A Better Day

“I soon realized that there were two ways I could respond to my situation”—Martin Luther King Jr. explained—“either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force.” King famously took the latter course. But the modern rapper—be it Ice Cub, 2Pac, or Kendrick Lamar—seeks to simultaneously utilize the two approaches; the modern rapper, that is, creatively expresses bitterness.

Take Cube’s classic “It Was a Good Day,” for example. Notice how he subverts his song’s title, how he illustrates the tragedy of the young African-American’s “good day” by describing what did not occur. In Ice Cube’s world, positivity is only found in the absence of negativity, and not in positivity itself. Cube finds a day remarkable—that is, worth remarking upon—when “nobody I know got killed in South Central LA,” when “I didn’t even have to use my AK.”

A lack of tragedy is not—should not be— a cause for celebration.

Love Again

Is it the artist’s job to protect his/her work from gross misinterpretation?

“Yet every writer learns over a lifetime to be tolerant of the stupid inferences that are drawn from literature and the fantasies implausibly imposed upon it,” argued Phillip Roth, a great novelist (wrongly) called by many a great misogynist. Is Junot Diaz an objectifier of women because his characters objectify women? Does Francis Ford Coppola condone violence because his films inspired people to commit violent acts?

The answer to these questions, of course, is no. But what about rappers, whose lyrics sometimes read more like diary entries than artistic statements? I’d argue that to interpret lyrics as biographical and to take anything at face value would be to ignore the artistry of rap music. Take the song “Love Again” off Run The Jewels’ excellent album from last year, for example. In the song, El-P and Killer Mike exchange sexually explicit and degrading lyrics (“I will never condescend / Now spread yourself,” “Do you ask him pretty please / Do you crawl on hands and knees / Like you used to do for me / Oh, you such a dirty girl”) before launching into the chorus, “I put that dick in her mouth all day / She got that (dick in her mouth all day) / She take that (dick in her mouth all day).” If you were to pause the song midway, you might take El-P and Killer Mike for vile misogynists. But you’d be wrong. For the next verse and chorus, in which guest rapper Gangsta Boo one-ups her peers in terms of sexual gratuity and lewdness, cleverly inverts the stereotype of woman as mere pleasure provider. She raps, “He had a lot of bad bitches in his past / But I was the one who turned that boy into a motherfuckin’ man,” just like the countless rappers who brag of stealing a girl’s prized virginity—before launching into her own version of the boys’ chorus: “He want this clit in his mouth all day / He want this clit in his mouth all day (Yeah, ho!).”

Circle Sound

It used to be much easier to decide which labels were independent and which was not, which music could be called “indie” (short for independent) and which could be (often derisively) labeled popular. But now, in 2015, with Poptimism and Postmodernism, along with cheaper, digital hardware and software at the forefront—the underground has been appropriated by the commercial artists, and vice versa. The directional flow of influence has is becoming even more and more muddled as this century progresses.

The most basic difference between Independent and Major labels is financing, particularly the magnitude of such financing. “Independent and “major” are relative terms; there isn’t a clear line at which an “independent” label becomes “major”. (According to Association of Independent Music (AIM) “(…) A “major” is defined in AIM’s constitution as a multinational company which (together with the companies in its group) has more than 5% of the world market(s) for the sale of records and/or music videos.” But this becomes more complicated when you look at all the smaller branches of these major labels that could themselves be called independent.)

In his article, Andy Bennett mentions the independent rap label “Circle Sound.” Circle Sound “specializes in the production and promotion of Turkish Rap Music” (84). The rappers who release music on the label—which admittedly as a Turkish-centric label in Germany doesn’t have wide appeal—incorporate their ancestor’s country sounds into the contemporary German rap sound. Because the label is independent, the rappers can focus their interest and expressions into such a particular style; because their success is not predicated on the appreciation of a wide audience, these artists—like independent artists across the globe—can make the music that they want to make, immune from commercial concessions.

Rockmobil, a musical project that provides its members with instruments and a space to make music, aims to “promote integration between the youth of different ethnic minority groups in Frankfurt by encouraging these young people…to make music together.” Bennett goes on to explore how such youth—often the children of Turkish, Moroccan, and African immigrants to Germany—are drawn to the making of rap music and thus to an identification with African-American youth who are similarly ostracized in their own country. But the Rockmobil participants—like the rappers on Circle Sound—don’t merely confirm to the traditional German rap sound. Rather, they incorporate the sounds of their ancestors and experiment with the forms in which they work—possibly influencing future major label artists in the process.

Hands Up

Hip-Hop that delivers a positive message is not “good” Hip-Hop; great intentions do not make a great song. Take Macklemore’s hit, “Same Love” for example, a song in which the Best-Album-Grammy-winner raps, “The same fight that lead people to walk-outs and sit-ins, / It’s human rights for everybody / There is no difference / Live on! And be yourself!” Of course everyone—regardless of sexual orientation—should be able to marry. Of course you didn’t choose to be gay. Of course…

These sentiments are not in the least bit insightful, nor do they pack any emotional punch; to make matters worse, the words are delivered often rhymelessly, lacking in any lyrical dexterity or ingenuity. Instead of creating something aesthetically pleasurable, Macklemore chooses to stand behind the pulpit and preach. As Professor Imani Perry puts it, “the correlation of artistic quality and politics does not hold within hip hop any more than it would in another art form.”

And there are many instances of fine artistic quality matching with honorable political intentions in Rap music. In “Fight the Power,” the inimitable Chuck D (along his hype-man Flavor Flav) drops the famous bars:

“As the rhythm designed to bounce

What counts is that the rhymes

Designed to fill your mind

Now that you’ve realized the prides arrived

We got to pump the stuff to make us tough

from the heart

It’s a start, a work of art

To revolutionize make a change nothin’s strange”

Notice the assonance in the first four lines—the way the “I” sound is repeated over and over again, delivering not just auditory pleasure but also an empowering message about individuality, about the power to fight inherent in all of us.

Now fast-forward twenty years later to Vince Staple’s “Hands Up.” The song’s title derives from the post-Ferguson rallying cry “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” which Michael Brown purportedly shouted before Darren Wilson gunned him down. In this song, Vince Staples raps over an ominous beat that incorporates siren sounds as well as the distortive effect of a loudspeaker. Inverting the classic rap trope to “throw your hands to the sky,” Staples raps,

“Yeah, put your hands in the air

Put your hands in the air

Put your hands in the air

Nigga freeze, put your hands in the air”

mimicking the voice of the policemen that violently broke up rallies in Missouri—and continue to arrest innocent and guilty black men to this day. Listening to the song, one can see Staples telling his fans to put their hands up, simultaneously in celebration of the Hip-Hop form and lamentation of the present state of the Black Man.

I Feel Like Vapor

What does the singer who romanticizes drugs reveal about himself? I’m reminded of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” in which Gray laments the intellectual beauties inaccessible to the lower class: “But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page / Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll; / Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage, / And froze the genial current of the soul.” These illiterati must thus find escape beyond the page; so too the composer of a Rebetika song that glorifies hashish—a composer either unable to read or simply unable to gain entry into the world of art—must find escape in the smoke-saturated atmosphere of the tekedes.

Reading Beaton’s account of Rebetika and its infatuation with hashish brings to mind not Jazz and the Blues, but the modern rap song. Listen to Young Thug’s track “Stoner” and hear him repeat “I feel like Fabo” over and over—as his voice signifies both more pain and braggadocio with each successive mention of the five syllables. (Fabo is a rapper renowned for his excessive drug use, even among rappers.) Danny Brown echoes this sentiment in his song “Kush Coma,” rapping “Got my mind drippin’ / Gotta get away from all this bullshit in my way / Knowing goddamn well when the high go away / Same shit gon’ be still in my way.” Note that the rest of the song reads like a celebration of weed and its euphoric effects, and it is, in a certain sense; however, the ecstasy achieved through the smoking does not exist in a vacuum, but is partly derived from its erasure—for just a few hours—of the pain felt while sober.

The Singer of Tales

Chances are you haven’t heard of Charles Wright. You may ask: “Is he one of the guys who invented the airplane?” No, he is not. But he is the Poet Laureate of the United States.

In his essay entitled “The Oral Artist,” Isidore Okpewho relates the many different kinds of oral artists found on the African continent—before exploring how the roles of these same artists have devolved and evolved over time. Okpewho talks of the historian, recorder of truth and teller of past glories and devastations; the hype-man, inciting the crowd before the politician makes his case; the folk-tale teller, the modern-day Aesop, spinning yarn about talking animals and a soon-to-be-humbled egotist; the retired poet, making sure that the poets primed to supplant him are worthy; and the propagandist, looking past the flaws of his leader and patron. The list goes on.

I’ll focus on just one of these oral artists: the imbongi, or the hype-man. Okpewho quotes an imbongi describing his role: “That imbongi before you speak he can sort of, I don’t want to use this English word, To ‘hypnotize’ people…” Think of a concert you recently attended. Now think of how that opening band you’ve never heard was so great that immediately after the show you went on Spotify and listened to their most recent album, and how they made you even more excited to hear the main act than you were before you got to the venue.

Do we owe the idea of the opening act to the Africans? Or do we naturally—inherently—trend towards the existence of appetizers, intros, overtures, anything that whets the appetite as we mentally prepare ourselves for something great–or at least something greater than the lesser thing that came before it.

The Lord Shall Bear My Spirit Home

“For all their inevitable sadness,” Lawrence Levine writes, “slave songs were characterized more by a feeling of confidence than of despair.” Slaves would joyously sing of their future paradise in heaven, how they would soon break free from their shackles—as the Hebrews did—and march independently to the sweet tune of everlasting chosen-dom. But the man in Eden does not dream of a separate destination; nor does the happy woman think to wish for happier times. Every time the slave sings of his joyful anticipation of the world to come, he also sings of his present despair—his defeatist view that there is no place in the mortal world where he can achieve comfort and transcendence. W.E.B. Du Bois, assessing the many slave songs that speak of a better life beyond life, writes: “Of death the Negro showed little fear, but talked of it familiarly and even fondly as simply a crossing of the waters.”

We spoke in class of the paradoxically sad comedian, how making light of a distressing subject can both signify courage and cowardice on the part of the joke-teller. Inside every great joke is the ability to create a shared sense of recognition, and to allow that communal recognition to alleviate the pain underlying the joke. Let me share an example, one of my favorite quotes from Infinite Jest:

The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent Blott finds stuff that’s really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It’s like there’s some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn’t happy. The worst-feeling thing that happened today was at lunch when Michael Pemulis told Mario he had an idea for setting up a Dial-a-Prayer telephone service for atheists in which the atheist dials the number and the line just rings and rings and no one answers. It was a joke and a good one, and Mario got it; what was unpleasant was that Mario was the only one at the big table whose laugh was a happy laugh; everybody else sort of looked down like they were laughing at somebody with a disability.”

Everyone (besides Mario, the intellectually stilted, sincere young man) initially laughs because they seem to have grappled with their own existential crises—and the possibility of the universe’s meaninglessness. But this shared feeling of intellectual anguish brings them together, and allows them to collectively carry whatever load weighs down upon each individual’s shoulders.

Jesse