilgrimage.

The mayor’s office rushed out a report entitled The South Bronx: A Plan for Revitalization. ‘The most damaging indicators cannot be measured in numbers,’ the report concluded. ‘They include the feat that prevails among many business people in the South Bronx over the future of the neighborhood, concern over the security and safety of investments; the waning faith and sense of hopelessness that induces many of them to give up and flee to other areas.’[16]

Edward Logue, an urban renewal official recruited to work in New York City after leveling some of Boston’s historic neighborhoods, spun it differently for a reporter: ‘In a marvelous, sad way, the South Bronx is an enormous success story. Over 750,000 people have left in the past twenty years for middle-class success in the suburbs.’[17]

But other wonks were less disingenuous. Professor George Sternlieb, the director of the Center of Urban Policy at Rutgers University, said, ‘The world can operate very well without the South Bronx. There’s very little in it that anyone cares for, that can’t be replicated elsewhere. I have a science-fiction vision of coming into the central city in an armored car.’[18]

One Mayoral official, Roger Starr, following the Rand Corporate and Senator Moynihan, articulated an end-game policy of ‘planned shrinkage’ in which health, fire, police, sanitation, and transit services would be removed form the inner-cities until all the people that remained had to leave, too—or be left behind.[19] Already, schools had been closed and abandoned, after first being starved of arts and music programs, then of basic educational necessities…

It was 1977. A new arrow of history was taking flight…in their own way, the new generation—to whom so much had been given, from whom so much was being stolen, for whom so little would be promised—would not settle for the things previous generations had been willing to settle for. Concede them a demand and they would demand more. Give them an apocalypse, and they would dance."

Notes
[1] Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005), 10-19.
[2] Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 257, 267-273.
[3] Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 291.
[4] Paul Cowan, "On a Very Tense Frontier: Street-Fighting in the Bronx," Village Voice (June 22, 1972), 1, 16, 18, 20, 22.
[5] Policeman Anthony Bouza, "The Fire Next Door," CBS Reports, broadcast March 22, 1977.
[6] Jill Jonnes, "We're Still Here": The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of the South Bronx (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), 125-126.
[7] Amalia Batanzos, Youth Services Agency Commissioners, said, "In the South Bronx, the young male Puerto Rican unemployment rate is 80 percent. He sees that there's no way out and if there's no way out, it really does not matter if you're violent." New York Illustrated: The Savage Skulls with Piri Thomas," produced and directed by Abigail Child, WNBC Community Affairs Program (New York), aired November 18, 1973.
[8] Joseph B. Treaster, "20% Rise in Fires Is Adding to Decline of South Bronx," New York Times (May 18, 1975), 1, 50.
[9] CBS Reports, "The Fire Next Door."
[10] Joe Conason and Jack Newfield, "The Men Who Are Burning New York," Village Voice (June 2, 1980), 1, 15-19. Jack Newfield, "A Budget for Bankers and Arsonists," Village Voice (June 2, 1980), 13.
[11] H. Rainie, "U.S. Housing Program in South Bronx Called a Waste by Moynihan," New York Daily News (December 20, 1978), 3.
[12] Geoffrey Hodgson, The Gentleman From New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 157-158.
[13] Deborah and Rodrick Wallace, A Plague on Your Houses (New York: Verso Books, 1998), 22-77.
[14] Lessie Sanders, quoted in Devastation/Resurrection; The South Bronx (New York: Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1980), 64. Robert Jensen, project curator.
[15] Ivor L. Miller, Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 187-188.
[16] The South Bronx: A Plan for Revitalization (December 1977), 8. Report prepared by the Office of the Mayor, Office of the Bronx Borough President, Department of City Planning, Office of Economic Development, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
[17] "The Ups and Downs of the South Bronx," National Journal (October 6, 1979), 1648.
[18] Martin Tolchin, "Future Looks Bleak for South Bronx," New York Times (January 18,1973), sec. A1, A50.
[19] Robert Fitch, The Assassination of New York (London: Verso, 1993), vii-viii. Wallace and Wallace, A Plague on Your Houses, 24-26. A decade later, Starr would apply the same logic to welfare and lead the neoconservative push toward "welfare reform" in the 90s.

When even economists can't figure it out, hip-hop execs and artists think they can.

2008-12-05T13:49:00.005-06:00

I just read this piece from the L.A. Times and I couldn't help but write a response.

Earlier this Fall, the Hip-Hop Summit featured the likes of Russell Simmons, Ludacris, and Yung Joc, among others, who "gave advice" to nearly 2,000 people who gathered to hear about home buying "opportunities." I guess this shouldn't be too surprising since the so-called experts can't understand the reasons for the current economic recession.

After reading the article, I don't know if I'm more pissed about these cats telling us to "get our money right," like this is a question of intelligence, or by the fact that they are actively encouraging people to buy homes now, completely ignorant of the larger picture.

All this does for me is throw light on the antagonistic divide between these folks and us. And even though, in the grand scheme, they are small potatoes when it comes to the real financial elite, their place indicates their divorce from the actual conditions of life as workers face it. They have no appreciation for the fact that working folks and people of color have been getting their asses kicked by the State and ruling elite (and without much of a fight) for the past 35 years in terms of declining wages, rising unemployment, outsourcing, militarization of cities, decay of public infrastructure from schools to hospitals to public transit, and the intensification and standardization of labor, etc.

Now y'all wanna sit there and tell us to get our money right? What the fuck?! We have been buying homes, but with the variable interests rates (which we're damn near forced to accept if we want a home) and with no increase in the value of our labor-power, we wind up foreclosing after the first couple of years! AND, you got speculators who are actually making money off of working people foreclosing on their homes through the collapse of certain lending institutions which precipitated the current crisis to begin with. Once this began to implicate the financial elite in general, the State steps in to save them by nationalizing key institutions. This wasn't enough though, so congress quickly writes up a bill where the working class will pick up the tab by nearly a trillion dollars that could be used to build homes and infrastructure, but is instead handed over to the same motherfuckers that got us here.

Instead of acting oblivious to this reality and giving, at best, irrelevant advice, why aren't they encouraging working people, like David Banner has been doing, to form mass organizations to fight for power? At times like these, such organizations are critically needed. But some of these people aren't able to see past their own fortune and into the struggles of common people. It doesn't matter where the fuck they are from. Like Rakim said, it's where you at.

"Conscious" Hip-Hop that I Actually Like

2008-11-29T13:11:00.008-06:00

You'll know if it ain't your first time here that we have a huge distaste for the term "conscious" hip-hop as well as for many of the artists and groups who are tagged with this label. At the same time, we understand the reason why conscious hip-hop exists and why people see it as a valid alternative to more mass forms of hip-hop. And because we understand hip-hop as an ever-changing and complex thing, we accept all of it.

Below I've included a couple videos from two West Coast Asian-American hip-hop artists that have been considered by many as conscious hip-hop. The first is Seattle-based Blue Scholars with their song "Loyalty" from the album, Bayani (they've disabled the embed code, so you'll have to click the link above). It's a track that gets heavy rotation on the iPod when I'm driving through New Orleans streets. Not something you'll hear a lot down here.

A line from the song worth mentioning, "No call for the blue collar gettin' low ball, It’s a long climb just to get to petty bourgeois."

I don't have time to make a political critique, but even though I dig the above quote, I can't say I dig the Blue Scholars' affinity for Maoism. The interesting thing about them is that they aren't the Maoist dogmatists that someone of the likes of Immortal Technique appears to be (whether officially or not), but instead have an interesting blend of Baha'i faith that you wouldn't normally think would fit. But it works. But as I've told my Seattle friends, this would fly in the Pacific Northwest; it wouldn't jive at all in the South. This is precisely why hip-hop is so universal, though.

The second vid, Bambu's "Crooks and Rooks," is a live version of the song. He's part of a group called Native Guns which have been doing their thing for a hot minute now. The video is a little annoying because it's got interview clips in between the verses of the song. And the clips don't really do him justice the way his longer interview does. He has a good critique of conscious hip-hop that you should check out. Unlike some, he doesn't collapse into dissin gang bangin, but actually sees it as a legitimate form of survival organization. If any of y'all are interested in a longer political appreciation for gang organization, check out this piece from libcom.org.

The beat for this song is sick, and he's got a nice flow, but I ain't no critic. I like what I like.

Is Busta's "Arab Money" racist?

2008-11-26T18:15:00.010-06:00

These notes are from our Seattle friend Khalil that he posted on his Facebook page last Sunday. We think that they introduce some critical dynamics not immediately apparent from the song's lyrics; lyrics that has got some folks calling the song "racist". We're not going to weigh it down with our own intro because it stands on its own as a fresh perspective.

--

I've been seeing some folks bothered by the latest Busta Rhymes song, "A-Rab Money". A lot of Arab folks are getting upset, and I've been trying to figure out exactly why. I have a hunch but it's not crystal clear yet.

This is what I've come up with:

One of the big things people are saying is, "Don't call us A-Rab! We're a3rab! That's like droppin' the N-bomb." I'm with you; I feel that. Someone wrote that a3rab blood runs thicker than the oil fields. True.

I've been thinking about it and I think a3rab folks are upset for at least two reasons. First, we don't want to be associated with the Saudi regime or the Emiratees. F those bourgie Uncle Toms. They collaborate with US imperialism and thug on a3rab and South Asian working folks who have to go [to] those countries, because their own lands are being looted by capitalism.

It's a question of identity. A3rab folks are asking themselves who they want to be identified with: the a3rabs of the intifadas, or the Mubaraks and Saudi princes. This is a beautiful democratic impulse.

But there's more to it than that. Why is Busta, a Black man, talking about this aspect of a3rab society? Because, straight up, we can't deny that these folks exist. But why isn't Busta singing about the Iraqi or Lebanese resistance?

I think a lot of a3rabs feel betrayed by Busta. We see ourselves suffering under white supremacy and those munaafiqun regimes propped up by the US. As a3rab Americans we identify with the Black experience in this country, but in an international context.

I think it's great that a3rab folks are right to feel this sense of solidarity with Black folks, but Busta has some reasons for seeing the world this way. Granted, it's not entirely accurate, but he has his own experience. Busta sees the petty bourgeois a3rabs come into his neighborhood and set up liquor stores, or the rest of us who go on to become doctors or lawyers or whatever. Black folks don't really have either of those options available to them. They can't own stores in their own neighborhoods, and most don't have an education system that allows them upward mobility. This is what it means to be the model minority: people of color being a step above Black people.

This tension is only going to be solved when thousands of a3rab youth reject the professional careers our parents pressure us into and start marching in the streets against white supremacy. This middle class life is a part of American racism. We need to start prioritizing multi-racial solidarity over upward mobility.

Now I agree that Busta is wrong for not seeing the fractures in our community: the democracy movements that fight against US imperialism and a3rab regimes, the a3rab workers who struggle everyday against the a3rab bosses. Busta, you F'ed up, so let's try to get this right, because, me? I don't have any A-Rab money.

There'll never be another MC Breed

2008-11-23T01:21:00.006-06:00

I just learned seconds ago that Flint, MI rapper MC Breed died Saturday due to kidney failure. He was only 36 years old.

Before Proof, before Jay Dee, before Boss, there was MC Breed. Being from the Detroit area, Breed had the flexibility to straddle the coastal front. Some of his songs had boom bap sounding beats, while others were more G-Funk in influence.

I think my favorite joint of his though was "Job Corps". It sampled Johnny Guitar Watson's "Superman Lover" used subsequently by Lady of Rage in "Afro Puffs" and a host of others. There was no YouTube clip of "Job Corps" so I threw up a joint he did w/ Pac called "I Gotta Get Mine". This was, of course, emblematic of the good ole days in rap when it wasn't all materialistic and individualistic. That's a joke, by the way.

Rest in peace, Breed.

http://newsroom.mtv.com/2008/11/22/remembering-mc-breed-a-true-hip-hop-pioneer/

Interview with D&HHP

2008-11-21T13:12:00.024-06:00

This week we've had the pleasure of rapping with Alex Billet of SleptOn.com and Rebel Frequencies about what we've been doing here for the past three years. We're thankful for the opportunity to offer a different perspective from the prevailing views on what hip-hop represents as well as increase some participation, traffic, and bring new life to this blog. We appreciate all of you who read us, link to us, and take time to offer us your slice on things. We'd like to think this interview will stir the pot some more and get folks to chime in.

-R.E.B.E.L.

http://www.slepton.com/slepton/viewcontent.pl?id=2280

Hip-hop is on top of its game right now. After years of abuse, derision, and one attempt after another to push it to the margins, hip-hop's role in the Obama victory has rekindled the debate about music, politics, and the role they play in our everyday lives.

The Democracy and Hip-Hop Project is a blog founded in 2006 by two New Orleans based activists: [KOOL DJ R.E.B.E.L.] and LBoogie. Their mission is to promote the idea of hip-hop as bottom up culture. They have been unapologetic in defending hip-hop against its detractors in the mainstream media, while maintaining an analysis that at its root, hip-hop is an expression of what it means to struggle in modern America. [R.E.B.E.L.] and LBoogie recently talked with SleptOn's Alexander Billet about hip-hop's past and present, its politics and future, and the struggles that face the hip-hop generation today.

Alexander Billet: How did the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project come about and what were the reasons for it? What is it that you think Hip-Hop can tell us about the world?

R.E.B.E.L.: Back in the late 90s when I was still a bedroom DJ and producing for a variety of local Kansas City hip-hop artists, I started a website as a place to upload my music and share updates about what I was working on, etc. Because I was always political and music was many times an avenue by which I would inveigh my politics, I would also add a bit of political commentary on the site. I eventually quit making music and spinning records, but I kept the site going and used it instead to publish my perspectives about hip-hop as a whole, not just what I was doing.

At the time, my outlook on hip-hop was very conservative--not conservative strictly in the political sense, because I always considered myself Left, but in the sense that I had a very antiquated set of ideas about what hip-hop was supposed to be and look like, and when much of it didn't look that way anymore, I concluded that hip-hop had been hijacked by white art students. When I was young I listened to a lot of gangsta rap (and I still do), but by the mid 90s I was swept up into the b-boy revivalism that was taking place and so by the time it began to decline and many of the folks who identified by that form of hip-hop were increasingly white college kids, the only solution was to "bring it back" to the hood, to people of color and working class whites. This was, of course, as crazy as it sounds and the problem with this is that people of color and working class whites had already redefined hip-hop and were at the forefront of innovating completely new forms that had bypassed the so-called four elements categories that I was still stuck in.

Nonetheless I continued working out my ideas on the site which I had renamed the Economic Foundations of Hip-Hop which was informed by a sort of deterministic Marxism. A very close comrade of mine, [C.L.R. Odell], an MC who went by the name "Treason", was a central part of this working out of ideas because we recorded and performed together and had similar problems with the local "underground hip-hop" milieu that we ran in. By late 2004, I had one of those intellectual breakthroughs, a leap, where I began to see hip-hop as something not limited to the artists who made hip-hop music, but as something that emanated from below, an ethos of sorts, that informed the general direction of hip-hop. I began to see how ordinary people, not just the MCs and DJs, were the ones who provided the context for hip-hop and they did this through their daily struggles at work, at home, and elsewhere.

Throughout the next year, Rob and I began to discuss and think about hip-hop on completely new terms. I wrote a piece about hip-hop and the workplace, about the transformation hip-hop went though during the decline of gangsta rap and the ascendancy of bling-bling. On the latter, Rob wrote a critique (The Dialectics of Hip-Hop) which sent me for another critical leap. At that point, hip-hop was no longer just the product of artists, as I said, it was the activity of common people, right? But I still continued to look at hip-hop as a repository for objective events. So hip-hop was a response to poverty, a response to capitalism, Reaganomics, etc. Sure, hip-hop develops in the context of certain objective conditions, but it also moves by its own internal contradictions. Under my former assumptions, hip-hop had no independent life or dynamic of its own. Rob challenged that and it forever changed the direction my writing would take.

From there I established Democracy and Hip-Hop as a blog in early 2006. The blog format helped simplify and streamline publishing instead of maintaining and hosting a website myself. It also facilitated more consistent writing and reaching out to other writers and blogs that shared similar perspectives, far and few between these others were. Rob wrote rather sparsely, but his theoretical contributions to the blog were hardly sparse since most of my writing was usually off the back of a conversation we had recently had. The fruit of our work was published in late 2006, now called "Theses on Hip-Hop".

Alex: The blog is very open about the influence it takes from Marxist intellectuals and activists like CLR James and Grace Lee Boggs. At first glance this seems to be a weird connection to make to popular culture. What do you think socialist ideas bring to the table when talking about rap and hip-hop?

R.E.B.E.L.: Rob and I, in addition to being artists, were also once a part of a small, independent political organization. Growing dissatisfied with the direction this organization was heading, we started reading a book by C.L.R. James called "Marxism for Our Times" to try to hopefully get some perspective for how we might set ourselves on the right track. This was late 2005, so we had long been thinking and writing about hip-hop and were on the cusp of creating the D&HHP. But what our rigorous discussions gave to us in terms of an appreciation for hip-hop in a new way, James gave to us in politics, economics, and culture altogether. To put it mildly, we were blown away.

James wrote extensively on American popular culture and one of the best examples of this was a book released posthumously called "American Civilization". In many ways, what James did for us was confirm the ideas we were coming to while at the same time offer so much more content and vision. It inspired me to write a blog on American Civilization which I published in June of 2006. And it is through the blog on James that I came to know LBoogie.

I think the biggest influence James had on us was his writings on the drama of ancient Greece and the concept of "universality". The drama of ancient Greece was so important for James because it was a testament to the level of universality a society can reach. Ancient Greece was a society based on direct democracy which was premised on the idea that ordinary people were capable of governing themselves. Therefore, their art and culture was an extension of that form of social organization, an organization which made little distinction between the part of daily living involving production of human needs and artistic expression. There they were highly interwoven.

Our society is not based on direct democracy, so popular culture will necessarily be inhibited by the limits of state capitalism and bureaucratic rule. But ordinary people, specifically the working class and many times through the experience of people of color, through their daily activity and struggle, give us all kinds of inclinations about what kind of society it is possible for us to make. The self-organization of black people in their communities and schools in the 1960s, the wildcat strikes by workers over control of production which continue to this day, the distrust and cynicism towards traditional politics, all these are manifestations of a society trying to break free of the present one. One way we express this is in popular art. This is the import of James. Today, that popular art is hip-hop and we feel that if James were alive today, he like us would be seizing on this new, dynamic form of expression.

Alex: Hip-hop has always had this shadow looming over it; this negative perception of hip-hop as materialistic, bling-obsessed and misogynistic. Where do you think this perception comes from?

LBoogie: This can't be traced to any one source. It's a characterization used by a variety of sources across the political spectrum, so it doesn't always mean exactly the same thing coming from different critics. But it tends to have some common bases.

On the one hand, this argument is a response to very real changes that have occurred within hip-hop over the past 15 years or so, specifically the decline of Gangsta Rap, the rise of "bling bling", and the more recent proliferation of Southern hip-hop. What typically gets said is that bling bling hip-hop and southern rap are no longer about lyricism, no longer have a social message, the music has been manipulated by the music industry and the newer artists have sold out to the pursuit of individual gain and wealth. In some ways, the music industry has had a hand in the shaping of hip-hop since the 90s, but to emphasize it as a deciding factor is to ignore other factors at one.

For one, in the early to mid-90s you had the transition from Reagan-era trickle down economics to the Clintonite "Good Years" of welfare "reform" (or welfare deform as [R.E.B.E.L.] likes to say), which really represented a new stage in the continued economic attack on inner-city neighborhoods and communities of color. In this context, gangsta rap (which was the prevailing form of hip-hop during that transition) was compelled to change or be overcome by its own contradictions. Gangsta rap wasn't a full negation of capitalist society and was being transcended by a generational and philosophical shift that eventually manifested in bling bling. While gangsta rap embraced working class life and maintained a stoic allegiance that, yeah the 'hood is fucked up but it's all we got; bling bling was like, fuck that, fuck the hood, fuck living hand to mouth, fuck wealth being a privilege, fuck the old simple clothes, the old cars, and all that, we takin' it all by storm.

That's not to say that bling bling was false to its roots; it never fronted and acted like it didn't come out of the hood. Nor was it completely new; elements of it had been expressed through earlier artists (c'mon now, "birthdays were the worst days, now we sip champagne when we thirst-ay"…). Yet a lot of hip-hop fans became critics after seeing this change in the culture, and over time developed a perspective that these newer forms of hip-hop were materialistic and bling-obsessed. Of course, there are problems with bling bling, but there were also problems in gangsta rap and in the so-called golden era before that (show me a rapper that has had a consistent feminist perspective in any era, and I'll be damn impressed). But hip-hop is no pure substance, never was and never will be, and without understanding its duality as both a rejection and an embrace of what is happening in wider society, then hip-hop will never make sense.

So that's one basis for this negative perception of hip-hop. On the other hand, it's an argument rooted in the racial and gender relations within American society. It's no coincidence that hip-hop gets typecast as being more misogynistic than any other music genre or cultural form; nor that it's associated with violence more than any other, and the "wrong" kind of violence at that; nor that it's actually blamed for causing much of the depravity of present-day society.

Such negative characterizations, in one form or another, have historically been the ideological backbone for political attacks against communities of color. Hip-hop by its very nature is associated with people of color's cultural and political traditions. When white supremacists want to justify their racism towards people of color, they attack hip-hop as evidence of the latter's supposed degeneracy. Don Imus is a recent prominent example of this, but there are others. The very same critics who couldn't care less that women still make lower pay than men in most jobs, or that one out of every four women will experience some type of sexual violence in their lifetime, or that the invasion of Afghanistan didn't "liberate" Afghani women (imperialism never does) – they are the ones now on a crusade against misogyny in hip-hop. It's reminds me of the old saying…with friends like these….

Alex: The other side of the coin seems to come from those on the left, who have an expectation that hip-hop should be a lot more "conscious." Is this a wooden view to take of the music?

LBoogie: Absolutely. It's also a reflection of how some tendencies among the left view culture, if we can momentarily define hip-hop narrowly as a cultural movement and expression. Since the early 20th century, if not before, the left has recognized that culture is a contested terrain among which the conflicts and contradictions of daily life play out. Some left tendencies have viewed culture as an important sphere for understanding and recording the self-activity and self-government of working folks. We see C.L.R. James as an example of such a tendency and at D&HHP we've tried to continue in this tradition. Other left tendencies view culture as a space to compete for the "hearts and minds" of working people. In other words, there are "reactionary" and "revolutionary" forms of culture, and it is the left's job to create those "revolutionary" forms which can bring a "conscious" and militant politics to working people. Often, those who critique hip-hop for not being more "conscious" are of this tendency.

It's precisely because of the logic that political consciousness is "brought" to people that makes many ignore the political character of hip-hop, even mainstream hip-hop. They're too busy looking for revolutionary keywords (just listen to any Immortal Technique song for the full litany), explicit critiques of imperialism or white supremacy, shout-outs to Che, Mao, Lumumba. Most hip-hop doesn't operate on those terms, so a lot of times what you see instead is the left identifies "conscious" rappers who become the "vanguard" for all hip-hop. The holy trinity of "conscious" mainstream hip-hop is Common, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli, and in underground hip-hop it can be anyone from Immortal Technique to Blue Scholars.

But what is conscious hip-hop really? What is its content? Lupe Fiasco participated in a hip-hop forum here in New Orleans about a year ago, and someone asked him how to get people to stop listening to rappers like Young Jeezy and listen to more "conscious" rappers. Lupe responded by saying that Jeezy is a conscious rapper because he interprets the world he interacts with. And people interpret their world in the language they speak.

George Lamming, famed Caribbean writer and a contemporary of C.L.R. James, once commented on the inability of the left to "communicate politics." He felt that the most radical and profound kind of politics can actually be communicated without any political talk taking place. That's often how political ideas are discussed within hip-hop. The fact that many left tendencies cannot do this, let alone understand it, points to how isolated the left is today from the working class and its cultural traditions.

Alex: A recent post on D&HHP revolved around "hipster rap," this crop of artists like the Cool Kids and Kidz in the Hall that reach back to pre-gangsta, late 80s aesthetic, yet their sound is thoroughly modern. Does this represent something new or is it simple nostalgia? What do you think it represents?

R.E.B.E.L.: I really believe that the youngest of the hip-hop generation is what gives hip-hop its vitality. They are the least conservative and nostalgic about anything. They haven't lived long enough to be nostalgic and are constantly creating a hip-hop that represents them and their world. They could give a fuck about Kool Herc and Bambaataa, or KRS-One and Chuck D, Tribe or De La. For us older generation folks (older is relative here, I'm only 28), that is a bad thing because we tend to place emphasis on "knowing your history" and "staying true" and all that other nonsense.

The Hipster Rap thing evades many older hip-hop heads. For some of us, it means hip-hop is "coming back" or redeeming itself. For others, it is a further indication that hip-hop and civilization as a whole is dead because it supposedly reveals that we cannot create anything new. We abhor both of those perspectives. This is not hipster rap; that is, if we're talking about the Cool Kids, Kidz in the Hall, Kid Sister, or other artists to emerge from within this aesthetic vein. There may be a hipster rap, but if there is, it is mainly white, New York art students who not only take the appearance of old school rap, but actually replicate its sound, delivery, and lyrical content. This is real hipsterism and it is depraved, but the reason for its depravity is because it is driven by an elitist view that these people are above society, that they look down from their ivory tower to mock what ordinary folks have done. It is not even counterculture, because counterculture folks at least have a sense of values; that popular culture is bankrupt and that we need a culture of opposition. This is a good instinct, but just like backpacker hip-hop today, they cannot find an independent basis for their existence. They exist only to oppose and cannot find in popular culture the tendency of common folks to resist. Pop culture ain't counterculture, but pop culture does counter, no doubt.

But I can see the reason why folks are calling this hipster rap. They see the immediate aspects; the hairstyles, the clothes, etc. and conclude that this is hipsterism. As you said, their sound is thoroughly modern. But they can't see that hip-hop is a continuum and not a pendulum. Hip-hop does not go back. 90s b-boy revivalism didn't go back, even if they thought that's what they were doing. What hip-hop does is save up its experience so that the new forms become a part of the whole. The 80s is done, but the experience is still with us and animates to some degree our hip-hop today, just as the 90s does.

Alex: This election season there have been an unprecedented amount of artists who have openly sided with the Obama campaign, and it seems that hip-hop has played a role in the election it never has on this level (everything between the Obama mixtape and Kanye playing the DNC). What do you make of this?

LBoogie: This is a great question. This is something we've followed closely for the better part of this long election season. To answer that properly (albeit briefly) we have to consider both why hip-hop is able to be a vibrant political participant in this election process, and also what wider currents are at hand in the U.S. that have made this such an historic election.

What does it say that the DNC invited Kanye? Or that the Obama campaign felt compelled to publicly distance itself from that Ludacris song, "Obama Is Here"? These are important indications of the ways in which official society is forced to recognize and respond to hip-hop as a legitimate social and political force it must contend with. It is competing for the attention of a restless and angry generation whose music is more than just a collection of hit songs or celebrity rappers, it reflects a philosophy of life that rejects much of what official society stands for.

It's a contradictory philosophy, no doubt, but in it you can see the recognition of the alienation of the current way of life ("All through the week, I've been at work, doing my job / Then somebody told me, the weekend's just for me", Kelis on "Weekend"); a rejection of that alienation ("To hell with just gettin by and economizing / It's kinda hard bein humble in the belly of struggle", Busta on "Been Through the Storm"); and a vision of change ("I'm from the school of the hard knocks, we must not / let outsiders violate our blocks, and my plot / let's stick up the world and split it fifty/fifty / Let's take the dough and stay real jiggy", Jay Z on "Hard Knock Life").

This election was much bigger than one man or one political party. In different ways, hip-hop's support for Obama was both a no-vote and a yes-vote. In 2000 and 2004, the failed electoral strategies that dominated social democratic-left politics was the "anybody but Bush" approach. That failed to win either mass support or mass energy, and not only because the opposing candidates were about as exciting as watching paint dry.

This time around, the mobilization and energy that was galvanized within hip-hop was not just a rejection of Bush, it was a rejection of three decades worth of failed neo-liberal ideology. The ongoing economic crisis only sharpened these existing sentiments. "They been sellin us a dream, tellin us we on the same team, now we all gotta deal with the lie" (Mary J. Blige on "Something's Gotta Give"). At the same time, it was an embrace of a larger vision of a fully multiracial U.S. – something hip-hop has instinctually cultivated from day one. There's been a push from Obama's campaign and segments of official society to also encourage a multiracial vision, but it's different. Multiculturalism from above is just another form of white supremacy. But multi-culturalism from below is a manifestation of hip-hop's desire to bring to all areas of social life the multiracial community and solidarity it has already cultivated in the cultural realm.

It was also an embrace of a desire for young people and working people to see themselves in the driver's seat of making history, on their own terms. Precisely because this mobilization is larger than Obama, it is likely that it won't be able to be contained within the channels of official society. We'll have to keep our eyes open to see where the hip-hop generation goes from here.

Davey D's review of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention 2008

2008-11-19T23:04:00.008-06:00

This is an alright and interesting review. In it, we can get an idea for the problems of hip-hop organizations, their political form and content, as well as their class basis.

A few introductory comments first. The NHHPC is not a new political form. It is a high-profile, recycled political action committee for the Democratic Party and, as such, was bankrupt before it even began. Its organizational leadership is composed of intellectuals, professors, and business folks whose sole interest is to channel the unique political character of the hip-hop generation into voter mobilization, not to arouse in it a sense that it alone can manage society independent of managers, professionals, and politicians.

There may very well be organizations in the future (perhaps in formation now) that speak to the hip-hop generation on its own terms; and that's because it is or will be organized by genuine segments of the hip-hop generation itself. No telling what latent forces this could unleash upon the nation. But the NHHPC and others like it won't just lead us astray (we aren't even giving it the time of day to do that), but will continue to solidify as extensions of the established political magnates.

I'm not in any way dismissing the folks who attend the convention or the rank-and-file organizers of the NHHPC so much as saying that the form of the organization itself inhibits and restricts activity of an independent nature.

Some of you may have read a piece I wrote a year ago, The Hip-Hop Organization is Nothing New. It isn't necessary to recount all the points made there since y'all can just read that. However, there is a missing component in that piece that surfaces in Davey D's review below and this is the aspect of funding.

So much of political activism today has been funneled into non-profit public service work that is funded by rich foundations. Politicized young people who want to organize around legitimate ills are drawn into non-profit work and inadvertently wind up doing the bidding of America's wealthy.

I highly recommend a book that a few us read over the Summer called "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" which not only gives a nice introductory to the history of foundations which began as schisms for corporations to do business tax free, but also how they helped to co-opt independent political movements in the 1960s. A chapter in the book has an abridged chapter from Robert L. Allen's "Black Awakening in Capitalist America" that speaks particularly to the Ford Foundation's intervention in the Black Power movement.

Anyhow, the rest of Davey D's review, pure entertainment. The terms of the discussion is such a joke.*

--

http://globalgrind.com/source/blog.myspace.com/42286/wake-up-are-hip-hop-organizations-truly-effective

During the recently held National Hip Hop Political Convention in Las Vegas we had an explosive panel that addressed the issue of Electoral Politics and how they intersect with Hip Hop music and culture. We wound talking specifically about the impact or lack of impact Hip Hop organizations have on the voting process.

Sitting on this panel were the following people;

Rev Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus
Professor Lamont Hill of Fox news and Temple University
Tony Cani- Young Democrats
Honorable George Martinez of H2Ed and former elected Official & emcee
Rosa Clemente-Vice presidential candidate of the Green Party

This panel started off tame enough but then erupted and got somewhat contentious as the panelists started addressing some very hard and oftentimes difficult questions. around the role Hip Hop organizations play in mobilizing people around electoral politics.

A spirited discussion emerged about how we go about getting people politically engaged. Do we follow the model of having a high profile celebrity standing before the people hawking a cause or do we push for people to empower themselves by organizing block by block. There was enlightening back and forth between George Martinez and Rev Yearwood.

Yearwood heads up the Hip Hop Caucus and recently enlisted the aid of rapper T.I. and singer Keyisha Coles to do a big register and Get Out the Vote Campaign. Yearwood was also behind the Vote or Die campaign with P-Diddy. Yearwood talked about those campaigns and admitted that he had been approached about why he had not included lesser known artists like NY Oil or Immortal Technique who do the community work day in and day out . he said ideally he would like to see everyone involved.

George Martinez challenged the practicality of Rev Yearwood's methods. He called it a sham and said it was misleading. He said people need to be empowering themselves and that such methods are good for getting funding but not necessarily good or even needed to get someone into office.

Martinez noted that he was elected before there were any of these organizations came into existence. he said it's all about going block to block and locking things down that way. He insisted that if you aren't known on your block then you essentially aren't putting in work. he warned the audience to be wary of self appointed leaders who claim to rep for us while not putting in the work.

Yearwood felt it was unfortunate he and his organization was mischaracterized and that he was tired of hearing revolutionary rhetoric with no follow up from the people espousing it. He went on to emphasize that people are still dying in the streets and we have to reach them. He said he was about trying to reach his people to politicized them by any means necessary even it included using T.I. He said it was important that a felon like T.I. speak to the issue of voting because there are so many of us in our community who can relate.

Questions were raised about the impact funding has in allowing people to move forward or whether it compromised people to the wishes and agenda of the Democratic Party. This question was specifically addressed around the members of the newly formed Gen Vote and money from the Tide Foundation and its ties to the Democratic Party.

This led to deeper discussions around why so many within Hip Hop activism still dependent upon funding from foundations and why haven't business plans been hatched that would lead to true independence.

Another touchy issue that popped up was the lack of support from Hip Hop organizations for the Rosa Clemente's Vice Presidential candidacy. She pointed out that after years of complaining about not having our agenda being addressed and how the two political parties have all but abandoned our communities except when it comes to siphoning off votes, she was said there has been lack of support from the leadership of some of these Hip Hop organizations. She noted that this is not about Rosa Clemente but about the vessel she represents. She felt money and resources needs to be directed toward highlighting the 10 point platform of the Greens which includes Social Justice. That's an issue the two parties dare not touch.

Rosa also brought home the point about the unwillingness for many including those in progressive circles to accept female leadership. She pointed out how disappointing it was for her to be apart of the NHHPC for over 5 years and show up at a panel as important as this that only had one female. That scenario has got to change quick.

Professor Lamont Hill talked about how easy it is to dismiss Obama if you are a progressive and permanently position him as a tool of larger political interests. He said its real easy to dismiss voting for the Greens as a throwaway vote for MCcain. he stated that for the first time we have millions of people excited about an election and looking at issues. He said we can't afford to throw that away and that we should find ways to engage those folks who have come to politics through the Obama campaign.

He talked about the challenges many of us are facing in terms of raising money and being completely independent.

Tony Canti talked about the disastisfaction his group had with the democratic Party and how they broke off specifically so they can address key issues. However, he talked about how the electoral political process is a numbers game and that the game has got to be played in such a way that you make those numbers if the desired goal is to get someone into office where they can make key decisions.

Audience members like NY rap star NY Oil noted that part of the challenge we have is getting people to do diligence. he said far too many people go home after hearing all this information and never ever do their part.