Consider: Scarface’s Interview with All Hip Hop

A couple days ago, I read All Hip Hop’s interview with Scarface. He spoke hard, was heartfelt and genuinely emotional. His disgruntlement with the state and industry of hip-hop was understood and intensely sincere.

This is one of the many moments that stood out to me from the interview:

AllHipHop.com: To me, Hip-Hop is a cultural element of expression. It expresses lyricism, dance, art; it gives insight into our community. Why do you think Hip-Hop is losing that essence?

Here is Scarface’s response:

“Any two ways that you get a White boy singing the Blues; somebody’s lying somewhere. You know, the Blues—have you heard the Blues before? For a White boy to put the Blues out, and says what’s hot in Blues, it’s a lie; because, he doesn’t even have no idea. He doesn’t have no idea why this is done and why we feel how we feel. You cannot expect for a 45 year old 50 year old White boy to dictate what’s hot within the Black community.”

Really, I agree with him. It evokes an image of someone singing the Blues in a tuxedo on a grand stage with a full orchestra.

There’s a cultural relevance to the Blues, to hip-hop music, so when he says for a white person to be singing the Blues – “he doesn’t even have no idea,” there may be some truth to that. I agree that those whose narratives are most deeply embedded in the spirit of the music are those who should have the most influence over its direction.

Face’s quote also taps into why I believe, when people critique hip-hop, they don’t realize they’re critiquing the forces that commercialize and dissolve the music. People who critique hip-hop truly have not heard it, do not have access to it, or are simply critiquing “the man.”

Anyway, not to get off subject, but the interview is a memorable one. I think Face hits every point on the head.

Consider: Sterilizing Poetry from Hip-Hop

Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, apparently doesn’t like Snoop Dogg being put in the same analytical breath as Shakespeare. This article by John Lundberg of the Huffington Post, at one point (quoted below), begins to irritate me, especially when he seems to imply an issue with most teenagers likely naming rappers as their favorite poets. The author’s thinking on the matter, in that regard, strikes me as retrograde, fearful, uninformed.

And Motion’s purist attitude of wanting to keep the hallowed halls of poetry sterile from anything that won’t inch its way into the good graces of his poetic definition is indicative of a problem that will continue to deepen the schism between people and poetry.

Again, you can read the article here.

So now here is the argument: Sometimes, you can steep too low when trying to make poetry appealing to teenagers. Apparently, hip-hop music, while being the closest rendering of poetry at its roots and staying true to the art’s most formal, original forms, is still, somehow, the lowest pier for teaching poetry.

I’m not afraid to say that, again, those who stick up their noses at hip-hop have never listened to a hip-hop album in their lives. It’s the idea that that man, with the sunglasses and pigtails can, no, should, actually write something that can demand our analysis in the same way the rosy-cheeked guy can, that sickens many of our beloved elitist superpoets. Any time you start separating art, suggesting that you can’t look at exhibit A to learn an appreciation for exhibit B and, in turn, learn about their familial ties though unique in their individual elements, you push the stake harder through the heart of that art.

Rap and poetry are akin to me, anyway. So, my issue with Motion and this John Lundberg of the Huffington Post: How is excluding Snoop from poetry lessons maintaining the integrity of poetic study? Rap, to state the obvious, is pure, formal poetry – spoken, metered, rhyming.

So says Lungberg:

“But Motion is right that artists like Eminem, and even Angelou, only scratch the surface of poetry’s power.”

Look, I agree that Angelou isn’t the best American poetry has to offer (as a matter of fact, I don’t care for her work at all), but Eminem is a very worthy writer to study. I did a presentation on one of his songs in a Meter & Rhythm class, and realized what a great lyrical composer he is. No one writes like him. I’ve studied his rhymes, like, sat there and not only broke down the unaccented/accented nuances of his songs, but also broke down his rhyme schemes and the musicality of how he writes with the words, alone.

This article by Lundberg is afraid of what poetry is. (And don’t ask me what it is!) So, what Motion and Lundberg are telling us to do is vociferously rehash the same old voices and keep seeing where they take us, because it is only through their voices we will understand all stories.

Frankly, I love Poe, but I’m all for introducing Jay Z, B.I.G, Aceyalone, Eminem and Diamond D into our poetry classes. Teenagers need to know that poetry doesn’t have to be up there, somewhere far in the distance of the clouds where they need a pedagogical ladder to climb to be able to touch the bottom of the words. Let’s start with what’s right now; stop harking to an eighteenth and nineteenth century poetic past and demanding its relevance at every twist and turn, insisting on making it unconditionally important to minds that may be more interested in the poetry of the culture that appeals to them, the poetry of their generation that they feel coincide with their voices in these times in their language.

Why must we always say, “Well, let’s try to show how Shakespeare’s sonnets can be compared to rap”? I mean, that’s fine and all, but why can’t we start with here? Why can’t the bar be those of this poetic present? Hip-hop is a starting point – more teenagers have taken in poetry from listening to hip-hop than from choking up Shakespeare. The fact that, to me, more teenagers can “bust a rhyme” by their favorite emcee than “bust a sonnet” by Shakespeare reveals, to me, that folks like Snoop, Fabolous, Joe Budden, Cam’Ron, represent the bar by which this generation finds its poetry. Why can’t these little literary cults wrap their minds around the fact that, yes, Shakespearean poems and Snoopian lyrics have plenty in common, and that either can be the stepping stone for engaging in each others’ works?

Why must the poets of this generation be pushed over because of a dire insistence to listen to the voices form the graves from which all living poetry must be measured, from which all of today’s experiences must find validation?

Photo Citations: http://www.nlcphs.org (Shakespeare); http://www.babble.com/ (Snoop)