It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation

by M. K. Asante Jr

  That day has come. It is up to the post-hip-hop generation to create a new world. Historical circumstances have birthed us into an unjust world, but isn’t it our personal responsibility to make sure we don’t grow old in it? We must not become accustomed to the cruel and harmful; inhumane and unjust; criminal and vile.

  This means beginning to carve, out of the hard stones of our history, a place for ourselves—one that, as poet/activist Amina Baraka says, is not “about the business of destroying ourselves, but uplifting ourselves.” We need not be intimidated by our parents’ stories of struggle, but instead take their stories out of the closets of invisibility, and wear them as inspiration. When we realize that all things grow with love and that the seed is hope and the flower is joy. When we realize as Rosa Parks said in an interview shortly before her death that “We still have a long way to go.” It is time to move together as one.

  That includes civil rights leaders working with us, rather than publicly criticizing us, to develop and hone leaders. Revolutionary leader Che Guevara told his comrades, “One of your duties is to create the people to replace us.” The civil rights generation must adhere to this and know that the strides they made become diminished if we cannot build upon them. Great leadership is not about great individual talent or great oratory, but about intergenerational mantle-passing. Great leadership must be nurtured, matured, and spring from a community that values collectivity, love, and compassion. When this doesn’t happen, the individual talent and great speeches that are present in every generation will become tools employed exclusively for self-advancement—even at the expense of a community. In this leadership-less abyss, a rapper, for example, who rhymes about destroying his community via drugs, murder, and sexism is celebrated by that same community for the personal accomplishment of becoming a professional recording artist. This is why leadership must be fostered in strong communities by incorruptible leaders with a strong sense of sociopolitical struggle. With once vibrant communities decimated, no unified political agenda, and a safe, corporate “leadership” base, one quickly realizes why the fog is so thick.

  We are the light that promises to burn the fog away. Garvey asked, “Can we do it?” Of course we can. Although things have been rough, we are still the seeds of our planters. And it was Henry David Thoreau who said, “Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

  Back in Cayuga Park, among the trees and gardens, there lies a path that weaves through the organized chaos. It’s called the Path of Hope. The path of hope for us is real when we recognize that we all need each other equally. When we come to see as the African proverb tells us: It is new broom that sweeps clean, but it is the old broom that knows the corners.

  The path of hope leads us to recognize the tremendous efforts of people, young and old, committed to bridging the gap. Young people like Pierce Freelon, the twenty-two-year-old founder of Blackademics, a Web site that has blossomed into the premiere online roundtable for young Black thinkers. The site has effectively created a national and international dialogue between the generations. Through thought-provoking blog posts and insightful interviews with older luminaries like bell hooks, Jesse Jackson, John Hope Franklin, Maya Angelou, and Angela Davis, the site has created a dialogue that is helping conquer the divide. All bridges between young and old must begin at the scratch line of communication. Perhaps the best example of this is Nikki Giovanni, a poet who is truly watering the thorn for the sake of the rose. Born in 1943, Giovanni got “Thug Life” tatted on her arm to show her “solidarity with the younger generation” after Tupac’s death. Giovanni explains that it was “a way of saying to the younger generation that the older generation mourns with you.” As all of us, younger and older, march into the unknowns of our collective future, let us remember the compassion, sensitivity, tenderness, and love that Freelon and Giovanni share with each other. Let us embrace the earth, seeds, and planters all at once, understanding that we must work in tandem with each other—echoing the life cycle of nature—if we wish to survive.

  How much is it going to cost to buy you out of

  buying into a reality that originally bought you?

  — SAUL WILLIAMS

  [ringing]

  Yo.

  Hip hop?

  What’s up.

  Thanks for your time.

  No doubt.

  Can you hear me okay?

  Yeah, but I’m on a cordless phone so if I stray too far from the base I might lose you.

  Huh, I figured you would have a strong signal.

  I do, just so long as I stay close to the base.

  All right, so, stay close.

  I will.

  Ready?

  Shoot.

  So, can you tell me where you’re from?

  Originally, of course, I’m from Africa. The Motherland. I mean, it ain’t hard to tell—just peep my first name.

  Hip? I didn’t know that was African.

  Well, now ya know.

  The word “hip” comes out of the Wolof language, spoken by the Wolof people in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. In Wolof, there’s a verb, “hipi,” which means “to open one’s eyes and see.” So, hipi is a term of enlightenment. My first name means “to see or to be enlightened,” ya dig.

  Definitely, definitely, I can dig it.

  That’s Wolof, too.

  What—dig?

  Un-hunh, it comes from the Wolof word “dega,” which means “to understand.” So, you know, there’s nothin’ new under the sun. It all goes back. Whether we know it or not, it’s all rooted in Africa.

  I guess it’s like that proverb that says: “Even in a foreign habitat, a snail never loses its shell.”

  That’s exactly what it’s like.

  Or as Malcolm X said: “If a cat has kittens in an oven, that doesn’t make them biscuits.” [laughter]

  That’s why my godfather named himself Afrika Bambaataa and called his crew the Zulu Nation. That’s hipi, dega?

  Yes, yes I do. Any more Wolof?

  Actually, yeah—honky.

  Honky? As in —

  Yeah, as in honky. It comes from the Wolof word “honq,” which means “pink man.”

  Damn. That’s interesting. All right, well, since you brought it up, what’s your take on the large group of whites that enjoy you and your music?

  To be honest, that word you just used—“enjoy”—I take issue with that word, man. White people have always “enjoyed” Black performers—that ain’t nothin’ new. During the most violent, virulent, and vehemently racist times in America, whites shelled out mad loot to watch Black performers do their thing—smile, shuck, dance—as if everything was cool when in reality Blacks were “swinging from southern trees like strange fruit.” The only way entertainers could make it back then, from a financial standpoint, was to show them pearly whites and avoid addressing the brutality that was really going down. When white folks went out or listened to music, they didn’t wanna be reminded of the conditions that they created. They just wanted to… “enjoy” themselves.

  A ‘ight, so now fast-forward.

  My music is ghetto music—period.

  It arises from a people, a beautiful people, who have been oppressed to the full extent of that word; a people who are forced to live under conditions that are inhumane and unjust. Yet, the part of me that the honqs dega is the shit that, just like back in the day, never calls their oppression out.

  Peep game: They’ll not only listen, but they’ll spend money to hear Black men lie about killin’ other Black men; lie about sellin’ crack to Black people; lie about pimpin’ Black women. On the other hand, though, not only will they NOT spend money, but they won’t even listen to rappers who tell the truth about the oppressive conditions that the community really faces; who tell the truth about the prison industrial complex; who tell the truth about the school system; who tell the truth about police brut
ality; who tell the truth about the U.S. government. And do you know why?

  Why?

  Do you know who David Banner is—the rapper?

  Of course. He made “Like a Pimp.”

  David Banner tells us the answer.

  He breaks the whole thing down when he says: “They want black artists to shuck and jive, but they don’t want us to tell the real story because they’re connected to it!”

  So because they’re connected to it, they fetishize Black disenfranchisement and transform the ghetto into a glossy magazine spread, uprooting it from the chain of injustices that created it, thus disconnecting themselves from it—like voyeurs.

  Okay, but do you think that perhaps for whites listening to your music, it may bring them closer to the ghetto and compel them to help out there?

  Help out?

  Listen, the people in the ghetto have never been the problem. The people in the ghetto don’t make decisions to bulldoze their homes and build freeways through their neighborhoods. The people in the ghetto don’t redline their own neighborhoods. The people in the ghetto don’t deny themselves loans and mortgages. The people in the ghetto don’t cut funding for their children’s schools. The people in the ghetto don’t put more cops in their streets. The people in the ghetto don’t install cameras to monitor themselves 24–7.

  The people in the ghetto don’t have any political power, so if white folks who like my music want to help, they need to go back to their communities and help out. The reality is that their communities need the most help because racism is so rampant there. So they need to study history, not just my history, but American history so they can properly understand who I am. Then they need to educate their communities. But that hasn’t been happening. So, as a result, the dismal conditions that I was born into in the late seventies in the Bronx—despite all the whites that listen to my music today—haven’t changed.

  So, I don’t know what it really means to have all these frat boys banging my music as they study to maintain a racist status quo—to keep the progenitors and custodians of me oppressed.

  You really think they’re studying to keep Blacks oppressed?

  Well, yes.

  The education that they’re getting is teaching them to maintain the status quo. Teaching them to keep the world, give or take a few inches, as is. So whenever you don’t oppose a system, then by default, by your inaction, you support it. So whether conscious of it or not, they will, even if it’s by doing nothing, fall in line with the continued oppression.

  Do you think that whites—

  Yo, no disrespect, man, but I’d like to move on from the whole white thing. You got other questions?

  Yeah, no doubt. All right, so, Black people, then?

  For them, I am the latest weapon in a long line of weapons that have been created, out of necessity, to uplift and aid them in their struggle for liberation.

  But you said yourself, there’s a lot of negativity out there that promotes stereotypes.

  Exactly. Weapons are like time.

  Time?

  Yeah, time.

  Time can either be used constructively or destructively. You can either waste it or you maximize it. But time itself stays neutral. The same is true for a weapon, any weapon: it can either be used by the oppressed to liberate themselves or used against the oppressed.

  So, you said you’re a new weapon?

  Yeah, but keep in mind that everything that is new is, by that very fact, very traditional. So I’m right in the tradition.

  So being a part of that tradition, do you really think your music can liberate Black people?

  Well, not by myself, of course. But in the context of a movement, my music can be the soundtrack.

  Look at the freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. Those songs were the soul of that movement; the fire and fiber they needed to keep on keepin’ on. Those songs were designed for one purpose: to invigorate and call to action. To prepare people for struggle, to elevate their consciousness.

  You’ve got these big powerful voices singing, “Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom,” I mean, that’s revolutionary. Or, even “We Shall Overcome”—that’s a declaration of victory. Those songs inspired people to challenge oppression, ignited their feet, and united them for a common cause. The music was the fuel. The music was the weapon.

  Even Dr. King himself admitted that “through this music, the Negro is able to dip down into wells of a deeply pessimistic situation and danger-fraught circumstances and to bring forth a marvelous, sparkling, fluid optimism. He knows it is still dark in his world, but somehow, he finds a ray of light.”

  That’s my tradition.

  Is your music, today, providing that “ray of light” for your generation?

  The ray is definitely there, but the movement is missing. So, you have emcees who are using me to uplift, educate, and inspire, but no foot soldiers on the ground to make the rhymes reality.

  So, when it’s all said and done, more has been said than done…

  And that’s not what I’m about.

  I’ve got a first and a last name and they’re connected. I already told you that hip was to enlighten. Well, “hop” is an Old English word that means “to spring into action.” So what I’m about is enlightenment, then action. Without the enlightenment, you’re not going to know what to do, but without the hop or the action, well, then it’s just rhymes. Those freedom songs in the sixties, without the movement, what would they be?

  So is that what KRS-One means when —

  Yes! That’s what he means when he rhymes in “Hip-Hop Lives”: “Hip n hop is more than music / Hip is the knowledge / Hop is the movement / Hip n hop is the intelligent movement.”

  Would you say your musi—

  C’mon… [sigh] My bad for interrupting you, man, but you keep asking about my music. Is my music this… Is my music that… I’m more than just music, but that’s all you focusin’ on.

  Fair enough. What other components would you like to address?

  The spiritual dimension.

  Don’t wrench me out of my context.

  The masses bore me out of resistance and rebellion.

  The most powerful part about me is my spirit—the spirit of resistance. Of rebellion against oppression. An outlaw.

  Now, don’t get it twisted, I’m not talking about a poor Black person that runs around terrorizing their own hood, terrorizing other poor, disenfranchised people. That’s not an outlaw.

  You remember what Ras Baraka said on The Fugees jawn “Manifesto/Outro”?

  Um, refresh my memory.

  On the outro, Ras says:

  It’s easy to kill niggas cuz they look like you, they smell like you, shit, they even live on your same mothafuckin’ block. The only problem we have is killin the people who don’t look like us, who oppress us.

  So I was born from those kicks of oppression… and we’re still getting kicked.

  And this is born out of the ghetto experience?

  Yeah, but when I say “ghetto,” I’m really talkin’ about a whole notha’, deeper level. Like, I might be young, I’m only in my thirties, but I’m coming out of a spiritual tradition of rebellion. It goes way back.

  How far back?

  I mean, it goes back to 1526 when the first Africans arrived here in shackles and just a few months later, killed their massas.

  Where was your spirit when slavery was widespread?

  In the fields.

  X, who is sometimes called the “fire prophet,” told you that during slavery, there were “two kinds of Negroes: house Negroes and field Negroes.”

  The field Negroes were the masses of people. There were always more field Negroes than house Negroes.

  The house Negro, who, though still enslaved, “lived in the house with master, dressed pretty good, ate pretty good because they ate his food—what he left,” would “give their life to save the master’s house.” Although he was only getting leftovers and was still a slave, he lived bett
er than the field Negro. If massa said, “we got a good house here,” the house Negro would respond by saying, “yeah, we got a good house here.”

  Now, what about the field Negro.

  The field Negro “caught hell,” ate left-leftovers, and dressed like a field mule because that’s what he was. Underfed and overworked.

  When the slave master’s house—the “big house”—caught on fire, the house Negro, hand-me-down firefighter, would try harder than the master to put the flame out. While the field Negro would “pray for a strong wind to come along.” So when I was born, what did I say?

  “We don’t need no water, let the motherfucka burn?”

  Exactly. “Burn, motherfucka, burn!”

  And do you know what Dr. King told Harry Belafonte right before he died?

  What?

  He said: “I sit here deeply concerned that we’re leading our nation on an integration trip that has us integrating into a burning house.”

  That’s heavy. Do you think people know the house is burning?

  They know, in their gut, that it ain’t right.

  But most oppressed people are too preoccupied with the day-today struggle to think about the bigger picture. Do you know what Harriet Tubman said?

  She said a lot of things.

  Well, one thing she said was that she freed a thousand slaves but she coulda freed a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves.

  So people don’t even question their condition anymore. They believe as they are taught; and they are taught that they are inferior and that their inferiority is the reason for their condition. Charles Hamilton Houston said it best when he said: “As long as ignorance prevails, blacks will be the tools of the exploiting class.”

  That’s why hipi is so important. To combat the ignorance so people will know the real from the fake. Rap from traps.