“So see,” I told to the reporter, “I can’t write about, say, flowers.” Today, however, I take pride in writing about and, in fact, believing in flowers. For to believe in flowers is to believe in tomorrow.
The late Tupac Shakur wrote about flowers, too.
“Long live the rose that grew from concrete,” he celebrates in an early poem. Even in his definition of THUG LIFE, Tupac infused the floral/natural element, explaining, “What you feed us as seeds, grows, and blows up in your face—that’s THUG LIFE.”
Tupac went on to create an ancronym from the words that best described his lifestyle; the same words tatted in dark blue-black ink across his chiseled cocoa-colored stomach: THE HATE YOU GAVE LIL INFANTS FUCKS EVERYBODY. Tupac’s definition and acronym for “THUG LIFE” verbalize a potent anger that he—a burgeoning flower of the hip-hop generation—felt toward some in his parents’ generation: the planters. Writer, scholar, and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom Tupac considered one of his “real teachers,” may have articulated this anger best in “Homeland and Hip-Hop.”
For the music arises from a generation that feels with some justice that they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison. They grew up hungry, hated and unloved. And this is the psychic fuel that seems to generate the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry. One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth and the climb above the pit of poverty.
Twentieth-century Black thinkers like James Weldon Johnson observed, “The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art…. And nothing will do more to change the mental attitude and raise his status than a demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro through the production of literature and art.” It is because of this that there has always been great attention and criticism given to Black art by Blacks. Both the blues and jazz music were perceived by an older, more church-rooted crowd to be raunchy, hedonistic, and not representative of “decent Black folk.” Zora Neale Hurston once noted that the older generation believed that the “good-for-nothing, trashy Negro is the one the white people judge us all by. They think we’re all just alike. My people! My people!” Throughout our history, this disconnect between generations is heard loudest in the firestorm about the younger generation’s music.
During hip hop’s early years, the strongest opposition to rap came from older Blacks. Aside from those in the Afrocentric and Black Nationalist movements, who initially embraced it as a vital tool for Black liberation, the consensus among older Blacks was that the music was ignorant and violent and promoted criminality.
I remember wandering into my dad’s office at Temple University where he was chair of the African-American studies program, and being greeted not by him, but by Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, and DJ Lord of Public Enemy. As an Afrocentrist, my father recognized the importance of Public Enemy and their message; however, many of his colleagues didn’t understand the value and saw the group as nothing more than rowdy hooligans rather than revolutionary spark plugs.
Despite hesitance from some elders, many in the hip-hop generation attempted to bridge the gap. One such try was in 1984, during Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, when Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, and others teamed up to make “Jesse,” a track promoting the civil rights leader’s presidential run. The song’s hook was a poignant analysis of the current state as well as a fraternal embrace of Jackson:
Brothers stand together and let the whole world see
Our brother Jesse Jackson go down in history.
Melle Mel had established himself as an emcee dedicated to addressing serious issues. In “White Lines, Don’t Do It,” Mel addressed the crack problem in the Black community long before it was at the forefront of most of our agendas. In “World War III,” Mel rapped against the prospects of nuclear war. And in “Not Going to Play,” Mel, along with Sun City and Run-D.M.C., addressed apartheid in South Africa. Despite the pentameters of praise delivered in “Jesse,” Jackson opted not to use this song during his campaign. Many in the hip-hop community took that decision as not only a rejection of their music, but, ultimately, of them as well. Moreover, it would be a symbol of things to come. As legendary raptivist KRS-One remembers about the older generation’s position on the emerging culture, “Our own people prevented our voices from being heard. And that’s the real politics that need to be addressed.”
Although there was an effort by some older Blacks to silence the voice of the rebellious eighties youth, hip hop’s increasing power in the global marketplace—due to the discovery of a huge white base that brought about larger distribution deals—made it practically impossible to quiet the voices of rappers. So instead, the older generation used their voices to condemn the music that, because of its new foray into white America, was becoming increasingly problematic for many Blacks, old and young. The image of civil rights pioneers steamrolling and smashing hundreds of rap CDs was forever imprinted in our collective memories. The late C. Delores Tucker, a lifelong civil rights leader and activist, became known for the rallies and protests she led against what was dubbed “gangster rap.” Tucker was a staunch believer that this subgenre of rap was a form of genocide and was destroying the minds of Black children, exploiting women, and glorifying gang and criminal culture. “It is a crime that we are promoting these kind of messages. The whole gangster rap industry is drug-driven, race-driven, and greed-driven, and it is not healthy for our children,” declared Tucker. Tupac, who was a frequent target of Tucker’s, retaliated through his music. On the album All Eyez on Me, Shakur rhymes: “Delores Tucker you’s a motherfucka / Instead of tryna help a nigga you destroy your brotha.” During one interview, Tucker clarified her position, demonstrating an understanding and appreciation for hip hop and explaining that she wasn’t against hip hop.
I’m not complaining about hip hop. I’m talking about gangster-porno
rap which is rap that glorifies murder, rape, drugs, guns, and is very
misogynistic toward women by calling women demeaning names. That is the kind of rap—gangsta porno rap—that we’re against, not hip hop, not rap in its purest form.
Tucker later went on to unsuccessfully sue Tupac for “damaging her sex life” with her husband. Misunderstandings such as this contributed to the hip-hop generation’s don’t-give-a-fuck mind-set and furthered a deep divide comparable to the one that separated the rebellious white hippy/activist/flower children of the sixties from their white happy/consumer/cookie-cutter parents. Later, Tucker remarked that “we’re going to keep fighting it until it dies or we die.” It’s ironic that a woman who fought on the front lines during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements outlived Tupac. They both died, however, having never sat down with each other.
One hopes that misunderstandings such as these would allow the hip-hop generation and civil rights generation to come together; however, a few years after Tupac’s death, the public face to this gap would be reopened with this hook:
Ah ha, hush that fuss
Everybody move to the back of the bus
Do you want to bump and slump with us
We the type of people make the club get crunk.
That was the chorus for “Rosa Parks,” a hit single from the rap duo OutKast. No matter where you were in the summer of ‘98, hood-to-hood, “Rosa Parks” was on heavy rotation.
Although the song, which sports an upbeat tempo and party tone, doesn’t actually address who Rosa Parks was, most in the hip-hop generation simply saw it as a harmless dance track named after a civil rights pioneer. In fact, the song may have been a helpful reminder for a generation who many believed “don’t know their history.” Many people in the civil rights generation, however, took the song as a dis. The song’s rotation was scratched when Rosa Parks, the matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement, took Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and Andre 3000 (Andre B
enjamin) to court.
Parks is famous for her refusal on December 1, 1955, to obey bus driver James Blake’s demand that she relinquish her seat to a white man. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history. The boycott also launched a young Martin Luther King Jr., one of the organizers of the boycott, to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Her role in American history earned her an iconic status in American culture and her actions have left an enduring legacy for civil rights movements around the world.
In March 1999, Gregory Reed, attorney for Mrs. Parks, filed a lawsuit claiming that OutKast’s song defamed his client, unjustly appropriated her name for commercial purposes, and, because of consumer confusion, hindered the sales of the Parks-authorized gospel album A Tribute to Rosa Parks. Reed, at this point in time, asked for an injunction and upward of $5 million. OutKast responded, just as numerous rappers and artists had previously responded in similar situations, by pointing to the First Amendment. So there it was: icons of the hip-hop generation versus an icon from the previous one. The case, in one sense, was seen as widening the gap between the generations. In another sense, however, the case revealed some of the keys to closing it.
Mrs. Parks said she was disturbed by the sexual references and vulgarity in the song. Lines like: “Bull doggin’ hoes like them Georgetown Hoyas” and “Doing doughnuts ’round you suckas like them circles around titties” offended Parks and prompted the suit. In addition, the song throws around a civil rights-generation vocab no-no: “nigga.” Regardless of the hip-hop generation’s ranging views on “nigga,” “nigguh,” “niggah,” or “ngh,” the civil rights generation is almost unanimously against its use.
From the beginning, this dispute revealed one of the major challenges that has hindered intergenerational progress: communication.
“There’s nothing wrong with the youth, unless you look at NBC and CBS and ABC,” says comedian, writer, civil rights and antiwar activist Dick Gregory. “All we got to do is go and give the youth the truth, and they will respond.” Gregory’s analysis is an important one because one of the major factors that has contributed to the intergenerational disconnect is the way in which the older generation is exposed to the youth. Because of the decline of Black institutions where young and old can interact together, the older generation is mainly learning about young people not through illuminating conversations or engaging dialogues, but through mainstream media outlets, TV being the largest medium among them. BET, MTV, and the nightly news are the primary informants that shape their perceptions and vice versa. We know from the most recent research studies on the ethnographic effects of television, including those conducted by the Center for Media Literacy and Alliance for a Media Literate America, that TV not only plays a major role in teaching white America about us, but also, and perhaps most detrimentally, teaches us about us—the older generation of Black folks about their successors. Just as media is not a good third party to communicate, it’s not a good learning tool, either, especially as far as images of young Blacks are concerned. Generations need to take time to get to know each other on a personal, familial, and communal level.
Tupac’s genius lay in his ability to make keen observations on human relationships. He recognized this lack of communication and quality time. Consider what he said when asked about people who misperceive him: “Once people take the time to find out who I really am—they’re surprised.”
Any real attempt at conflict resolution, without direct communication and dialogue, only complicates the message and distances the generations still further, as we will see as this unfortunate case proceeds.
Although Parks’s case was initially dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Hackett in November 1999, Parks, in the summer of 2000, hired the late Johnnie Cochran to help her appeal the court’s decision. Cochran, who ironically represented rappers Tupac Shakur, Sean Combs, and Snoop Dogg, took the case to the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in the case being remanded. Cochran explained, “Rosa Parks is an icon in this country. She’s the mother of the civil rights movement,” he said. “Because she stood up, we can all stand up.” Cochran’s message echoed that of Georgia congressman John Lewis, a mahogany man who marched beside Rosa Parks in the sixties. When asked about the case, he said, “Rosa Parks is a mother of the civil rights movement. It would be very unfortunate if people forgot her raw courage and remembered her as an elderly African-American lady who sued a rock band.”
Both Cochran’s and Lewis’s statements reflected the idea that the younger generation had forgotten its history. Forgotten the marches. Protests. Fights. Pain. Despair. Spit. Sacrifice. Dogs. Cheeks. Crosses. Whips. Hate. Hoses. Hydrants. Sirens. Sweat. Fire. Panthers. Us. Shoes (worn). Epithets. Strange fruit. Pride. Solidarity. As John Leland writes of the hip-hop generation in Hip: The History, no group “has been less interested in the past, except as something to be scratched.”
A pathetic example of this forgetfulness is when Joseph Skipper, a hip-hop generationer, broke into the then eighty-one-year-old Rosa Parks’s home. Once he entered the house, he asked: “Hey, aren’t you Rosa Parks?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Parks said as she handed him three scrunched-up dollar bills.
“Give me more!” Skipper demanded.
When Parks couldn’t come up with any more loot, Skipper punched Parks in the face. Soon after, he was caught and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. If we are to be successful, by the true measure of success rather than simply money, we must employ the principle of Sankofa—going back to the past to move forward in the future.
On April 15, 2005, just a week after Johnnie Cochran’s funeral, the lawsuit was settled. OutKast and company agreed to pay an undisclosed monetary amount and to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs “to enlighten today’s youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races,” said the court in a statement. OutKast also agreed to perform on a tribute CD and appear on an educational TV show about Parks’s legacy. And finally, under the agreement, OutKast admitted no wrongdoing. This was a disaster. A disaster because once in the courtroom, all real communication between Parks and OutKast, representatives of two powerful generations, was severed. The potential for collective good was amputated. OutKast, along with their label, never admitted to any wrongdoing. It is imperative that all generations recognize that we need each other’s support rather than contempt.
On October 24, 2005, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, dubbed the mother of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement, passed away. This death, like those of Tucker, Cochran, and Tupac, raises the stakes and reminds us that time is running out. The post-hip-hop generation, whose promise is to heal relations between all generations and classes of Black people, must learn from the mistakes that were made in this case, as they are symbolic of larger intergenerational issues. In learning from these mistakes, solutions reveal themselves that will enable us to conquer the divide.
Even with the deaths of Tupac, Tucker, and Cochran, the fire that separates the hip-hop generation from their parents rages on. Bill Cosby is not the lone voice of his generation when he describes the hip-hop generation as “people putting their clothes on backwards… people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack… standing on the corner… these knuckleheads… with names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all the crap and all of them are in jail.” He goes on:
This is a sickness, ladies and gentlemen, and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees: “He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And yo
u need to have an orange suit on, too.
Cosby’s comments, which he emphasizes were “out of love,” expressed what most of us have heard in churches, schools, barber shops, beauty salons, and other community spots where young people interact with elders. It’s more than a complaint, it is, rather, an indictment. An indictment that accuses the younger generation of dropping the ball, torch, and mantle. It more than suggests that the hip-hop generation has blown the opportunities the Civil Rights Movement created. Cosby says it explicitly:
I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done—they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown v. Board of Education—these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English… Brown v. Board of Education, where are we today? It’s there. They paved the way. What did we do with it? The White Man, he’s laughing—got to be laughing. Fifty percent drop out—rest of them in prison…. And these people don’t know history, they don’t know about who faced down bigots to help them.
A cinematic expression of this indictment can be seen in the Hughes Brothers’ hood classic Menace II Society. When Caine, a teenager symbolic of the hip-hop generation and the protagonist of the film, gets arrested, he is interrogated by an intimidating middle-aged ultra-Black detective, who utters the infamous lines, “You know you done fucked up, don’t you? You know it, don’t you? You know you done fucked up.”
What’s interesting and often overlooked is how similar Tupac and Cosby are. Cosby opens the preceding speech with this statement:
I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing.”
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation Page 21
