Rest in Peace

Stan Winston
1946-2008

You dazzled us.

A Global President

We live in an increasingly globalist society, yet the American populace seems to want a president who is wholly provincial. We want the president to ‘be ours’ and no one else’s. You cannot be (or maintain as) a super power if you can’t see past your own country. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that McCain will be well-received internationally. How seriously can you take an aging cowboy who is in a near lock-step with the previous administration—an administration that has fostered so much ill-will internationally?

Clinton, as smart as she is, isn’t the trailblazer everyone wants or thinks her to be. In this country’s history, she is the only viable female presidential candidate—and she deserves to be recognized as such. However, in the international community, she’s not so special nor is she the first heavyweight female political figure on the global stage: Margaret Thatcher, Tansu Çiller, Angela Merkel, Benazir Bhutto, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Kim Campbell, and others share that distinction. And it sickens me to have to think of this election in terms of gender and race—because it only goes to show how backwards Americans are. People should be able to run for the highest office based on merit. More meritocracy is evidenced on American Idol than in our own political system. And it is the role of merit that makes Obama’s presidential run so frustrating.

As far as the international piece goes, he is more prepared than both Clinton and McCain (even though he saw combat in a different country) combined.
Barack is biracial and from his earliest days had to view the world through a transcultural lens. He grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, and lived and worked in Chicago; three cultural melting pots. You’re not getting much international flavor in Arkansas or Arizona. His being an attorney calls in to question his moral and ethical fortitude, but just based on his upbringing, he has been better prepared for engagement with the international community than either Clinton or McCain.

Folks want to argue that Clinton’s eight years in the White House has given her the training she needs to tackle international problems. A quick aside: I keep harping on the need for a president to be ready for international matters because I truly feel that local governments should be able to handle all domestic problems.
Just because Clinton is married to one of the greatest (yet ethically malleable) political minds of our time does not mean that she is ready. Being the President of the United States is not a meme you can catch. It takes hard work and you don’t learn it through osmosis. But her exposure to the presidential process, foreign ministers, international travel does give her a leg up on Obama, in theory.

What it will boil down to is who utilizes their skill-set in the best possible way. Can Clinton take those eight years and parlay them into an effective presidency? A presidency that will completely and totally eclipse her husband’s storied run? Or can Obama operate from his profoundly transcultural context and embrace the entire world with more than just fancy rhetoric and youth galvanization? And McCain…we don’t need Bush-lite. McCain is the Billy beer of this presidential race—amusing, yet awkward and really spooky under close scrutiny.

I haven’t made up my mind who I will be voting for this November (well…it won’t be McCain) but I will be taking a close look as to who can effectively engage the world in such a way that American will regain some of its international luster—a luster that has been thoroughly corroded under the Bush regime.

Where Does Africa Fit In?

What, if anything, does Africa owe pan-Diaspora Black peoples?
What, if anything, do pan-Diaspora Black peoples owe Africa?
I've been thinking about this lately and I'll offer some ideas in the coming weeks.

Wright and the RC

So…the race card (RC). It makes me laugh—only to distract myself from the anger—when people make the claim that someone is using the RC. The reason that this is coming up is because of what should have been a non-incident: Statements made by the oh-so-divisive Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Rev. Wright said some things that would cause the average (ignorantly-pseudo patriotic) person to blanch. While his words may be too incendiary for some—let’s take a brief look at the track record of our country and see how far off he is. I won’t put the key points in a narrative, I’ll make a list—it is your job to check it twice:

- Decimation of this land’s Native population through war, disease, and treaty violations.
- The trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery
- Jim Crow
- Being the only country in the world to ever drop an Atom bomb (hell, the US dropped two) on an inhabited area
- Getting into WWII so late that European Jews were killed in earth-shattering numbers. Earlier involvement could have saved more people
- Having prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor
- The Tuskegee Experiment
- Viet Nam
- The Iraq War

This is just a mild sampling. As you can see, this country has done/contributed to/engineered through inaction some pretty heinous events. But back to the Rev. Do I agree with everything he spouts? Nope. But I do agree with and appreciate his anger, even if it is a bit self-aggrandizing. But the sad thing is that, as a whole, the US population is so intellectually and socially amateurish that they not only want to lash out at Wright, but also want to stick Obama within the rhetorical sphere. While I like Obama, he is not that hard nor is he that brave. In his current position, he can’t be. This country is (and will be for a very long time) colorstruck (with those of darker skin bearing the brunt of this nation’s color issues).

An institution like Bob Jones University can exist (with the President even going there to visit) and there is little to no uproar. Pat Robertson can say things that are truly divisive, but he has been a confidant to many government leaders. But a retired Black Reverend, who has a connection with the only viable Black Presidential hopeful in this nation’s history, is assaulted by a full multimedia attack. One of the most prominent attacks is saying that Wright is playing the RC. While I do believe that many
Black folks scream racism too much (especially if they get caught doing something stupid) racism exists and to call it out is not playing the RC. It’s self-defense.

What’s funny is that the people who are accusing Wright (and other outspoken Blacks) of using the RC…They are doing the exact same thing, but in their (limited capacity) minds, it is okay for them to do so. When bitter, gun wielding, clinging to religion, American-folks scream that someone is playing/using/dropping the race card, they are playing their own as a foundation for their criticism. What it boils down to is this—it is okay to play the race card, only if that card is carte blanche.

This is dedicated any and everyone who has the fire to point to the demon and name it.

Let Me Clear My Throat...

At the risk of sounding silly and unnecessarily cryptic, hip-hop cannot be explained in any concrete sense. The culture is as transient and malleable as our consensus reality, and the only way to really explore it is to consider hip-hop culture as ontology. Yes, folks, emceeing, graf writing, b-boying, DJing, and all of the other attendant aspects of the culture can give us meaning.

In its broadest interpretation, hip-hop is alchemy. It changes poverty into wealth; letters into words, words into lyrics, and lyrics into mind’s eye pictures that—if the lyrics are poignant enough—stay with us. Old music is made new; remixed, filtered, and rearranged, and re-presented in startling fashion. Blank walls are altars on which—with a small sacrifice of paint and time—can act as a bold town crier. Trains carry the gospel of self from city to city. Bodies twist and bend and whirl, pushing beyond typical human capacity—transforming dance into an act of rebellion against physiology.

The culture invites us to participate on all levels: physical, intellectual, emotional, and the metaphysical. Hip-hop’s four elements have one thing in common, they all engage us in our imaginative capacities; but each element intersects with the imagination with its own unique properties:

Graf writing is concerned with the symbiosis of the hand and eye.
B-boying deals with preprioception, physical limits and tolerances.
Emceeing allows us to bring forth the stuff of the subconscious and deliver it with audible passion.
DJing is an empathic pursuit—being open to change, allowing one to be moved by the whims of the crowd.

It’s that deep.

But with what passes for hip-hop today, it is nearly impossible to see how the culture can be worthy of anything, other than derision. As it stands, the public face of hip-hop is a throwback to the coonery and minstrelsy that openly plagued black popular culture from slavery right on up and through the civil rights movement—and exemplified today by the likes of the Flavor of Love, 50 Cent, and I § New York—all of which are vying to send the black public image skipping and singing back to the plantation.

It is so easy to blame the media, but in the case of the negative presentation of hip-hop, the media is at fault. But so are we. Big Media’s main concern is making money. That’s a given, and it is understandable. What isn’t so easily understood is why these media conglomerates whole-heartedly support the lowest common denominator of black cultural output.
An aside: I am fully aware that more than just black folks can claim to ‘be’ hip-hop or be about it, but it is a black art—don’t ever forget that.

I heard a guy say, “Smart black people aren’t good for business. It’s entirely too different. The skin and hair are already a shock, but to add brains…you’re just looking to lose money.” Damn. The sad thing is that his words are true, on a certain level—that level being that most black folks don’t like to see themselves as intellectual.

As to the why of this—that’s an entirely different piece of writing.

So, operating on this crazy premise, Big Media puts out crap, banal, anti-intellectual hip-hop (arguably the most popular youth culture today) and people of all nationalities can imbibe on black ignorance, en masse. What’s worse, the audience (us)—not caring what is being said, as long as the beat is hot—buys song after song, ringtone after ringtone, of pure drivel. And we like it. We like it like a thirsty man in the desert welcomes a glass of water, even though there is dirt in it—the dirty water is all that is available. But what sucks is that there is a clear-watered oasis not more than thirty feet from the thirsty man, but it is obscured by blowing sands and mirages. And it is due to the blowing sands and mirages of so much corporate bullshit, the once powerful art form/cultural expression of hip-hop has as much longevity as an Ikea kitchen table. However, this is not to say that there aren’t pockets of hope, progress, and meaning.

Independent American labels like Rhymesayers Entertainment and Def Jux are engaging us in ways not experienced since the heydays of Public Enemy, NWA, BDP, De La, Tribe, and Rakim. Not just in the arena of “this beat is so ill,” but in the “what did he just say?” and “that was philosophically profound” arenas as well.

Jean Grae has made anguish and despair an aggressively beautiful art form.

Over in the UK, you have Roots Manuva who presents the ethos of a UK black making UK rap in such a unpretentious way—run, not walk, and buy his album Awfully Deep.

In Paris, American expatriate Mike Ladd has done more for the aesthetics and potential of hip-hop than the entire Dipset crew.

Needless to say, these aren’t the only thing’s that recontextualize hip-hop in a better light, but the aforementioned don’t get nearly the exposure they deserve.

But what does all of this have to do with the hip-hop in its ontological capacity?

The culture and its artistic offshoots can act as a compass—showing the way to a better understanding of our world—allowing us to navigate treacherous psycho-social terrain. Whether it is through the ear, hand, eye, heart, mind, voice, or the imagination; this art/culture/cash cow of a culture that I love so dearly (even though I’m approaching thirty-six) can sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the heavy-hitters of philosophy, such as existentialism and epistemology. In fact, I’d argue that hip-hop, in its alchemical form, is the direction that modern philosophical thought and action should be traveling.

As with all meaning-making devices, hip-hop was built on a foundation and then took these constituent parts and created something entirely new. From poverty, racism, hopelessness, and violence, hip-hop was forged as a way to encompass (and transcend) all of the disparate and negative pieces that it is derived from. It became a way of becoming—self-actualization and realization to a drumbeat.

Our rhetorical debates happen in the cipher; our proclamations are displayed on trains and walls; we’ve done away with the false dualism of mind/body; turntables allow us to stay in constant contact with our ancestors, using their ancient wisdom to approach modern problems. Hip-hop is the new ontological beast on the philosophical block. And as the Fugees said on 1996s The Score: “Warn the town, the Beast is loose.”

Galactica Breakdown

Some Questions...

- How King Kong is the cover of the new Vogue?
- Where is D'Angelo?
- And speaking of soul men; where is Maxwell?
- Is it just me, or are The Roots the most consistent band around?
- Does eating good chocolate ever get old?
- Have you read Jinichiro Tanazaki's In Praise of Shadows? Why not?
- When was the last time you told someone you loved them, and meant it?