AYI KEWI ARMAH (Per Ankh Publishers, Popeguine Senegal), JACK WHITE (Time Magazine), GEORGE CURRY (Atlanta Daily World), CHUCK D (mistachuck@rapstation.com), MIN PAUL SCOTT (Final Call), and ERIC TURE MUHAMMAD (Final Call)
WHAT DO THEY SEE???




A brief note.
If, possible, Ayi Kwei Armah’s book 2000 Seasons should be read in its entirety. There are some stunning parallels between Armah and keen and courageous leaders in the analysis of hip hop, the political/economic environment and our general condition as a people. The focus here is on hip-hop. However, many other parts of the African community reflect the whole range of hip-hop behavior. Living by principle, selling out, manipulation, unconscious consumerism, non-strategic thinking, etc. can be found in many places
I know that I may be naïve, I still hope for the genius of the hip-hop artist to be wed again to the tradition of the Jeli (griot), Nganga, Jegna, Seba or simply the great spiritual leaders of our struggle, Denmark Vesey, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser. Players or Played? Who will call the shots and why?
Baffour Amankwatia II-Asa G. Hilliard III





Armah, Ayi Kwei (1979) 2000 seasons. Chicago, Third World Press

(EXCERPTS)
Prologue

Page. xi

Springwater flowing to the desert, where you flow there is no regeneration. The desert takes. The desert knows no giving. To the giving water of your flowing it is not in the nature of the desert go return anything but destruction. Springwater flowing to the desert, your future is extinction.
Hau people headed after the setting sun, in that direction even the possibility of regeneration is dead. There the devotees of death take life, consume it, exhaust every living thing. Then they move on, forever seeking newer boundaries. Wherever there are living remnants undestroyed, there lies more work for them. Whatever would direct itself after the setting sun, an ashen death lies in wait for it. Whichever people make the falling fire their aim, a pale extinction awaits them among the destroyers.

You hearers, seers, imaginers, thinkers, remembers, you prophets called to communicate truths of the living way to a people fascinated unto death, you called to link memory with forelistening, to join the uncountable seasons of our flowing to unknown tomorrows even more numerous, communicators doomed to pass on truths of our origins to a people rushing deathward, grown contemptuous in our ignorance of our source, prejudiced against our own survival, how shall your vocation’s utterance be heard?

Page xiii

We who hear the call not to forget what is in our nature, have we not betrayed it in this blazing noonday of the killers? Around us they have placed a plethora of things screaming denial of our nature, things welcoming us against ourselves, things luring us into the whiteness of destruction. We too have drunk oblivion, and overflowing with it, have joined the exhilarated chase after death.

How have we come to be mere mirrors to annihilation? For whom do we aspire to reflect our people’s death? For those entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer, conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams. Such idiot hopes come from a territory far beyond rebirth. Those utterly dead, never again to wake, such is their muttering. Leave them in their graves. Whatever waking form they wear, the stench of death pours ceaseless from their mouths. From every opening of their possessed carcasses comes death’s excremental pus. Their soul itself is dead long since putrefied. Would you have your intercourse with these creatures from the graveyard? Go to them then, and speak your message to long rotted ash.



Page xiv

A people losing sight of origins are dead. A people deaf to purposes are lost. Under fertile rain in scorching sunshine there is no difference; their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial.

But among the rushing multitude remember well the many rushing just because that is the present road—rushing not out of devotion but because they are of a nature to their internal order from the present season’s surroundings. It is a waste of the order from the present season’s surroundings. It is a waste of the seer’s thought, the hearer’s breath, a waste of the utterer’s spirit to pour blame on such natures. Were the surrounding order the order of the way, these also would again be people of the way. It is their nature to flow along channels already deepened by recent flow. It is not in their nature to wonder, threatening their easy flow. It is not in their nature to wonder, threatening their easy flow. It is not in their nature to wonder, threatening their easy peace with thinking if channels already found run true. Finders they are, not makers. Would you too, in pride miming the white, deathly people, would you also heap contempt on them? Do it directly then, and for your own satisfaction undisguised. Only plead no disappointment that the ones you so contemn, they too have not turned out to be makers. Fingers they are—never did they deceive you with any promise to be creators.

Page xv

Remember this: against all that destruction some yet remained among us unforgetful of origins, dreaming secret dreams, seeing secret visions, hearing secret voices of our purpose. Further: those yet to appear, to see, hear, to utter and to make—little do we know what changes they will come among. Idle then for us to presume despair on their behalf; foolish when we have no knowledge how much closer to the way their birth will come, how much closer than our closet hopes.

Page 1

We are not people of yesterday. Do they ask how many single seasons we have flowed from our beginnings till now? We shall point them to the proper beginning of their counting. On a clear night when the light of the moon has blighted the ancient woman and her seven children, on such a night tell them to go alone into the world. There, have them count first the one, then the seven, and after the seven all the other stars visible to their eyes alone.

After that beginning they will be ready for the sand. Let them seek the sea line. They will not have to ponder where to start. Have them count the sand. Let them count it grain from single grain.

And after they have reached the end of that counting we shall not ask them to number their raindrops in the ocean. But with the wisdom of the aftermath have them ask us again how many seasons have flowed by since our people were unborn.
Page 1-2

Beware the destroyers. It is their habit to cut off fingers from the hand itself uprooted from its parent body, calling each fallen piece a creature in itself, different from ears, eyes, noses, feet and entrails, other individual creatures of their making. Is it a wonder we have been flung so far from the way? That our people are scattered even into the desert, across the sea, over and away from this land, and we have forgotten how to recognize ourselves?

Page 3

That we the black people are one people we know. Destroyers will travel long distances in their minds and out to deny you this truth. We do not argue with them, the fools. Let them presume to instruct us about ourselves. That too is in their nature. That too is in the flow of their two thousand seasons against us.

Page 7

We have been handed down a vision of a slave man roaming the desert sand—a perfect image of our hollowed chiefs today. Language he had not, not ours, and not his own. It had been voided out of him, his tongue cut out from his mouth. He pointed to the gaping captivity. Thinking he still had a soul, even mutilated, we imagined was after sympathy. We were mistaken—he was pointing to the hole with pride. They who had destroyed his tongue, they had put pieces of brass in there to separate the lower from the upper jaw. The slave thought the brass a gift. Its presences made sweet to him the absence of this tongue. He communicated his haughty pride to us, indicating in the sand with precise remembrance when he had achieve each piece of brass, what amazing things he had been made to do in order to be given them.

Au! Is it not only rife among the fatted chiefs, this idiocy of the destroyed? Among ourselves we have seen beings thus voided of their souls, sent deep into earth on their mission of destruction, injected with the white people’s urge to devastation, sending wheat they take across the sea to the white destroyers’ homes.

Page 8
Creation calls the utterer to reach again the larger circle. That communication must be the beginning of destruction’s destruction, the preparation for creation’s work. That, not an incestuous, unproductive, parasitic gathering, is our vocation, that our purpose. We will not betray this remembrance: that all unconnected things are victims, tools of death.

The disease of death, the white road, is also unconnected sight the fractured vision that sees only the immediate present, that follows only present gain and separates the present from the past, the present from the future, shutting each passing day in its own hustling greed.

The disease of death, the white road, is also connected hearing, the shattered hearing that listens only to today’s brazen cacophony, takes direction from that alone and stays deaf to the whispers of those gone before, deaf to the soft voices of these yet unborn.

The disease of death, the white road, is also unconnected thinking, the broken reason that thinks only of the immediate paths to the moment’s release, that takes no care to connect the present with past events, the present with future necessity.

Page 17

‘Slavery—do you know what that is? Ah, you will know it. Two thousand seasons, a thousand going into it, a second thousand crawling maimed from it, will teach you everything about enslavement, the destruction of souls. The killing of bodies the infusion of violence into every breath, every drop, every morsel of your sustaining air, your water, your food. Till you come gain upon the way.

Page 18

‘You too will know the temptation to become takers. Some among you will succeed too well. Their souls voided out of them, they will join the their destroyers but only in the way of dogs joining hunters. The rest, all of you, your children, their children than their children after them and generations after them again and again all will be victims till the way is found again, till the return to our way.

Page 25

Conditioned to their work of killing, the askaris at once began an assault upon our women. Now the wailing of the women brought everybody running from the town. Even the hunters came desperate from their secrecy in the grasslands bringing bows and arrows. The oldest women, coming from the nearest houses, were first to arrive. The very oldest—Nandi was her name—threw herself in the path of the slaughtering zombies. She was the grandmother of the killers’ leader, and so her sudden appearance there in all that blood, naked in her hurry, for a moment caused the askaris to halt. Nandi looked around the palace yard, saw the women trying to defend themselves, a couple of their bodies already past defense, and the askaris ready to leap again at them.

‘But for whom are you fighting still?’ Nandi asked the askaris. She saw her grandson. “Son of my daughter, whose work are you doing? Look. Those who turned you killer, where are they? Look at hem. That should have been your work: killing your people’s killers, destroying your people’s destroyers. You did not do it, the work of your life. Instead you chose the work of walking corpses, killing your own people. What could we say to you? We knew your masters. They would have screamed at you to kill us all, and you would have obeyed them. But look now. There your masters lie. You can give them your obedience no more. They have been sent past its use. For whom then are you still killing your people? Son of my daughter, for whom?

Page 26

The askari zombi leader did not answer. On his face a look of terror, hate, despair, loss a look as of one plunged unprepared into vertiginous motion. A shout followed, in the predators’ language Arabic. Then the zombies rushed again. First their leader killed his grandmother Nandi. Twelve more fell that night. It was the arrival of the hunters from the grasslands that brought the carnage to a stop. The hunters’ fortune was good this auspicious night. The hunters made no speeches, but struck immediately, destroying the most desperate of the zombies turned into wild, ineffective fighters by too much dawa in their brain. The remaining askaris, more than half, the hunters working together with the smiths disarmed.

The predators from the desert, the white men, were not long in discovering in themselves a particular affinity for these creatures. The predators had a special use for them, and their souls—souls a healthy dog would have vomited out of his body—their souls were ready to accept such use. That use was this: the predators consistently re duced these men first to beasts, then to things—beasts they could command, things they could manipulate, all in the increase of their power over us.

To reduce them to beasts the predators starved their minds. The predators lowered in number and in seriousness the matters that could cause these hangers-on to think, till in the end ether was nothing at all they cared to exercise their minds on.

To reduce them to things the predators fed their bodies, indulging their crassest physical wants promptly, overflowingly. The predators fed them huge meals of meat and drink and added abundant dagga for their smoking. The predators supplied them with women and watched their copulation as another kind of sport. Such was the askaris life. From morning till sleep they were either at some sport, eating, drinking, copulating, smoking or defecating.

Page 30

Their bodies having thus been used to draw them into a state of mindless physical strength, habit sufficed to turn the state itself into a purpose for these aimless creatures. The new-found end of their lives was how to keep from doing anything different from the hollow cycle of shitting, smoking, fucking, drinking, eating, playing.

Page 33

When the white predators from the desert came a second time they found a brood of men ready to be tools of their purpose. This time again the predators came with force—to break our bodies. This time they came with guile also—a religion to smash the feeblest minds among us, then turn them into tools against us all. The white men from the desert had made a discovery precious to predators and destroyers: the capture of the mind and the body both is a slavery far more lasting, far more secure than the conquest of bodies alone.
Page 39

Our way is reciprocity. The way of wholeness. Our way know no oppression. The way destroys oppression. Our way is hospitable to guests. The way repels destroyers. Our way produces before it consumes. They way produces far more than it consumes. Our way creates. The way destroys only destruction.

Page 82

‘The first wish of the white men is this: they have heard of our land, of the beauty of the mountains and the plains’ fertility here, and of the metals our earth contains—iron in abundance, gold, silver, and our pure red copper. These metals it is the white men’s wish to take away from us, to take them to their home beyond the sea. In return they promise to give the king and his courtiers shy things, entertainment for their eyes. They would have us break up the mountains, take out what is good in them to give them, leave ourselves here the waste sand.’

The people assembled murmured their astonishment, but they respected the custom forbidding any interpretation at a time like this. As for the king he was still in his palace with this guests the white men.

‘This is the white men’s second wish,’ Isanusi continued. ‘They have been told of the forest here and of the grasslands; of the birds and animals we have roaming the land. It is the white men’s wish to have us help him kill these birds and these animals. They do not want their flesh for food. They elephants they day they want destroyed, but only for their tusks. There is a hunter among the white men, and a trader. These two say tusks can be sold for riches. Leopards they want dead for their hides. As for our gazelles, they would kill them to use their head for decoration.

‘You have heard me. The white men, guests of the king, would have us destroy our mountains, then our animals, and give them white is of use to themselves, leaving here the offal. In return they would reward the king of gifts, the king together with this courtiers.

‘There is a third wish the white men have made. Land they want from us, but not only the way guests ask the use of land. The white men want land cut off from other land and set apart from the, as if land could ever be a things belonging to any but the people as a whole. On this their cut-off land they would like to have crops grow. But the white men are not accustomed to doing their own planting and it is not in the minds to get accustomed here. They would have the king give them men to work the land—I use their language, for they think the king owns men he can give away others—so that to speak truth ours would be the planting and the caring, their the harvest and its profit. In return they would reward the king and his courtiers with more gifts.



Page 83

‘Listen to their fourth with. The white men say they have herd we have many people here—too many, they say—and that our women’s fertility is reported a wander among them. It is their wish to takes numbers of our people away from us. They say these numbers would in the new places beyond the sea work on the land as fertile as ours here…’

Here a grown of utter incredulity rose from the people assembled. Isanusi held his words, waiting for the sound of distress to die down, but it rose higher. So he spoke again.

‘Those who would still know the reason of the white men’s coming, let them listen. The white men have come here wishing to buy humans, to buy women among us, to buy men among us, to buy children among us and take them to unknown lands. In return they will reward the king and his courtiers with gifts.’

One among the king’s flatters turned ashen at these words, took back escaping breath, then rose in a hurry.

‘Stay Otumfur,” Isanusi turned and called to the hurrying man. ‘Stay and hear the end. I am almost there. Then we can go together to the king and I will help you till him what it is I have told the people. Stay.’

That flatterer, thus caught in Isanusi’s honesty, mumbled inaudible words to himself and came back to his seat. Isanusi turned again and continued.

‘Hear now the last wish of the white men. They have a road they follow, and something called a god they worship—not the living spirit there is in everything but a creature separate, raised above all surrounding things, to hear them speak of it rather like a bloated king. It is the white men’s wish to take us from our way—ah, we ourselves are so far already from our way—to move us on to their road; to void us our soul and put their spirit, the worship of their creature god, in us. For this they do not think it will be necessary to reward the king and hit courtiers. They say it will be reward enough when we have lost our way completely, lost even our names; when you will call your brother not Olu but John, not Kofi but Paul; and our sisters will no longer be Ama, Naita, Idawa and Ningome but creatures called Cecilia, Ester, Mary, Elizabeth and Christina.

Page 84

‘Hear now the end. The white men wish to destroy our mountains, leaving ourselves wastes of barren sand. The white men wish us to wipe out our animals, leaving ourselves carcasses rotting into white skeletons. The white men want us to take human beings, our daughters and our brothers, and turn them into slaves. The white men want us to obliterate our remembrance of our way, they way, an in its place to follow their road, road of destruction, road of a stupid, childish god.’
Page 86
The teachers told us quietly that the way of experts had become a tricky way. They told us it would always be fatal to our arts to misuse the skills we had learned. The skills themselves were mere light shells, needing to be filled out with substance coming from our souls. They warned us never to turn these skills to the service of things separate from the way. This would be the most difficult thing, for we would learn, they told us, that no fundi could work effectively when torn away from power, and yet power in these times lived far, immeasurably far from the way. This distance from the seats of power to the way, this distance now separating our way from power usurped against our people and our way, this distance would be the measure of the fundi’s pain. They told us there was no life sweeter than that of the fundi in the bosom of his people if his people knew their way. But the life of a fundi whose people have lost their way is pain. All the excellence of such a fundi’s craft is turned to trash. His skills are useless in the face of his people’s destruction, and it is easy as a useless in the face of his people’s destruction, and it is easy as slipping on a riverstone to see his craftsmanship actually turned like a weapon against his people.

Page 87

‘Change, or we will kill you,’ the first white predators, those from the desert, had said. ‘Believe in our road; abandon your way. Forget your ancestors, forget your posterity. Forget who your people are; forget your very selves and we will let your bodies live.’

Page 111

‘But you, Abena, how shall we ever deserve your forgiveness?’ it was Kwesi’s voice, but the question belonged to all of us.

‘Why forgiveness?’ asked Abena. Her sound was of true surprise.

‘You could have saved yourself.’ Sobo said this.

Abena laughed. Laughter so unexpected here that we were startled, and two of us, Ude and Kenia, asked sharply; ‘Why do you laugh, Abena?’

‘But I could not have saved myself.’

‘You did not want to come to this…’

‘I did not want us to come.’

‘You came because of us’

‘I came because of us, yes.’

‘That is what Sobo meant. You should have refused to come. You could have saved yourself.’

‘Saved myself apart from all of us?’ Abena asked. Silence. ‘There is no self to save apart from all of us. What would I have done with my life, alone, like a beast of prey?’

Page 147

‘These white destroyers, they searched among us with shrewd eyes, took whom they needed and offered us a choice not open to the rest; “You can escape the worst sufferings of slavery if you will become askaris for us.”

“Do you now see the white destoyers’ kindness? “Help us in the destruction of your people. That will be your individual salvation from destruction.” Ah, the life of the askari that I lived. That life.’

Page 206

There is no beauty but in relationships. Nothing cut off by itself is beautiful. Never can things in destructive relationships be beautiful. All beauty is in the creative purpose of our relationships; all ugliness is in the destructive aims of the destroyers’ arrangements. The mind that knows this, the destroyers will set traps for it, but the destroyers’ traps will never hold that mind. The group that knows this and works knowing this, that group itself is a work of beauty, traps for the heart, traps to destroy the mind. Such a group none of the destroyers’ traps can hold.




White, Jack (2000) Time. “A militant voice silenced: Emerge magazine falls victim to social change.” June 15, page 55

…Nearly devoid of humor. The kind of magazine that nearly always left you angrier at white people than you were before you read it. The problem? It came on way too strong for many of its intended readers, not to mention white advertisers.

…Johnson, a former editor at Time Inc., where Emerge got its start a decade ago before being sold to BET, thinks Emerge failed because, “It didn’t strike the right chord with its readers.” By that, he clearly meant that Curry’s bristling brand of journalism is no longer marketable to a black bourgeois audience that wants to be entertained, not browbeaten. The new, as yet unnamed, Magazine that Vanguard will bring out next year to take Emerge’s place, say Johnson, will be a “black Vanity Fair.”




Curry, George E. (2002) “Viacom’s BET Turns into ET.” Atlanta Daily World. December 26, page 8

Remember when your mother was about to administer a whipping and told you, “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you?” You didn’t believe it. Nor should you believe it when a successful African-American firm sells out to a White one while pledging that after the sale, Black consumers will not get hurt.

If we needed a reminder, we got a harsh one last week when Black Entertainment Television announced that it will eliminate “Lead Story,” “ BET Tonight with Ed Gordon” and “Teen Summit.” With one public announcement, BET became ET-empty television.

Even though I never cared for all the rump-shaking-and I recognized that BET programming was never aimed at my generation- I defended the network because even with all of its short comings, BET had a few programs that were unique.

“BET Tonight,” whether hosted by Ed Gordon or Tavis Smiley, was an excellent outlet for newsmakers and entertainers. “Lead Story,” where I served as a regular panelist for more than seven years, gave newsmakers-Black and White-an opportunity to be questioned by top-flight African-American journalists.

At least up until moderator Cheryl Martin and panelist DeWayne Wickham of “USA Today”/Gannett News Service left the show earlier this year and the regular panelists began appearing irregularly, it was the only program where Black newsmakers and Black journalists could regularly, sometimes heatedly, exchange views in an incisive and substantive manner on what was best for Black America.

“Teen Summit” was the only program where the views and insights of Black teenagers, not those who proclaim to speak for them, were not only heard, but welcomed.

BET’s weekday news show has been spared, at least for now. However, there are no guarantees that once the network’s contract with CBS expires, it won’t go the way of the other three programs.

Unless they are replaced by similar shows-and that’s a big if-BET will be little more than a Black MTV. There’s nothing wrong with a Black MTV if we had a Black CBS, as Whites do. Not only do they have CBS, they have ABC, NBC CNN, Fox, C-SPAN and much more.

In fairness to BET founder Bob Johnson, it’s too much to expect that one Black network could fill all of the needs of Black America. But I know how proud Bob was of “Lead Story”-he says it was his favorite program-“BET Tonight with Ed Gordon” and “Teen Summit.” And when they were securely on the air-even as the “The Boondocks” comic strip took regular jabs at the network-African Americans had a reason to tune in to BET.

At least we could tune in to serious programs that provided perspectives on issues of importance to our community. Now, there are fewer reasons to let our remotes stop on BET. In fact, if the news show is removed, there is nothing on the network that would attract my attention. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Some people see it as progress when an African-American firm is sold to a conglomerate such as Viacom. For Bob Johnson, the businessman, that is progress, the American Dream. But for most Black Americans, it’s the American Nightmare. When the few programs on TV that require us to use what we have from the neck up are taken off the air, what’s left is indistinguishable from what we see on the White video channels.

Sadly, we’re seeing a trend. In addition to BET, we’ve lost Motown, Johnson Products and even some of our Black funeral homes. AOL Time Warner has purchased 49 percent of ‘Essence’ magazine (some have noticed changes there, too) and 100 percent of Africanna.com. The “Chicago Tribune” wwns Blackvoices.com.

With Whites becoming a minority in the U.S. in the next 50 years, just as they already are in the world, they will continue to buy Black-owned companies. And each time, as we’ve seen with BET, the pattern with be the same.

First, there will be a major announcement proclaiming how the influx of cash will strengthen the Black company without changing its basic character. The head of the company will be retained to run the unit for a specified period, supposedly offering further assurance that things will not change that much. And after the sale is completed and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson don’s show up at the door, the White-owned “Black” company is viewed in the same light as any other division-to provide mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money.

The Black seller of the firm makes out like a bandit and the Black community is left dazed, wondering why we were so easily duped.

George E. Curry is editor-I-chief of NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com.






From: Kiilu Nyasha
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 13:01:28 -0700

EMpTy V ; BLACKFACES REDUCED TO BLACKFACE SILENTLY DESIGNING A DUMBED
GENERATION IN AMERICA

By Chuck D

The aftermath of the MTV Video Awards carries a business as usual
stench across the ever influenced cultural uh, black planet. The new
power elite in america the selection board of MTV. If I closed my
eyes and ears and went back in time it would've been an oily
Rockefeller gathering in the 20s,or a scotch and politic driven
Kennedy gathering in the 40s. The new power breed of selectors who
govern images to feed to the world youth, invisibly anonymous to
most, while being the choosers of who, what, when, why, and how.

In the words of my friend Kyle Jason we've ( black people on screen )
been reduced to comedy. As an artist I ve been fighting all my
career in a genre that has been hijacked by 'culture bandits', simply
cats who've used rap music and hip hop as a personal whatever without
putting anything back where they've got it from in the first place.
That s the ongoing complaint by the figureheads that started this
thing and I don't blame them. The lack of image balance is killing
us.

Cutting to the chase, in this so called business I've overstood the
bullsh#t, navigating the lunacy as much as possible to the masses and
cats within. But here's the deal, MTV standards ( whoever this
roundtable of culture caretakers are all I got was a cat by the name
of Tom Calderone who waffled so much on the issue I swore he was
swimming in syrup.) has clarified to my people both at KOCH and
SLAMjamz records that the 'Gotta Give The Peeps What They Need' video
would have to delete all affixed logos (a policy to not promote gear,
although I've long thought this to be ridiculous..but whatever I've
conceded that this is their little thing to keep situations from
making the money they make) and the thing that has myself going to
war..and that's to vanish ALL AUDIO AND VISUAL references to Mumia
Abu Jamal..the Free Mumia lyric. This is serious. In a climate
where they're playing the hell out of Nelly and Khia dumbing american
kids (17 and under..like who else is gonna be fanatical about adult
life requesting videos?) down to 'its so hot imma take my clothes
off' down from 'my neck to the crack of my ass' with a 'shot of
courvosier' .No offense to the prior two artists, because I really
don't think they know any better. I'm pulling the race card here
because MTV has admittingly reduced black faces to blackface. .
This time the control factor is the intangible grip over a designed
generation, 3 generations across since the MTV span since my 21st
birthday in 1981. Well you have designer clothes, designer cars,
designer drugs, and designer mentality for a designer generation.
MTV has successfully tailored a generation through the thread of
popular culture ,to pied piper itself to detach itself from a past
while blurring a future, thus dumbing them to the american way of
weighing people based on quantity as opposed to quality.

Quantity is the measurement needed for the almighty bottom line ala
the corporate dollar. Blackface at its dumbest makes a lotta money
for VIACOM. On also owned BET peeps know BRUCE BRUCE more than
newsman ED GORDON, reducing us as blackfolk to comedy where we think
americas laughing along with us in reality they re laughing at us.
It's the same reason I left DEF JAM ..we start off rebelling against
the one sided control ways of the establishment, only to find that it
eventually becomes a worse establishment itself. A joke in the
shadows of making money 'holla!

Really it ain't about playing the Public Enemy video. So be it. I
do art and songs to provoke and not be a joke. It would've been
simple as hell for them to rather say they didn't like the video.
But as a black M-A-N it's the NERVE of them judging what's acceptable
coming out of a blackface. If they think having a political
viewpoint in music is irrelevant, it's because they've taken the nazi
approach in censoring it themselves. Deep down.. rap to these
standard people is disposable romper room sh#t that will never
resonate to the LED ZEPs, BEATLES, NIRVANAS,AEROSMITHs, FLEETWOOD
MACS,BON JOVI status they still uphold in their hearts and minds.
But based on the ridiculous yet influential decisions they make while
in bed with their big business partners (major labels) is
unacceptable as far as my community is concerned. Judging that
anonymous circle of people in the standard department I feel, think
and ultimately know they would rather reduce us into a screen of
swinging monkeys, and retreat to their tri-state bridge and tunnel
confines.

Thus it always seems I exist in a twist of paradox. I refuse to edit
out the MUMIA audio AND visual, that's crazy and they must be out of
their f#cking mind. And since then eMpTy V has recended a bit by
saying that the visual images can stay in and the names but the word
FREE would have to be removed. It's getting funnier by the week,
that's something to never say to a black person (maybe why they would
never understand DEAD PREZ's Lets Get Free.

This is 2002, so much insanity swirling around Manhattan itself its
ridiculous NOT to make a statement about things like this. The
paradox is..that the fight completely vanishes the visibility. The
edit allows the video to be seen, but compromised and weakened, which
music is supposed to hurdle anyway. They didn't mention the H RAP
BROWN part which befuddles me for he's accused of the same thing.
Maybe they're so unfamiliar and dumb that they don t know WHO he is
and think I'm talking about some Brown rappin cat or something. I
play the race card for real in this case. The charge of VIACOM/ MTV
reducing us to comedy through images forces me to flip that card out.
Would MTV News cover this story ,especially one in which they're
guilty within?

write Chuck D at mistachuck@rapstation.com



WEB POSTED 10/1/02


The Dummyfying of Hip Hop America

by Min. Paul Scott
—Guest Columnist—
(FinalCall.com) -- The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright, but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness. Proverbs 15:2
I used to wonder why the rappers with the extensive vocabularies, you know the ones who could make a trip to the grocery store sound "deep", were no longer played on the radio: the Rakims, KRS-1s and the Big Daddy Kanes. I figured that they just fell off and were in a Rappers’ Retirement Home somewhere or people just weren’t feeling them anymore. But then reality hit me in the head and I began to compare their records with the stuff that the video shows and radio stations are playing today and began to see a sadistic plan in place to lower the IQ of Afrikan people.
I remember back in my school days, before I got out of bed in the morning I would play "Ain’t No Half Stepping" or "My Philosophy" on my boom box to get myself motivated to face the world another day. Before I had to do a presentation before the class, somehow listening to "Follow the Leader" on my walkman made me less nervous on my way to school. The lyrical flow of these brothas seemed to add an extra kick to my otherwise humdrum English Lit. report, even though the teacher would frown at me when I would end my presentation with a loud "PEACE É and I’m outta heeeeere!"
But the Hip Hop world is very different now and most of the lyrics of today make me want to take a sip of a 40 oz., get back in bed and sleep until Rap City comes on.
I once heard of a book that told of a diabolical plot by the media to lower the IQ of the American public. While this may sound a little farfetched, or the view of someone who had too much to drink while he was watching the Matrix, when you put that conspiracy theory in the context of Hip Hop it becomes more believable.
The power of "the WORD" has long been revered by our Afrikan ancestors. They understood that in the tongue lies the power to build or destroy, to give life or pronounce death, to reveal the TRUTH or deceive with lies. So there is power in the WORD (KNOWLEDGE) and a people who lose respect for KNOWLEDGE are doomed for destruction.
This is why it is disturbing to see how corporate America has misused "the WORD" in an attempt to Hip Hopnotize a whole generation into thinking that reading anything other than the Source is against some unwritten Rap Code of Conduct.
It is no secret that historically, Afrikan people have had their history "jacked" (stolen for those who are not down with Hip Hopology) the details of this grand larceny have been hidden from us, so most of the younger generation think that we have never created anything that wasn’t for the entertainment of White folks and the reason why so many brothas are in jail is because "that’s just the way real Niggas roll" without putting it into an economic, social and political context. During the 19th century, being able to read was punishable by death. In the 20th century, being well read puts you in the "uppity nigger" category and even today a group of brothas discussing anything other than who won the Monday Night Football game is considered a threat to White supremacy.
But the oppressor knows that TRUTH crushed to the ground will rise again and no lie can last forever (as Dr. King said). So the trick today is to fill the heads of the youth with so many lies that most will not recognize the TRUTH, even when it is staring them in the face and even if they do recognize the TRUTH, to program them to reject it, if it does not fall within the borders of what corporate America defines as what is or is not Hip Hop.
Hip Hop at its best, especially on an "undaground" level, is producing some of the most well thought out breakdowns of the problems facing the world in 2002, but commercial Hip Hop at its worst promotes anti-intellectualism and convinces the younger generation that if you make any statement besides "youknowwhatimsayin" then you ain’t represent’n tha hood. The art of communicating our thoughts has been the main casualty of THUGGISM.
While the poetic words of Paul Lawrence Dunbar "we wear the mask, the grins and lies" spoke of the double consciousness that many Black folks have had to possess in order to survive in a society dominated by racial stereotypes, in Hip Hop it can be said that we wear the mask that frowns and spits gangsta lyrics.
The problem is that this iron mask comes with a bandana and padlock and is almost impossible to take off when you have been wearing it for too many years.
With all of the resources available to them, this generation has the potential to be among the most brilliant minds that have ever walked the planet. But this potential has been sabotaged by corporate America.
The entertainment industry tells the youth that all they need is "Street Knowledge," which will enable them to have girls, cars and lots of platinum chains and will ultimately enable them to rule the world in the name of Hip Hop.
As much as I want to keep the FAITH, I am quickly thinking that "The Thug who Sat by the Door" theory is nothing but a fairy tale. Too much time has been wasted and too much Black blood has been spilled to keep me believing that within the well guarded and locked down entertainment industry, there is a secret organization of gangsta rappers who are pimpin’ the "system" and will one day, armed with the money they have earned and Street Knowledge,take off their masks and reveal themselves as the saviors of Afrikan people. It is possible, however, that the masses of fed-up Black people can put so much pressure on the gangstas that it will force them to at least sound like militant revolutionaries. The elders tell me that the groups of the 1960s, who said it loud that they were Black and Proud, only did so because the masses demanded it.
There is a war going between the oppressor and the oppressed for the minds of this generation and the ones who are victorious will be the ones who want it the most.
We must represent Black Consciousness as hard as the youth represent Hip Hop. As the great Funk philosopher George Clinton once said, we must program, deprogram and reprogram.
Like an old science fiction movie, there is always a word (symbolic of a divine TRUTH) that snaps a victim out of hypnotic trance and those of us in the struggle for the survival of Afrikan people will not rest until we find it!
(Min. Paul Scott is founder of the Durham, N.C.-based New Righteous Movement. He has also launched the National Hip Hop Reformation Campaign. For more information, e-mail operationmedia@yahoo.com.)



WEB POSTED 10/8/02
Social commentary and Black rap
Why can Eminem blast the 'system' but PE can't?

by Eric Ture Muhammad
—Staff Writer—
(FinalCall.com) -- Can White artists make social commentary and get airplay while Black artists can’t? Why is Black music reserved to booty shakin’, thuggery and promoting the latest drugs and alcohol?[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/T%27SHAN%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.jpg[/IMG] These aren’t new questions for socially conscious consumers of Black entertainment. But the recent controversy over the "censoring" of rap group Public Enemy’s (PE) latest video raises the questions even higher.
"Artist have choices," Black CEO Karen Mason of Atlanta-based Destiny Talent Agency told The Final Call. "They can decide what they will sing, act and do. They are fully responsible for all that they do. And we as the consumer must challenge them.
"I mean, how does someone go from the rhetoric of the Five Percent Nation (Busta Rhymes) to hawking Courvoisier (liquor)—for free—without us holding him or her accountable," she charged. "I don’t think it so much a matter of being radical or not. It’s really about right and wrong. Is it right to peddle Courvoisier to our youth? Is it right to drop inferences and outright commercials for ecstasy (drugs), oral sex and immoral behavior to our youth?"
A strong public outcry from hip hoppers everywhere successfully forced Music TeleVision (MTV) to reverse its decision to ban PE’s latest video, "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need." The song is from their latest album, "Revolverlution." The video and lyrical content speaks to the freeing of political prisoners Mumia Abu Jamal and Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown. Both are former Black Panther Party members.
MTV originally refused to air the video unless all references to Mr. Abu Jamal were censored out. It was their position that the content was glorifying "cop killers." Both Mr. Abu Jamal and Imam Al-Amin were convicted of the killing of law enforcement officers. Both maintain their innocence and say the actions taken against them is part of a government conspiracy.
"I deal with media hijacking and the uses of technology on us," Chuck D told The Final Call in an exclusive interview. "The key, and I learned this from (researcher) Steve Cokely and others, is to try to talk about new sciences and new effects without sounding like I’m talking Japanese to our people.
"It’s not the fact that MTV turned down the video and we’re trying to get the video played. I don’t give a damn. I make music to make a statement," he said.
After public outcry intensified via e-mail petitions, editorials, commentaries and the threat of boycott and demonstrations outside of MTV’s New York studios, MTV reconsidered its position and recently announced plans to air the video free of censorship.
Apparently, the issue of freeing Black U.S. political prisoners—which America claims not to possess—is a larger threat to White-owned music stations and labels than social issues raised by White artists like Eminem. The PE track, although tremendously popular in underground hip hop communities across the world, is hardly heard on radio or seen on music television stations. The same goes for other dominant Black male artists in hip hop like Kam and Dead Prez.
"The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that if you know better, you will do better," PE member Professor Griff told The Final Call. "But that’s a two-fold process. First you have to know, and then you have to do. And these artists—they know. They just refuse to take a proactive stance, maybe from fear of losing some fans or some money. They are up in the millions of dollars anyway, but they fear the loss, when they could at any time be sued for the foolish things they do and lose it all anyway," he said.
On the other hand, Eminem is in heavy rotation as he calls for the removal of the Bush administration. In his latest effort, "The Eminem Show," on the track called "Square Dance," the White artist rambles strong social commentary against the U.S. government’s war policies, terror and Mr. Bush.
"There is indeed music that offers more than booty-shaking, sex, drinking and drugs," commented WAOK radio talk show host Chris Askew in Atlanta. "The problem is, we collectively seem to ignore it. It’s easy to say we are being force-fed this music, but why do we consume it in such volume?
"One way to address this problem is to understand that we have power in how we determine to spend our money. We are the trendsetters. Each and every dollar does count. I will never knock an artist for the work he or she creates and I will always defend their right to create it, but we are lacking balance in the presentation of the arts across the board," he said.
"The bottom line is artists have to become more aware of what is going on in our community," said Kenya Jordana James, the 13-year-old editor-in-chief of Blackgirl magazine. "A lot of these artists are not in touch with the pulse of their community. It’s all Hollywood now. At the same time, there are artists who are saying something. There are artists out there who are conscious of what is going on … and we need to support them."
Some of those artists the youth hear, she said, are the group Nappy Roots; singers India.Arie, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and reggae artist Damian Marley.
"We need an inner-anarchy," Chuck D said, suggesting that people in the industry should organize and go after individuals in these corporations and make them personally accountable.
"That will start something," said Chuck D. "You got people who remain anonymous that make decisions on programming for millions of people and nobody knows who the hell they are. If you start naming the names, social security numbers, names of their kids, the schools they’re at, they’ll start running like roaches with the lights on, and they will start making more conscious decisions. We would have knocked away the corporate veil and force them to make statements as individuals.
"You know my name and you attack me and you hide under the corporate name of MTV. If you can know my name and attack what we do as a group, I have and the people have the right to know you—first, middle, last name—and everything about you, like the corporations have on all of us," he said.