Hell No This Ain't A Synthesis

If you know a little about hip-hop, you know that there's a widely perceived divide between "conscious" rap, and the mainstream stuff you hear on the radio. The narrative goes that conscious rap deals with politics, and leads to progress, while mainstream rap deals with diamonds, guns, and crunk juice, and is destructive to the hip-hop community. Hence, artist after artist proclaims, "hip hop is dead,"and the realness of the music has been sapped by materialist industry automatons like, say, Souljah Boy.

That's the story of hip-hop that any good fan knows. But what we don't always acknowledge is how the very act of telling that story is productive for the conscious rapper. It is a means of acquiring, in the eyes of fans and fellow artists, authenticity. It is a way of distinguishing oneself against the mainstream, and, as such, superior to it. Calling oneself a conscious rapper, or calling hip hop dead, is an elitist act which not only makes presumptuous claims about what's good for hip-hop, but also reinforces one's own position as insulated intellectual, and is by and large an act of vanity (To be clear, the act of "conscious rapping" is a beautiful thing, but the category is not).

Put that on the backburner for a hot minute, and let's turn to Beyonce and Single Ladies. The impetus for writing this was a minor question: "Is Single Ladies a simple upgrade of an old Betty Page dance?" That question birthed a major inquiry: "Is Single Ladies just another example of pop music upholding the ideological status quo?" That question birthed pages and pages of debate on this blog. And by asking that question, the big question, we stabbed ourselves in the heart.

For that question assumes that pop music is, essentially, an ideologically reproductive discourse. It labels pop artists as the automated mouthpieces of traditional American ideology, which in this case means consumerist, masculinist, and heterosexist. And then it asks, what is Beyonce's role in furthering those causes? Thus, we find, built into our very question is the elitist, intellectual, bourgeois, and liberal viewpoint that mainstream culture is generally bad for the people, for it upholds the status quo of conservative practice. So far so good. So we ask again:

Is Single Ladies just another example of pop music upholding the ideological status quo?

But while this question allows us liberals to feel safe about out own position as "above" mainstream culture, we actually prevent any type of liberal change to happen. That is, our very question cuts off the potential mouthpiece of progress (Beyonce), by constructing her position in society as powerless and ideologically stale. The question collapses our own ability to see Beyonce as progressive in her politics. And if you know anything about Beyonce, then you know her politics are radical. So, we silence the radical thought.

Beyond that, by critiquing pop stars on the grounds of stale ideology, like critiquing mainstream rap, we reproduce our own social status as the liberal intellectual elite. That is, it's incredibly safe for us, the critics, to call out pop music on its consumerist and masculinist tendencies, because that doesn't risk the production of new knowledge, knowledge that could be potentially harmful to our own comfortable position. If we listened differently to what Beyonce was saying, then we might actually hear something we think threatening-- that her, a pop star, really does support the swift execution of white masculinist rule in this country. By carrying out our typical liberal critique, we silence that voice.

So, here's your choice: A) You can buy into mainstream culture, and support mainstream ideology, or B) You can stand at a safe distance, and criticize it, further limiting mainstream culture's power to actually accomplish change. Both are ready-made, easy, risk-free options. And in fact, both support the status quo. You can take the red pill or the blue pill, and both come in a nice, safe, palatable package. Hell, THEY'RE THE SAME FUCKING PILL. This is the way American cultural hegemony works- it doesn't hide, it isn't secret, it's not a conspiracy. What it is is, though, is a dirty trickster, and it will convince you that your liberal, safe, stance on these issues is progressive, when in actuality your position is merely one half of the dialectical unity between you, the liberal, and the object of your criticism, the mainstream. Thus, we remain on our untouchable, protected, liberal island, the island of whiteness, class, and intellectualism, and all the while real instances of consumerism, racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, etc... continue to circle us like hungry wolves.

So for those who are quick to proclaim Hip Hop Is Dead, or who believe that Single Ladies is just another sexy woman engaged in soliciting the male gaze, think about the power of your own gaze in constructing those stereotypical narratives. Think about the power of risk-free, procedural critique, which doesn't allow room for change, but rather encourages the further insulation of your own liberal values. Think about this, as you recede slowly into some irrelevant, white, safe middle distance, and your voice changes to that of the cranky old scholar, who's lost any ability to see the world other than the only way they know how.

what dreams may come

Nate Robinson played professional basketball last night for the first time in 30 days. D'Antoni called his name, and he didn't move. He said he didn't understand his coach. He just sat there, on the bench, like he always does, until a teammate told him that the coach wanted him to play. So with 3 minutes left in the opening period Nate comes into the game. In total, he grabs 41 points, 8 assists, shooting 18 of 24 from the field. He hits the last two shots for the Knicks to force OT, and scores 11 points in overtime. He scores 19 of the Knicks last 22.

Over in Jersey, we call Nate High Risk/ High Reward. There's this feeling, that putting him in the game is like going for a three pointer to win-- if you hit, you're a hero, and if you miss, you deserved to be questioned on why you didn't just play for the tie, find an easier shot. He's the polar opposite of compatriot David Lee, who gives solid numbers every night, but lacks the turn-it-up ability of real superstars.

But we have to question this easy way of thinking, this racialized differentiation of David Lee, white, Mr. Reliable, and Robinson, black, the Sparkplug that Couldn't, the Brainless Wonderboy. These are the stereotypes of an NBA that has been "overrun" with black players who are "all athleticism and creativity, but no brains." This way of thinking speaks more to an American insecurity with the dominance of black athletes in professional sports than it does to any truth about the "racial essences of ballplayers."

Last night, Nate, 5'9", was practically walking to the basket. That he scored 19 of the Knicks last 22 is one thing, but he was doing it on layups. The Hawks periodically threw Mike Bibby (crafty veteran), Joe Johnson (superstar), Marvin Williams (young-star-on-rise), and Josh Smith (high-flying-shot-swatter), out to guard him, to no avail. Note that Bibby is the shortest of these men, at 6'2", while Smith and Williams are both 6'9", a full foot taller than Nate. With ease he dribbled around each, finding his way to the cup time and again, using hesitation moves to literally get uncontested 2-footers. When they tried fouling him, he still made the shots. When obvious fouls weren't called, he still made the shots.

Only after a long stretch of finding layups, already in full turn-it-up mode, did Nate take what traditionalists call The Bad Shot, a contested pull-up 30 footer with little time taken off the shot clock. Naturally, he sank it, hopping up and down towards a howling Knicks bench after the Hawks were forced to call timeout.

We must question The Bad Shot. We must free ourselves from the chains of tradition, and think, for a long while, about this Bad Shot. Statistical evidence has shown that being "On Fire" is a questionable proposition. Then we must also question statistics. Because "On Fire" is a feeling buzzing through a crowd, a general notion that when the ball leaves the hand, it will find the net. The and-1 play is its proof, that contact will do nothing to deter Hot Hand from scoring. But the deep 3, The Bad Shot, this is the true meaning of On Fire, and we must accept that in hindsight, it was always going in.

Which leaves us with Nate, still a Knick, still sitting on the bench for attitude problems, for making bad decisions, who, when given even a glimmer of playing time, leaves the net in a heap of ashes, who doesn't see the other 9 players on the court, but a clear and open path to the basket every time the rock is in his hands. Our only recourse is to blame ourselves for what we have done to him, for planting the seed in his mind that he is anything but a baller. For using him as the racialized and criminalized symbol of risky basketball. This is the side of Nate that remains unspoken, that who we think he is is actually just who we say he is. Last night, he was saying something to us.

circles of hell

My sophomore year at school was a dark time. I spent most of it either cooped up in my dormroom or in the darkroom trying to make pictures of walls that looked like this:

I only had a few allies, mainly two oversized Philips speakers and Limewire. So this is something of an ode to them. I felt like I was in the beginning of Clan In Da Front, when you can hear RZA's voice from some middle distance, reverbed to high hell, belting, "UP FROM THE 36 CHAMBERRSSSSS" as if he were caught in some dungeon, currently escaping. That's the place where I was: dungeon-chamber #36, surrounded by empty walls, in the ad libs before the music even starts.

Wu-Tang was something of a lifeline, so I made a project of systematically combing through Wu affiliate albums. So this is something of an ode to Wu. The further out from the Wu core I got, the darker the music seemed to get. And then I found Killah Priest's Heavy Mental ('98), orbiting in the Wu solar system somewhere out near Pluto. Priest got on the map with a feature verse on "B.I.B.L.E." off GZA's undisputed classic Liquid Swords, but it was his solo albums that really reached out and grabbed me by the throat. See I found something in those early tracks that I identified with: deep thudding bass drums, crunchy snares, and melody samples that sounded like murderers whistling in empty alleys or Egyptian snake-charmers.

Guns, shootouts and crack sales, black males in packed jails, trapped in hell, no peace, cold streets, surrounded by po-lice this whole week, buildings with no heat, low lights and gaspipes with slow leaks, dog fights, lowlifes, throw dice the whole night...

Now I'm not gonna front-- I'm a white dude that grew up in a well-off NJ suburb, in comfort. I don't profess to know the experience above. I have not been systematically oppressed based on my race, I didn't grow up with drugs on the corner, or face economic depravity in the form of an an under-cared for housing development. These are issues that Priest speaks so eloquently about, but they are not my story. And yet, I turned to these recordings when I was depressed, and found music that spoke to me.

Underneath Priest's covert politics is a raw emotion, unfiltered by notions of popular culture or what rap music "should be." Priest puts the inherent conflict and violence of personhood under a spotlight, expounding on it as a means of catharsis. His method involves synthesizing contemporary stories of plight with ancient imagery derived from mythology, history, religion, etc... This world of antiquity acts as a vector through which the MC interfaces with the present. In other words, the violence and zealotry of, say, a Mayan sacrifice, has a particular relevance to the world Priest encounters around him:

I saw Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush

Barefoot suckin from the titties of a wolf

Upon the brazen altar, six men

Offer their only daughter/ splashin holy water

I ran for the camcorders, now I'm plagued with curses

I roam the Earth's surface, snatchin purses

Allergic to Catholic Churches, what's the purpose?

Religious worship is worthless

I visit ancient sanctuaries, where the saints were married

But now they buried/ Cause of Satan's fury

I faced the jury

Held in court, like Christ nailed to a cross

Confront my knowledge, like Christ in front of Pontius Pilate

Days of violence, standing in a haunted palace

The government wants my wallet

(From "If You Don't Know")

And this worked for me. It spoke to pain, pressure, politics... the things that were weighing me down, and will weigh me down again. He seemed to understand the feeling of a restless desert search, pocked with mirages of success, friendship, $, love. So I turned the volume up, despite the complaints from hallmates. I shut the door. I did push-ups. I drove around with the windows up. And things started to turn, a slow viscous stirring in the soul maybe. Or just better housing and better friends. Or maybe just a little Killah Priest. So this is an ode to him.

Going up

The past summer has been full of books for me, and few have sated my thirst after reading the Pevear translation of Anna Karenina. I've searched all of my standbys and classic writers, Fitzgerald, Forster (and others not beginning with "F"), but none have kept my attention after Tolstoy. That is, until I opened up Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist.

It's about elevator inspectors, and it's exhilarating.

Two warring factions in the Department of Elevator Inspectors vie for dominance: The Empiricists, who go by the book and rigorously check every structural and mechanical detail, and the Intuitionist, whose observational methods involve meditation and instinct. Set in a dirty, working class, mob-run American metropolis sometime after the civil rights movement, the book focuses on Lila Mae Watson, the first black female inspector in the country.

The book quickly unwinds form this initial novelty (elevator inspectors? really? how quaint) into a dark and hyper-realistic city with heavy suggestions of Film Noir, while going off on philosophical excursions into Lila Mae's educational life, and delving into her struggle with racism and politics. Blade Runner comes to mind, and much of the descriptors of the book I can think of come from film, rather than literature. But the writing is incredibly artful, not only the prose but the structure as well.

And while the book is going in what seems like one hundred directions at once, it's all headed upwards. The elevator provides not only the organizing content, but melds all of these ideas and themes into one focus. Never before have I considered the theoretical, psychological and even social implications of these metal boxes, but this work of art has given me new eyes onto the dark chutes we so depend on.

The book is a thriller, a philosophical investigation of culture and fear, an excursion of dark humor and is an entirely rich, full invented world in it's own right. From a vivid flashback to Lila Mae's final inspector's examination to the random mentions of Lift magazine, the world unfurls without pretense, each one accomplished with a whip-crack.

From the book:

"'If we have decided that elevator studies - nuts and bolts Empiricism - imagined elevators from a human, and therefore inherently alien point of view, wouldn't the next logical step, after we've adopted the Intuitionist perspective, be the build an elevator the right way? With what we've learned?'

'Construct and elevator from the elevator's point of view?'

'Wouldn't that be the perfect elevator?'"

The Intuitionist is just such a thing: a piece of steel constructed from air, a book separate from book-ness. Frankly, it's an ascension.