THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.3,ISSUE#14, DEC/2022-FEB/2023
Hip Hop culture – as manifest in B-boying (breakdancing), graffiti writing, DJing and eMCeeing – constitutes aesthetic rebellion through artistic commitment towards social affirmation of freedom situated against oppressive historical conditions. This aesthetic rebellion inherent to Hip Hop discloses a creative dynamic of transcendence and resistance originally born out of cultural improvisations of oppressed African American, Afro-Caribbean and Latino American communities of New York City (with the South Bronx as the epicenter) in the late 1970’s.[1]
Each original manifestation of Hip Hop culture gives form to this avowal of freedom as a phenomenon of aesthetic rebellion against the normative gaze of established power. An open affirmation of social freedom that implicates postmodern lumpenproletariat[2] subjectivity is thus manifest through these original four elements of Hip Hop culture, and though widely extolled, their worth as genuine aesthetic rebellion is rarely understood.
The B-boy breakdances by pushing rhythmic motion past previous limits towards the world and towards one another, redefining lived experience through transcendent movement that resists gravity in ways that pop, lock and uprock towards disrupting established structures of meaning by breaking out of an overdetermination-from-without that structures human subjectivity though formalized parameters of traditional dance practice.
The graffiti artist or writer engages in visual Art as going out for fame, and explodes antiquated notions of acceptable locations for artistic placement towards aesthetically rupturing the normative gaze that informs philistine accusations of vandalism, as the urban landscape itself becomes the ultimate canvas for postmodern hieroglyphics brought to life with radical imagination, daring and aerosol spray paint.
The DJ transforms the vinyl turntable from technology designed to play recorded music into an instrument fundamentally responsible for musical creation. And by channeling the live energy of block parties and park jams into recording studio sessions, the DJ produces beats as musical ruptures that reject formal notions of harmonious melody, notes and chords in favor of an unyielding re-composition of intense rhythmic fragments that serve as the sonic foundation for the poetic lyrical discourse of the eMCee.
The eMCee unleashes thought as poetic lyrical discourse, by which meaning transcends the logic of grammar, with an intentionality of situated consciousness towards realizing the human condition through visceral narratives of life and death, love and suffering, celebration and defiance, delivered with a spirit of sh*t talkin’ Blues inflected Muhammad Ali against the world style confidence implicated through struggle against the racist dehumanization that is implicit to the normative gaze of a western imperialist continuum. Through the creative movement of such poetic lyrical discourse, the eMCee engages in urgent revaluations of lumpenproletariat identity towards constituting postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity as resurrection from social death by way of creative emancipatory culture relevant to the underground of modernity. The eMCee works towards mastering the art of poetic lyrical discourse in a manner that weds intellect to rhythm towards giving birth to yet another unprecedented cultural phenomenon of transcendence and resistance arising from the Blues metaphysic.
As manifestations of social freedom affirmed through culture, Bboying, graffiti writing, DJing and eMCeeing constitute the foundations of Hip Hop as aesthetic rebellion against the normative gaze of established power towards challenging the legitimacy of imposed creative limitations and revealing a distinctive style and vision of the social, through contemporary reformulations of the Blues metaphysic towards actualizing a unique set of corresponding principles and valuations as Art. This aesthetic orientation emphasizes unlimited innovative originality over formulaic imitation, prioritizes that which is rugged and unfixed over that which is smooth and polished, and exalts the Raw as a qualitative approach of unadulterated aesthetic possibility that doesn’t seek to filter the Real that situates lived Black experience, but rather reintroduces the Real through new cultural manifestations of social freedom as Art that commits sensory experience towards a horizon of rupture from traditional representation.
In this sense, Hip Hop aesthetics are informed by an artistic commitment towards the original, the rugged and the Raw as emancipatory revaluations constituted from the lived experience and creative imagination of postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity unique to the neo-colonial American ghetto[3].
As such, when resolutely cultivated as aesthetic rebellion, Hip Hop culture introduces potentialities towards a redemptive artistic and intellectual vantage point from which the socio-historically oppressed, the culturally marginalized, the economically exploited, the spiritually dehumanized, the globally dispossessed, the racially outcast, the outsiders, the wretched of the earth who constitute the underground of modernity, can critically engage an oppressive society through postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity. For postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity speaks to the needs of those most ready for, or at least most in need of, radical social change within the global context of a decaying old world order of western imperialist power.
The lived experience of grassroots Black and Latino communities, who rely on constant social improvisation to thwart oppressive historical conditions as a matter of human survival, is crucial in understanding the soul of Hip Hop culture. The soul of Hip Hop, the original creative force and cultural relevance of Hip Hop as transcendence and resistance through Art, is derived from its ability to give voice to the conditions and concerns that inform and implicate postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity.
The Hip Hop intellectual, who arises from the neo-colonial American ghetto or identifies with and embraces postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity, becomes responsible for cultivating a critical consciousness that meets the urgent needs of the underground of modernity as ascendant humanity struggling with racist dehumanization and spiritual alienation in the streets of a world in structural transition and socio-historical upheaval. The cultural dynamics of this phenomenon, in turn, necessarily contribute to the birth of Hip Hop intellectual resistance, specifically through the growth and evolution of the eMCee as the primary initiator of Hip Hop intellectual activity.
Though Hip Hop culture constitutes an aesthetic rebellion that encompasses several avenues of artistic manifestation, we shall, in this case, focus on the music[4], with particular emphasis on the function of the eMCee as Hip Hop intellectual.[5] The creative praxis of Hip Hop music can be characterized as rappin’ to the beat, an artistic intentionality that unites poetic lyrical discourse to challenging rhythmic ruptures, and clearly has tremendous intellectual implications. And yet, although Hip Hop poetic lyrical discourse facilitates cultural transcendence tailored to captivate crowds at neighborhood block parties, it also involves a social reckoning of Black people as ascendant humanity awakening to consciousness[6] through intellectual resistance against the racist dehumanization inherent in an advanced neo-liberal capitalist society.[7]
Hip Hop music maximizes the accessibility of social freedom against structural limitations that situate the underground of modernity by introducing a sonic unity of poetic lyrical discourse and rhythm as rupture against the normative gaze of established power. This poetic lyrical discourse ultimately contributes towards a vast reservoir of emancipatory thought that begins critically questioning the concrete socio-historical context of the same limited avenues of freedom which gave it birth. Accompanying and even propelling the rise of this poetic lyrical discourse of resistance are eMCees with a critical consciousness and radical imagination that define cultural authenticity as the urgent necessity to communicate the oppressive conditions of lived Black experience. Still, the party music aspect of Hip Hop, as poetic lyrical discourse of transcendence that celebrates improvised cultural freedom situated within oppressive socio-historical circumstances, is still very much alive and is the most commercially viable, economically exploitable and popularly acceptable form of lyrical expression.
Regarding the Art of eMCeeing, the dialectic intellectual movement of Hip Hop music as call and response is most visible in freestyle ciphers and rap battles. Through these social activities of poetic cooperation and lyrical competition, the aesthetics, techniques and skills of eMCeeing are shared, mastered and pushed forward as Art. The freestyle cipher begins with an eMCee rappin’ and rhymin’ as others begin to gather around in a loose knit circle or cipher. As one eMCee finishes or is creatively interrupted, then another eMCee takes control of the poetic lyrical discourse and contributes to the spontaneous intentionality of social consciousness and poetic continuation of lyrical flow.
The freestyle cipher facilitates aesthetic growth and artistic development by allowing the eMCee to feed directly off of grassroots response to artistic innovations and creative ingenuity or lack thereof. If the eMCee does well in a cipher, the crowd remembers such aesthetic contribution and the artistic reputation of the eMCee then grows amongst the grassroots community in the streets. If the eMCee disappoints, then the artistic reputation of the eMCee suffers and often requires that the eMCee work twice as hard next time to get the social respect needed to enhance their artistic reputation as an eMCee. To achieve this social respect and grassroots validation often requires intellectual development from the eMCee as culturally manifest through the qualitative creative progress of their poetic lyrical discourse.
Freestyle ciphers constitute a steady progressive artistic evolutionary experience when compared to the immediate impact and tremendous intellectual growth that can take place during a lyrical clash or rap battle. Battles allow for dynamic revolutionary leaps of artistic endeavor as skills, techniques and aesthetics of eMCeeing are disclosed through two eMCees putting their creative abilities to the ultimate test by clashing through the Art of lyrical dominance for cultural recognition and social respect from the grassroots community. Lyrical battles can occur in freestyle ciphers, on stage and even on wax (recorded music). To emerge as the champion from a lyrical clash or rap battle, the eMCee has to out rhyme another eMCee while winning over the allegiance of any listeners or spectators. Ultimately, for the eMCee to triumph, it becomes not only a creative test of artistic will towards moving the crowd, but a question of competitively outthinking and outwitting your opponent under immense pressure.
As such, the aesthetic development of eMCeeing is dependent upon improvised poetics and spontaneous critical thinking throughout the fierce Hip Hop intellectual crucible of lyrical conflict inherent to rap battles. The artistic dialectic of lyrical battles actually increases the possibility that Hip Hop intellectual standards can be maintained in spite of the growing influence of the entertainment industry on Hip Hop culture.
Before Hip Hop culture’s uncritical assimilation of capitalist values, even a commercially successful eMCee selling millions of records would have a very difficult time earning any social respect from the grassroots, as long as that eMCee did not artistically measure up to the poetic lyrical discourse of recognized Hip Hop intellectual standard bearers. The expansive monopolistic control of mainstream media neutralized any vestiges of aesthetic rebellion initiated through Hip Hop culture, as successfully as postmodern lumpenproletariat orientations were financially coopted towards prioritizing the exploitative interests of advanced neo-liberal capitalism against any emphasis on emancipatory social commitments through Hip Hop intellectual resistance.
Initially resistant to providing a venue for Hip Hop music on the airwaves, the eventual embrace of Hip Hop culture by mass media, especially radio and television, slowly but surely eroded Hip Hop intellectual standards of aesthetic rebellion through sheer repetition and savvy mainstream propaganda. For a time, the aesthetic rebellion inherent to Hip Hop itself served as a grassroots counterweight against any attempts to co-opt Hip Hop culture for further exploitation by advanced global capital. Little by little, however, the original, rugged and raw aesthetics that once defined the creative scope of Hip Hop music were replaced with smoother polished harmonious derivations in sound. Thus, allowing continuous experimental fusions of r&b and pop music to triumph commercially by overcompensating for a severe lack of creative edge with loud celebratory nonconformist debauchery, that although at times offends imperial mainstream sensibilities, never actually threatens established structures of western imperialist power. This mainstream media friendly softcore musical landscape is more tailored to the eMCee as party motivator, than the eMCee as Hip Hop intellectual who thrives in a more hardcore sonic environment.
At a club or party setting, where people can experience an intersubjective resonance of social openness and the possibility of community expressed through movement and dance, the beat takes priority and as such most club bangers aren’t held to a high lyrical standard. Still, this in no way absolves the eMCee from being responsible to move the crowd with captivating lyrics whenever performing live & direct at a club, show or party. Mastery of the Art of eMCeeing is revealed through poetic lyrical discourse that unites cultural transcendence and intellectual resistance through a critical consciousness against oppression that resonates in solidarity with even the most feverish unruly party-hungry crowd of postmodern lumpenproletariat. This exemplifies the emancipatory potentialities of the eMCee as Hip Hop intellectual.
As each successive generation of eMCees first artistically masters then artistically improves on the lyrical prowess and creative ingenuity of their predecessors, aesthetic potentialities of Hip Hop music as cultural transcendence and intellectual resistance continue to grow. It’s no coincidence that as the eMCee continues pushing the boundaries of poetic lyrical discourse, the scope and range of Hip Hop music moves beyond the cultural transcendence of partygoing multitudes and expands exponentially to include expressions of intellectual resistance against marginalization, alienation and oppression as socially experienced and consciously lived by the postmodern lumpenproletariat and artistically interpreted by the eMCee, as the primary force responsible in initiating Hip Hop intellectual activity.
Even a limited understanding of the aesthetics of eMCeeing can assist in revealing potential patterns of conformist or progressive social engagement. Simple rhyme patterns, combined with shallow one-dimensional content, can be viewed as indicative of social complacency or worse actual social acquiescence to the status quo, thus making the eMCee more susceptible to reactionary ideology. Complex lyrical flows combined with depth and meaning can be seen as the work of an alert mind with a critical threshold that is more likely to be dissatisfied with and rebellious against the normative gaze of established power, thus introducing emancipatory potentialities of socio-historical unrest that in turn necessitate the continued development of Hip Hop intellectual resistance.
Through the efforts of the eMCee as Hip Hop intellectual, Hip Hop music can function as a grassroots archive of emancipatory discourse for the underground of modernity who can become increasingly disenchanted with academic institutions that are geared to preserve the interests of the imperial mainstream-as-civil society. The spiritual joy, historical tragedy and social vitality of lived Black experience inform this poetic lyrical discourse through the dialectic intentionality of call and response as rhythm and intellect. The beat breaks through sonic inhibitions by initiating a continuous musical rupture that provides rhythm as an opening for potentialities of lyrical flow towards penetrating situated consciousness through focused poetic onslaught.
The intensity and quality of intellectual provocation however, is dependent upon the creative capacity of the eMCee. For it is through poetic lyrical discourse that the eMCee discloses a wide variety of lived Black experience, emotion and radical imagination interwoven as creative mosaics of thought and artistically developed into a coded language that is culturally accessible to the grassroots. The degree to which one is in tune with the underground of modernity is reflected in one’s ability to understand the veiled meaning behind much of what is expressed in Hip Hop lyrics.
However, the emancipatory potential of Hip Hop aesthetics as cultural transcendence and intellectual resistance is in constant danger of being subordinated to the needs of an entertainment industry that approaches Hip Hop as a vast and dynamic resource of cultural capital to be exploited. This drive of exploitation in an advanced neo-liberal capitalist society is constant and unyielding. The continued exploitation of Hip Hop music by global capital creates a spiritually suffocating environment for the eMCee functioning as a Hip Hop intellectual.
As such, the eMCee in imperial mainstream accessible globally commercialized Hip Hop music functions more as the party rocker of Hip Hop’s early days. Whereas the eMCee who makes music geared towards postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity can still function as the critical voice of the underground of modernity. The eMCee as party rocker has a definite and authentic role in Hip Hop culture, however the same also holds true of the eMCee as Hip Hop intellectual.
When original heads complain about the current state of Hip Hop, they speak to the fact that the socially sanctioned easily exploitable party music aspect of Hip Hop, though legitimate, does not encompass the full range of Hip Hop culture. For though potentially an extremely financially rewarding choice, the exploitation that the party rockin’ eMCee often embraces without hesitation, must be navigated and even resisted by the eMCee as Hip Hop intellectual.
The price paid by the eMCee who embraces his own exploitation by global capitalism, is that of passing along the function of Hip Hop intellectual activity to the Hip Hop journalist. Initially, this invariably assists the development of Hip Hop intellectual resistance by providing a different media platform from which to engage in the maintenance of the aesthetic standards handed down to the journalist from the eMCee. This in turn, produces a flourishing of literary endeavor as Hip Hop intellectual resistance makes the transition from poetry to prose. At once, this dynamic move from poetry to prose widens the cultural base and expands the intellectual horizons of the postmodern lumpenproletariat. No longer just the representative of the particularities of the neo-colonial American ghetto that birthed Hip Hop culture, the postmodern lumpenproletariat begins speaking to the worldwide needs of the underground of modernity by incorporating within itself, any who reject advanced neo-liberal capitalist valuations regardless of their ‘race’ or class specific origins.
The value of Hip Hop, as cultural transcendence and intellectual resistance for the socio-historically oppressed African American, Afro-Caribbean and Latino communities, now also becomes increasingly effective in speaking to the alienation of ‘white’ youth.[8] The Hip Hop journalist, in this sense, fills the dual role of gatekeeper and guide for the growing masses of disaffected ‘white’ youth involved in Hip Hop cultural activity. This progressive cultural marriage lasts as long as the Hip Hop journalist functions in accordance with authentic Hip Hop intellectual standards of aesthetic rebellion. As soon as Hip Hop intellectual endeavor becomes subordinate to the financial priorities of successful magazine production and maintenance, the honeymoon between the Hip Hop journalist and Hip Hop intellectual standards becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
The Hip Hop journalist, now increasingly at odds with the Hip Hop intellectual, and needing a new and more attractive commercially viable subject with compatible standards of mutual exploitation, embraces the party rockin’ eMCee who currently projects himself as a one-dimensional thugs to riches American ideology fulfilling drug dealing capitalist entrepreneur. This unholy union between wack eMCee, uncritical Hip Hop journalist, conformist music magazine, compliant mass media, and advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization, is responsible for this contemporary era where any critique of exploitation by the eMCee in attempting to regain his role as Hip Hop intellectual is viewed as unfair and labeled as a form of hatin’. Aside from lending itself to socially displacing and muting actual ‘racial’ hatred from its origins in western imperialist power; Hatin’, as a dogmatic slang term which is commonly used to equate critical thought to an unstable emotional outlook, is an extremely popular projection of the normative gaze and works towards preventing the eMCee from properly functioning as a Hip Hop intellectual.
The more Hip Hop journalism functions as an unofficial mouthpiece of advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization, the more it generates inauthentic Hip Hop intellectual activity from a cultural vacuum that can then be taken advantage of by the sanctioned interpreters of imperial mainstream culture and social legitimacy found in the world of higher education.[9] Although the academic establishment does contain a few rebels willing to embrace postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity in discursive fights against Empire, the dynamic between those who understand Hip Hop culture through lived experience and those who would reduce Hip Hop culture to a mere ‘object’ of inquiry is at best rife with social tension and cultural volatility.[10] Rather than shy away from the streets however, academics should seize upon this opportunity for socio-historical relevance. While Hip Hop intellectuals, who have nothing but disdain for the academy, should maximize this opportunity for much needed theoretical growth. Working together in a spirit of unity in diversity, the actual potentialities of emancipatory praxis for both can be greatly enhanced.
Hip Hop allows for confrontations of oppression through Art as a correlative dynamic unity of cultural transcendence and intellectual resistance. And yet, though potentially giving voice to the need for revolutionary change through the lived experience of the postmodern lumpenproletariat, Hip Hop culture is still no substitute for revolution.[11] For although the open affirmation of social freedom situated against oppressive historical conditions is indeed the condition of possibility for constituting the aesthetic rebellion inherent to Hip Hop culture, this should never be confused with the elimination of oppression itself. As such, we should be wary of Hip Hop intellectuals engaged in reformist social activism who may at times succumb to an unhealthy exasperation in attempting to project a movement of cultural radicalism and artistic protest as genuine revolution itself.
The reality is that no new coherent socio-historical movement of emancipatory praxis, outside of already established incremental methods of ‘civil rights’ inspired democratic protest towards influencing the political orientation of established power, has been seriously considered since the demise of the Black Panther Party and the defeat of the Black Liberation Army.[12] Addressing this lack of radical imagination is a weight that implicates the current task of any eMCee, writer, artist, teacher, journalist, professor or poet etc. who seeks to function as a Hip Hop intellectual.
Still, the Hip Hop intellectual will have to contend with the lapdogs of established power who seek to ridicule, discredit and obscure questions of emancipatory praxis and social justice from public discourse relevant to the imperial mainstream-as-civil society. These lapdogs, be they neo-conservative eunuchs or liberal reformists, are content with glorying in spiritually stagnant positions in search of financial rewards and social privilege while the shores of human liberation remain ever more distant for the underground of modernity suffering under the racist dehumanizing oppression and alienating exploitation of advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization.
Hip Hop aesthetics can still provide an invigorating source of Black cultural transcendence and intellectual resistance in relation to the normative gaze of western imperialist power by confronting established structures of meaning through dedication to Art. Hip Hop culture can even be considered revolutionary when it assists in ensuring that socio-historical potentialities of Black liberation remain alive and culturally accessible to grassroots Black community. However, conscious revolutionary lyrics are no substitute for concrete engagement in globally relevant social movement towards human liberation, even though such poetic lyrical discourse may be a part of the process in initiating a cultural growth in the radical imagination of grassroots consciousness among the underground of modernity towards introducing new emancipatory horizons of historical possibility. For this growth in the radical imagination of the grassroots is in itself a necessary and fundamental precondition for any attempt at meaningful social change in the world.
The normative gaze of a western imperialist continuum ultimately thwarts Hip Hop cultural transcendence and mediates against the scope of Hip Hop intellectual resistance through congesting the geohistorical possibility of emancipatory praxis against Empire with objective violence and miseducation of soul. As such, it is the spiritual responsibility of the Hip Hop intellectual, to critically address and discursively confront the normative gaze of western imperialist power that continues to thrive and remain relevant to the lived experience of the postmodern lumpenproletariat throughout neo-colonial ghettos around the world.
The Hip Hop intellectual who embraces this spiritual responsibility inherently develops a more insurgent perspective of social critique, even as western imperialist power becomes more adept at camouflaging the globalized structural consistency of objective violence and miseducation of soul that constitute the normative gaze of modernity itself. Faced with the magnitude of contemporary geohistorical oppression, the Hip Hop intellectual is thus forced into a recurring decision to choose between a microphone, a laptop or a semi-automatic handgun with spare clips as a lived wager towards reintroducing geohistorical potentialities of emancipatory praxis against Empire.
Hip Hop aesthetics manifest a creative tension between Hip Hip cultural transcendence and Hip Hop intellectual resistance towards pressing emancipatory imperatives that require a much more insurgent commitment against the normative gaze of modernity as imposed by western imperialist power. This creative tension inherent to Hip Hop aesthetics thus proved vital in contributing to my death as a purely Hip Hop intellectual and my subsequent rebirth through Black radical intellectual commitment towards interrogating existential horizons of human ‘being’ and human liberation.
*This is a reworked and revised version of “Death of a Hip Hop Intellectual” originally published in Hip Hop Intellectual Resistance, (Xlibris, 2009) pp. 23-36.
[1] Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York, Penguin Books, 1998), That’s The Joint: The Hip Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, (London: Routledge, 2003), Jeff Chang & Kool Herc, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2005).
[2] This term comes about through interrogations of the writings of Fanon, Marcuse and Cleaver. “. . . that fraction of the peasant population which is blocked on the outer fringe of the urban centers, that fraction which has not yet succeeded in finding a bone to knaw in the colonial system. . . . It is within this mass of humanity, this people of the shanty towns, at the core of the lumpenproletariat, that the rebellion will find its urban spearhead. For the lumpenproletariat, that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.” Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963) p. 129. “The opposition which escapes suppression by the police, the courts, the representatives of the people, and the people themselves, finds expression in the diffused rebellion among the youth and the intelligentsia, and in the daily struggle of the persecuted minorities. The armed class struggle is waged outside: by the wretched of the earth who fight the affluent monster.” Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1969) p.7. “. . . under monopoly capitalism the exploited population is much larger than the proletariat and that it comprises a large part of previously independent strata of the middle class.” Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1978) p. 34. “The Lumpenproletariat are all those who have no secure relationship or vested interest in the means of production and the institutions of capitalist society.” Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero, (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 1969, 2006) p.177. One of the primary characteristics of the postmodern era is an ‘ahistorical’ social consciousness, or as Baudrillard puts it, “History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth”. Jean Baudrillard, Simulcra and Simulation, (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1994) p.43. Within this postmodern context, the lived experience of the lumpenproletariat exerts a grounding and inherently human influence on those who have lost touch with the real. In his classic essay “On Lumpen Ideology” published in The Black Scholar, Vol.4 Number 3, Nov.-Dec. 1972, Eldridge Cleaver asks prophetically—“And who are we? Who is this ‘us’, still oppressed and longing to be free? Who are we that neither capitalism, socialism, nor third worldism provides for?” To which the Hip Hop intellectual responds, ‘we are the postmodern lumpenproletariat’.
[3] The term ‘neo-colonial’ American ghetto re-emphasizes the reality of domestic colonialism as experienced by Black people in America. “It is because of the fact that Black people in the United States are also colonized that Fanon’s analysis is so relevant to us.” The Black Panther Party, in adopting this Fanonist “perspective . . . gave it a uniquely Afro-American content.” Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero, (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 1969, 2006) p.176. Cleaver then further elaborated on this “uniquely Afro-American content” from exile – “We regard this as the advent of the neo-colonialist phase of our peculiar situation in the United States because it corresponds to the moment the colonial power decides to grant a measure of independence to the colony and replace the colonial regime with a regime of puppets. And this is what they’re doing now in the United States by pulling certain levels of the Black bourgeoisie into the power structure and developing for them a vested interest in the capitalist system.” The Black Panthers Speak, edited by Philip S. Foner, (New York, Da Capo Press, 1970, 1995) p.109. “From the beginning the American Negro has existed as a colonial being. His enslavement coincided with the colonial expansion of European powers and was nothing more or less than a condition of domestic colonialism.” Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution?, (New York, William Morow & Company, 1968) p.76.
[4] “This recent music is significant of more ‘radical’ changes and re-evaluations of social and emotional attitudes toward the general environment. But I cannot think that the music itself is a more radical, or any more illogical, extension of the kinetic philosophy that has informed Negro music since its inception in America. Negro music is always radical in the context of formal American culture.” Leroi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America, (New York, William Morrow & Company, 1963) p.235. Although Amiri Baraka is speaking specifically about the Jazz of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane his analysis is equally applicable to the Hip Hop of KRS ONE, ICE CUBE and NAS.
[5] The role of the eMCee, as Hip Hop intellectual, is even more explicit when contrasted with Cornel West’s understanding of the “Black musical tradition of performance” which he explains as an African American “organic intellectual tradition” in his classic essay “The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual” included in Cornel West, Keeping Faith, (London: Routledge, 1993) pp. 67-85.
Although I’ve been ‘rhymin’ since my late High School years when our crew(peace Sultan, Jamal, Nabil, Jonathan aka JC SWEET - [R.I.P.], Badi, Kushmir, TT, Willie ‘DJ KODEE’ and DJ Johnny G[R.I.P.]) used to sneak into a local radio station (WLGI 90.9 FM) at night and freestyle battle over instrumentals and make mixtapes. For my understanding of what it takes to truly eMCee, I draw primarily from my own experience as an eMCee in the Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina underground scene from 1994-‘99(peace SEZ ONE, Keeshon, PHIL SKILLS, BIG MEET, ROCK, QWAY, PHILLY, SKAZ, HACK, FLAWLESS, ZULU ROB, LOVEJOY, KAS, TAY, Cheryl, BORN SUPREME, SIMI SWELLS, MADD, BRO-RABB, Stephon, SANKOFA, PEZ, KAZE, Niko, MIKE NICE & the BUTTA TEAM etc.) during which I performed at shows, constantly composed lyrics and songs, battled other eMCees and participated continually in freestyle ciphers. Since coming to New York in 2001, I’ve been more focused on my writing than my ‘rhymin’, although I did involve myself in forming FORT TABARSI, a crew of eMCees (peace SEZ ONE, SUPA NICE, MOORE PESOS, ROX FONTEEZ, MOZEM, INFINITI and A-MEGA) with a shared radical Bahai worldview who put out two unofficial ‘mixtape’ CD’s focused on what we describe as SPIRITUAL REVOLUTIONARY UNDERGROUND HIP HOP.
[6] Sartre understood and witnessed a similar dynamic taking place in the poetic expressions associated with the ‘Negritude’ cultural-political movement in the French speaking African Diaspora. “These Black men are addressing themselves to Black men about Black men; their poetry is neither satiric nor imprecatory: it is an awakening to consciousness. . . . I should like to show that this poetry – which seems racial at first – is actually a hymn by everyone for everyone.” Sartre, “Black Orpheus”, What is Literature? and Other Essays, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1948, 1949) p.293. Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor were two of its defining figures; check out Leopold Sedar Senghor, The Collected Poetry, Transl. by Melvin Dixon, (University of Virginia Press, 1998) and Aime Cesaire, The Collected Poetry, Transl. by Clayton Eshleman and Annette J. Smith, (University of California Press, 1984).
[7] ‘Advanced neo-liberal capitalism’ is a term that combines Marcuse’s take on advanced capitalism with Chomsky’s take on neo-liberal globalization. “ . . . domination – in the guise of affluence and liberty – extends to all spheres of private and public existence, integrates all authentic opposition, absorbs all alternatives. Technological rationality reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe.” Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1964) p.18. “The assaults on democracy . . . lie in the power of corporate entities that are increasingly interlinked and reliant on powerful states, and largely unaccountable to the public. Their immense power is growing as a result of social policy that is globalizing the structural model of the third world, with sectors of enormous wealth and privilege alongside an increase in ‘the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings’.” Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, (New York, Seven Stories Press, 1999) p.93.
[8] Marcuse definitely shares this view that “If art ‘is’ for any collective consciousness at all, it is that of individuals united in their awareness of the universal need for liberation – regardless of their class position.” Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1978) p. 31.
[9] For a sustained critique of the Academy and its intellectual subordination to western imperialist power, check out Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship by Noam Chomsky, (New York, The New Press, 2003). These words of Nizan are also relevant - “The philosophers are satisfied. These men, the products of bourgeois democracy, express their gratitude by fashioning whatever myths this democracy may require: they elaborate a democratic philosophy. This regime seems to them the best of all possible worlds. It is extremely difficult for them to even conceive of the possibility that other worlds may exist. Hence their contentment cannot be seen as the result of their having made a comparison and a choice. This world of theirs represents the consummation of the history of mankind: the cardinal philosophical speculations have long been completed; Descartes, Rousseau, and Kant have lived and thought; all the great inventions have been invented; all the continents have been explored; the major revolutions have been accomplished; everything converges to make for a more perfect democracy.” Paul Nizan, The Watchdogs, (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1971) p.54.
[10] The best attempts at enlivening academic discourse through Hip Hop intellectual engagement can be found in the work of Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean? : Reflections on Hip Hop, (New York, Basic Civitas Books, 2007). Here’s an example of how Dyson breaks it down in one of his previous works - “Hip Hop culture is important because hip-hop at its best advocates the belief that we must do away with the inhibiting, even paralyzing, social and political practices that have been passed on to us from outside our culture – and sometimes from within. Hip-hop culture has sparked the latest chapter in an ongoing debate in black culture about the clash between bourgeois values and conservative traditions on the one hand and, on the other hand, the assertion of liberal values and progressive, even radical, political traditions. It has also raised the question of whether political engagement through traditional political actors in conventional costume, so to speak, is the only means to affect social change, or whether cultural forms like hip-hop can have any effect on the political front.” Michael Eric Dyson, Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion, (New York, Basic Civitas Books, 2003) p.274.
[11] Marcuse recognized this tension between the dogmatic ‘orthodox’ Marxist view of art as mere ruling class ideology vs. the potential for art to emancipate consciousness vs. the actual distance between art and revolution. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, p. 32. In dialogue with Jean-Paul Sartre, Search For A Method, (New York, Vintage, 1963, 1968) and Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol.1, (London, Verso, 1960, 2004) and Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1961, 1963), ‘praxis’ indicates a unity of theory and action, deliberate activity, decisive engagement, meaningful work or purposeful action that transcends utilitarian considerations towards introducing the possibility of constituting human subjectivity.
[12] Check out Akineyle Omowale Umoja’s thorough and enlightening essay “Repression Breeds Resistance : The Black Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party” included in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, edited by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, (New York, Routledge, 2001) pp. 3-19.
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