Hip-hop nation

People think that I'm being contradictory, but it's just common sense to see that there are two sides to hip-hop. Hip-hop has a positive impact, but also has a negative impact in terms of these anti-black images and this misogynistic attitude that comes from rappers who sell multi-platinum records. Like Jay-Z. But at the same time, Jay-Z offers a message that the society is screwed up, that it's difficult out here, that the issues of unemployment and education are critical issues. The music is contradictory but the messages that society is sending us are contradictory too. I don't think that it's unusual; I think that's how life is.

What are you most critical of about this music then? How does it actually affect people's lives, particularly young blacks?

It's hurting a lot of young people who don't have a concrete definition about what it means to be young and black in America today. They turn to the music and they turn to films like "Menace II Society" and "Dead Presidents" for those definitions. The black intellectuals have failed to offer a new definition of what it means to be young and black. In the absence of that, films and music have filled that void.

Stanley Crouch did an editorial a couple of days ago about the R. Kelly situation. He quoted [former Nation of Islam minister] Conrad Muhammad saying something to the effect that the sad thing is that hip-hop and the entertainment industry have created a situation where young women can rationalize a ho mentality. Young men can rationalize a thug mentality as being part of what it means to be young and black. We can't continue to hide behind the idea that the critics are old people who don't know what they're talking about, and we can't continue to hide behind free speech. These are very real issues and the music is affecting people's lives in very real ways. We have to begin, as a generation, to be more critical of ourselves.

Since the audience for hip-hop is made up of so many white kids, and kids from other various backgrounds, what part do you see them playing in this? Will they join this political movement?

Definitely. Other groups will play a part. But one of the things that I'm calling for and trying to outline in the book is that the black community -- young black hip-hop generationers -- are not organized enough to begin to create a movement that would parallel the '50s and '60s civil rights and black power movement. I put so much emphasis on African-Americans because we have not yet created a national organization. I talk about coalition building in some parts of the book, but you can't even begin to think about coalition building with other groups when you don't even have one solitary serious national organization. I'm very critical of the Hip-Hop Action Network, but to their credit, they have stepped out there with a national group that's trying to articulate some of these issues. But if someone from the entertainment industry spearheads it, it's going to be more likely to fail.

You're more interested in the people from the local and student activist groups that are emerging.

You have many local activist efforts emerging. Like the group in Selma, Ala., that created the Joe Gotta Go movement -- they helped to vote Mayor Joe Smithermen [a former professed segregationist] out of office, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on the West Coast headed up by Van Jones, Black Cops Against Police Brutality, the Inner City Games Foundation headed by Donna Frisby Greenwood in Philadelphia, Listen INC in Washington. But these local groups don't have enough of an awareness of what other groups are doing similarly around the country.

There's a student activist movement. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, they have Hip Hop Generation and they put on a conference annually called Hip Hop as a Social Movement. The first year they had something like 2,000 participants, the year after that, 5,000. They celebrate the four elements of hip-hop, they are raising issues of politics and they have a multicultural and coalition-building agenda. Hip-hop clubs are beginning to emerge on college campuses in the same way that black student unions emerged in the late '60s and early '70s.

So you don't think that young blacks at universities shy away from activism?

No, not at all. One of the things that happened to our generation is that we're so immersed in celebrity culture that the media has gotten to the point where something is almost not newsworthy if it isn't tied to some celebrity, especially for blacks. So the Russell Simmons group gets a lot of attention because Russell Simmons is involved with it. Because rappers turn out and support what he's doing. But I don't think it's any more meaningful than what Van Jones is doing, or what Delacey Davis [founder of Black Cops Against Police Brutality] is doing.

But young whites of this generation are in a unique position in terms of political activism and in terms of putting these issues on the national agenda. Young whites who are into hip-hop have to make a distinction between whether they're into hip-hop as a pop culture phenomenon, or whether they're into hip-hop as a subculture of black youth culture. If they're into hip-hop as a subculture of black youth culture, then they have a better understanding of some of the issues that young blacks are concerned about -- education, employment, incarceration -- because those are the issues being addressed in the lyrics. We need to see that consciousness manifested in the polls.

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