while i did get emo over alternative/indie music, i was
not quite at home in it.is it because
it's prickly and i'm not supposed to be comfortable there? or is it because
despite being a resistant culture it was a homogenous space that was not so
welcoming to me (sans purple hair - i tried once, the dye didn't take)?i eventually found a home in hip hop.open to sampling and claiming the world in
it's entirety, in hip hop there was room for my love for the smiths and i ended up having some of the best discussions about morrisey's angst with hip hop producers, and
hip hop djs from stretch armstrong, to mark ronson, ztrip, and hollertronix
(later diplo), would mash up the party mixing in rock records on the
regular.yeah so that's my heart but
whileI may only have
one tattoo. And not on my chest. and I may have vacillated btw birkenstocks,
doc martens, and chucks under my long shapeless dresses. and I may have
listened to more of the smiths and the cure than the sexpistols and iggy. and
de la and the native tongues may have stolen my heart after i had given up on
hip hop during the new jack swing era, i did cry tears of joy in 2004 when i finally
saw morrisey live at the apollo in harlem -he came across the sea to Martin
Luther King Blvd. yo. And i cant wait to jump around and swirl and rock
out with my little girl at Afro Punk fest next weekend. I'll try not to cry.
Yesterday, while reading Sam Lipsyte's "The Republic of Empathy" on
the train, I was surprised when the tussling characters on the roof
said "no time for arbitration, son". While I thought briefly how I'd
never heard "arbitration" and "son" in the same sentence, the young
man standing next to me on the train said, "I aint playin, son" to his
friend. Jinx! 'Twas a great "new york/er moment" that I immediately
relayed to my ex-roomie from Barnard I was meeting for a drink. So
today as I finished reading "Empathy" on my way to work at a
non-profit on Wall Street (now I sound like one of Lipsyte's
characters), I was tickled when the asshole Wall Street guy says he
made "mad" and "madder cake". The instances of "son" and "mad",
relatively obscure inner city hip hop vernacular, in one story is
rare, even for New Yorker fiction. They are however two very different
uses of the language by Lipsyte. The instance of the blue collar
Latino character, Fresko using "son", is fine, he is a character that
one comes eventually to empathize with. However, Zach, the Wall
Street guy is later drawn as a villain. My point here is that this
language when used by a white eventually comes to mean asshole. I
noticed this on HBO's Girls with the "wigger character" in the play
which almost prompted it's cancellation. The character was overplayed
but is still viewed as pathetic.
Being a "wigger" and/or using inner city vernacular in general equates
you with asshole. And why is wigger allowed? If Paltrow can't say the
"n-word" in a song title, why is essentially calling someone a white
nigger okay? Wigger becomes an out for using the n-word. It's even
more offensive because it's meant to offend - and what does it
actually mean? That this white person that has adopted inner city
vernacular is acting like a "nigger"? In affect calling all inner city
youth, "niggers". I've got no love for the robber barons on my block
either, but Zach, a kid who was not tucked in by his mom, is painted
the villain by Lipsyte, for really challenging systems of value, and
it is his use of inner city vocab, acting "wiggerish": mad cake, yo
(the yo, added by me) that marks him as such.
This recent branding of "black acting" whites as loser assholes or
inauthentic somehow does not ring true for any of my friends who at
one point or by certain types may have been deemed wiggers. Instead of
the shallowness afforded this bastardly term, they have crossed
bridges and cultures to empathize with the other. Sometimes
successfully and other times, not so much - ain't nothing easy.
In the film, The Five Heartbeats (and in a line later sampled by rap
group, De la Soul) it's asked, "Why we gotta always crossover, why
don't they cross over to us?" Well the infusion of urban culture
throughout the world actually has seen this 2 way transmission but it
seems that in spaces like "Girls" and in-between the lines of short
stories in the New Yorker that we find an emphatic backlash.
Niggas in Paris, I love that song. It's like I'm here - as my most base self, not dressed up to fit in with you and still ballin. I remember walking into Bev Hills hotel with Roc crew and feeling like "What you looking at? What? That's what I thought!":). And I'm middle class. Yes, we in Jerseys and sneakers, with a New Yorker writer in tow, and your kids want to be like us. Ball so hard... Like finding a Biggie "Live in London" LP from '95 at a record store in Amsterdam when I went to live there a decade later. Yeah we's here, black and ugly as ever.
Niggas went to paris and london and did not forget niggas. The London LP has Big shoutin to "south london" sayin how happy was "to see y'all niggas, I been lookin for y'all niggas since I been here." I love it and get all mushy thinking bout it. He was in London yo, like my parents (Black Muslims in London decades before - nuff respect), but yeah, our movements will not be circumscribed and we will come as we are.
That hyperbolic presence/performance, however lets magazines like Jackie think they can call our style, Niggabitch. I sincerely think it was meant to be hip, and edgy, and this editor did not know the ledge. And while I am happy they apologized and fired the editor, Europe did not have a civil rights movement or African American history courses in barbershops or at universities, a lot of people is ignorant and get their cues from our popstars. We play the victim when we have helped create the monster - and so I love Jay's 'N*ggas in Paris', but I'm also not boohooing over someone calling my style, niggabitch (Rihanna apparently called herself #NIGGA (an actual 'trending topic' (!!) on twitter a couple days before), it's schizophrenic. Let's transform these signifiers (I'm tired of letting this language rule me), truly rep the monster, re-imagine it, or lay it to rest ..
A New York Times blog urges us to Occupy Language (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/what-if-we-occupied-language/). One by showing how language is used as a means of social and economic control. but also showing that it is "not immutable" and we can reshape it re-contextualize it through movements like the "Occupy" one. There has long been debates over these terms and they continue to strike chords. But there have been some developments and why the almost hysterical reaction to the Dutch magazine seems somewhat a step back from a more nuanced discussion of these terms.
I sometimes think that Jay uses "niggas in paris" as a set-up. he's ultra aware of the word, still makes it the title although only mentions it once in the lyrics (yeah, one time in the entire song!). But dares you to "fine" him. Who knows what Jay's motives are, but brothers in paris does not confront the europeans/ the colonizers (of america too!) in the same way. You may have made me a "nigga", but your children have made me their god. This nigga's/ bigger's coming home to roost... "and you're gonna love me....." :)
on another note, this was letter I wrote to the editors of NY Times as a college student (that was published!) in 94 (I remember my german professor came up to me and said he had seen it - #fame!), self righteously as ever I attack Ice Cube, but it also speaks of Tribes' re-imagining of the word (in the negative), but taking linguistic and rhetorical leaps all the same:
i watched HAIR last night on the HBO Family channel. it was trippy. it took me back to the first time I saw HAIR. at someone's loft on Bond Street in the village. they were projecting it onto a wall and it was about 1994. i think Carlos the club promoter was housesitting and i was there with Bobbito, i think stretch, and some other downtown heads/personalities as HAIR played in the background and we took in the evening. I dont remember the story only the images that flashed on the wall of the apartment/loft, so was surprised to discover last night as i read the opening credits that barnard alum Twyla Tharp choreographed the movie. and damn, has anyone seen the opening dance number to "age of aquarius" ?? is way trippy - magical even and i may have had an actual flashback as I retold the story of my first viewing to my hubby.
woke up this morning thinking of other inner sanctums ./experiences/ moments i lived in the 90s. not in the clubs, we often rehash those stories, but in peoples homes in new york city. it doesnt happen much in a city where most live in shoebox apartments (the rent is too damn high!) and didnt happen for me, a 19 year old that went from dorm in morningside heights to club and maybe fatbeats, wash square park, phat farm, or footwork exclusively. but those moments for instance in our apartment on bleeker and macdougal when jamie c and harold hunter battled to see who could memorize the most lyrics to 'verbal intercourse' on first listen. or listening to liquid swords for the first time and marveling at rza as his production went decisively off track. there are more funny private escapades that will one day be told/sold:), but the tangential conversation i remember from that late night watching HAIR was about bush and whether shaven or unshaven was preferred. this was 94, the brazillian was just about to hit the streets of new york - hard... i still remember the conversation. this week, tangential conversations about hair have involved sesame street characters performing "i love my hair" and akiba brilliantly suggesting elmo record the response,"i too love your hair", and my husband admitting that he likes unshaven legs. since pants season is upon us, i may just try it out. trippy... :)
i went back to holland last week. what a difference three years and an engagement make. you however cannot escape your past. i was reminded of this as immigration agents escorted me from the line to the office after finding me "in the system".
"come with me" said the gustapo looking brute -- when did immigration officers become security guards?? all over 6 ft tall and 200 lbs, with this haircut shaved close but into a point or arrow on the forehead (i later noticed this same cut on the guy working in the airport Nike shop). bizarre and they all had guns! nothing like the genteel officers at bermuda, or even US, border.
I've just recently realized that i am not a terrorist or drug dealer and have nothing to fear going through such check points and security - even though post 9/11 procedures red-flagging my arabic name had me thinking i was indeed plotting my country's demise. little did they know all i do is bullshit & party, and bullshit.. and write my little raps (occasionally) on here. anyhoo, after a couple minutes they came to me and said i had an unpaid fine. oh shit i thought -- my old beef with the royal library in the hague caught up with me. The Koninings Bibliotech (Queens library) maintained that i never returned phillp roth's .. when i know that i did cuz i actually went out and bought it because i enjoyed it so much.. but alas it was not a library fine.
"do you remember riding your bike in amsterdam without a light in October 2006?"
really? wow. of course i remember getting "busted". i didnt remember giving them my real name:). funny thing was that i wasn't "in the system" in November 2008 when i last visited holland. they're catching up with themselves (i figure post that last bombing attempt) . in any case i payed my 34 euros (10 euro late fee), got my passport stamped and they let me in.
so i went and saw smif nwessun at knitting factory that night. i breezed through really-- caught the last couple songs. i havent blogged in a while. i took an extra job. i'm back at the restaurant i worked at 10 years ago, fresh out of college. i used to do coat check, then recruited three of my friends to share the job. now i'm on the register two nights a week and dj once a month. the djing is fun-- but a little stressful.. i mean people are dining to my music. i dont want to give them a stomach ache:). it's gone well and folks have asked for business cards (first of all i dont even have a cell)and mix cds.. imma hit.. but exhausted. i'm no spring chicken anymore and these multiple gigs, while i await a response from the academy, are tough. tuff in dutch is cool. it's so much easier to be "tuff" in holland, though i bumped my head yesterday and had to put an icepack on for like an hour so it didnt swell.. cool it now... yeah.. sometimes you gotta cool it:)
oh but i wanted to blog about something specific. not obama, but yeah, be ready:)but about a girl on the train yesterday that had been displaced from her home in New Orleans. she was watching that denzel movie filmed in new orleans on some new fangled portable viewing device on the 2 train and pointing out all her old haunts to her homegirl whom was presumably an uptown native. in between stories of the river boats and the mall was a longing for home, quite exquisite in it's painful simplicity. "I cant wait to go home", "when are they gonna rebuild? it's taking so long..". meanwhile she trekked to work with the rest of us, but with visions and memories of the river ("nah.. that water's too dirty to swim in..")holding her down.
yeah - th eevents at columbia threw me for a loopty loop-- especially as i'm in the midst of applying for (more) school.. i persevere. but here's a question-- why do i work at a council of 'learned societies' and the only banter has been about 'across the universe' (good movie by the way-- black 60s/power pretty much ignored, but cute)-- and only person i've spoken to about this nu noose was the staples delivery guy.. noone spoke bout alhamjad (sp? who cares.. ) when he was up at columbia either - they offered no opinions.. no opinions.. is that what the distant academy is bout? makes me question again why i want the phD.. why i want to enter such a world. i know i want to teach, write, contribute to a canon of knowledge that shapes this place we call home (that would be planet earth) so yeah, i'll walk it out and like mr smif and mr wessun (tec and steele), and numerous of my other bros in the struggle, despite not being from do or die bed-stuy i never ran, never will.
columbia (princeton, or cuny graduate center:-) i'm comin for ya X
ps. smif and wessun plus sadat x perform at kniting factory this FRiday
