Black Nationalism and Rap Music

Black Nationalism and Rap Music
by Errol A. Henderson

To take part in the African revolution it is not to write a revolutionary song; you must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves, and of themselves. ... In order to achieve real action, you must yourself be a living part of Africa and of her thought; you must be an element of that popular energy which is entirely called for the freeing, the progress, and the happiness of Africa. There is no place outside that fight for the artist or for the intellectual who is not himself concerned with and completely at one with the people in the great battle of Africa and of all suffering humanity.

Sekou Touré1

In this paper, I examine some major nationalist trends in rap music (or hip-hop), its development and the implications of its future growth. I argue that rappers should return to the nationalistic focus of hip-hop if the industry is to become a base for African centered politico-economic and cultural development. This Afrocentric rendering could help promote a national culture to replace the popular (faddish) culture of violence and sexism, and both wed African Americans to the best in their culture and allow them to more directly profit from their cultural product.

Additionally the promotion of Afrocentric national culture may help to create a standard of behavior and a new rites of passage away from guns, dope, sexism, and violence, and toward more African-centered definitions of manhood and womanhood rooted in righteous behavior, support for liberation struggles and political prisoners, Afrocentric community building, and good entertainment. Asante (1993, p. 124) maintains that "it is only a centeredness born of knowledge of our history and consciousness of our predicament that will lead us out of the abyss of violence."

Further, rap must be insulated from White supremacist criticism from outside the community. Euro-Americans cannot stand as the moral authority in this country—their hands are too bloody. The moral vanguard of this country has always been the Black, Brown, and Red communities. However, too many in the Black community, their White supremacy intact, simply parrot the Euro-American condemnation of hip-hop. This is baseless, and is reminiscent of the facile criticism of be-bop. This group of White supremacists in Black face simply wait for White sanction of culture before giving their seal of approval. They admonish, inter alia, that rap music causes violence. That makes about as much sense as arguing that "Love Child" by the Supremes caused teen pregnancy. These senseless assertions are not pursued in this article.

The larger point is that the reality of the baselessness of these condemnations does not absolve African Americans, especially Black nationalists from criticizing hip-hop. Karenga (1993) reminds us that rap music does not have a martyrs immunity against criticism. However, we do not condemn hip-hop, but we challenge it to rise to the level of the best of its potential. I argue that its nationalistic focus points the direction toward, and encompasses, the best of this potential, which is the fusion of Black popular and national culture.
The Origins of Hip-hop

Rap music has had a profound impact on the African American community in the United States. Its greatest significance, to my mind, derives from the fact that it has fostered a profound nationalism in the youth of Black America. Arguably, hip-hop has become a conduit for African American culture to a greater extent than even jazz. Where the latter could, though its polyrhythmic syncopations, embrace both the nuances and jagged edges of the collective Black experience, it could not self-consciously energize the nationalist ethos in quite the way the more lyrically focused hip-hop does. To present these jagged edges, jazz, or be-hop, needed the uncompromising lyric of the poet. Also, poets, with their jagged edges intact, still required the talking drum of instrumentation to fully capture the Black ethos of struggle, resistance, righteousness, exploitation, and creativity in Black America. Hip-hop fused the two—poetry and jazz—in such a way as to render itself the most conductive source of the current of African American culture.

Hip-hop, or rap music, began in the early 1970's. The first synthesis of self-conscious poetry and music can be traced, most directly, to the Black nationalist Last Poets. Their albums The Last Poets, Chastisements, This is Madness, and others have become classics in the African American community. When one member who separated from the group, with the stage name "Lightning Rod," used a musical score provided by Kool & The Gang as a backdrop to his lyrical narrative of a day in the life of two hustlers, he had no idea he was laying the basis for an entirely new musical genre. This album, Hustler's Convention, was a mainstay in the album collection of a South Bronx DJ named Kool Herc.

Herc credited Lightning Rod and James Brown with providing the foundation for hip-hop, but it was Herc who gave it life. Herc was deft at the early art of mixing and fading one record into the next without missing a beat in the interchange. He did this mostly by ear. His vast repertoire of music, including some reggae beats that though loved in the streets were very hard to find, and his thundering speaker system known as "The Herculords" made his music highly danceable, rhythmical, and unavoidable. The thundering sounds of the Herculords remains legendary.

Meanwhile, an electronic genius of a young man, J. Saddler, had developed a more accurate way of mixing music from two turntables. Grand Master Flash, as he became known, originated the "clock method," whereby DJs used the face of the album as a sort of reckoning tool by which one could remember one's place on a record more exactly. This was necessary because Flash would not simply "mix" the records, but he would "scratch" them: Using the needle in the groove as an instrument to make the grating though rhythmical sound for which rap has become famous. Although a hip-hop prodigy, Grand Wizard Theodore, reportedly discovered this technique while under Flash's tutelage, it was Flash who perfected it. Flash is credited with giving hip-hop its face—the deft, smooth and creative DJ. The battles between Flash and Herc became legendary. But even Herc would have to admit that none were faster than the original "Grand Master."

The face of rap in its early days was definitely the DJ. The body of rap was the urban wasteland that was the South Bronx. Here gangs of New York youth were encased in what could only be described as a war zone. After the Black power movement, the Vietnam War, and the FBI COINTELPRO against positive Black community organizations, gangs were almost alone as the one institution in the Black community offering a cogent message to Black youth. That message was, "join and survive." The largest of these New York Black gangs was the Black Spades, and its youthful leader would rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the South Bronx. He transformed the Black Spades into the Zulu Nation, and he transformed himself into a hip-hop legend. Afrika Bambataa. With the coming of Bambataa the mind of hip-hop was turned to Black nationalism, positive creativity, vision, and healing. Some of his messages would not take root until as late as 1981 when his early rival, Flash, convinced his MC Melle Mel to co-author "The Message," the first nationally recognized "progressive" rap statement on the condition of Black America.
Hip-Hop As A Conduit For Political Culture

Hip-hop is much more than the names and faces of individual practitioners of the genre. Inter alia, it has the potential to fill a transitional void of cross-generational cultural transmission within Black culture by providing a new lyric to an old tune, in some cases literally. When Public Enemy dropped "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," they were not only providing an anthem for incarcerated Black youth, but they were doing so in the context of regurgitating "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedaelamistic," a 1970s Isaac Hays tune from the album Hot Buttered Soul. It is the sampling aspect of hip-hop that allows for creative synthesis in the context of cross-generational cultural transmission. Not only was this tying together of generations important in the aesthetic sense, but it was more significant because the nexus was established between a relatively apolitical generation of the 1970s and 1989s with the staunch Black nationalist African American subculture of the 1960s. Kool Herc made the most of this potential in hip-hop for cross-generational cultural transmission. In one sense, this was epitomized through his early use of James Brown ("Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud"), the Black nationalist Last Poets, and Rastafarian reggae. Reggae, especially in the hands of Bob Marley, picked up the nationalist torch laid down with the death of jazz great John Coltrane. Black nationalism was incubated in reggae before the coming of hip-hop, and to this day the best of reggae maintains its Garveyite elements.

Because the early era of hip-hop (1973–1979) was dominated by the DJ, the spun records had to speak for themselves. DJs like Herc and later Hollywood, just threw some catchy phrases over the mix; however, there wasn't much to the actual "rap" element of hip-hop. Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, The Treacherous Three, Lovebug Starski, and Hollywood were important progenitors of the era of MC dominance in hip-hop. MCs demonstrated their verbal acrobatics over "def" DJ mixes. This was epitomized in "Rapper's Delight," the Sugarhill Gang's expropriation of some of Grandmaster Caz's old raps, which nonetheless made rap a national phenomenon. The phrasing was classic hip-hop, but simplistic. Within two years, Melle Mel let the world know that living could sometimes be "like a jungle." This was "The Message." Although it was different from the hip-hop then in vogue, it evoked the nationalist roots of rap better than anything before—or since. It was cutting edge. It was in the best tradition of what KRS-ONE would later describe as "edutainment," but it was not as pretentious as the latter. This brand of nationalism was rooted in the commonality of oppression, and "The Message" made it plain. Later rap artists like Public Enemy and X-Clan would attempt to provide a more explicitly political and cultural analysis of the black condition without compromising the basic hip-hop aspects of their raps.
The Foci of Nationalism

Karenga (1980, p.15) defines Black nationalism as the political belief and practice of African Americans as a distinct people with a distinct historical personality who politically should develop structures to define, defend, and develop the interests of Blacks as a people. This entails a redefinition of reality in Black images and interests, providing a social corrective by building institutional and organizational structures that house Black aspirations, and it provides a collective vocation of nation building among Black people as a political end. Beyond Karenga's definition lies the issue of the motivation, or justification, for the emergence of Black nationalism within the African American community. There appear to be three such justifications for the emergence of Black nationalism.

First is that brand of nationalism that emerges from identification rooted in a perceived commonality of oppression. Another emerges from a recognition of a convergence of political purpose, objectives, and goals. Third is that brand of nationalism that rests on the justification of a commonality of culture. The first type, though superficially based, can be quite lasting. In the Black community it rests on the recognition of the common caste identity of Blacks in White supremacist America. In its vulgar, though popular, aspect, it promotes a form of skin color nationalism that disregards the diversity within the Black community especially around issues of class, gender, and cultural identification. In this sense, it is inherently reactive, rooted in the specious Eurocentric concept of race under which the very people who promote this brand of nationalism have been relegated.

In the second variant, nationalism emerges from a common agenda. This form is usually representative of a more sophisticated analysis beyond purely skin color considerations. However, what actually emerges is a collective agenda among those filtered into the process by skin color considerations. Here where Black skin is viewed as necessary, though not sufficient, a type of interest group focus or specialization occurs where the nationalist group orients itself around a particular ideology and political program and offers itself as an appropriate vehicle for the realization of Black aspirations. There is a wide continuum ranging from the Black nationalist conservatism of Washington through the bourgeois nationalism of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to the revolutionary Black nationalism of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA).

In the last case, where nationalism emerges from culture considerations, the reactive and purely skin color considerations are bypassed. Nationalism that emerges from a cultural perspective takes on self-defining aspects of the culture group itself and does not derive from reactive definitions. Because culture is an inclusive concept, it incorporates gender, class, and other diverse components of society within its construct. It does not rely on the Eurocentric concept of race, however, it realizes that people of a common African culture in this society are also primarily those we consider Black people. Also, this nationalism suggests that whereas African Americans constitute a distinguishable culture group—a people—then that people should have a common agenda because, historically people have developed as groups and, presently, African Americans have been subjugated as a group into a caste in the United States. Notice here that though a commonality of oppression is recognized in this approach, it is not the primary for this, an African-centered nationalism. Only this justification leads to the synthesis of nationalist thought and practice suggested by Karenga's (1993) definition of Black nationalism. Much of the early nationalism in hip-hop had as its justification a commonality of oppression. There later emerged a nationalism based in the second type; a commonality of interests and agenda. It was only later, especially with the rise of X-Clan that the third type began to develop.

It is clear that nationalism, whatever its justification, has, inter alia, political, cultural, psychic, and economic elements. Rappers began to articulate all these perspectives in their music. Entertainment was the raison d'être, but entertainment could be couched in nationalism and could become Afrocentric and transformative. Asante (1987) asserted the connection between Black aesthetics, from orature to dance, and Afrocentrism. This Afrocentrism could then infuse the best image and interests of Black peoples into the popular culture and allow it to fuse into a liberating national culture. 2

This was the central focus of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. 3 The potential for the development of such a liberating process was all the more important because hip-hop up to the time of Run DMC's "King of Rock" was strictly playing to a Black audience. Of course all hip-hop was not nationalistic, or even political, for that matter. Many rap artists were as apolitical as their counterparts in mainstream music. I would argue, however, that from its inception the nationalist ethos has been present in hip-hop. In fact, this Black nationalism has structured hip-hop in the past and continues to do so. It is important that we understand how and why this has occurred.
A Nationalist Conduit: The Zulu Nation

Nationalism in hip-hop does not emerge exclusively from the lyrics of early rap music. In the early days of hip-hop in the 1970s, this nationalism developed from the collective ethos of the Black community that spawned this new genre. In this respect, the very framework of the hip-hop community suggested, fostered, and allowed to flourish a collectivist nationalist praxis. This is because hip-hop was incubated in the Black community's house parties, public parks, housing projects, and local jams. These sites in the Black community were often under the immediate influence of the dominant territorial gangs in the areas. The gangs made security a chief concern for both would-be rappers and those coming to jams. For their own benefit, gangs could insure the safe conduct of a party, at some cost, functioning as traditional security. In this some gangs could find their own commercial success.

The presence of gangs also motivated performers to enlist their own crews for security, especially when they performed outside of their own home base, because much of the hip-hop scene was done through house parties. 4 One such famous crew provided security for Grand Master Flash. The Casanova Crew, as they were called, had a reputation; according to Grandmaster Caz: "They were kicking nigger's asses."5

The movement into different territories also facilitated the spread of hip-hop.6 This process also moved gangs into more commercial and less territorial postures as the prospect for wealth beyond nickel and diming over turf presented itself in the form of commercial security enterprises. It also suggested the transformation of crews and gangs in a manner that would reflect the collective ethos that hip-hop, even with its famous "battles," nonetheless promoted.7 This suggested a linkage around commonality instead of differences. The most obvious commonality within the emergent hip-hop community was the fact that it was exclusively Black. Any commonality that emerged would have to emerge within that context. The result was a reaffirmation of the basic aspects of Black cultural nationalism framed in the context and aspirations of a young gifted and Black core of hip-hop talent. This was the Zulu nation.

Zulu is really a youthful expression of cultural unity. As such it does not go in and out of style. People may be down with particular crews or not, but the unity associated with the cultural aspects of hip-hop operate independently of folks going down with this crew or not. Caz captures this notion when he points out that "it's [Zulu's] not a record, and it's not something that gets hot and not hot. You might be up on it now and not hear about it later, but to people that's down it's always there" (Eure & Spady, 1991, p. xv). Zulu brought cultural focus to the hip-hop community because its chief leader was himself among the earliest sources of hip-hop: Afrika Bambataa. Although Bambataa had emerged from the Black Spades, one of the largest Black gangs in New York, the ethos that he brought forth was inclusive. In response to the question, "Did Zulu play a part in bringing about the unity [in hip-hop]?" Grandmaster Caz responded:

Definitely, because Bambataa ... everybody was down with Zulu, even if you down with the crew, even if you wasn't down with [Africa] Islam and the Funk Machine, and Bambataa and the Soulsonic Force, you was still down with Zulu. You was down with Bam, you know what I'm saying. So that came from everybody just being down with Bam. None of that shit was happening when Bam was around, it was a respect kind of thing. Like down at the Roxy, that was Bam's shit. I mean, Bam was the first major person talking about unity, or people being together. (Eure & Spady, 1991, pp. iv–xv)

Bambataa had an organization, a legacy as one of the early progenitors of hip-hop, and when he and his group, the Soul Sonic Force, in 1982 scored a major hit record with "Planet Rock," the Zulu ethos began to inundate hip-hop nationally.

Nationalism and the Nationalizing of Hip-Hop's Appeal: Run DMC

The nationalist ethos that was evident in the music of Flash and Bambataa did not dominate hip-hop. The young genre drew even more on the diverse aspects of the creative community that had spawned it. It was not until the middle 1980s that mega rap stars Run DMC made an overtly Black nationalist statement in rap form with the release of "I'm Proud to Be Black." Interestingly this recording appeared on an album, Raising Hell, where the rappers performed with White, Aerosmith, in a rap and roll version of the rock group's "Walk This Way." What had occurred in the interim is that hip-hop began to more overtly incorporate the flavor of New Wave, Techno, and House music. Hip-hop had always relied on R&B, jazz, funk, reggae, and rock samples. But not before Run DMC did hip-hop have both a national White audience and a hard rock sampling face. Run DMC did not begin this way. They, guided by the managerial and marketing genius of Russell Simmons, parlayed the B-boy image of hip-hop into million-dollar record sales. Their nihilistic reflections on the hardship of ghetto life captured the ethos of urban Black youth. Their hit, "It's Like That," became an anthem of Black youth, so much of which was isolated in the inner cities. Isolated from the more bourgeois elements of emerging Black suburbia as well as the Black middle class whose aspirations were more consistent with the roles found in the Cosby Show and the mood captured later in Bobby Mcferrin's, "Don't Worry Be Happy," DMC's message reflected and legitimized the B-boy lifestyle, and the Fresh Fest tours that they headlined showed major labels as well as the entire country that hip-hop was and would remain a powerful force in music.

Run DMC's hard edge rap was coupled with guitar riffs that would put the best rock guitarists to shame. But coupled with the uncompromising bass and talking drum of the R&B and funk traditions, this made for an incredible rhythmical bouncing B-boy style. This wasn't Led Zeppelin. It was more like Cream meets P-funk meets the Last Poets, with as much of a mixture of frivolity, humor, fantasy, and conscience. But at the stage of "King of Rock," it appeared that hip-hop was playing to a Black (and increasingly Hispanic) audience while beginning to attract Whites. It was not, however, self-consciously crossing over to insure White appeal. That appeared to be, at best, secondary. However, with the unheard of commercial success of "King of Rock." the crossover appeal was so great that Run DMC appeared to cross over and out of the mainstream of hip-hop (African American), and they have never really been accepted back, on a national level, by their previously loyal Black rap fans.
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Started Aug. 3, 2007 by:

RBGStreetScholar: View Discussions »

Category: Knowledge Born
Tags: rbg, education, liberation, revoultion

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Permalink Reply by LUNATIC The Messiah Aug. 4, 2007

Thanks for sharin' RGB. I couldn't stop till I got to the end. Here's something for you to kinda sum up the whole article...............

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LUNATIC-Imagine A Nation.mp3, 7.5 MB

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Permalink Reply by RBGStreetScholar Aug. 4, 2007

Respect
1

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Permalink Reply by Kala Nation Aug. 4, 2007

I think your song 'Imagine A Nation' is Kala Nation's new anthem thanks Lunatic.

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Permalink Reply by LUNATIC The Messiah Aug. 7, 2007

I am deeply honored. And you're more than welcome. ;)

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Permalink Reply by Kala Nation Aug. 9, 2007

I wrote the Pan-Afrikan report card to illustrate my point.I do think with the internet Nationalism will rise again.One point that we all have to be careful about is sepatating those of us who are Afrikan Nationalist with those who are racist.The White media cleverly link the two together,when the Black racist usually doesnt even like his own people just hates whites alittle more.Afrikan Nationalism is an acedemically accepted legitmate movement,no different the the two major political parties.Hip hop can find new territory and new ground promoting unity with the Afrikan Continent.DONT BE FOOLED ALL OF THE HORROR STORIES YOU ARE HEARING ABOUT AFRIKA IS DESIGNED TO MAKE YOU ASHAMED OF BEING BLACK.There are many positive things going on on the continent to get excited about so hold your head up and be proud.THE DAY OF AFRICAN REDEMPTION IS HERE!

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Black Nationalism and Rap Music

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