All Hip-Hop is Conscious Except for “Conscious” Hip-Hop
Deep stuff! Props to GRANDGOOD for the link. Check it!
by Krisna Best
Here’s the content:
Freedom Summer: A HipHop for Justice Concert featuring politically conscience [sic!] hiphop, information such as: how to file a police complaint, Know Your Rights and Cop Watch trainings and spoken word and visual art from from the Young Scholars for Justice Network. All ages are invited.
WHEN: Friday, July 11, 2008, doors open at 7pm. Open mic, youth poetry and spoken word from 7-9pm. Speak outs, networking and deejay music will follow with HipHop acts/Know Your Rights trainings from 10pm-2am
WHY: To entertain, educate and organize members of the community around issues concerning police misconduct, racial profiling and the impact of the war on drugs and the war on youth (via programs masquerading as anti-gang/anti-graffiti efforts).
Here’s the breakdown:
Despite the problem that “politically conscience” is a phrase containing an adverb that precedes a noun, we at the D&HHP don’t get stuck on grammar.
I just couldn’t help exposing the irony that as “conscious” hip-hop parades itself as self-evidently intelligent, its protagonists sometimes reveal it to be just what it is: ignorant as hell.
This hip-hop show, like thousands of others like it, are gonna “teach” us how to file a police complaint. Well folks, if that’s all “conscious” hip-hop has to offer us, we need to tell it, “Peace.”
Now, I certainly realize that my insignificant rant is not gonna make this elitist cultural hangover disappear; that I will “educate” people on how to file a complaint to the hip-hop 5-0 (who would that be, the Temple of Hip-hop or the Zulu Nation?) about the wackness of this synthetic, bourgie phenomenon called “conscious” hip-hop and the same handful of rappers who get boxed into to this unfortunate category, and that it will somehow dissipate.
Let me tell you what hip-hop heads back in the day did (who mainly get remembered for everything BUT what they actually DID) for themselves without some external vacuum music culture pushing them to do so: when the police beat Rodney King nearly to death and were given a free pass by the State to keep it up, the people of L.A. burned and destroyed the centers of wealth, power, and exploitation ($1,000,000,000 worth. Yes, billion.) and all the cops could do was stand on the sidelines. Why? Because their complaints got them jack shit except more violence. Because a white supremacist institution’s only function is to sustain and perpetuate the permanency of those who rule us.
When the next outburst of American anger and determination comes, it’s going to unleash such a creative force that it will make Ice Cube and Public Enemy look like child’s play (let alone Talib Kweli and his “revolutionary entrepreneurialism”). The next surge of violent creative potential will be from all those hip-hop heads that the “conscious” crowd dismiss in their veiled middle class racism. It will be those cats Black, Brown, and White, with gold fronts, gold chains, saggy pants, and cocked hats who throw off the old society and give us something worth living for. Why? Because they know there is no alternative WITHIN the present arrangement. They know that those who rule are unfit to do so and no amount of diversification of the rich and powerful can prove otherwise.
They know “rights” don’t mean a god damn thing.
There are certain rights that we have on paper that we don’t actually have. But there are certain rights we don’t have on paper that we DO have. The right to rebel. That’s what the fuck hip-hop is about.
In the 1960s it was cultural nationalists that sold out the black movement because they found their freedom in political patronage, in dashikis, and in middle class values, all the while workers in factories and lumpen in the streets were getting the shit beat out of them by cops, by union bosses, and by politicians.
Now the cultural nationalists are these phony backpackers telling us that real hip-hop means being peaceful and being philanthropists and supporting Obama. Well hip-hop has never been about that.
I used to say it. I used to say the exact opposite. I was the DJ at the backpacker hip-hop shows, handing out “know your rights” cards to the audience thinking that was the most militant shit ever. But that’s not how movements happen.
A great MC who gets chained to the “conscious” label once said something profound. “Things change when people get a sense of their value.” Most definitely.
So keep wearing out Common Sense’s Resurrection, keep thinking People Under the Stairs are the dopest hip-hop in 15 years. The rest of us, and the most of us who make up this hip-hop generation will pass you by like the Pharcyde.
Peace.
Via Democracy & Hip-Hop Project
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
1. “Conscious” hip-hop is only as conscious as the people in the hip-hop scene; which is reflective of the general public’s level of “consciousness”: a public who is largely deaf, dumb, and blind; slaves of a mental death, and easily lead by reactionaries in a negative direction.
2. As long as revolutionaries stay outside the hip-hop scene and throw stones at it, the artists (and along with their support network of artist management, promoters, DJs, radio program directors, journalists, etc) will never improve their overall political line.
3. Revolutionaries need to make themselves useful to the hip-hop scene by promoting shows, hosting radio programs that do more than play what’s hot in the street (Hard Knock Radio in SF/Oakland, hosted by Davey D is a prime example), and by becoming artists (emcee, DJ, graf, b-boy/b-girl) themselves.
4. “Know Your Rights” cards represent the level of active consciousness amongst the people. People bear witness to the raw truth of the matter, but won’t step up and do what must be done; they will beg and plead with the powers that be, as the preachers and politicians tell them to do. This goes back to point #1.
5. Advocating or building a copwatch is a better viable alternative, but you won’t recruit very many to do the actual work. I know this from direct experience. And you for sure won’t recruit very many (at this point in time) by advocating or attempting to build a BLA (Black Liberation Army)-type response to police terrorism.
Most folks spend the majority of their time chasing a paycheck (and then a good time via drink and drugs that can help them escape their miserable lives) and are deeply afraid of attempting to “rock the boat”(and with good reason). Both of these things contribute to their profound alienation from others in their own community.
Many may tell you that they are against police terrorism, but will be the first to call the police if they have a problem with a neighbor or a relative. They support the state, its general ideology, and its institutions with very little forethought or hindsight. Only when they themsleves or someone close to them is injured (or killed) do they stand up and “fight”. Or, at the very least, complain under their breath to the people closest to them.
6. Many of the so-called “gangsta” rappers are much more conscious of the state and what it represents. However, many (if not most of them) wish to be the one(s) with the whip(s) and the gun(s), the downtown boss that acts as a John Gotti-like figure; the “big man” who be “runnin’ thangs” on the streets and gettin’ his paper. “He who has the gold (and the army) makes the rules” and they know and respect this. They grasp the fact that running a government is little different than running a large-scale dope-selling operation better than most revoltuionaries do.