July 2007 Archives
Too Much Time on Their Hands
Michael Vick stands in judgment, and it goes without saying that a generation of young black male athletes also stand in judgment. More than Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant and Pacman “sometimes you need to just call a dangerous psychopath a ‘dangerous’ psychopath” Jones, Michael Vick has now become the stand-in for all that ails professional sports. And it’s not fair, but Michael Vick and his generational cohorts should know better.
The current crop of black male athletes are more visible and better compensated than every generation of black athletes that came before them. And for some of these young athletes, they believe they are beyond reproach because of it, particularly if said criticism comes from the generation of black athletes who toiled on fields, courts and tracks without the glamour and prestige that these young athletes now take for granted. I’m always reminded of Vince Coleman, a former major league baseball player who, months after signing a free-agent contract with the New York Mets in 1991, claimed that he didn’t know who Curt Flood was. It was Flood who, 20 years earlier, challenged the reserve clause in baseball, which essentially made baseball players little more than salaried chattel. Flood was the reason why Coleman and countless others can become free agents and sale their talents to the highest bidder.
As we witness the wealthiest generation of professional athletes ever, increasingly the professionalization process is beginning in childhood, as kids as young as seven and eight years of age are already being prepared for lives in professional sports. It is in this context that many of these athletes, particularly if they are black males, are denied the fullest range of social and cultural experience. The by-product is a generation of young rich athletes who, when they are not toiling for the NBA or NFL, are sitting at home playing video games 10 hours a day, before they hit the club. Lots of money and too much time on their hands and it explains, in part, why figures like Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan might gamble away millions of dollars, why former NBA star Jayson Williams (the black one) might be sitting in his bedroom playing with guns, or why an athlete might become interested in betting on dog fights. The irony is that given their largely unprecedented wealth, this is a generation of athletes who could truly afford to experience the world in ways that their predecessors could only imagine.
For actor Bernie Casey, a former NFL player who played for the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams in the 1960s who nurtured his interests in painting and photography while he was in college (he has two degrees in fine arts) and in the NFL. Then there’s the example of Alan Page, an All-Pro NFL lineman, who pursued his law degree at the University of Minnesota, while he was still playing (he also ran a marathon during that time). Page is currently a judge on the Minnesota Supreme Court. And finally there’s former NBA player Dick “Fall Back Baby” Barnett, who was the starting shooting guard in the New York Knicks' 1970 championship. Barnett entered the NBA in the early 1960s without a degree, but during his playing days, not only earned his bachelor’s degree, but also completed a Masters Degree in Public Policy from NYU. With an interest in urban education, after he retired from the NBA, Barnett went on to earn a Ph.D. from Fordham University.
Granted, for the athletes like Casey, Page and Barnett, it was not unusual for them to take on full-time jobs in order to make ends meet in an era when professional sports simply wasn’t as lucrative as it is now. It’s one of the reasons why Casey and Jim Brown, for example, took up acting. So I understand that they were forced by the realities of their moment to broaden their interests. But I wonder what Michael Vick might be doing right now, had he sat down and read a copy of Dick Barnett’s latest book The Funky Jockey Strap - The Social Dilemma: Observations on Education, Black Males and Black Professional Athletes in America during his down time.
Soul and Prose: Chrisette Michele and Michael Eric Dyson
This past week I was in New York City for joint signing event with R&B vocalist Chrisette Michele and author and scholar Michael Eric Dyson. Michele and Dyson were at the Borders Store in the Time Warner Center signing copies of I Am and Know What I Mean: Reflections on Hip-Hop, respectively. In many ways both are cutting against the grain.
Chrisette Michele's I Am defies all the logic of how one breaks an R&B artist in today's marketplace. To their credit Island Def Jam--Jay and L.A.--are allowing the 24-year-old to build an audience by drawing on her strengths as a youthful (and beautiful) repository for a generation of long-gone chanteuses. I am a fan. Dyson is arguably the preeminent public intellectual of his generation, engaging the pubic on the multi-tiered platforms that contemporary media culture demands we all be literate with (where's the blog, Michael?). As such he has been the target of scorn from both academics and lay people for pandering to his audience and being little more than Ivy-League trained ambulance chaser, as if somehow writing 14 books in 14 years addressing the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and culture is simply a hustle. I for one defend that hustle and that of all others who can function critically in the marketplace of ideas.
That said, the event promised to bring together a unique cadre of folks--teen shorties looking to get a glimpse of Chrisette, hip-hop heads, knowledge hungry grad students, members of the socialist workers party (lol), folk who just love some good music and some good talk and a bunch of other folk, who just happened to be passing through. But the already hyped energy went to another level when five minutes before Chrisette Michele began her four-song set, in walked Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, CNN's Roland S. Martin--and a few minutes later, Essence Magazine's Susan L. Taylor and her husband Khephra Burns. After Michele's set, which didn't disappoint, Dyson passed the mic to Smiley, West, Martin (who spotted Taylor in the crowd), Taylor, the Rev. Marcia Dyson and his humbled homeboy from the Bronx, to give some love and get our own spit on. And Dyson's generosity was reciprocated, when Cornel West, served as Dyson's ultimate hype man, as they both recalled a trip to NYC (from Princeton) 20 years earlier to catch Sarah Vaughn (who Michele cites as an influence) at The Blue Note and they peeped Gordon Parks, Sr. at the bar with a women 50 years his junior. As Roland Martin later described the Border's event--it was HOT!
There was a time where one could roll into a meeting in a library up in Harlem and it would not be unusual to see Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Jesse Redmond Fauset, and Wallace Thurman--the critical and artistic black intelligentsia of the 1920s--sitting there. The event at Borders on Tuesday, might be the closest that we can get to that kind of moment again. And as Roland Martin and Susan Taylor reminded folk that night, the gathering was smaller in the one that congregated at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to form the foundation of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that began in December of 1955.
Tavis Talks!
Cornel Preaches
The "Queen of Black America"
Roland Martin on his game
Head Nodding Prose for the Summer, Volume One.
Soul Covers: Rhythm and Blues Remakes and the Struggle for Artistic Identity
Michael Awkward
Michael Awkward, the Gayl Jones Collegiate Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan, has a built a career on the notion of "close" readings. In other words, he takes quite seriously that every word and gesture matters, when one examines the culture of African-Americans. Though he has been primarily concerned with black women's literature throughout his career--in many ways initiating the field of black male feminist criticism--in his new book he turns his attention to the music of Al Green, Aretha Franklin, and Phoebe Snow, highlighting songs that the artists chose to cover during the period of 1964-1976. In the case of Franklin it was al album length tribute to the music of Dinah Washington, while Green, during the height of his popularity, chose to cover Country music standards like Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times." --songs which Green used a template to write songs that expressed his own "country boy" sensibilities. In the case of Snow, easily the lesser known of the trio, Awkward examines the "something in between"--Snow is a Jewish singer-songwriter with "kinky" hair who rarely tried to disturb perceptions that she was an "authentic" Soul singer, particularly on her album Second Childhood. Soul Covers is not for casual fans of Soul music, but for those who interests might best be described as devout.
Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life
Davarian Baldwin
The Harlem Renaissance period of the 1920s has often been held up as the pinnacle of 20th Century black expression and legitimately so, given the ways that figures such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston and many others tried to concretely shape the larger culture. But as Davarian Baldwin shows, Harlem often cast a large shadow on the places and spaces around the country where blacks were gaining voice and influence--on their own terms. As such Chicago's New Negroes is a tribute to the entrepreneurial and intellectual spirit of black Chicagoans that matched the artistic spirit of their Harlem brethren. Here Baldwin is particularly in tune with the pursuit of leisure--that which was as much about blacks viewing themselves as equals to whites, as was the pursuit of full citizenship. Thus figures like Negro League visionary Rube Foster, filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, Madame CJ Walker (who made pressed hair an emblem of true womanhood), Thomas Dorsey (who conceptualized the gospel music industry in the late 1930s after years as a blues pianist), and boxer Jack Johnson are rightfully elevated to the status of standard-bearers of modern blackness. Baldwin is particularly astute in his discussions of the significance of "The Stroll"--the physical location in Chicago where blacks literally performed their sense of being Black Moderns.
Voices Rising:
Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbain, Gay, Biseual & Transgender Writing
Edited by G. Winston James and Other Countries
In recent years, Redbone Press has staked a critical reputation as a supportive home for a generation of black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered writers, including critic superb Ernest Hardy
, novelist sharon bridgforth, and poet Samiya Bashir. Thus it is only fitting that Redbone Press would publish Voices Rising, a volume that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the founding of Other Countries, an artistic collective dedicated to the artistry of gay men of African heritage. The third volume in a series, Voices Rising is the first that is fully inclusive of the voices of black women. The collection is simply a must-read for those truly interest in recognizing the fullest breadth of black expression in our contemporary moment.
The Boys of Summer (of Sam)
The game of baseball was never really made for television. For every great moment in the history of baseball that was televised—Henry Aaron’s 715th homerun, Carton Fisk’s walk-off homerun in game 6 of he 1975 World Series, and Bill Buckner flubbing a ground-ball in game 6 of the 1986 World Series, to name a few—there are literally millions of 3-2 counts, foul pop-ups and pitchers throwing over to first base that have driven folks away from the game. While watching baseball on television is perhaps only a thing for purists, in contrast, baseball nostalgia makes for great television. Such is the case with the HBO documentary Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghost of Flatbush and ESPN’s mini-series The Bronx is Burning.
The story of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ relocation from Brooklyn, NY to Los Angeles, CA is pretty well known to longtime residents of Brooklyn and most baseball fans. In this story the late Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers, is the clear villain. Some 50 years later, folks still have an incredible rancor for the man who presumably moved their beloved Dodgers out of Brooklyn and indeed some of the team’s more well known fans such as Larry King and actor Lou Gossett are almost comical in their rants about O’Malley. Throughout Ghost of Brooklyn, one gets a sense of just how integral the team was to the lives Brooklyn’s working class, which was made up of 1st and 2nd generation white immigrants, black migrants from the south and the first significant wave of Puerto Ricans into New York City. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field, the stadium they played in was the common ground, particularly after Jackie Robinson integrated the Major Leagues in 1947. The common foe in those days was the New York Yankee, who were upscale and as white-as-can-be; The fact that the Dodgers lost to the Yankees so often in the World Series—6 times, before beating them in 1955—only enhanced the rivalry.
While the Ghost of Flatbush makes for great baseball nostalgia it also offers a compelling social history of New York City during a time of great development. Indeed this history presents the real villain of the story: Robert Moses, the New York City Commissioner, who from 1924 until 1968 was arguably the most powerful man in New York City as he could green light any development project he wanted. Under Moses’s watch more than 600 miles of roadway, nearly 700 playgrounds, 13 bridges and numerous beaches, particularly Jones Beach, was developed. It was Moses who denied O’Malley’s request for a new domed stadium to be built in downtown Brooklyn, preferring to build a stadium in Queens at the location where Shea stadium now stands. As the country became increasingly car-centric and the core Brooklyn Dodgers fans were moving to Long Island (courtesy of roadways that Moses built), the 700 parking spaces at Ebbets Field just made it difficult for the Dodgers to maintain their fan base. When the city of Los Angeles offered free acreage for O’Malley to build the stadium of his dreams and Moses refused budge on the request to use downtown Brooklyn, the Dodgers said goodbye—taking the New York baseball Giants with them. Moses erected federally funded housing projects at the site of Ebbets field and I imagine few of the current residents have any sense of the great history to location represents.
Robert Moses was also responsible for the building of the Cross Bronx Expressway, making him the only man who can claim to have had a hand in both the relocation of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the creation of hip-hop. As Jeff Chang thoroughly details in Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, the Cross Bronx Expressway really creates the structural and spatial conditions that allow for the formation of hip-hop in the Bronx. By the mid-1970s, as Chang also details, the Bronx was burning, hence the titled of the HBO mini-series. The title comes from an observation that the late Howard Cosell made during the broadcast of a Yankees game on television in 1977; a burning building could be seen in the background, in what was, at the time, not an unusual occurrence in the Bronx. 1977 was also the summer that New York was under siege by David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam killer. But The Bronx is Burning, shows that the real drama was in the clubhouse of the New York Yankees as the trio of manager Billy Martin (played by John Turturro), owner George Steinbrenner (Oliver Platt) and Reggie Jackson (Daniel Sunjata) fought and bickered their way to a championship. It was Jackson who famously announced, upon signing as a free agent with the Yankees, that he was the “straw that stirred the drink” and stir it he did. Jackson was never a race man, in the sense that we think of Jackie Robinson or even Hank Aaron, but he was in many ways the template for the current generation of black male athletes, who are arguably more comfortable in front of the cameras than they are on the field.
The Amen Corner: Blackness and the Populism of Common Sense
"The use of the N-word is unacceptable," Stephanie Brown, director of the NAACP’s Youth and College Division announced, adding that "Every time we use the N-word, we disgrace the ancestors who came before us." The setting for Brown’s pronouncement was a mock funeral, for the word “nigger” that was part of the programming for the NAACP’s National Convention in Detroit, MI. According to Michael H. Cottman of BlackAmericaWeb.com, Brown’s words, “brought the crowd," numbered in the thousands “to their feet.” I’ve been here before. Conventional wisdom suggest that when faced with crises and uncertainties, one should rely on their common sense, but when applied to conditions that confront large communities, such wisdom profoundly undermines the possibilities of bringing new ideas and ways of thinking to bear on the situation. David Lionel Smith observed more than a decade ago, “Common sense is not critically self-conscious, and its function is to facilitate conformity and adaptation to familiar circumstances. It thrives on familiarity and fears change, and therefore common sense is profoundly conservative.” While all points-of-view need to be acknowledged and valued in the “marketplace of ideas,” the thunderous applause and standing ovations that often accompany common sense responses, at times shut down and silence alternative points of view, particularly if it goes against conventional wisdom. Indeed common sense borders on a form of
populism, that denies black communities access to the fullest range of strategies to address our conditions.
Such is the case these days when the conversation turns to the subject of blackness, particularly in the era of television programming like Charm School, Flavor of Love and the forthcoming Hot Ghetto Mess. My point is not that the stereotypes that these programs traffic in should not be addressed, but that too often the level of discourse about these issues are simply reduced to the common sense notion that black people shouldn’t make fools of themselves on national televisions in the full gaze of white America. Such logic of course made sense in the early 20th century during the era of Jim Crow, but holds little value in an era in which performed “blackness” is a major commodity for all involved including those blacks who ostensibly produce “blackness” and the corporate media that reproduce and circulate said “blackness." As rapper David Banner comments in the pages of the CQ Researcher, a newsletter published by the Congressional Quarterly, “There was a time in history when we didn’t have a choice about being called a nigger. Now that we’re making money off of it, it’s a problem.” Banner’s comments go against common sense, but they tellingly highlight the complexities of the issue that simply telling rappers, black youth and others, not to use the word, doesn’t allow.
So, of course young black women shouldn’t appear in music videos or on programs like Flavor of Love, engaging in forms of “blackface-without-the-shoe-polish” minstrelsy, that my friend and colleague Joan Morgan suggests they never get called on the carpet for. But a commonsense response to this reality does little to examine the issues of beauty, desire, impoverishment and self-esteem that motivate some to appear on such programs. A common sense discourse that deems that we should ban or funeralize the word “nigger” also does little to highlight the exquisite and thoughtful ways that artists have explored black identity, white supremacy and notions of the familial by using the word. It seems to me that we continuously sell ourselves short by not allowing ourselves to be as complex as possible and that includes our ability to think beyond the little black box of “common sense.”
Chasing Down a Memory
So this story begins in August of 1983, just weeks before I would leave the Boogie-Down for my first year of college. At the time, I was a big fan of Pop-Top-40 from the 1960s and 1970s - less an issue about an identity in flux, and more so just a need to hear the music that made the world I inhabited as a 17-year-old, nappy-headed negro from the South Bronx. My station of choice was WCBS-FM, which was still an oldies station at the time. One of my favorite programs on the station was their weekend countdown of the Top-20 charts in New York City during the late 1960s and 1970s. It was one of those countdown shows, highlighting the Top-20 from August of 1969, that was of particular interest to me. As a child, 1969 always held a special place in my heart, largely because of the Apollo 11 moon landing (I was a science nerd as a child, in many ways still a nerd) and the New York Mets, who improbably won the World Series that year. It was also the year (in August specifically) that Jr. Walker's "What Does in Take? (To Win Your Love)" hit the charts. As I recalled in What the Music Said nearly a decade ago, "What Does it Take?" connects me to my earliest memory of sharing music with my father. So as I sat there in August of 1983, listening to WCBS, I did so largely out of the expectation of hearing "What Does It Take?" (remember this is way before the digital revolution made back catalogues as readily accessible as they are now).
It was while sitting there that I heard a song which began, "when I die, I hope to be/a better man than you thought I could be." I never heard the name of the song or the artist that sang it, but damn if the song and that lyric didn't stay in my head for another 10 years. By that time I was in graduate school at the University of Buffalo, I heard the song in passing and again failed to hear what the song title was.
Okay, so we fast forward to last month and I'm in the Chicago area for a gig at the National Association of Women's Studies and about to have dinner with my friend and colleague Richard Iton, who is a straight up audiophile (to the point of addiction I might add). We're sitting in his car, and damn if I don't hear coming from his stereo, "When I die, I hope I'll be, the kind of man that you thought I could be."
The group is a multiracial group from Ontario called Motherlode and they had a top-20 hit during the summer of 1969 called "When I Die." Richard knew of the group because he's a native of Toronto, but his immediate reason for having a copy of the song in his car, was a recent post at OkayPlayer about J-Dilla's use of Motherlode's music on Donuts. "When I Die" is sampled on Donuts' "Intro." Given Detroit's proximity to Ontario, it not surprising that J-Dilla would have been familiar with Motherlode and it also explains, given the same issues with proximity, why I heard the song on a Buffalo radio station in the early 1990s.
Needless to say, I finally tracked down the song and once again, we can thank hip-hop for putting the pieces together.
What's in Your Hip-Hop Canon?
Last week WNYC's Soundcheck had a conversation about the validity of a hip-hop canon, no doubt inspired by Brian Coleman's fine new addition to the field of hip-hop studies. Personally I'm not a big fan of canons, since the very premise of one elicits a form of elitism. That said, as folk ranging from Paula Zahn to your local high school social studies teacher feel compelled to bring themselves up to speed on things, it may be tactically useful to present folk with a list that some of us think of as most reflective of what this thing is. I regularly stand in front of classrooms filled with 18-21 year olds (as many of them Black as they are White, Latino/a and Asian) who stare blankly into space when I mention folk like Whodini, A Tribe Called Quest and Gangstarr. Jazz scholars and critics often talk about this concept known as the "common practice" period--that period in jazz history, where most of the elements that make Jazz, Jazz, are present. If I had to identify a "common practice" period for hip-hop, it would be from 1987- 1992. With that in mind, I'd like to offer my own hip-hop canon.
Just a few things about my choices. I was a fully grown man when It Takes A Nation of Millions was released, so my taste in hip-hop reflects that of a fully grown man, who's been married for 16 years, has two daughters under the age of 10 and who drives a minivan. Also, because of my vocation, I heard hip-hop, particularly in the 1990s with cats like Habermas, Baudrillard, Michael Eric Dyson, Skip Gates, Patricia Hill-Collins and Greg Tate whispering in my other ear. Finally, this is not meant to be some comprehensive list--there are folk like Em, Mr. Fiddy and T.I., for example--who I simply don't be checking for. That said this list is biased--premised on an east coast, quite frankly, New York bias, that I'm proud of.
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back (1988)--Public Enemy
As important for the Bomb Squad's singular production as it was for Chuck's post-Black Power rage.
Edutainment (1990)--KRS-One (Boogie Down Productions)
KRS-one on firm footing intellectually and musically, before he started taking himself too seriously.
Follow the Leader (1988)--Eric B and Rakim
The title track alone where Rakim meets Baudrillard should be enshrined, but the album proved that Rakim was just hip-hop's first poet laureate.
The Chronic (1992)--Dr. Dre
The G-Funk uncut and before all of the Death Row drama. And yeah the violence, gratuitous references to weed and the misogyny are a bit much, but musically speaking...
Buhloone Mind State (1993)--De La Soul
3 Feet High and Rising was such a force, but Buhloone State--the first after De La killed themselves--perhaps captures them at their peak and still playful.
Raising Hell (1986)--Run DMC
Arguably the first hip-hop album, as opposed to a collection of 12-inch singles. On a commercial level, this recording changed the game while helping to build the branding power of hip-hop with tracks like "Peter Piper" and, of course, "My Adidas."
The Predator (1992)--Ice Cube
Amerikka's Most Wanted was a singular achievement because of Ice Cube's youth and the big break he made from NWA. There's also an argument here for Death Certificate, but in my mind Ice Cube didn't become Ice Cube until his vision was writ large on the world as the drama of May '92 was unfolding to the world. The Predator was his--and hip-hop's--"I Told You So Moment"
Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992)--Pete Rock & CL Smooth
Pete Rock's post-bop production style at its finest and maybe one of the most underrated recordings in the mix. "They Reminisce Over You" is simply timeless.
Illmatic (1994)--Nas
A recording that is emblematic of what I call hip-hop's hard-bop minimalism--the spiritual progeny of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue.
Black On Both Sides (1999)--Mos Def
One of those moments--Voodoo, Mama's Gun, and Like Water for Chocolate were a year away, and Black on Both Sides set the tone. Mos Def will never be as important as a recording artist as he was here.
Paul's Boutique (1989)--The Beastie Boys
Often takes a back seat in our memory to It Takes a Millions, but this recording simply took sample-based hip-hop production to another level. The group graduates from its frat-party debut and begin a cycle of provocative and compelling art.
Ready to Die (1994)--The Notorious B.I.G.
Bless his soul, but Biggie was never gonna be better than this.
The Blueprint (2001)--Jay Z
The truest emblem of 30 being the new 20, Shawn was still hungry and still cocky, but feeling more comfortable with the striking introspection that has become his hallmark. Moved nearly 500,000 units the week of 9/11. Enough said.
Enta Da Stage (1993)--Black Moon
Black Moon was the personification of East Coast hardcore in the mid-1990. "I Gotcha Opin?" Hell yeah.
The Low End Theory (1991)--A Tribe Called Quest
There is of course an argument for Midnight Marauders, but the leaps and bounds that Phife made from their debut People's Instinctive Travels...made this special.
Mama Said Knock You Out (1990)--LL Cool J
With three discs already in the can, LL was already a star, but had been brought down to size by the uninspired Walking with a Panther. Marley Marl got him focused musically and of course, James Todd Smith always had his eye on bigger prizes.
Very Necessary (1993)--Salt N' Pepa
Fact is, there are great singles by female MCs, but few have been allowed to implement fully blown conceptual visions. Salt N' Pepa were at the height of the popularity and delivered a true gem.
Aquemini (1998)--Outkast
It's hard to argue against Stankonia, which could arguably be one of the greatest hip-hop recordings of all time, but in my mind the deep crevices of modern Southern culture are so palpable on Aquemini--it really is the best representation of their artistry.
Like Water for Chocolate (2000)--Common
"6th Sense" proved that Common could be relevant beyond Chicago and in many ways Like Water for Chocolate is an East Coast recording. This wins out over the rest of Common's oeuvre because it holds together as conceptual art. Yes, Electric Circus was more daring, but Like Water for Chocolate was better music.
Late Registration (2005)--Kanye West
Kanye had a lifetime to do College Dropout and only a year or two to do Late Registration. The latter was better art and functioned seamlessly in the world of straight pop music.
Things Fall Apart (1999)--The Roots
Perhaps the most striking cover art in hip-hop and the Achebe reference was simply brilliant. The Roots had something to prove here and the music reflects that.
