Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Me and Mother Jones :: Hip-Hop Politics In A New Era

Here’s a preview of the second of my pieces out this month, an overview of the emergence of hip-hop activism in the U.S. and its prospects for 2008 and beyond from Mother Jones. There’s also a timeline…which reminds me to let you know that the book Born In The Bronx by the great Joe Conzo is finally out! More on that soon…for now check this:

Jerry Quickley, hip-hop poet, performance artist, and war correspondent, can describe hell. It is a post-“liberated” Baghdad street, jammed with beat-up Brazilian and Czech sedans spewing trails of carbon monoxide, clouds of dust thickening in the 125-degree heat. He is riding shotgun in his Iraqi friend’s car. “You have no traffic lights because there’s no electricity. You have no police because they’d just be shot or blown up,” he says. “You can barely breathe, traffic’s going nowhere.”

U.S. transport patrols fire into the air in an effort to clear traffic and ward off would-be bombers. Iraqi drivers desperately ram their clunkers into each other to get out of the way. “And while this is all going on,” Quickley says, “this friend of mine is playing songs by 50 Cent.”

The top-selling doo-ragged-and-body-oiled rapper—whose smash debut album was entitled “Get Rich Or Die Trying”, and whose 2005 album “The Massacre” occasioned a multi-platform onslaught that included a book, a feature movie, a bloody videogame, a bling-encrusted line of watches, shoe and “enhanced water” (“hydrate or die trying”) endorsements, not to mention tabloid headlines about a beef with a former protégé culminating in real-life shootings—warbles through the busted car stereo in a nasally drawl, “Many men wish death upon me.”

“Sarte was right,” thought Quickley at that moment. “This is ‘No Exit.'”

For many, this is what hip-hop has become: an omnipresent grisly übermacho soundtrack from which there appears no exit. Tensions exploded this past spring after the April firing of shock jock Don Imus, who had called the largely African American Rutgers women’s college basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s”. While Nike took out ads in the New York Times and on the web that read “Thank you, ignorance…Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak”, Fox News commentators like Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson lectured hip-hop advocates. For two days, Oprah Winfrey and an angry studio audience cornered Russell Simmons, the rapper Common, and music industry executives.

For many, this is what hip-hop has become: an omnipresent grisly, übermacho soundtrack. Don Imus unleashed the latest hip-hop backlash when he noted that in calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” he was using an argot popularized by rappers. The frenzy of finger-pointing that followed culminated with the spectacle of Bill O’Reilly lecturing hiphop advocates on sexism and the “n word,” while Oprah berated Russell Simmons and other industry executives. The talk show circus aside, there’s plenty of evidence that people are weary of corporate rap. Only 59 million rap albums were sold in the United States last year, down from 90 million in 2001. According to the University of Chicago’s Black Youth Project report, youths—particularly minorities—overwhelmingly believe that rap videos portray women of color in a negative light.

Once a cacophony of diverse voices, the genre now looks like a monoculture whose product, not unlike high-fructose corn
syrup, is designed not to nourish, but simply to get us hooked on other products, from McDonald’s to Courvoisier.

Quickley, though, remains a true believer in hip-hop’s transformational potential. For him, it goes back to the summer of
1976, three years before the Sugarhill Gang’s breakthrough “Rapper’s Delight”…

Read the whole thing here.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 5:12 am | 0 Comments

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

The Disappearing Model of Color

The always on-point Guy Trebay on the disappearance of models of color from the runway.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 8:43 am | 1 Comment

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

From The Whoa! File on Supersurveillance :: Dragonfly Spy Drones

This stuff is, uh, just bugged out.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 7:30 am | 0 Comments

Feed Me!

Revolutions

DJ Nu-Mark :: Take Me With You
DJ Nu-Mark remixes the diaspora…party ensues!
El General + Various Artists :: Mish B3eed : Khalas Mixtape V. 1
The crew at Enough Gaddafi bring the most important mixtape of 2011–the street songs that launched the Tunisian & Egyptian Revolutions…
J. Period + Black Thought + John Legend :: Wake Up! Radio mixtape
Remixing the classic LP w/towering contributions from Rakim, Q-Tip + Mayda Del Valle
Lyrics Born :: As U Were
Bright production + winning rhymes in LB’s most accessible set ever
Model Minority :: The Model Minority Report
The SoCal Asian American rap scene that produced FM keeps surprising…
Mogwai :: Hardcore Won't Die But You Will
Dare we call it majestic?
Taura Love Presents :: Picki People Volume One
From LA via Paris with T-Love, the global post-Dilla generation goes for theirs…

Word

Cormac McCarthy :: Blood Meridian
Read this now before Hollywood f*#ks it up.
Dave Tompkins :: How To Wreck A Nice Beach
Book of the decade, nuff said.
Joe Flood :: The Fires
The definitive account of why the Bronx burned
Mark Fischer :: Capitalist Realism
K-Punk’s philosophical manifesto reads like his blog, snappy and compelling. Just replace pop music with post-post-Marxism. Pair with Josh Clover’s 1989 for the full hundred.
Nell Irvin Painter :: The History of White People
Well worth a Glenn Beck rant…and everyone’s scholarly attention
Robin D.G. Kelley :: Thelonious Monk : The Life And Times Of An American Original
Monk as he was meant to be written
Tim Wise :: Colorblind
Wise’s call for a color-conscious agenda in an era of “post-racial” politics is timely
Victor Lavalle :: Big Machine
Victor Lavalle does it again!