“We Young, We Strong, We Do it All Night Long”: #HipHop and the #Ferguson Resistance

“We Young, We Strong, We Do it All Night Long”: #HipHop and the #Ferguson Resistance November 24, 2015

speak the truthBelow is a paper I presented for the “Exploring Hip Hop Beyond its Beats and Rhymes: Opportunities to Analyze the Power of Music” panel at the National Communication Association held in Las Vegas Nevada on November 20, 2015. I would like to thank the Cross Examination Debate Association for sponsoring the panel.

When Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, it caused a firestorm of social media attention and protests along with criticisms. One of the criticisms was where was hip hop in all of this?  For instance, Vibe put together a round table made up of their editors and other industry leaders that asked the question, “Is Hip Hop Doing Enough?” Clover Hope wrote that she wanted a “Kanye rant. It’s disheartening,” she continued, “to see so many rap stars who have voices and big bullhorns remain speechless. On Mike Brown, but also on police brutality against unarmed citizens, excessive force and muffling of journalists, which continued for days in Ferguson without meaningful interjection.”

Andreas Hale wrote, “I’m extremely disappointed that the bigger hip-hop acts have refrained from playing a larger role in this. Some of hip-hop’s most visible artists can beef with one another over the most trivial of things (money, women, who’s more macho) but won’t beef with law enforcement over killing our children?” Keith Murphy opined, “As a protest, socially-conscious outlet, hip-hop has long been dead. Basically, we are talking about a musical genre that has been boiled down to catchphrases and a more party, affluent-worshiping culture. Hip-hop no longer has any room to make a stand or make a statement beyond pushing a brand. Mr. Brown’s death is met with apathy and a tweet.”

Kyle Gise acknowledged that while he heard artists such as “David Banner, Chuck D, and Immortal Technique” speak out about Ferguson, he lamented that he had not heard any “mainstream rap artist talk about what’s going on.” “An artist”, he continued, “has so much voice and power whether it be through a song, video, community outreach, or even a tweet. These are the people the youth look up to before any politician, both locally and nationally.”

However, in one of the most scathing essays about the lack of hip hop involving came from Andreas Hale in a piece poignantly titled “What Day was it Exactly When Hip-Hop Stopped Giving a Fuck?” He started his essay by comparing hip hop’s past with its present. He wrote:

Once upon a time, way before social media was a vehicle to communicate with anyone in the world and blogs allowed rappers to release music at will, hip-hop had a voice when it came to political and social issues. If that was the case back then, today’s rap music has become nothing more than a gossip tabloid that is more infatuated with Kanye and Kim’s relationship than it is with police brutality and the alarming genocide of African American men.

As he continued down memory lane he noted, “Twenty years ago, you couldn’t kill one of our children in cold blood and not expect the community to come out in full force. But today is different. You can kill one of our children and rappers barely bat an eyelash.

While he did acknowledge that there were some in the hip hop community “slowly speaking out,” with a few tweets and mentions after their performances, he then asked, “what then? Do we go to sleep happy that we shouted out Mike Brown and held up the peace sign at the end of a show? Can we be truly satisfied with a couple of tweets about how bad it is in Missouri right now while those within the community are hit by rubber bullets and plowed with tear gas? The question is whether the hip-hop community sees this one all the way through or will it just another hot topic that we’ll conveniently forget in a few weeks?”

While some commented on hip hop’s inaction, hip hop was very much on the front lines during the early days of the Ferguson uprising. Writers Daniel Cherubin and Marc Hogan collected tweets from hip hop artists during the first week of the protest. However, Rapper J Cole immediately released a single title Be Free as a tribute to Michael Brown. According to Vice writer Kyle Kramer “the song strips away any of the posturing and moralizing that usually makes J. Cole’s message songs fall flat and just emotes. He howls, “it ain’t no gun they make that can kill my soul,” and it’s reassuring. He sobs “all we want to do is break the chains off/all we want to do is be free,” and it’s heartbreaking.”

Moreover, I suggest that Cole’s song is also part of the much larger African American prophetic tradition. What Cole does with the song is to lament and express the grief that community felt at the time. Again, according to Kramer he writes that Cole goes

[B]eyond channeling the rage of the moment, beyond highlighting the chilling interview excerpts describing the scene, this is a song that aches deeply, that reaches into a much longer-standing despair. It’s in J. Cole’s voice. It’s in the way he sings. It’s in the way this isn’t a rap song but rather a sort of raw nerve freestyle born of deep frustration and sadness. This is a song about Michael Brown, but it’s also a cry for, in Cole’s words, “every young black man murdered in America.”

While some wondered where the national artists were in response to Ferguson, the local hip hop scene represented quite well. Interviewed by St. Louis Public Radio, rapper Tef Poe reminded skeptics that he was “on the ground pretty early on;” so early in fact that when he got to the scene, he could still see Mike’s “blood in the middle of the street.” He said that the protests had already “influenced the St. Louis hip hop community.” Further, he said, “It’s crazy because the hip hop community catches a lot of flak for the music and the lyrics that we produce, but from my perspective we were some of the first people on the ground.” I think that the hip hop community is on top of it.”

One of the most powerful pieces to come out of that first week of terror was Killer Mike’s open letter. He starts by announcing to the world

We are human beings. We deserve to be buried by our children not the other way around. No matter how u felt about black people look at this mother and look at this father and tell me as a human being how u cannot feel empathy for them. How can u not feel sympathy for their pain and loss?” He reminded people that this family was not “’THOTS, niggas/niggers, hoes, Ballers, Divas.’ These two people are parents. They are humans that produced a child and loved that child and that child was slaughtered like Game and left face down as public spectacle while his blood drained down the street.

He then shifted and focused his attention and the audience’s on the parents of Mike Brown.

Look at the pain of this mother; look into her eyes. Look at the man behind her. Look at that father made helpless and hurt that he [could] not defend his seed. Don’t debate. Don’t insert your agenda. Save me the bullshit Black on Black crime speech and look at these [two] Noble creatures called humans and look at what [government]-sanctioned murder has done. It has robbed them of their humanity and replaced it with pain and shame, suffering and hurt.

To continue his line of thinking as it related to possible red herring arguments that typically come from tragedies such as these he screamed,

I don’t care if others rioted or why. I don’t care that ballplayers and rappers are what they [should] be. I care that we as humans care as much about one another more. I care we see past Class, race and culture and honor the humanity that unites our species. Stop talking and LOOK at these PEOPLE. LOOK at these HUMANS and stand with them against a system allows a Human PIG to slaughter their child.” He closed his letter by writings, “Forgive any typos love and respect u all.

The critique of hip hop should not come as a surprise. While we are used to it coming from right wing conservative factions and many times while we understand that criticisms aimed at hip come from blacks steeped in politics of respectability, these critiques came from within the hip hop community itself. I argue that this in and of itself is not a bad thing because in order to hold the community accountable for its own actions or inactions, one must hold each other compassionate accountability.

However, I also maintain that criticizing hip hop is also a default position for many of us in society–that to blame hip hop for action or in action, for good, bad, or anything in between; to blame hip hop for just existing at times, is the problem. It negates the need to further analyze and see issues and problems that go way beyond the surface. Moreover, as exemplified here, it also negates what hip hop did and continues to do in Ferguson and beyond.

Thank You


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