It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation (33 page)

The people in the ghetto don’t have any political power, so if white folks who like my music want to help, they need to go back to their communities and help out. The reality is that their communities need the most help because racism is so rampant there. So they need to study history, not just my history, but American history so they can properly understand who I am. Then they need to educate their communities. But that hasn’t been happening. So, as a result, the dismal conditions that I was born into in the late seventies in the Bronx—despite all the whites that listen to my music today—haven’t changed.

So, I don’t know what it really means to have all these frat boys banging my music as they study to maintain a racist status quo—to keep the progenitors and custodians of me oppressed.

You really think they’re studying to keep Blacks oppressed?

Well, yes.

The education that they’re getting is teaching them to maintain the status quo. Teaching them to keep the world, give or take a few inches, as is. So whenever you don’t oppose a system, then by default, by your inaction, you support it. So whether conscious of it or not, they will, even if it’s by doing nothing, fall in line with the continued oppression.

Do you think that whites—

Yo, no disrespect, man, but I’d like to move on from the whole white thing. You got other questions?

Yeah, no doubt. All right, so, Black people, then?

For them, I am the latest weapon in a long line of weapons that have been created, out of necessity, to uplift and aid them in their struggle for liberation.

But you said yourself, there’s a lot of negativity out there that promotes stereotypes.

Exactly. Weapons are like time.

Time?

Yeah, time.

Time can either be used constructively or destructively. You can either waste it or you maximize it. But time itself stays neutral. The same is true for a weapon, any weapon: it can either be used by the oppressed to liberate themselves or used against the oppressed.

So, you said you’re a new weapon?

Yeah, but keep in mind that everything that is new is, by that very fact, very traditional. So I’m right in the tradition.

So being a part of that tradition, do you really think your music can liberate Black people?

Well, not by myself, of course. But in the context of a movement, my music can be the soundtrack.

Look at the freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. Those songs were the soul of that movement; the fire and fiber they
needed to keep on keepin’ on. Those songs were designed for one purpose: to invigorate and call to action. To prepare people for struggle, to elevate their consciousness.

You’ve got these big powerful voices singing, “Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom,” I mean, that’s revolutionary. Or, even “We Shall Overcome”—that’s a declaration of victory. Those songs inspired people to challenge oppression, ignited their feet, and united them for a common cause. The music was the fuel. The music was the weapon.

Even Dr. King himself admitted that “through this music, the Negro is able to dip down into wells of a deeply pessimistic situation and danger-fraught circumstances and to bring forth a marvelous, sparkling, fluid optimism. He knows it is still dark in his world, but somehow, he finds a ray of light.”

That’s my tradition.

Is your music, today, providing that “ray of light” for your generation?

The ray is definitely there, but the movement is missing. So, you have emcees who are using me to uplift, educate, and inspire, but no foot soldiers on the ground to make the rhymes reality.

So, when it’s all said and done, more has been said than done…

And that’s not what I’m about.

I’ve got a first and a last name and they’re connected. I already told you that hip was to enlighten. Well, “hop” is an Old English word that means “to spring into action.” So what I’m about is enlightenment, then action. Without the enlightenment, you’re not going to know what to do, but without the hop or the action, well, then it’s just rhymes. Those freedom songs in the sixties, without the movement, what would they be?

So is that what KRS-One means when —

Yes! That’s what he means when he rhymes in “Hip-Hop Lives”: “
Hip n hop is more than music / Hip is the knowledge / Hop is the movement / Hip n hop is the intelligent movement
.”

Would you say your musi—

C’mon… [sigh] My bad for interrupting you, man, but you keep asking about my music.
Is my music this… Is my music that…
I’m more than just music, but that’s all you focusin’ on.

Fair enough. What other components would you like to address?

The spiritual dimension.

Don’t wrench me out of my context.

The masses bore me out of resistance and rebellion.

The most powerful part about me is my spirit—the spirit of resistance. Of rebellion against oppression. An outlaw.

Now, don’t get it twisted, I’m not talking about a poor Black person that runs around terrorizing their own hood, terrorizing other poor, disenfranchised people. That’s not an outlaw.

You remember what Ras Baraka said on The Fugees jawn “Manifesto/Outro”?

Um, refresh my memory.

On the outro, Ras says:

So I was born from those kicks of oppression… and we’re still getting kicked.

And this is born out of the ghetto experience?

Yeah, but when I say “ghetto,” I’m really talkin’ about a whole notha’, deeper level. Like, I might be young, I’m only in my thirties, but I’m coming out of a spiritual tradition of rebellion. It goes way back.

How far back?

I mean, it goes back to 1526 when the first Africans arrived here in shackles and just a few months later, killed their massas.

Where was your spirit when slavery was widespread?

In the fields.

X, who is sometimes called the “fire prophet,” told you that during slavery, there were “two kinds of Negroes: house Negroes and field Negroes.”

The field Negroes were the masses of people. There were always more field Negroes than house Negroes.

The house Negro, who, though still enslaved, “lived in the house with master, dressed pretty good, ate pretty good because they ate his food—what he left,” would “give their life to save the master’s house.” Although he was only getting leftovers and was still a slave, he lived better than the field Negro. If massa said, “we got a good house here,” the house Negro would respond by saying, “yeah, we got a good house here.”

Now, what about the field Negro.

The field Negro “caught hell,” ate left-leftovers, and dressed like a field mule because that’s what he was. Underfed and overworked.

When the slave master’s house—the “big house”—caught on fire, the house Negro, hand-me-down firefighter, would try harder than the master to put the flame out. While the field Negro would “pray for a strong wind to come along.” So when I was born, what did I say?

“We don’t need no water, let the motherfucka burn?”

Exactly. “Burn, motherfucka, burn!”

And do you know what Dr. King told Harry Belafonte right before he died?

What?

He said: “I sit here deeply concerned that we’re leading our nation on an integration trip that has us integrating into a burning house.”

That’s heavy. Do you think people know the house is burning?

They know, in their gut, that it ain’t right.

But most oppressed people are too preoccupied with the day-today struggle to think about the bigger picture. Do you know what Harriet Tubman said?

She said a lot of things.

Well, one thing she said was that she freed a thousand slaves but she coulda freed a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves.

So people don’t even question their condition anymore. They believe as they are taught; and they are taught that they are inferior and that their inferiority is the reason for their condition. Charles Hamilton Houston said it best when he said: “As long as ignorance prevails, blacks will be the tools of the exploiting class.”

That’s why
hipi
is so important. To combat the ignorance so people will know the real from the fake. Rap from traps.

The radio—is that (t)rap? Or is there some positive there?

I’m not even gonna get into that

Why not?

Man, discussin’ corporate radio—
Hot this, Jammin’ that, Q this, Blazin’ that
—is like debating the pros and cons of rape.

But I will say this: Once you educate people about their history, about me, about themselves, they won’t even want to listen to what those stations are playing now. And that’s how those stations will die.

What about people who say you’re dead?

Again, education. I’m not talkin’ about school, but real education. Saying I’m dead is a shock thing, it makes people pay attention. Like, look, if you don’t watch out, Imma die.

I’m not dead, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t die. It doesn’t mean that I’m healthy either. I need to be conserved.

And in the end, people only conserve what they love, and they only love what they understand, and they will only understand what they are taught.

So you have to teach them.

That’s why you see the misogyny, the self-hatred—Black people are not being taught to love themselves. So Black people don’t conserve themselves or each other. It’s time to change that.

Word. Word. Well thank you.

[silence]

Hello…? Hello…? Hip hop? You still there?

Yes, still here. I ain’t going nowhere. I think I’ve got to put this phone back on the base and charge it, though.

All right, well thanks so much for your time.

Peace and remember to tell the people: I am their weapon! Peace.

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