Freddie Gibbs – You Only Live 2wice (ESGN, EMPIRE, 2017)
Known for his distinct quick rap flow and witty rhymes, Freddie Gibbs just released You Only Live Twice, a hip-hop album with honest lyrical content and heavy bass instrumentals. The beat in “Crushed Glass” comes from Mobb Deep’s classic track, “Where Ya Heart At.” In this track, Gibbs raps about unfairness in the justice system, how he was wrongly convicted of rape, and how he wishes he could start anew: “Tried to give me 10 for some pussy that I never touched—hire like 11 lawyers, had to level up.” He also raps about his baby daughter and how his rape conviction has made him see life differently. In “Andrea,” Gibbs raps about his criminal past and how he made it out when others have never left the hood and remain caught up in a fraudulent lifestyle. “Some n***** take the trip I took but they don’t get to leave. Came out that bitch speaking Russian, German, Guapanese.” Gibbs brings forth genuine lyrics reflecting his life and shares them with the world on this hip-hop album.
The online platform Montreality is taking the Montreal hip-hop community by storm
Sina Ghiassi didn’t know his love for both cartoons and hip-hop would one day collide, leading to one successful project.
Within the vivid colours and mystical worlds of childhood cartoons, Ghiassi believes there is a driving force that pushes people to follow their dreams. Cartoon heroes take on the world and face trials at every turn, all while figuring out exactly what their superpowers are.
After years of being inspired and enamoured by these heroes, Ghiassi heard the whispers of his own superpowers at age 16.
Nestled in the crowd at a Talib Kweli concert, Ghiassi fell in love with hip-hop. He realized he didn’t belong in the crowd, but backstage, amidst the workhorses and geniuses that made these concerts run smoothly.
Nine years later, Ghiassi has built a rare archive of interviews with some of rap’s best.
Montreality is an online platform devoted to the curation of interviews with various world-class and local artists who are dominating the rap and hip-hop scene. Ghiassi has interviewed and met some of the most sought-after artists in hip-hop, and he’s developed his own interviewing style. Often, he will ask quirky questions about first jobs, favourite cartoons and favourite books.
Montreality operates through a YouTube channel, Facebook page and website.
Over the past year, not only has the group’s Facebook page increased from 20,000 likes to two million, Ghiassi also had the chance to meet talented MCs and producers, including Rae Sremmurd, Schoolboy Q and Metro Boomin.
The Montreality team, made up of Ghiassi and his partner, Daniel Yañez, have collaborated with Belgian artist Robin Velghe (RHYMEZLIKEDIMEZ) to create stunning visuals for the website and the filmed interviews, all inspired by the cartoons and video games Ghiassi grew up with. “I wanted it to feel like Saturday morning cartoons,” he says.
Photo of Ghiassi by Galton Celestin
The Montreality project all started with Ghiassi and his best friend Yañez sneaking backstage at concerts, trying to get their favourite rappers, to give “Montreality shoutouts” on camera. That was a mere six years ago, at a time when there was no full vision for these interviews—just some kids looking to meet their heroes.
Ghiassi still carries that youthful enthusiasm and intense fervour with him as he continues to build his platform. “I feel like cartoon characters, I looked at those as my role models. I feel hip-hop artists are superheroes as well, or super-villians some of them—they’re all characters,” says Ghiassi. “Ash [from Pokemon] wants to be the very best, he wants to catch them all and that’s what I want to do, I want to capture every artist on my list.”
Ghiassi learned much of what he knows about the hip-hop industry from the books lining his shelves, and from his experience interning with the legendary Montreal harmonica player Bad News Brown and Bad News’ manager, Henry-Francois Gelot.
When Ghiassi worked with the team, the pair saw a tenacious work ethic in him, as well as an eagerness to learn. Though he learned a lot from them, he also brought his own set of skills to the team. He started as an intern, creating graphics, but always soaking up as much information as he could in Gelot’s downtown office and on tour with Bad News. Eventually, he became their executive assistant.
“I would have messed up big time at some point without mentors like Bad News and Henry,” said Ghiassi. “As soon as I was introduced to hip-hop, I was like, I have to be a part of this. I want to bring something to the culture. It’s my duty.”
Raekwon brings driven energy to the mic as he raps on classic hip-hop beats. The Wild features an old-school hip-hop vibe with low-key melodies that are easy to vibe to. The album is more concentrated on its lyrical prose rather than club-banging hits, which is refreshing for a hip-hop album nowadays. In “Marvin,” Raekwon pays tribute to legendary singer Marvin Gaye, who passed away on April 1, 1984. He narrates Gaye’s life story—his ups and downs, until the day his father murdered him. “Can’t You See” is a soothing, storytelling track with a nostalgic feel as Raekwon raps about growing up in the 80s to show how much his life has changed since then. The track is about his life journey, and he raps about how any obstacle can be conquered. “My Corner,” featuring Lil Wayne, has playful lyrics and a catchy hook. “Visiting Day” is a soulful song featuring Andra Day’s R&B and jazzy vocals. The song has a sad tone, as Raekwon raps about his homies from his neighbourhood who are still living reckless lives, risking jail time. Overall, The Wild is a genuine and enjoyable hip-hop album.
Montreal-based rap group Dead Obies released a new EP, Air Max on March 17. The release is filled with calming beats that border on melancholic, with songs like “Cruel Summer” and “Allo Allo.” Straying far from the usual mosh pit-inspiring songs, Air Max is perfect for a chill evening with friends. While keeping with the technique of voice clips dispersed throughout the album, as was done on Gesamtkunstwerk¸ the bilingual hip-hop band included much more English in this release. This makes the album more accessible, but admittedly diminishes the charm that stemmed from the group’s French Canadian origins. While the album itself is very good, it’s a definite departure overall from the sound of Dead Obies’ previous albums.
Atlanta rapper Future’s fifth studio album brings back the type of trap music no one wants to hear anymore. With artists like Migos, Travis Scott and NAV excelling with moody, atmospheric sounds, Future tries to push a more upbeat, hard-hitting flavour. However, just like an old bottle of Coke, the flavour falls flat. The album starts out with a banger called “Rent Money” which features Future delivering his signature triplet flow, while a heavy beat supports his voice in the background. From that point on, the album degenerates into a directionless mess with no real appeal. Sure, the beats sound nice, but that isn’t enough to save the album. Future flows the same on almost every song, while delivering the same uninspired lyrics about money, drugs, fame and women. Just by listening to one song, you’ve pretty much heard the entire album. Future was once at the forefront of trap music, but now he’s outdated and has been surpassed by much more interesting artists.
After releasing his EP, Eternally the Student, the rapper returned to study jazz at Concordia
For Milla Thyme, rapping is about bringing light to important social matters. “You have to talk about things that are unjust and speak about them,” he said. Milla Thyme fuses a mix of soul, hip hop, and jazz into his music. Milla Thyme is the MC name of Concordia student Max Miller. It’s a name he developed in his early teens. “Milla Thyme is 100 per cent me. It’s when I’m playing bass and rapping and I’m writing all the music myself,” he said.
The MC can be spotted at Le Cypher, a popular hip-hop jam session party at Le Bleury-Bar à Vinyle, which takes place almost every Thursday night. It’s one of his favourite Montreal hotspots. In fact, the rapper said it’s like his second home. “We get 150 people average per week so it’s a good platform for people to see you perform regularly,” he said.
People from all walks of life can get a chance to come up on stage during Le Cypher and try out rapping—even if they’ve never done it before. “It’s a safe space for people to communicate,” Miller said. “You get people of all different genders, ages, sexual orientation. We don’t care. We’re all the same, right?” Miller has been rapping and playing bass with the band Urban Science at Le Cypher almost every Thursday night. The band is comprised of about 20 to 25 artists, some of whom played on his recent EP, Eternally the Student. “It was my friend Thomas Lafrance, a.k.a T-Cup, on the drums,” Miller said. “And then on keys we had one of the baddest under-25 keyboard players in the city, named Nicolas Dupuis, who goes by the name Anomalie. I’m just so grateful that he had the time to play with us.”
Come see Milla Thyme perform live on Thursday evenings at Le Bleury-Bar à Vinyle. Photo by Emily Vidal
Urban Science has also played at many popular venues in Montreal, including the Jazz Festival two years in a row, which Miller said he’s grateful to have been a part of. “That group has taken me to amazing places,” he said. For the rapper, there is no better feeling than freestyling on stage during Le Cypher nights. “It’s like having an amazing orgasm, a sweet release. It’s one of the best feelings, a natural high,” he said.
When he’s not busy performing as Milla Thyme, Miller is focused on his jazz studies program at Concordia. He said it’s important for him to keep up his studies, to never stop learning or growing, both as a person and as a musician. The artist is also the president of Concordia’s Hip Hop Community, a student club that holds rap battles for social justice. Each week, a different social issue is addressed at the rap battles, such as police brutality and gender inequality. The club also holds workshops that allow people to work on different elements and aspects of hip hop, and allow them to share their music with others on stage.
“It’s a good way for Concordia students and members of the community who don’t have much experience but want to be involved with hip hop and social consciousness,” Miller said. A rap battle on police brutality will be held on Feb. 15 at the Le Belmont nightclub on St-Laurent. The proceeds for this event will be going to Montreal Noir, which Milla Thyme said is a socially-conscious group advocating equality. Miller feels very lucky to have always been pushed to chase his dreams by his parents, who are artists themselves. “Michael Miller, my dad, is actually the most produced black playwright in Canada. And my mom was a TA at Juilliard in her 20s,” he said. “My parents are both established in their careers. They told me, if I’m going to pursue arts, that I have to [give it] my 100 per cent.”
Concordia’s Hip Hop Community president, Max Miller, also known as Milla Thyme. Photo by Ana Hernandez
This support really helped Miller overcome the struggles involved with creating his music. “I think the biggest challenge we all face is ourselves,” he said. “That’s always the biggest challenge because it’s an internal conflict, just questioning [yourself], like we all do, in some way. That’s something, as an artist, you deal with a lot.” Miller said artists like Kendrick Lamar and J-Cole allowed him to forget about the hardships of the music industry. Through their meaningful lyrics, they inspired him to focus on being real in his music as well. “They gave me a renewed sense of purpose,” he said.
Miller’s EP, Eternally a Student, which was released in October, touches on deep subjects that truly matter both in his own life and in society. The songs, he said, are a true representation of what was going on in his life as well as what he saw going on around him. For the artist, that’s the ultimate goal: to express himself in a way that can be relatable to someone else. “I hope my music can help people in their day-to-day, and if someone’s going through something, that it helps them get through that,” he said.
If there’s anything Miller wants artists to take from his story, it’s that the most important thing is to believe in yourself, and in your own music. “Just keep pushing,” he said. “Don’t give up, and just know that no one can tell your music better than you can.”
A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic Records, 2016)
Earlier this year, the world lost Phife Dawg, founder and member of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. A few months before his passing, the group reunited for their first TV performance in almost two decades. That performance led them to record their first album since 1998. The result is an incredible final album for the group. It doesn’t feel forced, and it’s not an overtly sad album. The album feels much like when you see an old friend for the first time in years, and they leave you wondering why you don’t see each other more often. The lyrics and content are as sharp as ever. Sonically, tracks like “Whateva Will Be” showcase Tribe’s timeless signature sound, while songs like “Kids…” demonstrate more experimental production styles for the group. These elements, along with some fantastic guest appearances, make this album a welcome addition to one of the greatest discographies in hip-hop.
Trial Track: “Whateva Will Be” featuring Consequence
“Welcome to Planet X,” a dark world portrayed by Long Beach rapper and Slaughterhouse member, KXNG Crooked. Just a day before the American presidential elections, Crooked released his new concept album, Good Vs. Evil. The album begins with the song “Welcome to Planet X.” As soon as you hear the first spoken words (“I live in a world that is different than your world”), you will find yourself immediately engrossed in its flow. The song transports you to a reality where children swim in lead-infested pools, where poverty in the inner cities is palpable and citizens are continuously haunted by the cops. Sound familiar to the tragedies going on in the United States? Crooked’s descriptive imagery adds to the apocalyptic nature of this alternate reality. This album is an outcry to recent events unfolding in America. Feelings of anger and oppression are evident through the aggressive tone of his lyrics and the eerie tempos integrated throughout the album.
Montreal’s hip-hop artists and activists combine music and social justice
Make some noise for the 6th edition of the Rap Battles for Social Justice series, which took place live from Reggies Bar on Sept. 28. During this edition, local hip-hop artists and activists took the stage to participate in a rap battle about climate justice.
Some big names in the Montreal hip-hop scene were present, including members of Montreal’s collective hip-hop band, Nomadic Massive. The group’s singer and emcee, Meryem Saci, co-hosted the event. Each artist was accompanied by the hip-hop and soul band Urban Science, hosts of the #LECYPHER hip-hop and soul jam sessions.
The goal of this rap battle was to raise awareness about pipelines, fossil fuels and the tar sand issues surrounding us. The event helped raise funds for Aamjiwnaang First Nation activist, Vanessa Gray, who needs support to fight her overbearing charges in court. Gray, along with two other activists, decided to shut down Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline on Anishnaabe territory. The activists were charged with counts of mischief for over $5 000 and are currently facing the possibility of prison time. The previous Rap Battles for Social Justice have raised more than $3 000 so far and organizers hoped to raise more by collecting donations at the door—it’s a pay what you can event.
There were two sides to each battle—emcees that were advocating for environmental justice, and The Duke and Bruce Payne, who expressed counterarguments. The Duke and Bruce Payne were the oil lobbyists, dressed in suits, walking around throwing fake $100 bills in every direction.
“Billions of gallons of wasted water, contaminated water, fauna slaughtered, forests replaced by pools and chemicals, so how’s that ethical?” rapped Dan Parker in a battle against The Duke. Students and activists also rapped slam poetry and recited poems about environmental justice. Each artist prepared and crafted their own songs and lyrics for the rap battle. “No more, no more, no tar sands, protect quality of life to all lands, respect the planet, live hand in hand, leave behind a legacy, not just a beaten planet,” was the hook of the first live performance that night by Dan Parker.
Local emcees grabbing the mic rapping about Climate Justice. Photo by Ana Hernandez
Dan Parker, the founder, coordinator and co-host of Rap Battles for Social Justice, has been working to unite the local hip-hop scene on the topic of social justice. Parker embarked on this journey in September 2014, and said it took a lot of work for people to believe in his project. “I was always into hip-hop, but I never felt comfortable going into the hip-hop scene because I felt like an outsider,” said Parker.
All that changed when he met Vincent Stephen-Ong, band leader of Urban Science and organizer of freestyle hip-hop nights where anyone can join and grab the mic. Parker said he felt free to take on the mic, participate and freestyle at Urban Science events—he felt it was more open than other hip-hop jam sessions.
Stephen-Ong remembers when Parker first approached him with his idea of rap battles focusing on social justice: “I was like, ‘You want to do what?’ I was very skeptical at first.” Once Stephen-Ong started working with Parker, however, he realized how determined he was. “Dan goes and he works, talks to people, he gets funding, he convinces various artists to be on board. I just keep seeing this event grow and grow, and it’s wonderful,” said Stephen-Ong.
“I asked Vincent [Stephen-Ong] about this project idea. He believed in it, and we’ve been doing these rap battles ever since,” said Parker. The very first rap battle happened in March 2015, and had a great turn out. “It was at Vitrola, a fairly large venue. Dan filled the venue—it was completely full,” said Stephen-Ong. Parker hosted the second rap battle at McGill University with Divest McGill, and a third with Divest Concordia last November. Success after success, Parker organized a rap battle against austerity with CUPFA, the Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association, then another for gender freedom.
Activists rapping for climate justice. Photo by Ana Hernandez
Rap Battle for Climate Justice is the 6th event Parker has organized alongside Urban Science. “It’s a combination of the activist’s popular education meeting the cypher hip-hop freestyle community, and fundraising for a great cause,” said Parker. One of the emcees hitting the stage that night was Mutatayi Fuamba, a local artist currently working on an upcoming album. He has also participated in previous rap battles for social justice. “I think this event is an interesting way to approach the issue of solidarity of Native Americans. It’s fun and engaging. The energy is here. I want everyone to enjoy the show and fuck all systems of oppression,” said Fuamba. He said that, while the event is called a battle because people impersonate lobbyists on the other side of the argument, mostly, there is no debate. “We are all against fossil fuels—we are all for social justice and climate justice,” said Fuamba. He has been attending workshops at Concordia University to prepare for this event. “We usually have one-hour workshops with activists who talk us through the issues, and then we have a hip-hop workshop where emcee’s show us how to write rhymes and discuss the history of hip-hop,” said Fuamba.
The workshops are hosted by Rap Battles for Social Justice along with different faculties from Concordia. “For the rap battle against austerity we worked with SAF, Sustainability Action Fund and we worked with the Centre for Gender Advocacy for the rap battle on gender freedom. These workshops are open to everyone” said Fuamba.“It’s a cool way to get together as a community, have fun and talk about things that matter and jam,” said Fuamba.
Behind the scenes of OUMF’s music festival with Mikey Rishwain Bernard
One of Montreal’s biggest back-to-school festivals is back for another year. Think old school hip-hop bloc party with DJs, live bands and loud crowds—this is OUMF.
From Wednesday Sept. 7 to 10, OUMF will present free performances from local and international artists outdoors on Saint-Denis Street at Quartier des spectacles. The festival is celebrating its 6th year and the lineup is one to look forward to. Renowned DJs such as DJ Jazzy Jeff and Skratch Bastid will be taking the stage.
This year’s great lineup of artists would not be possible without festival and program director of ‘M pour Montreal’ Mikey Rishwain Bernard. ‘M Pour Montreal’ plans a multitude of music showcases at festivals around the world. They are in charge of the musical program for OUMF. Rishwain has been handling all the music aspects of the festival. “My specific mandate is music programming and I also go on stage to host and say jokes that some people laugh at and some don’t,” said Rishwain.
The festival will be focusing on hip-hop, everything from old school to new school. DJ Jazzy Jeff used to kick it with Will Smith in their duo group “DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.” “He’s considered a catalyst to Will Smith,” said Rishwain. “He is a music pioneer to DJs. It’s good to see a guy still keeping it old school. It’s an honour to have him perform for us this year.” He added that there will also be indie bands and many female acts.
“I’m looking forward to Hein Cooper. He is a beautiful Australian man that looks like Justin Bieber and he has great songs. It’s great to bring that Australian vibe to the show,” Rishwain said. He said he’s also excited for the “Word Up Battles.” It’s a rap battle between two rappers, all in French. The rappers go on stage and compete live.“It could be edgy, but it’s very entertaining,” said Rishwain.
Another major highlight is Canadian DJ Skratch Bastid. He’s the first Canadian DJ to ever be nominated for a Juno Award and he will be performing at OUMF this coming Friday at 9 p.m.
The event is free and geared for all age groups. For Rishwain, OUMF signifies a boost before the school season. “A lot of young students from everywhere that are new to the city, they need their melting pot,” he said. “They seem to communicate through music and partying. This festival kicks off the school year.”
Interview with music programmer Mikey Rishwain Bernard. Photo by Bruno D. Capture.
Rishwain is well-known in the Montreal music scene. He plans a multitude of music festivals throughout North America and has brought many talented local artists closer to stardom. As festival and program director of ‘M pour Montreal’, his goal is to help artists develop outside of Canada.“We are here to put a system in place for artists to play for a lot of influential people in different countries,” he said, adding that he’s always been really big on bringing people together. “We are ‘M’ for middle guy, bringing musicians together to create success and showcase opportunities on an international scale.”
Mac DeMarco and Half Moon Run are great examples of artists that gained success through ‘M Pour Montreal.’ They first played in front of ‘M pour Montreal’ audiences. “We do music industry conferences by showcasing these bands and artists,” said Rishwain, adding that that was how these groups started their careers. He said he remembers booking Grimes and Half Moon Run in England when no one knew who they were and now they can sell out a whole show by themselves.
Last year, he saw Mac DeMarco and Half Moon Run play all around Europe. Rishwain said their crowds were even bigger in Ireland and Germany than in Montreal. “Knowing that they played together at ‘M pour Montreal’ and seeing them play in Europe gave me goosebumps. It shows how fast things can evolve and it happened in a matter of years for these bands,” he said.
Milk & Bone is another example of local success for Rishwain. “It was an honour to be part of their early success. These girls were always practicing. I heard a song and took a chance before ever hearing them perform live,” he said. “My feeling was booking them right away and it became a dream come true on both ends,” said Rishwain.
“I enjoy putting a breath of my own spirit in what I do,” he said. What he loves most about his job is to represent artists from Montreal. “I help pimp lots of bands and artists.”
Make sure to come and party at the OUMF music festival and laugh at Mikey Rishwain’s jokes. For more information regarding the event, visit their website.
Last week’s article looked at hip-hop’s beginnings, and we now dive into the genre’s corporate soul
(A continuation from last week’s piece on the issue)
Call me skeptical, but anybody who thinks that the interests of black America will take priority over the interests of corporate America probably has a very optimistic understanding of capitalism. Although some puritans will debate the exact moment corporate America decided, “Hey! We can package and sell this!” hip-hop’s commercialization arguably began in 1986; the first year rap albums started appearing on the Billboards. From then onwards, hip-hop was to be considered as much of a commodity as it was an art form, a class of brandable merchandise whose primary goal was to capture market share by delivering consistent quality and digestible programming.
Unsurprisingly, the music’s capacity to provide insightful cultural commentary took a backseat role. Rap musicians were now contributing to somebody’s bottom line, and maybe if they felt like it, also chose to paint that all-too familiar image of the black American experience in their music. Whatever the case, the profitability of specific musicians and topics would dictate who or what was to be pushed to the majority. Here we are in 2015, and whether or not those same practices remain detrimental to hip-hop culture—and by extension, the black community— has become largely irrelevant. If the financial interests of the music industry were dependent on an artist’s profitability, why change a recipe that has been so historically bankable? For hip-hop to be lucrative in the United States, it must remain familiar to the 63 per cent of people who compose the majority of its population: white America.
The thing is, white America has been listening to hip-hop music for quite a while, now. That is hardly news to anybody. Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes, a documentary directed by Byron Hurt, stated it plainly: white people consume 70 per cent of “all hip-hop produced” (the exact implications of that remain unclear), they have also been making hip-hop music for quite a while, and with great success. The Beastie Boys’ License to Ill became the first hip-hop album to hit the Billboards in 1986. But as we have come to understand, hip-hop music’s original source of inspiration were the laments of the disadvantaged, frustrated and marginalized; the realities that blacks faced in the United States, which was, if we can be blunt, historically the consequence of white people. Macklemore, probably one of the most controversial white people in music right now, provided very germane perspective during his interview on Hot 97, where he affirmed that as a culture that came “from pain, that came from white oppression,” he will not “disregard… [his] place in [hip-hop] as a white [person.]” Indeed, some very constructive dialogue at such a fragile period for race relations in hip-hop culture, and in America.
I’ll take a hot minute to drop a quick PSA for you, humble reader: this is not an article calling for the banishment of white people from hip-hop. White people have been contributing positively to the culture for decades. On top of that, it would be downright insulting towards pretty much every race to equate all of white America with corporate America. Maybe 2014 being the music industry’s most unprofitable year to date (according to Forbes) is just a symptom of how truly out of touch the industry has become with hip-hop culture. Let the eruption of online discussion revolving around Macklemore’s victory over Kendrick Lamar at the 2014 Grammys act as substantial proof of that disconnect. There have undoubtedly been upsets at the Grammys before, but what made this upset particularly remarkable is realizing how people were more agitated by the transparency of the decision-making process than anything else; today, the Grammys are more comparable to a showroom than an art gallery. It serves as nothing more than a presentation of the music industry’s “most popular products,” in much the same way that the Billboards do. Corporate America is focused on delivering prepackaged hip-hop content that caters to a national audience, where two out of three people are Caucasian. So no wonder that we are seeing less and less black hip-hop artists receiving accolades.
I guess we have come to realize that the influence exercised by corporate America over hip-hop is beginning to jeopardize the legitimacy of the genre as an art form. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that when art becomes product, the narrative of its creation is rarely dictated by what the artist thinks you need as a viewer. Instead, it is dictated by what the industry thinks you want as a customer. Neither the people, nor the sounds of hip-hop continue to serve its modus operandi. People are struggling with the definition of hip-hop because the industry’s presentation and acknowledgement of what truly constitutes hip-hop can no longer be fully corroborated by the black experience in America. It is for this reason alone, that hip-hop is in danger.
With the rise of hip hop as a money making institution, the genre may be losing touch with its roots.
If you were not already aware, afford me the opportunity of informing you that 2014 was a pretty terrible year for race relations in the USA. Now, I’m not here to debate or scrutinize the painfully familiar cases that have stained our memories; you have undoubtedly heard somebody else talk about them, because nobody lives in a hole that deep in the ground. But what I do want to talk to you about is the ever-changing landscape of the black experience in America, and how the largest institution of race relations in the country is reflecting these changes. This is an institution that, according to Jay-Z’s interview on Oprah’s Master Class, has “done more than any cultural icon.” An institution that Forbes says generates more than $10 billion in revenue annually. That institution is hip-hop. Now, being a white boy from a predominantly Jewish Montreal suburb, this is a tough question to answer… but does hip-hop truly represent the black experience in America anymore? Lately, it seems like the whole world has been arguing over what hip-hop is. And more importantly, what it is not.
A hip-hop song, like every other genre of music, is the result of an artist’s perspective. The imagery that hip-hop evokes continues to be shaped by the trials, tribulations and triumphs of a culture whose history in the United States has been resoundingly disadvantageous. Historically, hip-hop music has earned a strong reputation for illustrating themes of poverty, violence and drug trafficking; Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest recently clarified the definition of hip-hop on Twitter as an “artistic and socio-political movement/culture that sprang from the disparate ghettos” of New York in the ‘70s. It was for this reason that we have legitimized hip-hop as an art form: at some point, it captured the realities faced by black America.
Now, recently there’s been a growing dialogue as to whether that’s still the case. I can name at least five different interviews in the past couple months off the top of my head that have touched on the burgeoning racial tension in hip-hop. These conversations have brought particular attention to corporate America, and how the sound of hip-hop has been affected by its effort to continually monetize its most prominent figures and themes. If hip-hop’s legitimacy as an art form is assured by its capacity to portray the black experience, then I think it’s logical to make an assumption that the sound of hip-hop should have undergone some sort of audible transfiguration in its response to the bruising that the black body is currently suffering. I wonder if people—like Macklemore, or Azealia Banks, or J. Cole—have arrived at the same, depressing conclusions that I have after I asked myself this next question: can we even expect hip-hop to capture the experiences of Black America as an art form if it is subject to corporate America’s presentation of it as a product? Because I am so damn curious.
No form of music can be defined beyond who is performing, and how they perform it. Traditionally, hip-hop was defined by black people performing about, well, mostly black situations. As we have come to acknowledge, hip-hop was an emotional release, cathartic in its illustrations of gun violence and poverty, symptoms of the grim economic circumstances that plagued several corners of the black community from which the genre eventually emerged. But does the prevalence of these themes in commercial hip-hop music continue to reflect the black American experience today? J. Cole voiced his concerns in an interview with Power 105: “If you really take another listen to what’s being played right now, what’s being said, it don’t represent us no more … or I don’t know if it ever did … or if it just really represented what could be sold, and what could be marketed and what could be pushed.”
Considering that Neighborhood Scout placed the three most deadly neighbourhoods in America in 2013 in Detroit, where 80 per cent of its residents are black, or in Chicago, where the police department’s official online records estimate that three out of four homicide victims are black, it’s just frankly untrue of Cole to think that the discussion of gun violence in hip-hop music no longer provides even a marginal portrayal of the modern Black American experience. And if hip-hop never represented black people in America, as Cole described, why do so many listeners consider the political outspokenness of musicians like KRS – One or Public Enemy, both of whom enjoyed great commercial success, as one of the quintessential features defining hip-hop’s golden era? Forest Hills Drive, J. Cole’s third studio album, went gold within two weeks of its release. And while he is complaining about how there should be more artists in the commercial hip-hop scene who rap like him, the obnoxiousness of Cole’s message is eclipsed by the nobility of his theories and ideas on why the commercial hip-hop scene is lacking a brand of lyricism that paints different pictures of the black experience in America. Pictures that stand for a significantly greater share of the black community, beyond the likeness of what we have come to expect from Chief Keef’s or Bobby Shmurda’s music.
What J. Cole brings to our attention is how familiar these topics within the commercial hip-hop scene really are, how accustomed to this dialogue that we, as an audience, have grown, and what role, if any, the music industry has played in perpetuating these themes of destruction.
Stay tuned for part II of this discussion in next week’s paper.
