The Words Need Breath, Not Beat

Hip hop is politics. It is amazing what changes have come in the US in only 50 years… and how few things have really changed. The issues of one are related to those of another, and we can’t forget we are all still in this together. It would be a shame if those who the music was made for missed the point.

They asked Tupac if rap had a beat. He said “No.” Rap was poetry and stories. The meaning is in the words. It is political. Sometimes the beat only hypnotizes. It sterilizes the meaning. Sometimes a beat is only meant to hide the meaning from the powers-that-be. Scrap the beat. It is the space between the words that makes the message heard. You don’t need to give the words more punch than a breath. A beat just makes rap sell better.

That’s where the Watts Prophets come in, and The Last Poets and Amiri Baraka and Gil Scott-Heron and Digable Planets and friends. (I mean, here is music that demands all parts of you. No part of you sleeps.)  But here I am time warping again. News is always NEW. So leave the past behind. Right?

WRONG!

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás or George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (1905) Reason in Common Sense, v1, The Life of Reason. So what are groups like Digable Planets or The Roots, or A Tribe Called Quest doing when they musically reference the past. They are bringing back the politics, places we are fighting our way out of and they are showing us which way we should go. If we didn’t know where we were coming from we wouldn’t have any idea where we were going. We would just be running around looking for immediate gratification and killing each other. And sex and violence has a lot of entertainment value as far as the corporate/capitalists are concerned, but that alone doesn’t push us any forward in terms of knowing who and where we are.

Me? I’m a big fat white guy with a persecution complex stuck in a time warp. That’s not cool. That’s not “pop”. Heaven won’t have me and the devil don’t want me. And that’s good, because I don’t identify with anyone. You know? So I take what I need for me wherever I see something good, powerful, meaningful… It is a long painful process and I have no right to say something is something for sure. I can only say “I’m here” and put it out for you. That’s freedom of speech. I may be wrong but this is what I believe.

The corporate/capitalist forces take whatever is popular, powerful and meaningful, strip it of anything important, and point it at the highest selling demographic. That demographic is middle class white kids. That’s too bad, because that’s where I come from. But that’s my problem. I listen to stuff which has meaning to me, and that doesn’t include middle class white kids with their hats on backwards and their underwear hiked up outside their pants. Sex and violence in entertainment are tools used to turn us into things that merely react to stimulus. But we are more than just demographics, or numbers on a counter, or dollar signs.

There is nothing wrong with the visceral, as long as that is joined to the heart and mind.

Constant and severe self criticism is what hip hop is all about. It is all a process of becoming self aware and STAYING self aware. That means constant reflection upon ourselves and our place in the world. Becoming self aware AND STAYING SELF AWARE is a constant never ending process of gathering and realizing the other inside ourselves. The natural tendency is to turn it outward. This is difference. This is the outsider artist. We either demonize it or idealize it and set IT outside ourselves. And then we exploit it, whatever “it” is or whatever “they” are.

And if we find ourselves fortunate enough to fall into affluence and comfort - if we find the respect we have struggled for all our lives - we run the risk of forgetting who we really are. “Namaste” means “I am you” and that we are all part of the Divine, whatever you call the Divine. The Divine lies “in the least” as well as the greatest.

Stolen Moments was a gathering of New York hip hop and jazz artists and others who had gathered to make people aware of AIDS in the black community.   This is the heart. This is the source. Mos Def hosts Def Poetry Jam.  The words are where it’s at with people like Amiri Baraka. This is The Twin Poets and this is Amir Sulaimen reciting Dead Man Walking in London from the Dangerous Ideas Tour. And if that doesn’t touch your heart then you must have left your heart in your other suit.

We have to look into the past as well as around the corners in the alleyways, in the odd spaces, on the stoop and in the community centre. We have to listen to the words. Anything that has meaning for you. Once, in a galaxy far far away, in a film editing suite in a community centre, I found a CD in a discards bin, a Canadian group called Fermented Reptile. Severe Punishment. “I read some of the most powerful lyrics of our century… battle physically… conquer mentally.”

I’m looking at myself, looking at what I listen to, what I believe, what I have a right to say. I’ve heard that’s what hip hop is, and I have found my way back to people like The Watts Prophets half a century ago. I remember it because it is what I believe about me and I think that’s what the rest of the world needs. But, I fear, the world’s not going to find self criticism and self awareness… but there are pockets, and we have to find those pockets. Does that make me hip hop? Nope. I have no right to say “I am” anything except what I am.

And I think hip hop has something to say to me because I don’t find anything useful for me in from the wasp perspective. And I am working with that. I can only hope that the rest of the people in the world starts looking at their own problems and deal with those. My fear is that the rest of the world is too busy looking for difference in everybody else.

But, I think, the world, taken as a whole, isn’t going to change, and that’s a shame. Only we have the opportunity to improve ourselves. And the world is on it’s own. I mean, what has the world ever done for me? It’s all people. Yeah, we are all on our own, individuals tied together by only a loose network because the system sucks. Because the system exist only to keep people in place, to make us all part of the machine. And, let me tell you, this machine needs self-aware mechanics. And that’s us.

Otherwise, all this brilliance is gone to waste… in me, in you. As Ayn Rand says,“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”