Favorite Rapper Series #2: Ol’ Dirty Bastard [Part 1]

Ol Dirty Bastard was probably the first rapper I should have done, but instead I did Lil’ Kim. I was debating if I should do someone recent (ASAP ROCKY will be next) but Ol’ Dirty is my first foray into love for hip-hop, his style something I didn’t understand but craved. I first saw him on BET (Black Entertainment Channel) at aged twelve, in 2000, with this video:

Like the reaction I talk about in the post about Lil’ Kim, I distinctly remember that I did not know how to interpret it but instantly loved it. At age twelve for a young white girl in the white suburbs in a school district noted for elitism, I had little to no experience with Blaxploitation movies or the frank adult themes that the video explored. It would be several more years until I could understand the narrative he was presenting. But I loved it.

I knew Ol’ Dirty was making a commentary on what it was to be Black. I knew that he was making fun of something (Blaxploitation films, in this case). I knew that it had to do with sexuality (ODB fathered thirteen children, for one, for two Blaxploitation’s association with titillating themes such as prostitution and nudity) and acts of criminality (in this video, drugs, violence, and generally wild lifestyles which was widely mirrored by “Dirt McGirt”‘s long-term associations with criminality). All of themes, raw sexuality coupled with acts association with outcasted peoples such as violence, drugs, wildness were common in ODB’s work. He was a thoroughly self aware artist while refusing to give up the lifestyle that made him famous.
If you listened to “Baby Got Your Money” you can hear him rap about knowing the feds were watching him.

Indeed, in my own hometown, it is the legend that he used to come up to Bing and sell crack in the ‘hood even after the Wu Tang has made in mainstream music.

Ol Dirty was from Brooklyn, New York, and was a part of the Wu Tang Clan who mostly originated from Staten Island. He died in 2004 from a drug overdose. Primarily active in the 1990s but still recording up until he died, Dirty’s is considered an original gangster (OG) of rap music. His music is realistic within the experience of growing up Black and in New York City with dire economic experience. The auditory experience of Ol Dirty is one that recreates the places that made the composite of his life. In “Harlem World” he brings you into what is presumably Harlem during the 1980’s, a time of AIDS and violence,

Ol Dirty often has beats that are haunting and eerie. This is a creation of sound that carries into modern rap, in Drill music for example. The recreation of the chaos of the urban atmosphere is palpable and fills your head. It should be noted that Ol Dirty Bastard is the first of his kind within the sphere of his rapping style (extremely eccentric, bizarre, and outside what was typically heard of the era), and has an extremely distinctive sound. He got his name from the kung-fu movie “Ol’ Dirty and the Bastard” but Method Man has also been quoted as saying his name is significant to the fact that “there is no father to his style”. Indeed, he is considered something of a mythical Wu Tang member.

Often misunderstood for the constant recurrences of bouts of mental illness that manifested in bizarre behavior, frequent crack cocaine and other drug use, and occasional stints in jail, Ol Dirty is also the most misunderstood member of the Wu. A recent New Yorker Magazine article that chronicled the most significant figures in New York hip-hop ever (of which Jay-Z was featured on…how oddly capitalistic of you, Hov), dissed him with smugness. He is amongst the most irresponsible a citizen as a citizen can get, yet he is a respectable figure for the way he lived his life and his refusal to give up authenticity within the context of an artist being a manifestation of his art.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know his life was a mess. He mocks himself in “Drug Free”

He starts the song with “Don’t get High” and them immediately “Cocained-the fuck up/paranoid as a motha…yo I’m paranoid as a fucka!” followed by “nigga I’m tired of gettin’ high like that/stop fuckin’ with me”. Like what he was doing in the video for “Baby Got Your Money”, he reflected reality back at itself and then mocked it for the absurdity of it’s existence. Perhaps this is why he is so misunderstood; he is so advanced as an artist that there are truly so few artists that pursue his way of creating. The song ends with the lyric “Kids! Don’t! Do! Drugs!/drug free! drug free! drug free!” which ends with the infamous goodness of Dirty’s singing. He is entertaining in his insanity while also reflecting the duality of his reality; utter sadness and ecstatic energy.

As I get older I am more able to relate to Dirty and understand what he is mocking about life. I knew what he was doing when I was twelve, but (thankfully), had not had enough of life’s absurdity to understand what he was portraying. He has my heart ever since.

Favorite Rapper Series #1: Lil Kim

When I was twelve, I was at my cousin’s house who was about seven years older than me, and on the living room table was the album N.O.T.O.R.I.O.U.S K.I.M with this album cover

I remember thinking something along the lines of “holy crap”. It cracked my brain open, made me feel a little funny, and excited me. I listened to “How Many Licks”, saw the video, and knew that this Lil Kim chick was a bitch I wanted to roll with. Ever since then, she has had my unyielding loyalty.

Why did I respond to Lil Kim in such an intense way? Several reasons. First, though she has had her share of criticism for not always maintaining the high standard she is able to achieve with her music, she is a very unique artist. Her blatant sexuality is so palpable and explosive and she is so unashamed about it. During the 1990s, male machismo in rap music often caused commentaries relating to the fuckability of a female. I enjoy most of this music without annoyance to the subject matter I could find offensive because my love of hip-hop overpowers the negativity I could experience as a female listening to music that often referring to women as bitches and hos. I don’t mind being called a bitch, in fact I embrace it, but I’m not excited about being called a ho. But I get over this. I would be unable to listen to some of my favorite rappers if I was to get too into self-righteous oppositional feminism about rap music. Many of the white girls I grew up with scolded me for liking rap because “its sooooo misogynistic”. I thought they were lame and needed a little exposure to real life. But when I listened to Kim, I didn’t need to worry about that dynamic. Me and Lil’ Kim knew that there was misogyny everywhere in the world, and it didn’t stop us from loving Biggie who once wrote, “But you was my bitch, the one who’d never snitch/Love me when I’m broke or when I’m filthy fuckin rich/And I admit, when the time is right, the wine is right/I treat you right, you talk slick, I beat you right“ in a song titled “Me and my Bitch” which is speculated to be about Kim herself.

Second, Lil’ Kim keeps her attitude and doesn’t back down. When Nicki Minaj decided to be a dumbass and not show respect to her elders, Kim came out with an absolutely ill diss song,

This song is epic. Nicki Minaj decided in her original diss song against Kim to sample Biggie’s “Warning”, a truely disrespectful and unforgivably rude move considering that she is attempting to make fun of Kim while using Kim’s dead lover’s song as background beats. Nicki, you’re an amateur and not very intelligent for that. Indeed, Nicki Minaj has little to no actual street cred. Lil’ Kim has done time in prison as a result of legal defiance for refusing to roll on her co-conspirators in addition to being one of the loves of one of the greatest rappers of all time. Kim spits ” I seen ‘em come, I seen’ em go, still I remain./Sweetie, you goin’ on your 14th minute of fame,
I’m over 10 years strong still running the game/Cut the comparisons I’m in the legendary lane./Fighting for a spot? Child please, I’m solidified./With my hands tied, you couldn’t beat me if you bitches tried.” In my opinion, Nicki needs to sit down and go back to school. Kim talks in this song about not being afraid to call your enemies on their bullshit, “Thermometer in hand and I’m comin’ for your ass.
Who you think you gettin’ past?/‘I see right through you,’ your whole shit is made of glass.”. This is perhaps one of her best songs ever recorded because she just does not stop until Minaj’s ass is shredded, and that’s one big ass (ain’t nothing wrong with that, I’m just sayin’). As a hip-hop scholar, I took notes on this song and how to be a full fledged unyielding bitch. Thanks Kim.

Third, Lil’ Kim showed me that it was okay to be a freak. Be a freak in the bed, be a freak in the street, don’t apologize for your freakiness, and when people don’t get you, get even freakier because why the fuck not? Its fun to be a freak because you can’t stop us, and when you try, we laugh at you and walk away. We also know that you secretly envy us for our ability to not give a fuck about your opinion. She showed me that it was alright to be sexually assertive, something White feminism has talked a big talk about but hasn’t really demonstrated with tremendous success. I don’t know what Kim’s thoughts are on feminism, but I have a suspicion that she is beyond that shit. She know shes an equal to these males, shes proved it and and doesn’t need to talk about it, its her actions that show us shes got the bark, the bite, the talk and the motherfuckin’ walk. Dress how you want, fuck how you want, and be what you want.

Thank you Kim, Queen Bitch Supreme Bitch, and congratulations on expecting a little princess.

Can White People Rap?

My father is an avid blues and jazz fan, and growing up these were the musical genres most heard in the house. Famously, there is an essentialist question within blues, that being,

“Can White people sing the blues?”

For those crying “racism!” or “reverse racism!”, please relax. In previous posts I discussed why I as a White person see it necessary for my people to participate in the destruction of a system of privilege that wholesale benefits us (a later post I am planning will hopefully demonstrate the mechanics of superficial white privilege benefit for Whites while actually causing large scale harm to the entire society). I am not trying to attack White identity in this post, but pose a question about how our identity works.

The essential nature of the blues is human despair translated into haunting music, beautiful sounds evoking the ultimate sadness the conditions of human misery can cause. Listening to the blues is a wonderful experience because of the richness of the music but also an ongoing understanding of how people can create in the face of adversity and despair. The blues is based on the causes and conditions of Black Southern life; poverty, hatred, barriers to advancement, general terror and the threat of rape/murder. Black Southerners faced constant degradation, and in many instances had to participate in their own degradation in order to economically survive, which is reflected in Blues. While there were certainly poor Whites who endured conditions of poverty and misery, it should be noted that the experience was not the same. Without this extra layer of despair, White Blues performers have often been noted to lack a certain intrinsic musical quality that is found in all Black music performers.  

There is some debate as to the origin of rap/hip hop music. Some assert that rap music started in the Bronx during the 1970s as a direct result of Black political power. However, the Watts Prophets are widely credited with being the first hip hop group, formed out of the disarray of the Watts Riots, a race riot that took place in Los Angeles in 1965. In any event, this music is directly tied to Black political power and has roots in its story-telling quality of Black life and philosophy standing in contrast to ruling White privilege and power. Like the Blues, classic hip/hop and much of later hip hop takes the subject matter of what Black life consisted of. As I argued in Chiraq, that tradition still continues though it is often misunderstood because the lyrics may not be understood as political, intellectual, or significant.

Two of the most significant rap/hip hop figures in history, Tupac and the Wu Tang Clan, are collectively the most significant lyricists in the history of hip hop. Tupac was born to a Black Panther who months before his birth faced a three-hundred federal prison sentence. The Wu Tang Clan are a group of Staten Islander gangstas (and Brooklyn, holla Ol Dirty Bastard) who could be described as enlightened warriors.

From the Wu, “I bomb atomically, Socrates’ philosophies/and hypothesis can’t define how I be droppin these/
mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery/Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me/Battle-scarred shogun, explosion when my pen hits/tremendous, ultra-violet shine blind forensics” a song called “Triumph”. If you don’t think that is pure poetry, you have clearly never been very literate.

From Tupac, “This time the truth’s gettin told, heard enough lies/I told em fight back, attack on society/If this is violence, then violent’s what I gotta be/If you investigate you’ll find out where it’s comin from/Look through our history, America’s the violent one/Unlock my brain, break the chains of your misery/This time the payback for evil shit you did to me/They call me militant, racist cause I will resist/You wanna censor somethin, motherfucker censor this!/My words are weapons, and I’m steppin to the silent/Wakin up the masses, but you, claim that I’m violent” a song called “Violent”.

Both the Wu Tang and Tupac can be viewed as warriors. Both are regarded in the classic gangsta rap genre, but they are more than “gangstas”. They are poets who reflect the situation Black people have faced in the reality of the complete destruction of Black political power that was engineered by COINTELPRO, a government counter-intelligence program that is worth researching to understand the politick of White supremacy within American policies. Without legitimate power, lack of economic opportunities, and an unequal education system, rap music took the place to tell the dire story.

As a footnote, I exempt Eminem from this question about “Can White People Rap”? Eminem cut his teeth in Detroit and is a skilled lyricist and recognized as a legitimate rap talent within the hip-hop community. While lacking the experience of Blackness, he was raised in poverty, crime, and by his own acknowledgment participated in illegal activity in order to survive. I believe that like myself, Eminem calls bullshit on the White privilege system, “surely hip-hop was never a problem in Harlem, only in Boston,/After it bothered the fathers of daughters starting to blossom” from the song “White America”.

The White rappers I’m talking about are people like Macklemore and Iggy Azalea. They both make me want to vomit. Macklemore, for his righteous co-op of the problems of marginalized peoples and Iggy because she is ear-meltingly without talent, admonishing how she is a “bad bitch” while coming nowhere close to the likes of Lil’ Kim (the queen bitch, the supreme bitch, and the mistress of Notorious BIG and a skilled lyricist herself) or her contemporary Rihanna, who really is only considered a “bad bitch” for loving blunts. Iggy just seems to like to show off her beauty, and uses Black people as props in her videos. So edgy.

Kendrick Lamar and Azalea Banks, both of whom are Black, could be considered their counterparts. I am not going to link to Iggy or Macklemore, but here is Kendrick and Azalea

Kendrick Lamar lost to Macklemore at this past years Grammy’s. As Ol’ Dirty Bastard had historically pointed out (Wu Tang is for the Children!) the Grammy’s know shit about hip/hop when they chose Puff Duddy (sorry, Daddy) over Wu Tang. It was insulting and irritating in both instances. Iggy Azalea and Azalea Banks are compared mostly for sharing a name, but also because they came out at roughly the same time. Azalea Banks has had trouble releasing another album because, in her words, old white men don’t understand her music, a statement that may have a fair amount of merit to it. Banks historically has been through much hardship, spending some of her young adulthood as a stripper, and Lamar is from Compton and grew up in relative poverty. On the contrary, the White artists do not appear to have grown up under much hardship. It appears the greatest hardship Iggy endured was being rejected as a model for having a fat ass. Macklemore seems to have grown up in complete and total privilege.

Azalea Banks and Kendrick Lamar are not Wu Tang Clan or Tupac. Their music is without much political influence and they are not as lyrically talented. But such is that current state of hip hop. It appears that the glory days of early ’90s hip hop have been gutted commercially which started to take place in the late ’90s. There is still talent here; for example I am a big fan of ASAP Rocky, an artist who almost comes close to the glory days because he is funky and his lyrics are well crafted, but again he is no Tupac.

I titled this post “Can White People Rap” to be provocative. I’m sure many will find it offensive. I find it a little offensive myself, honestly, that I am positing that there is something intrinsic about a person’s race that enables them to do certain things better than other people of a different race. However, I’d like to get a little bit beyond that and conclude with the question of, what part of experience of identity of race causes a genre like hip-hop to be dominated by people with a common identity experience? What causes the dominant people within the racial dynamic to lack oomph within this genre? Is it because of hip-hop’s starting point was out of the Black political movements of the 1960s and 1970s and hopeful empowerment of Black people, that then turned into poetic witnessing of Black life, and then was commercialized by White record label owners? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I do know that Macklemore should not have won that Grammy, and that if ASAP Rocky wanted to ride with a fine bad white bitch, he should’ve called me and not Iggy Azalea.

Wu Tang Forever!

Oligarch’s Paradise

Tonight I flipped through the channels to find something to eat my supper to (I don’t say “dinner” because of my working class Irish/Polish roots) and to my delight, “Dangerous Minds” was playing on Showtime. In this film, a white former Marine teaches high school to economically disadvantaged and mostly non-white students where violence is everyday commonplace. The students navigate many impossible situations, such as getting kicked out of school for being pregnant, dealing drugs to have enough money to eat, not having enough to eat, growing up in poor schools which did not foster literacy, and living under the threat of death. Coolio, a rapper whose career peaked in the 1990s, wrote the song “Gangsta’s Paradise” which is featured in the movie. The song samples Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” and is a beautiful piece of music for both the sound and the clear, eloquent message and delivery.

This song starts out with the lyrics “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death/I take a look at my life/and realize there’s nothing left”. This line is obviously powerful as it invokes one of the most significant Biblical passages and shows the sadness of a life lived where so many limits impose “nothing left” but self-destruction. The song continues to outline why he has chosen the life of a gangsta, “Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk/I really hate to trip but I gotta loc/As they croak, I see myself in the pistol smoke”. According to RapGenius this passage means that while he does not like to “trip” or become angry/violent, he only sees his only death unless he is preeminently violent, “loc” being a reference to the gun he must carry on his person to prevent his own life from being taken. He also empathizes with his victims, but unfortunately cannot bring that to a positive fruition because “I see myself in the pistol smoke”. In my previous post, I explored a little bit what constitutes a violent act when physical harm is absent. This song demonstrated that for people the American society has relegated unimportant, people who are economically disadvantaged, people of color and the intersection of the two, there are few options giving a person liberal agency to choose the course of their lives. For many, the choices are the prison system, the cemetery, or for those youths who want out, the military which could equally result in their death. Is this a violence perpetrated by a society? Yes. How can a society, a non-agent actor, perpetrate a violence against people without decreed actions of physical violence? As with my previous post, a violence does not have to be physical. The American society has a history of enacting policies, such as Redlining disproportionate drug sentencing laws (longer sentences for crack cocaine possession over powdered cocaine to which crack cocaine use is the more chosen form of the drug for low income peoples because of the low street cost), and perpetually broken school systems in areas of prominently non-white racial demographics. In “Gangsta’s Paradise”, Coolio demonstrates the apathy, despair, anger, and ultimate choice of acting in a physically aggressive and violent way as a means of survival. For anyone who has seen “The Wire”, Omar is another embodiment of this phenomenon, himself living in a Gangsta’s Paradise of heroin ridden inner city Baltimore.

Recently, we learned that this country is an Oligarchy with democratic features, not a classic Democratic Republic To us common folk, this is not really news or surprising but it is nice that there is finally firm political science evidence for our long held suspicions. Between the recent Supreme Court decision on campaign finance, corporate personhood and welfare, and complete and total reign of the banking elite to steal from the common folk, the Oligarch’s Paradise goes far beyond what Coolio discusses in his song. Drafting wars, financing private prisons, buying congressmen, and no fear of prosecution for white collar economic crimes, the Oligarchy really got it made. Unlike Coolio, they do not live in fear for their lives nor do not they live fearfully of repercussions from the people they do violence against nor do they have any empathy for the people they chose to commit crimes against. American violence at its finest and most powerful, the last line of “Gangsta’s Paradise” “Tell me why are we/So blind to see/That the ones we hurt/Are you and me” is simply not applicable to them. At least Coolio’s character in the song could recognize what he was doing was morally objectionable.