Politics, Leadership, Hip Hop
By Crispin Sartwell
chapter on hip hop from "act like you know"
Last week Wolf Blitzer interviewed P. Diddy about the presidential election. It's no worse, I suppose, than consulting Ashton Kutcher or Madonna, who've also appeared as political spokesmodels. But it's no better either, and P. Diddy's music has nothing to teach anyone even about hip hop, much less tax policy or foreign affairs.
But Wolf should keep interviewing rappers. Much of the most powerful American political discourse at the moment is contained in hip hop music: not Diddy's pop thuggery, but the fiercely articulate, uncompromising, and elaborately detailed work of underground artists such as Brother Ali, Sage Francis, Atmosphere, Dose One, Immortal Technique, Paris, Dead Prez, and many others.
Music has inspired and embodied radical politics throughout the twentieth century, from the songs of the Wobblies to Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan to Bob Marley, Public Enemy to KRS-One. And insofar as there is a new radical American leadership - both black and white - it consists largely of rappers.
This, it seems to me, is a salutary and also predictable development. Recorded music is a mode of publication, and if Thomas Paine or Karl Marx were prosecuting their revolutionary agendas today, they might be issuing records rather than pamphlets. (To be frank, however, I wouldn't buy Karl's CDs.) But recorded music is a more powerful medium than the pamphlet, because it brings you the very voice of the writer.
Hip hop provides an unequaled opportunity for sonic collages that constitute powerful political critiques. Two of the favorite objects of sampling are Malcolm X and George Bush: one hears their words in their own voices, and then the words are commented on, made emphatic or ironic, turned against themselves and toward us. And hip hop is the most powerful style of recorded music, because it pours out an ocean of words in rhythmic waves that engage the body and the soul.
In many ways, the role of the preacher in black political life, and of the agitator in the political life of all races, has been superseded by rappers. In their fierceness and incisiveness, these figures rival Martin Luther King, Jr., Louis Farrakhan, Marcus Garvey. Sage Francis and Paris make John Kerry and George W. Bush look like the cliche-spouting sucker emcees they are: wastes of perfectly good microphones. The politics of race, 9/11, the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, colonialism, globalization, the meaning of democracy, the interpretation of history, the philosophy of religion: all of these are explored - often thoughtfully, always sharply - in underground hip hop.
Here is a slice of "Harlem Streets," by Immortal Technique: "They vote for us to go to war instantly,/ but none of their kids serve in the infantry./The odds are stacked against us like a casino./Think about it; most of the army is black and Latino./You can't read history at an illiterate stage,/and you can't raise a family on minimum wage./Why do you think most of us are locked in a cage?" (Keep in mind that the effect of this work cannot be conveyed fully on the page.)
The much more mainstream Hip-Hop Summit Action network, run by Russell Simmons and enlisting pop stars such as Ludacris and Kanye West, has registered half a million voters in the service of a progressive political agenda on issues such as profiling and HIV.
Much of the politics of underground hip hop is also leftist, though it often as well reflects the teachings of black power religions such as The Nation of Islam, The Nation of Gods and Earths, and Rastafarianism. And a lot of it as well has a deeply conservative streak. It pits itself against the glorification of materialism and violence in mainstream hip hop. It rails against drug use and promiscuous sex.
As the genius Brother Ali says: "In the streets we're bangin it out,/content to let Uncle Sam be the man in our house./ We waste money and call it cheese, /smoke plants and call 'em trees, /while subsidized daycare workers raise emcees./ We want the sex and not the kids, /want the check and not the job. /Most of all we want the blessings but won't answer to God."
If you want to know where tomorrow's leaders are coming from and how they think, if you want to know who's out here forming the political consciousness on our streets and in our schools, you had better face the music.
Crispin Sartwell's latest book is "Extreme Virtue: Truth and Leadership in Five Great American Lives."
