[On July
11th, 1960 Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a
Mockingbird was first published. One of the most
taught books in American classrooms, Mockingbird
offers (among other things) a flawed but vital representation of race in American
society and history. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of such complex
racial representations, leading up to a weekend post on mystery fiction and
race!]
On the distinct
but complementary visions of race and America in three rap songs.
1)
“Fight the Power” (1989):
I’ve written elsewhere about Public
Enemy’s ground-breaking and wonderful “Don’t Believe the Hype” (1988), but
in many ways “Fight the Power” (originally released on the Do
the Right Thing soundtrack and subsequently
included on the group’s 1990 Fear of a Black Planet album) is Public Enemy’s most
influential single track. That’s partly thanks to the particularly striking music video,
and its use of both Civil Rights footage and representations of contemporary
racial and social protest. But the song itself is plenty incendiary and
important, as illustrated by the opening lines of its final verse: “Elvis was a
hero to most/But he never meant shit to me you see/Straight up racist that
sucker was/Simple and plain/Motherfuck him and John Wayne/Cause I’m black and I’m
proud/I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped/Most of my heroes don’t appear on no
stamps.”
2) “Who We Be” (2001): The music video for DMX’s
impassioned anthem uses a good deal of Civil Rights and protest footage as
well, but despite that similarity I would argue that his song differs from
Public Enemy’s track in a number of significant ways. For one thing, DMX’s
verses focus at least as much on representing the darkest sides of African
American life (in the early 21st century as well as throughout American
history) as on an activist attempt to change the relationship between African
Americans and their society (although his repeated titular phrase, “They don’t
know/Who we be,” does reflect such an activist purpose for the song). And for
another, there’s an emotional rawness and intimate personal honesty in DMX’s
song (appropriately so, since it was part of an album entitled The
Great Depression) that culminates in the stunning final lines: “Somebody
stop me/Somebody come and get what me/Little did I know that the Lord was ridin’
with me/The dark, the light, my heart, the fight/The wrong, the right, it’s gone,
aight.”
3)
“A Tale of Two Citiez” (2014):
J. Cole’s track, part of his magisterial 2014
Forest Hills Drive album, certainly
features a powerful such emotional rawness and honesty as well, especially in
the desperate and spiritual final verse, performed partly by a child singer and
partly by Cole himself. But that’s only one of many stages and sides to this
complex song, which in a number of interconnected ways contrasts Cole’s
hometown of and impoverished upbringing in Fayetteville, North Carolina with
the glittering dreams and shady realities of Los Angeles/Hollywood. Moreover,
it does so within a dark and raw chronology: in the first verse the speaker is
possibly the victim of a drive-by robbery and shooting, whereas in the second
verse he and his friends are the ones perpetrating that crime. On its own
terms, and even more when placed in conversation with songs like Public Enemy’s
and DMX’s, “Tale” reminds us both of the vital role that rap can play in
representing identity and community (African American and otherwise), and of
the impossibility of reducing any part of those themes to one simplistic image
or another.
Last
representation tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other representations of race you’d highlight?
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