a bigger weapon & why i can’t listen to the radio any more

first off, check this interview with boots from The Coup. it’s good shit, especially the part where the interviewer tries to divide hip hop fans up by race and boots is like like yo – my music is about working class revolution and in the working class there are people of all shades. well said.

when are these media motherfuckers gonna finally understand that? it’s like, i was at a barbecue here in oakland last night talking to some folks about my band and trying to explain the concept of celtic hip hop fusion and a woman who described herself as irish-african-australian tried to phase me by saying “so you’re the black guy in the group?” and i thought to myself “what the fuck do you expect me to say to that?” are you accusing me of something, and if so then what?  or do you  maybe expect me to try to defend myself as though i’d just been insulted?  what’s your game here?  you just told me your half irish lady, you should know who invented rhyme. and what the fuck is hip hop besides the latest evolution in the art of rhyme? an MC aint nothin but a Bard in sneakers.

it’s funny really, black folks originated jazz, blues, & rock too – not just hip hop; but people don’t act like white folks that play rock are somehow trespassing.  now that’s partly because “rock” today sounds very little like rock n’ roll a la chuck berry, but then run dmc sounds more like talking blues to me then it does like modern hip hop so there you go. genre lines are invented and maintained by record labels and marketing hacks to sell products, they don’t have shit to do with the music itself except in the most abstract sense. and music is like any other living thing – constantly growing, changing, evolving. Projecting our culture’s penchent for segregation and intolerance onto it is absurd.

hip hop music was born out of fusion – funk and reggae and jazz and early techno and everything else.  that’s true of virtually every “new” music genre, hip hop is no exception to the rule. And that’s a good thing because it points us in the direction of having to realize that there’s nothing natural about racially segregating our music or ourselves. That statement should be totally self-evident in 2007, but given the fact that with a very few exceptions most of our neighborhoods, schools, and social institutions are still de facto segregated it’s worth repeating.

so yeah, most hip hop fans are “white”, whatever the fuck that means. big fucking deal, as of the last census 72% of america is “white” and, despite all the hysteria about how mexicans are going to “invade” and take over the southwest, america’s status as a majority-european descent nation is not about to change, not least because there are a hell of a lot of white latinos.  so what?  why are we so obsessed with Race anyway?  It doesn’t even EXIST fer chrissake, it’s nothing more or less then a social construct.   we need to smash the institutions that stratify people according to it and leave it where it belongs – in history’s graveyard for stupid ideas.   hip hop is all about crossing boundaries, sampling things from different places and bringing them together. in theory at least it should be the perfect music for a country looking for a way to construct an identity that isn’t based on hating people who look different.  now if only the blackface pop-rap stars and their corporate masters would shut the fuck up and let some real hip hop get out and onto the airwaves…

which brings me to my second, much shorter point. I can’t listen to the radio any more, haven’t been able to for a few years now; especially the so-called “urban” music stations. KMEL is particularly bad, it’s like watching someone i love getting their faces kicked in all day long every day. Which leads me to this final point – Nas is right, hip hop is dead; at least in America. Worse yet, all of us – fans and artists alike – are responsible for murdering her. If we had stood up for our culture and really tried to put a stop to this sick fantasy-world blackface-in-gold-chains freakshow by boycotting the stations and the labels promoting this bullshit we could have stopped it. maybe. possibly. possibly not. but at least we’d be able to say we tried. as it is we just get to watch endless reruns of G-Unit gang raping hip hop’s broken and bloody corpse on BET, and that’s a spectacle I’m just plain not down for. So i’ve disconnected my tv, thrown away my radio, and get all my music online now – where i have total control over what i want to hear and never have to hear another corporate rap jingle again if i don’t want too. it’s hardly a perfect solution but at least it keeps me from going down to the radio station and murdering the obnoxious little scumbags who pose as djs while they play the same pre-programmed mix over and over every day.

the beautiful thing (really the only thing keeping me from saying ‘fuck it’ and walking away completely at this point) is the knowledge that no matter what happens the wild creativity and power of hip hop culture can never really die. Hip Hop wasn’t born in the Bronx, it was rediscovered in the Bronx. Hip hop is ancient, it’s as old as words over beats and defiance against unjust authority – as old as humanity itself. It’s a part of every culture on this planet, which is why it spread so rapidly to every corner of this planet. People everywhere recognized it for what it was, picked it up, and made it their own. Outside of the US, ironically, real hip hop – conscious alive, vibrant, engaged with the real world and social issues – is still alive and well. Even here in the States that power and energy is simmering just under the surface -  it’s just a matter of time before it finds a new way to break through.  maybe that break through will still be called hip hop and maybe it’ll be called something else entirely, but whatever it’s called it’ll go through the same cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death. American Hip hop is dead, but death isn’t the end, not by a long shot. In nature corpses become food for scavengers and then fertilizer to nourish new growth.

and new growth is exactly what we need.

Posted: June 21st, 2007 under hip hop, music, race & racism.
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