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Hip Hop CDs
Straight Outta Compton (Priority, 1988)
/
Ghetto
Music: The Blueprint Of Hip Hop (Jive, 1989) /
Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
– Soundtrack (2005)
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50 Cent CDs
Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
/
The Massacre /
Guess Who's Back /
Power of the Dollar
* * * * * Books on Rap &
Hip Hop
Todd Boyd,
The
New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop
(2003) /
Sharif Responds to Todd
Boyd /
Is Hip
Hop Really Dead?
Brian Cross,
It's Not About a Salary... Rap, Race and Resistance in Los
Angeles: Rap, Race, and Resistance in Los Angeles (1993)
Tricia Rose,
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(1994)
Russell A. Porter, Spectacular
Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism
(1995)
Bakari Kitwana,
The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the
Crisis in African American Culture
(2003)
Imani
Perry,
Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (2004)
*
* * * * Is Hip
Hop Really Dead?
Or Is It Just
Wishful Thinking?
Sharif & Rahim Respond
A
Premature Announcement
Rahim-
Peace. Brother X has
constructed a penetrating analysis of the demise of the Hip Hop
Nation. However, he is premature in ascribing death to the black
arts movement. The brother's confusing the death of one
thing with another is a mistake often made. The nadir of a
movement may or may not foreshadow the death of a thing. But the
black arts movement will endure long after the Hip Hop Nation is
gone. What Brother X sees is the end of an artistic movement
that was based (originally) in the screams and wailing of a
generation of children that had been rejected and who
themselves rejected the dominant society.
In the past, such movements were
connected to some kind of political struggle to change society.
Hip Hop degenerated into a hedonistic pursuit of values that
were the exact opposite of what was political. By political, I
mean a movement that has as its goal the betterment of the
masses-black and the working poor of America. The Hip Hop Nation
started out political enough with X-clan and other groups. But after
big corps like Time Warner got through shaping the movement
-- it dropped even the trappings of anything political and
became the ranting of psuedo-gangsta millionaries.
My own belief is that
movements like the Hip Hop Nation arise when a generation is
divorced from its true history. Is it possible for a generation
to turn to hedonism when they are rooted in the suffering of
their people? If we compare hip hop to be bop -- the Hip Hop Nation
to the jazz generation -- we find some compelling similarities
and differences.
The jazz generation has, as
urban as it was, its roots in the blues. And the blues has
its roots in the South. What does the Hip Hop Nation call its
predecessor? It can not say that it borrows from the blues, even
through the blues is filled with violence. Seems Like Murder
Here is a compelling argument by Adam Gussow that violence
figured into the blues tradition. But the violence that
figured into the blues never became its dominate characteristic.
Jazz the child of the blues
is also associated with violence -- the zoot suit riots on
the west coast and the hijacking of jazz figures by police
and white men in the cities led to all kinds of confrontation.
And just as the Hip Hop Nation constructed the word
"yo" to designate who was a part of their nation, Lester
Young constructed the word "man" to designate who was
a part of the jazz generation. Both hip hop "yo"
and jazz "man" are anti-heroes in the American
tradition. But the figure of the jazz man overshadows the
yo as a cultural hero. There is no comparison between the
movement of Coltrane, Prez, Holiday, (your hero Armstrong),
Miles, and the other cultural geniuses of jazz.
Perhaps, the difference
lies in orientation and the times in which they emerged. Jazz
began its ascendancy between World Wars, the first and the
second. Also it was highly influenced by the intellectual
movements within and without America -- the New Negro movement,
the Harlem Arts Movement, civil rights and black power -- all
had an influence on jazz artist from (my hero)
Ellington's symphonies to Max Roaches' Freedom Suite. Hip hop
should have inherited much of its intellectual power from
Bob Marley. He was an urban prophet -- a wailer for justice at
home and abroad. But again, Marley was a semi-political figure
who towers over any figure of hip hop. As for Coltrane, he makes
the heroes of hip hop appear to be restless children
without a sense of the black man's spiritual, ascending
nature.
But as faithless as the Hip
Hop Nation is to its black legacy, I despite my misgivings must
love what is best in them. It is what they can become after
their hip hop experience that I love them. They will surely come
to question whether hedonism can be a path for
human-humane-development. Out of their despair, they still might
find the truth. I liken them to the Hebrew under Moses (May
God be pleased with him). For nearly forty years, he struggled
to reform his people until finally they were delivered to
the Promise Land. When the Hip Hop Generation finds it own Moses.
And ceases to worship the Golden Calf of hedonism. Then perhaps
Brother X's faith will be rekindled.
I wanted to say many other things but time
prevents it.
sharif
(2004) *
* * * *
Zombies Live a Life After
Death
Sharif, peace and blessings,
I think your analysis is
strikingly clear. And like you, I am quite uncertain about Hip
Hop’s imminent demise. I will agree indeed that it has
lost its cultural vitality. It has long ceased to be an
underground moving current of black life and culture. It has
become a stagnant pool for the worse kinds of social ills that
tragically affect African-American communities -- broken homes,
drug distribution and addiction, murder and mayhem. That sort of
culture is now far from underground, it is all over TV
programming and like basketball and other money-making sports
our youth are willing to sell their souls to prove who can do
and let escape from their mouths the most outrageous
inanities.
While I was catching the 44
bus yesterday on the way to St. Mary's, last Wednesday, I
overheard a conversation between two teenage girls in which they
were publicly denouncing their parents in the most vulgar terms
-- calling them MFs and other names; and worst, evaluating their
parents in monetary and the grossest materialist terms.
There was no hint whatsoever of reverence or respect for their
parents or any adult person. There were three adults standing or
sitting nearby and it was as if we were invisible or
non-existent. I had the urge to say something, but remained
silent and said nothing.
I am certain such behavior
would not have been possible a generation ago. You are
absolutely right about the generations of the 40s and the 60s --
that even in their rebellions against the previous generation
they retained a measure of respect and deference and
understanding that they needed something of the past, of family
life on which to build something new and better and more
wonderful. But for the so-called Hip Hop Nation or Hip Hop
Generation -- there is a cultivation, it seems, of
disconnectedness, of relativism (all is valueless) if Benjamins
are not there to determine the value. Thus, the lack of respect
for parents. Most of our parents are poor and poorly educated by
modern standards and thus are out of the loop of having any
Benjamins or, for that matter, Lincolns.
My Dear Brother, Hip Hop
may indeed be dead. But it's the Walking Dead. Like Zombies, it
lives even in its death and there are none strong enough to end
its misery and give it the final death blow. For it has been
discovered that Hip Hop like drugs can be used for social
control, especially to manipulate the poor and the powerless. And
Big Money and Big Power will make sure that it continues to
molest and make havoc in our communities.
But we have to do more than
criticize. We have to come up with cultural alternatives, that
which will win the hearts and minds and loyalties of our youth
and our communities. We need a music and cultural elements of
hope and struggle. The enemies of our communities must be
pointed out and at this point they tend to be ourselves. We
cannot struggle with the crotches of our pants around our knees;
nor can we struggle when our most educated and talented have the
basic sentiments of thugs and drug dealers, namely, "What's
in it for me?"
Later, Rahim
(2004)
* * * *
*
Styling Profiling and Dying—Businesspeople—Black,
Hispanic and white—continue to shout down the potential of many
of our youth with the voice of “…you need THIS product to be
cool.” I recently stopped by one of my local, storefront “hip
hop” clothing stores, just to keep up on the latest fashions.
Never did I realize that so much money was being made by “The
Tribe of Dollars.” Hats going for $25 to $50—complete with
appropriate gang colors and logos—many of them sports oriented.
Oversized “T” shirts being snapped up for $10 a throw. Plus,
what thugg (my personal spelling choice) of the future would not
be complete with the various belt buckles, cash wads (yes, they
DO sell them—LOL), plus jeans, jackets and jerseys—right down to
‘Lil G’ sizes.
It costs a lot to slouch into the criminal look, these days.
Here’s another one: local gas stations have become a boutique of
sorts for gang wear. Some of them sell the oversized T-shirts,
bandanas, and other assorted gang wear at lower prices…but
cheaper quality. Gas stations have to be diverse to make a buck
from the gang crowd in more ways that one. A few years back,
blunting became the rage. A blunt is a cigar that is center
filled with marijuana by an individual in order to mask the
smell of weed. (Unfortunately, because of the make-up of the
cigar in the first place, the weed tends to stay in the system
longer, thus ensuring positive drug test results.) Many gas
stations were reluctant to sell cigars—but more and more ‘local
customers’ demanded them. With a shrug of the shoulders, large
and small cigars became a part of the inventory at many
stations. . . .
While the Rap/Hip Hop industry has been
experiencing plummeting sales for the last five years, sales of
jerseys, caps, and T-shirts have been climbing upwards. The
“dream machine” of cable, HD, Hollywood, and various and sundry
television and movie shows have been developing and releasing a
constant stream of youth clad in gang colors pass many pairs of
anxious eyeballs. Though the public has put up some small amount
of protest, the media kabal continues to push—in 24 news cycle
fashion—those items that ‘make’ one ‘hip and happening.’ Even
the latest video games have the inclusion of character bad
guys—mainly Blacks or Hispanics—clad in what the entertainment
industry ‘believes’ to be gang attire based upon their focus
groups and field research.
Pro sports has been putting up a ‘mild’ protest about how some
gangs have been using their merchandise as a means of ‘flagging
loyalty’ to their local gang or crew. (30 June 2008)—Mike Ramey, a Street Gang Specialist, consultant, trainer
and Lead Instructor of THE GANG LINE, based in Indianapolis,
Indiana.
RameysGangLine@yahoo.com
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Mockingbirds at Jerusalem
(poetry
Manuscript)
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 20 October 2007 /
update 15 December 2011
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