That Indecent Noise- part one

a child of hip hop's Golden Era shares secrets of our shine (after Kwame Dawes)

I’m even surprising myself this morning by writing this post off the top of the dome.  I’m just going to take a little time, an hour let’s say, and freestyle this for you, and for myself. CONFESSION (adding pictures too 15 extra minutes… I’m not even proofreading this though, poof, it’s sent!) Freestyle shit.

This will be me thinking in public- a Black feminist practice.

The title of this column comes from a quote by Black Thought

long liveth -

“feeling the deeper void/ listening to

that indecent noise/

people used to tell me/

boy, your brain gon be destroyed”

Here’s part 2. And part 3 of this series.

These are thoughts that have been rattling in my little brain but the impetus for writing comes from reading Kwame Dawes’ Natural Mysticism.

In this book the Jamaican poet laureate investigates how reggae gave shape to his aesthetics and cultural style, not just as a fan, but as a writer a thinker, and a Jamaican cultural worker coming of age in the 60s and 70s. He writes about the social force of reggae and how, though he loved books as a child, the music has a magnetism that swept him and his folk up into new creative (and social) possibilities.

I’m only in Chapter 2 of this amazing book right now. So this is Part One of my musings.

thanks

NJ

for recommending I read this book!!!  I wish I had read it as the very first book of my MFA study, I’d recommend it to any Diasporan writer, any writer who writes inside and/or struggles against culture intentionally.

i graduated high school in 95 so this is a reflection on the decade of the 90s. i’d enter the decade as a twelve year old on home dialysis and leave the decade, January 2000 as an underground MC.  My hip hop journey was truly to depart then.

Here are a few ways that this time, this hip hop force has influenced my aesthetic and the way I approach my creativity:

First, hip hop has imprinted within me a passion to kick ass, a drive to be the best. It’s not polite to brag in literary circles the way it is on the M-I-C but I write with a passion to change the world blazing in my heart.   I write to flex on em, stunt on em, show em what I’m made of… and show ‘em what WE are made of. I may be silent about it publicly because it’s impolite for writers to be too ostentatious, and untimely for Black men to be too braggadocious in educated or radical spaces. But in the inner circle, we know what lights we are shining and we comment on how bright the wattage be as individuals and collectives. We’ll come back to this at the end.

OK, we’re back already. Hip hop, looking below the surface, is full of collective stories. Yes rappers rap about how they are the isht. But from Self-destruction to Brenda’s got a baby, to the myriad stories that observe mothers’ struggles to Is Brooklyn in the house to to Run and Something for Junkies by Killer Mike to They Not Like Us rappers put their personal stories within the stories of their ‘hood.  Rappers are observers, not only to tell stories about what they see but many tell you what’s going on and how their lives are in a context that they are from.  Chuck D said “rap musis is the CNN of the ghetto”.

Also, fuck CNN.

I carried this impetus with  me.  I am a “Detroit writer” seeking to find my story and put it next to the amazing folks that be around here, our slummy village peoples.

Third, what strikes me also about our era of hip hop is the collective voices. I may write more about this because it is an essential aspect of my creative practice and I don’t see it much in the literary space.

Let’s start with the feature.  A simple thing, really. A rapper invites another to drop lyrics on their song.  I heard recently how Lil Wayne blessed Cordae’s song but the OG pushed him to keep rewriting his verse -on his own song!  for over a year until he thought it was top notch. Nowadays hip hop beefs get most of the attention, but the feature, two warriors of craft sharing space and sound together is a real technology of “steel sharpen steel.” Sometimes features operate in that way, an experienced rapper puts a lyricist that they respect on a track (or two), maybe takes them on tour, and gives their career a tangible boost. I’ve watched AFRO grow his creativity after getting noticed by RA the Rugged Man.  There are organic hip hop ways where collaboration is also education outside of formal schooling.

I also came up in the era of the remix where an R&B singer would release a new version of a song with a rapper that would electrify the song and make new memories. We will never forget

Boogie Down, are you in the house? (Yeah)

Shaolin are you in the house?

Sacramento in the house Atlanta Georgia, are you in the house? West Coast, are you in the house? Japan!!! Are you in the house?

Everybody, are you in the house?

Baby, baby, come on Baby, come on, baby, come on!

We were a time of R&b groups. I still listen to Jodeci devotionally. Part of the appeal is that these mutli talented men came together under a single name and made music.  Even listen closely, the group is singing the chorus, the “lead singer” is singing the flavor or adding the hot sauce to the meal, totally flipping on its head common notions of leading and following

.

We could go on for years about the rap groups of the time. I’ll just drop ATCQ, Kast, and Wu right here and STFU.

Lets also talk briefly about the collaboration between DJs and rappers. I came up on the tail end of the time when DJs were listed first before the rappers. As a youth I was confused because I assumed Eric B was the man on the mic.  Remember DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince?  I do and it was not lost on me whose name we said first “back in our day” (as my son would say).

When I wrote my poetry book Lee Young Lee, I told Bridget Quinn, my book designer and publisher that she was the DJ and I was the rapper. Sherina Rodruiguez-Sharpe was the featured artist and wrote a helluva introduction/invocation/invitation (and edited the poems). It was important for me to put the process into a hip hop creative collaboration.  

You may never have heard of AWE Society Press. That’s OK: you also may have never heard of Will See. I rapped for twenty years and released 6 albums and a couple EPs. Finally (for now), from my hip hop culture, I learned the value of being underground.  I came up as a rapper watching Detroit artists tour overseas, be well celebrated, well respected, and well paid without a lick of radio play.  We sold our tunes “out of the trunk of our car” printed our own merch, and handed CDs to people directly.

I’ve heard it said now that there really isn’t an underground.  The digitization of music, the dependence on streaming, the idolization of celebrity. Now everyone’s a failed celebrity. Many of us were underground, like rhizomes, like tree roots that survive storms, like cemented up creeks that survive development, we moved beneath and often against the corporatization of rap; we help a cultural presence that was independent of the corporate products being sold to the millions.

Even, in our local movements we uplifted local rappers and songwriters and asked them to bless our rallies with local flavor, with videos we can be proud of. Now, it seems to me, that movements look to a few “conscious” globally known big name rappers for their anthems. I’d love to be wrong about this.

As a writer I want to support independent presses. One of my literary heroes Ishmael Reed balances between publishing in mainstream presses and independent jawns.  I’m excited to see how my underground hip hop, class of 1995 aesthetic and work ethic (not the Puritan type, nonononono) will unfold as my writing journey continues.

Well my time is up. My alarm has sounded. GONG!!!!!!!!

I’ll leave you with a few links to my new shit. (Oh yeah the cussing. Another hip hop legacy. But, wait, I grew up in a family of Southern Migrated cussin’ niggaz so I got that linguistic blessing from my Granny, not a song. But cussing in public, yeah, that’s our hip hop shizzle for rizzle my pizzles and my sizzles- and the crackaz too, bon appetit — y’all know you like it, secretly on your Beats By Dre!)

Runner Magazine

My poem “Patterns.Building.Male” was published this August

Bath House Journal

My poem “My Self Portrait #1” in issue 25 “surveying the border” this poem is included in  

Lee, Young Lee  which was published by AWE Society Press this summer.  

See ya next time… 

Oh yeah!!! Shout out super shout out to Zia Dione; we are navigating MFA together.   This summer we shared our writings about growing up in Chocolate City in the 90s, her in D.C. and me in Detroit and formed some great creative bonds and she also is founder of the Trunk of My Car Collective and also we talked about the struggle to be in school and to be from an oral culture and how our zigs and zags may not be like other’s zoo dah dippedies. We also talked ancestral healing, but that is not for publication or public eyes. 

Read it in the book(s)!!!!!!!