... the other Black experience
What do you guys think of writer Touré's latest piece for the Washington Post about the war on drugs and hip-hop?
Excerpts: "In the early 1980s, most of the socially conscious hiphop records mentioned drugs as one of the many problems affecting black Americans, not the central one. When they did touch on drugs, they were almost always depicted negatively; doing drugs was a character failing, and the songs usually portrayed the speaker as a bystander trapped in a ghetto, observing it, not participating in its ills. They were like griots, storytellers." (...)
"By the mid-1990s, the U.S. incarceration rate was the highest in the world, damaging or destroying countless black families. Studies show that the number climbed from the 1980s, when less than 500,000 Americans were imprisoned, through the 1990s, when more than 1.5 million were locked up. (Many of those who contributed to the rise were black men ensnared by the war on drugs: In 1995, 16 percent of non-college-educated black men in their 20s were incarcerated, and the percentage rose in the decade that followed.)
Instead of stories from detached bystanders, hip-hop swelled with gruesome first-person accounts of selling, addiction, gangs, guns, the police and prison — from KRS One, Ice-T, Public Enemy, Kool G. Rap, N.W.A. and others." (...)
"Hip-hop is the product of a generation in which many black men did not know their fathers. How did these fatherless MCs construct their masculinity? For some, it was by watching and idolizing drug dealers. Many would make it as rappers by packaging themselves as former dealers — either because that is what they were or because that’s who they revered. I’m talking about the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, the Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, the Clipse, Rick Ross and others. By then, it seemed as though an MC needed to claim drug-trade stripes to earn acceptance among hip-hop’s elite. " (...)
"Hip-hop could have grown into a challenge to the war on drugs but instead accepted it as a fact of life and told bluesy, or braggadocious, stories about its part in it.” (...)
"The nation surely failed its black male citizens by targeting and imprisoning them when joblessness and the crack epidemic left them with few real options. They were conveniently villainized, arrested and warehoused to help politicians, judges, prosecutors and police win the public trust.
But hip-hop also failed black America, and failed itself. It’s unavoidable that hip-hop and the war on drugs would become intertwined. But the music could have been a tool of resistance, informing on the drug war’s hypocrisies instead of acquiescing to them. Hip-hop didn’t have to become complicit in spreading the message of the criminalblackman, but the money it made from doing so was the drug it just couldn’t stop getting high on."
(Full piece here)
Please share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Comment
Comment by bela-rs on July 20, 2012 at 1:02am It's week end and let us remind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSs8DPI81Og
So the stake of being a listener of an active spot on that scene for youth development has it' borderlines.
For more antifascist lyrics from the Tommys out there in the northern territories of America a big smash out lined for my stochastic I've failed.
Ramadan mubarak my 5 percenters!
Comment by malachi smith on July 19, 2012 at 7:15pm Sure, he's right. In a hip-hop context, the larger number of people involved in the public face of the subculture opted for aspects that could be called negative. But I also disagree, in the sense that hip-hop never had a leader or specific way of being, a lot like punk in those early days. It's a style war, and sometimes a certain mode wins the day. Stakes is High as fuck, yes, and the casualties are many, but the healthy option was always on the table, yknow? De La Soul comes to mind right away, everyone knows they are dope, and had mostly positive things to say - but I remember the whole Native Tongues thing being dismissed in certain hardcore circles as "downtown rap", "hippies" and few other not-so-nice names. In "underground" communities, word on the street has a huge amount of sway. The result being 7 out of the 10 kids will follow the perceived alpha male, 2 will find a way out, curse their former existence and never return, and 1 will be an afropunk. ( until the day spell check knows this word and removes the red underline! ) Huge generalization, but I think you know what I mean.
Comment by bela-rs on July 19, 2012 at 3:58pm The tri_ball_Ism of using the term 'war' has therefor a lot of data and statistic material_Ism as ideological frame for all that shame, imprisonment could afford in and out of body queer_feminist Intersections. Here in Hamburg the hard coins of Heroine by 120000 persons from Russia origin, 1100 Pakistanis, 6000 Afghans, 11000 Iranians and 35000 Turks,..where the hell is the lingual turn on medication/white-=- drugs/color as narration in Rap songs all about?
Where is the conspi_racist coin of 1 kilogram Heroin in Afghanistan for 20,-Cent in an estimated market here pro gram of 30,-€?
There I am proud being a lyrical t_errorist!
Comment by Monique Little on July 19, 2012 at 3:00pm There was NEVER a war on damn drugs/drug product. War was funded by drug sells-the War ITSELF was ON drugs! Not to mention states make money on how many motherfukkas get imprison-WELCOME TO AMERICA! I don't even understand why we still use the expression war on drugs, as if it ever existed. Regan and his flunkies never waged war of the aircraft, ships, cost guard and all other officials that had to have been involved with the import of drugs. Instead they went to the damn street corners arresting the little guys at the bottom of the food chain who did not own nor have access to the Ships, aircraft, ect. to pull of any drug operations. Again, i am sick of using the term War on Drugs-because there never was one, call it something else or what is actually was.
Comment by Jeremy Shatan on July 18, 2012 at 8:43pm So basically, why did it take until 2012 for someone (i.e. Killer Mike) to write a song called "Reagan"?
Comment by bela-rs on July 18, 2012 at 4:29pm To talk about so called drugs, I mention at first a legalization of soft drugs like the ilk beer Ganja like the Netherlands do, and then we must talk about the phrase using about the bias narratives of the corruption lines the MC's and FemmeCees have knowledge about: the the medical use at first by patrilinearity of all that sudden feelin and emotion of luck and happiness in a capital_Ism society.
We, my Crew have a further understanding about the temple of squats the criminalisation of Marihuana as my first choice have. The devotion about to take it serious in a person of color [conspi_] racist manner that so many profiles a caught up by that schizo mirror the corruption lines in all deficits capital_ism have, we must take lyrics from that culture above more and more as alternative then all contracts of billionaires Hip Hop can't prevail as easy goin to take the narcissistic stance of so called 'Sucht_mechanism' as penetree usage of white power beef.
So called drugs have all that esoteric tunnels of Goa, Electro Shaman_Ism and so on, what Hip Hop is about the street credibility and Bass_Ism against racism will take as future choice here in postfascist Hamburg/Europe.
Bel
Comment by VERSION on July 18, 2012 at 1:05pm The discussion is instructive when you consider the well-known adage that the first step towards a solution of a problem is understanding that a problem exists. He is right, both about hip hop and America, but of course you can't separate the two if you're talking about American hip hop. We have had much recent history, especially in hip hop, of music delineating the ills of American society, particularly as it affects non-White Americans. That part of the problem is generally understood, at least by those here on AP. Touré is particularly apt in identifying the role of money as part of the problem: money changes everything. In America, there are several ways to get ahead, (and my favorite, by far, is education) but the surest, most secure way is to get a lot of money. Americans as a culture worship money, and forgive many (but not all) sins committed in the search for it. Precious little in our society is free, especially the important stuff like health care and education. When we have little money and when the media saturates us from birth with the idea that we need 'stuff', it is only 'natural' that we end up thinking money is significant...so significant that some will abandon any thoughts other than to accumulate it, and to somehow set themselves 'free'. The next, and long-overdue step, is discussing solutions. There is, of course, a well-established (although much smaller) vein of conscious hip hop, which focuses on some possible solutions...but as this stream is dwarfed by the commercial success of the mainstream, it is by cultural definition less 'sexy', and so remains all-too-often unheard. You know of this music, I do, too. But how to get the majority to hear it, to know why it is an important contribution to our future as a culture? Part of what this conscious hip hop does is exactly what I, too, would recommend...education. Learn what others have done, in other countries, other cultures, in other times. What might we adapt for the here and now? What might we have to invent new? And then debate it. Discuss it...share...I think silence is one of the enemies here, and so this forum is a step in the right direction...but it must go out from here...not preaching to the choir...and I welcome any and all further ideas, criticisms, and comments.
© 2013 Created by Matthew.
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