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KRS-One: The Gospel of Hip Hop: The First Instrument
The Gospel of Hip Hop: The First Instrument is due June 16th via powerHouse Books.
The Gospel of Hip Hop Coming Soon
Are you Criminal?
Or are you Subliminal?
Preorder at Amazon:
KRS-One - The Gospel of Hip Hop
If more rappers were as smart and articulate as Sir Mix-A-Lot, I'd listen to more video interviews.
Nice mix of history, business, common sense and love of music.
The NY Times is doing some stuff on Notorious, the Biggie Smalls movie in progress that we get to hear about every inch of the way.
They've got an audition video that doesn't link through and a slide show that works but both are from October which explains why they're so disappointingly familiar.
But the best part isn't really about Biggie at all:
"Failure could expose the studio to ridicule — pop-culture aficionados have already been sniping on the Internet — from a musical culture that has made a religion of credibility."
Using phrases like "pop-culture aficionados" when you're referring to bloggers and hip hop fans is a good way to draw ridicule but the religious claim is dead on.
Hip hop has a religion of credibility that's reaped more fakers than any other musical genre of which I'm aware but we're pretty much par for the course for religious movements.
And that's good business!
pit bull & chicks
ProHipHop wants to encourage the Hip Hop Nation to continue to make strong stands against dogfighting, just as both Russell Simmons and Just Blaze have done. A love of hypermasculinity does not justify the brutalization of animals who serve their masters wholeheartedly.
Don't let this be spun as another example of the evils of hip hop culture and don't let it be spun as inherent to the consciousness of dogs including pit bulls.
Stop the lies. Start the healing.
A public service message brought to you by ProHipHop and The Postmodern Anarchist.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Last Chance for Animals Releases Anti-Dogfighting PSA
Chronicle Photo of Adisa Banjoko by Eric Luse
My friend and associate Adisa Banjoko was featured on the cover of last Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle for an article entitled 9/11: Five years later / TYPECASTING MUSLIMS AS A RACE by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila. The article is a portrait of Muslims in the Bay Area who stand as counter-evidence to the monolithic stereotypes many Americans have of Muslims.
Chronicle Photo of Adisa Banjoko by Eric Luse
Adisa also recently hosted a panel on Hyphy at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club featuring Mistah FAB, Tamara Palmer, Traxamillion & Eric Arnold. If you want to get past the mainstream media portrayals of hyphy, check out the audio for an hour of real talk on the matter.
Chris Lighty points out that hip hop is a global business and his boy 50 Cent is a great example of that. He can tour anywhere in the world and get mobbed by fans. And, in keeping with 50's mentality, Lighty states:
We have an opportunity just like McDonalds to invade every part of the world with a piece of our culture thru hip hop music.
Now you can give me a hard time for picking out one line (although if you do, you'll have to listen to a lecture on discourse analysis, because it's clearly part of a well-established discourse, duh) but I'm sure you can agree that it does evoke the American mentality that is increasingly hated worldwide and part of the reason that Brand America is in serious decline.
In case you hadn't noticed Mr. Lighty, the first thing that goes in an anti-American or anti-Western demo/riot is the McDonald's and that's true from San Francisco (where I've seen it up close) to Pakistan (where I'll always only see it on tv). Nevertheless, I love those fries!
But American musical acts don't have to think in terms of invasion. American music is one of the last things the world still loves about the States. Case in point, Michael Jackson.
One of the better pieces I've seen lately on emerging hip hop scenes around the world was in the NY Times on hip hop clubs in Manila:
Western visitors to Manila may be surprised to come across an otherwise familiar scene: young adults filling the streets, bouncing from one club to another, decked out in the latest hip-hop gear as if they had come straight from Brooklyn. Except, of course, everyone is Filipino, and the rap is spiced with Tagalog, a language of the Philippines.
And if you browse MySpace profiles you can find all sorts of hip hop references all around the world. For example, as a Thai woman wrote to me at MySpace, Thailand is "full with hip hop wannabes u know?"
You'll also see that giving people the bird has gone worldwide across genders. Good work, America!
Perhaps more importantly, you'll find that people all over the world are taking hip hop and adapting it to their own circumstances. Lighty refers to the negative reaction from a variety of hip hop fans to such developments. For some folks, it's fine for them to buy it but not for them to make it, whoever them might be. And guess just how productive that mentality will be for those folks. Case in point, New York.
For my part, I'm digging the hip hop diaspora, because it brings me good things like the theme song to Samurai Champloo:
Given recent talk of the death and/or decline of hip hop, I found this article on similar concerns in classical music of interest, especially:
Underlying many of the jeremiads is what might be called golden ageism: the belief, bordering on an article of faith, that everything was better, both artistically and commercially, in the relatively recent past.
Sometime today an event/press conference is happening in which the Smithsonian's plan for a permanent hip hop collection will be publicized with an array of collectibles from:
pioneering hip-hop artists such as Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Fab 5 Freddy - [who] will blow that dust off and carry them to a Manhattan hotel to turn them over to National Museum of American History officials.
While it may be a fun event, more importantly, the Smithsonian announcement is a major legitimizing phase in the development of hip hop:
The project, the beginnings of a permanent collections, will gather objects that trace hip-hop's origins in the Bronx in the 1970s to its current global reach. It is expected to cost as much as $2 million and take up to five years to complete.
While the AP report gets part of the story of hip hop right, from hip hop's global rise to its incorporation "into marketing to sell everything from cars and clothing to food and furniture," author Marcus Franklin apparently needs a bit more education since he considers hip hop culture's "main elements" to be "rappers, DJs and breakdancers." Um . . . graffiti artists! There we go. That's why they call it the Four Elements of Hip Hop.
He also must buy into the erroneous notion that hip hop begins with The Sugarhill Gang since he states that collectibles have been hidden away for "nearly three decades."
Hey, but that's why we need some educational materials, right?
The collection will be called Hip-Hop Won't Stop: the Beat, the Rhymes, the Life, which seems quite fortunate for Jeff Chang's upcoming tour to promote the recent paperback release of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.
The AP report says that the money for the collection has yet to be raised and will come from the private sector. The $2 million will be used to "pay for artifacts, record oral histories, hold consultations with advisory groups and mount an exhibit telling hip-hop's story." You know, although today's event is supposed to involve "donations", given the combination of Russell Simmons and various hip hop elders who probably feel they need to get something more than recognition out of the deal, it's difficult to imagine that financial promises have not been made to today's protagonists.
Now where did I stash that tin foil grill that kicked it off in the Dirty Dirty?
This NY Times piece about the growth of Mr. Dollar's prosperity gospel in New York caught my attention for a number of reasons. In particular, it made me wonder whether or not there is a gospel rap equivalent that emphasizes making money. So many Southern preachers with large grassroots followings have emphasized the accumulation of wealth as a sign of blessings that it seems like an obvious connection to rap's conspicuous consumption and display of bling.
AdRants author Steve Hall layers his misperceptions on an ad campaign in Iowa encouraging teen abstinence from premarital sex with a Wait for the Bling (i.e. wedding ring) billboard. By stating that the billboard creators are trying to "latch on to what they perceive to be big city speak", Hall reveals his lack of understanding of the pervasive nature of mass media and the widespread use of such terminology.
Read some local papers, son, they're all online now! Not only has the term bling been everywhere for a long time, pimping that ride has also become a phrase used by local writers across the country to describe all sorts of non-rap, non-auto phenomenon. Hey, maybe they've got cable in Iowa now!
The concept of the "streets" is a funny one. For most people in hip hop that means some kind of commitment to the hood, to thug life and, sometimes, to the notion that the unruliness of hip hop has revolutionary potential. Actually it's simultaneously more complicated and yet simpler than that, but I raise the idea because, for me, a commitment to the streets is more about marches and demonstrations and rioting.
That may sound strange coming from someone who covers business news, but I've never claimed to not be strange. Though I haven't been following the details of the rioting in France, I do think it's a phenomenon that will be mostly misrepresented in the mainstream press and mostly misunderstood by the American people.
I believe that if I was following French hip hop, some of which is created by members of the communities that are currently rioting, I would have many references to the conditions that are sparking current unrest, because this stuff has been building for years. Suffice it to say that many of the rioters are kids whose immigrant families have been treated as outsiders and housed in projects. You know the drill, even if you've only seen it on tv.
As described in the NY Times:
"Discrimination has flourished behind the oft-stated ideals [of French society], leaving immigrants and their French-born offspring increasingly isolated in government-subsidized apartment blocks to face high unemployment and dwindling hope for the future."
Just as hip hop music has sometimes served as the CNN of the hood, so too does some of French hip hop play that role. However, hip hop movies have also helped educate folks, even the bad flicks. So if you're trying to understand the situation in France, you could get a lot from the film La Haine which translates as Hate. La Haine was released in 1995 and focuses on conditions in the communities that we now see in flames, though they seem to have taken the step that American rioters rarely do. They've left the ghetto and headed for the centers of power.
Here's one plot summary
"Injured by a police inspector during an interrogation, Abdel is at a hospital, almost dead. In the suburbs where he lives, some riots happened during the night, and one policeman lost his gun. One of Abdel's friends, Vinz, finds it. Vinz and his two pals, Said and Hubert, have nothing to do so they try to kill time. Vinz swears that if Abdel dies, he will shoot a policeman."
In addition to being a great movie, I found La Haine to be educational in similar ways to Boyz n the Hood. And, guess what? The La Haine soundtrack features French hip hop.
Update: I was just updating the Amazon info and noticed that the VHS version (there doesn't seem to be a U.S. dvd release) was listed in videos at no. 100 today, a huge jump from yesterday's no. 3,157. I haven't done a search but I'm betting some major media outlet is making the obvious connections that I'm making.
Though it wouldn't have affected US video sales (I don't think), the UK's Independent mentions the film:
La Haine: Schools, synagogues and hundreds of cars burn. It's Paris 2005
Available from Amazon:
Video/VHS - Hate aka La Haine
DVD/Import - La Haine
Soundtrack/Import - La Haine
Hip hop's hustler mentality is one of those liabilities that can also be seen as an asset. The drive to succeed by whatever means can be found when resources are few is one that pervades the history of hip hop. But the tendency to live for the moment and rip off what one can exemplifies too much of hip hop for anyone's good.
Jessica Bennett reports on a panel discussion, Young, Gifted, and Jobless: Hip Hop Culture and Youth Unemploymend, held recently at Oakland City Hall. It seems to have been one of those diversity of opinion events with the viewpoints including the rather optimistic perception of Dereca Blackmon, executive director of Leadership Excellence, Inc., who stated:
“A drug dealer has the ability to package and move large quantities, they have great communication skills, work well with large groups of people, many skills employers want in a worker.
A rather different stance was taken by a "young observer" who opined:
“When you go out for a job, you need to know how to speak in a professional way. And a lot of people think that if you talk that way, or try to 'sound white,' you're not keepin' it real or you're 'selling out'. What we need to do is learn how to code change. You see Diddy and Jay-Z on T.V. talking and dressing the way we do, but you better believe that when they're in those boardrooms talking to them rich white people, that they know how to put on a suit and speak correctly, and it doesn't make them any less credible in the streets.”
Terence Bradford, aka Billy Shakes, is both a sales manager for Citi Mortgage and a rapper who claims to have spent $50k recording a demo called Money Back Guaranteed who seems to combine such perspectives on the hustler mentality.
Bradford feels that "it's all the same hustle. It's just that mine is legal . . . Selling mortgages is very emotional. Just like in rap, we're trying to connect with people's hopes and dreams."
Quite a different take comes from Hadji Williams in his new book Knock The Hustle: How to Save Your Job and Your Life from Corporate America. As Adrants' Steve Hall writes:
Williams "takes a look inside corporate America, focusing on the ad industry, and calls the whole thing a scam . . . claiming Madison Avenue a place with no morals; calling the agency/client relationship a pimp and ho relationship; citing focus groups and time sheets useless because of continuous cover your ass antics."
Hall goes on to say, "While we haven't read the book, our own experience in the industry, while perhaps not as negative as Williams' seems to have been, certainly leads us to believe Williams may not be too far off the mark."
Speaking of hustles, I still haven't gotten a review copy so I haven't read it either. Hadji, hook me up!
Official site: Knock The Hustle
I've always wondered about the actual size of the market for expensive yet unnecessary items and I've just discovered that the emergence of Generation Gold-Collar has expanded that market in unexpected ways. Apparently the Gold-Collar designation came from a research firm called Synovate that found that of the "20 million young people who could be categorized as working-class in 2003", a third could be called "gold-collar", i.e. blue collar 18-to-25 year olds who often live at home and spend all available income on luxury goods.
According to Synovate's Ian Pierpoint:
"This is the best-dressed, least-able, least-equipped generation ever . . . If you're 24 or 25 and you're still at home, you're not doing a lot of things, like paying your own utilities. They are in some ways very experienced, but they are more coddled than other generations."
I'm sure many will blame hip hop's love of bling for the emergence of Generation Gold-Collar and Miss Info might agree. According to the San Jose Mercury News Minya Oh, aka radio personality Miss Info, has a book about hip hop and jewelry coming out in late August entitled Bling Bling: Hip-Hop's Crown Jewels. But while many decry bling consciousness, Miss Info says:
"All of these artists understand that bling is something that hip-hop can be proud of . . . It's a way that we have changed the world."
Right on, sister! And we have changed the world. From Hot Wheel's Blings providing a child with little blingie to JU$T ANOTHER RICH KID's gold plated McDonald's spoons, the world is a better place.
But I am concerned about a few things and I have to wonder, do Play-Doh perfume and Al Cabino's chocolate sneakers represent a new form of bling, a counter reaction or the early stirrings of post-bling consciousness?
Available from Amazon:
Minya Oh - Bling Bling: Hip-Hop's Crown Jewels
The NY Times has two interesting articles today that relate to hip hop's cultural influence, for better or worse. One article attributes the NCAA trend of "popping the jersey", in part, to hip hop style and that makes perfect sense. Like the Feenom Circle's Rawj says:
"aint gonna say that everybody knows who I is, but when you see me collar-poppin doin the electric slide you'll be like 'this brotha gets down for his.'"
I was really surprised that a NY Times writer is just catching on to the fact that the term "b*tch" can include men. Although Virginia Heffernan is focusing on tv, she seems to have missed the extensive use of b*tch among male hip hop artists, comedians and their fans when dissing other men. Given that rap musicians have a distinctive ability to mainstream prison culture, one would think that the connections would be fairly obvious. Even more so given that hip hop is full of the kind of macho males who diss "faggots" but think it's ok to get head or f*ck a guy as long as they beat him down first. You know, with all the talk about reforming hip hop, I doubt any prominent cultural critic is ready to take that one on.
By the way, Carolina's gonna kick everybody's punk ass. And maybe some day the NY Times will figure out the related meanings of punk that have nothing to do with music, little to do with Ashton Kutcher (though the lineage is there) and everything to do with men raping men.
Russell Simmons visited an exhibition on Auschwitz accompanied by Rabbi Marc Schneier, the founder and president of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding that Russell Simmon chairs, in what Jewish community leaders felt was an important show of support for "Holocaust communication efforts, especially in the New York public school system." Auschwitz – the Depth of the Abyss is free to the public through Mar. 11th at the United Nations' General Assembly Visitors’ Lobby.
As the blog Jewlicious discusses, the recent announcement of a Public Service campaign involving Russell Simmons called "I am a Jew," featuring television spots in which celebrities will show their opposition to anti-Semitism, has been attacked by the Anti Defamation League in a move that some have described as "bizarre."
Last month, BlackElectorate.com ran an interview by Cedric Muhammed with Russell Simmons that digs into what Simmons is about in relationship to Jews and politics more generally.
In related news, Cedric Muhammed has one of the more useful perspectives on the sale of The ROC while Jewlicious has made a point of declaring that Jewish, Israeli, hip hop violinist Miri Ben-Ari is Grammylicious.
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