Hip Hop Intellectual Resistance

Copyright © 2009 by Artemus Stover

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Contents

Gratitude, Acknowledgements & Shout Outs

Preface

Death Of A Hip Hop Intellectual

Promethean Soul (Radical Black Righteous Machismo)

Hip Hop Generational Discourse

Propaganda Killer

Hip Hop Intellectual Burden

Murder Of Man By Rational Animals

Working Definitions & Unfixed Terminology

O OPPRESSORS ON EARTH!

Withdraw your hands from tyranny, for I have pledged Myself not to forgive any man’s injustice. This is My covenant which I have irrevocably decreed in the preserved tablet and sealed with My seal.[1]

-Baha’u’llah (1817-1892)

Gratitude, Acknowledgements & Shout Outs

No work of mine would be possible without the unyielding spiritual strength and emotional support of my family; first and foremost my wife Nardos for her unremitting patience, companionship and understanding; my mother Ellen, whose unconditional love and unfailing guidance is the foundation of all my endeavors; Sultan, my brother in every sense of the word and the most authentic and complete human being I know; my father Bill whose calm example of spiritual certitude and heroism has always been a source of inspiration, his loving & irrepressible wife Leslie and my equally irrepressible brother Luke; my Uncle Greg who has always lived life on his own terms—as an artist/scholar/painter/African drummer/historian/martial arts enthusiast and whose example exerted a profound influence upon my own intellectual pursuits, Aunt Gretchen, my cousins Ali & Nura; Papa Asfaw & Mama Ferehiwot, Alemash & Titi, Berhan ‘Brex Bole’, Martha & Peter; all my family & close friends in South Carolina, North Carolina, California, Iowa, Connecticut, Honduras, Brazil and New York City.

Shout out to the entire worldwide Bahai community.

Shout out to the Brotherwise Dispatch Editorial Committee (from 2001-2004), it was a fun ride while it lasted—Rhaman Johnson, Sultan Stover, Brad Digital, Omar Money, Roddy Khadem, Scha Diggs, Tyrone Derden & Vahid Kelleher.

Shout out to ‘THE SOURCE Magazine of Hip Hop Music, Culture and Politics’, especially E. Assata Wright, for giving me my first freelance writing opportunity for a national publication back when I literally walked in off the street and into the SOURCE offices through a ‘connect’ masterminded by Brad Digital.

I want to also express my extreme gratitude and respect to Mrs. Vivian Austin Edmonds for giving me my first shot at professional journalism as a freelancer for THE CAROLINA TIMES, one of the oldest independent Black newspapers in the United States.

Shout out to Greg McAllister, Sultan Stover, Rhaman Johnson, Phillipe Copeland, Rae Gomes, Roddy Khadem, Anthony Outler, Nuri Chandler-Smith, Drew Shearer, Amy Seidenverg, Aaron Moore, Solomon Moore, Jamal Lally, Nabil Lally, Al Simmons, Niousha Roshani, Derek ‘Rudy’ Drakeford and Derrick Smith for their constructive feedback and intellectual camaraderie.

I would also like to thank; David Schalk for his encouragement and genuine interest regarding our continuous dialogue on the nature and role of intellectual engagement; Dennis Broe for inviting me to the SITUATIONS magazine new issue launch party and for several rewarding coffee shop duels on media criticism, Hip Hop culture and critical theory; Derrick Bell for finding the time to look over certain excerpts from the book and give his honest, yet measured, appraisal.

Shout out to my peoples at work—Jahanshah, Cristina, Cristiana, Faraz, Drexel, Jye Hwei, Alison, Annelize, Viktoriya, Krista, Anisa, Manny and Oliver.

Preface

The introductory essay, Death of a Hip Hop Intellectual, explores the tense relationship between Hip Hop aesthetics and Black cultural resistance to western imperialist oppression. This tension sets the tone and context for the following critical interrogations of Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul On Ice, Bakari Kitwana’s The Hip Hop Generation, Noam Chomsky’s Media Control, Kevin Powell’s Who’s Gonna Take the Weight? and Ralph Ginzburg’s 100 Years of Lynchings. The inclusion of lyrical excerpts from various Hip Hop eMCees between each essay is meant to further exemplify, in raw unfiltered poetic verse, the manner in which eMCees as Hip Hop intellectuals function as the critical conscience of those who continually face oppression in the neo-colonial American ghetto.

The particular essays which comprise this book were chosen because they reveal in glimpses, fragments and at times in protracted bouts, the beginnings of a critical theory which employs what I’ve termed an ‘existential liberationist’ perspective. ‘Existential liberation theory’ is an inherently rugged and unfixed method of critique which combines philosophy, social theory, cultural criticism and historical consciousness grounded in the human condition of constitutive self-determination and spiritual revolt, as reflected in two central concerns of Black existence; human ‘being’ and human liberation.

Although drawn primarily from my own lived experience as a Black man, my work is ignited through my Bahai Faith in the Oneness of God and Oneness of Humanity and theoretically informed through my engagement with the works of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Carter G. Woodson, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Horkheimer, Harold Cruse, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, Ishmael Reed, Cedric Robinson, Lewis R. Gordon, Mark Poster, Cornel West, Angela Y. Davis, Michael Eric Dyson and Noam Chomsky.

The critical interrogations and encounters contained in this book are revised, expanded and reworked versions of essays which were initially written between the years of 2001-2004 for THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH (www.brotherwise.com). Though much has changed and evolved in my own understanding since that time, I made a concerted effort to maintain the integrity and authenticity of each piece in the hopes that they may yet still contain some value as an earnest attempt at intellectual engagement.

THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH began as a consciously progressive Hip Hop webzine, intent on furthering a Hip Hop intellectual aesthetic as cultural resistance to advanced neo-liberal capitalist hegemony. In pursuit of developing this aesthetic, the DISPATCH evolved into an online independent intellectual journal focused on radical theory, social critiques and human liberation. This evolution reflected my own growing concerns over the limitations of purely cultural resistance to social injustice. Although Hip Hop culture still serves as a crucial repository for the emancipatory aspirations of the postmodern lumpenproletariat, its ability to create the necessary groundwork for radical praxis remains inherently problematic.

Hardly consistent, THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH has been intermittently on and offline and as such, we never truly cultivated a vast readership or regular contributors. However, as founder and Editor-in-Chief, the creative freedom and unencumbered atmosphere involved in running THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH has been crucial to my development as an independent radical intellectual. The current plan is to reload and re-launch THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH by September 2009 and begin publishing on a quarterly basis.

Rap is not pop/if you call it that then stop[2]

-Q-TIP

The intellectual always has a choice either to side with the weaker, the less well represented, the forgotten or ignored, or to side with the more powerful.[3]

-Edward Said

Wack eMCees have one style/gun buck/but when you say lets buck for revolution/they shut the fuck up/I can’t get wit it/down to start a riot in a minute/you’ll hear so many BO! BO! BO!’s/you’ll think I’m Riddick/while other eMCees are talking bout/up with hope/down with dope/I’ll have a devil in my infra red scope/POY!!/that’s for callin’ my father a boy/and CLAK! CLACK! CLAK!/ that’s for putting scars on my mother’s back/BO!/ that’s for callin’ my sister a ho/and for you BUCK! BUCK! BUCK!/cuz I don’t give a muthafuck/[4]

-KRS ONE

What would you expect to find, when the muzzle that has silenced the voices of black men is removed? That they would thunder your praise? When these heads that our fathers have forced to the very ground are risen, do you expect to read adoration in their eyes?[5]

-Jean-Paul Sartre

Political thugs in shark suits/persuade us to pull triggers in army boots/yellin’ join the armed forces/we lost the Vietnam war/intoxicated poisons/needles in the arms of veterans instead of bigger fortunes/still a lot of nigger callin’ in the corporate offices/war in the ghetto/crabs in a barrel/they torture us/they won’t be servin’ the beast too long/murderers wearin’ police uniforms/confederate flags I burn/[6]

-NAS

Beyond this, a work of art can be revolutionary if, by virtue of the aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom and the rebelling forces, thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation).[7]

-Herbert Marcuse

Fuck the police comin’ straight from the underground/a young nigger got it bad cause I’m brown/I’m not the other color so police think/they have the authority/to kill a minority/fuck that shit cause I ain’t the one/for a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun/to be beaten on/and thrown in jail/we can go toe to toe in the middle of a cell/fuckin’ wit me cause I’m a teenager/with a little bit of gold and a pager/searchin’ my car/lookin’ for the product/thinkin’ every nigger is sellin’ narcotics/you’d rather see me in the pen/than me and Lorenzo/rollin’ in a Benzo/beat a police out of shape/and when I’m finished/bring the yellow tape/[8]

-ICE CUBE

The police are the armed guardians of the social order. The blacks are the chief domestic victims of the American social order. A conflict of interest exists, therefore, between the blacks and the police. It is not solely a matter of trigger-happy cops, of brutal cops who love to crack black heads. Mostly it’s a job to them. It pays good. And there are numerous fringe benefits. The real problem is the trigger-happy social order.[9]

-Eldridge Cleaver

I’m lost in the blocks of hate/and can’t wait/for the next crab nigger to step and meet fate/I’m lethal when I see you/there is no sequel/24 seven MAC 11 is my people/so why you wanna end your little life like this/cause now you bump heads with kids that’s lifeless/I live by