I’ve been absent from this blog for too long!  Luckily, my absence has got me thinking about the idea of absence and how one hip hop artist in particular has also thought about the idea of absence.  Enjoy.

The following types of people might have objections to this post:

1.) If you do not believe that hip hop artists are creators, consumers, and connoisseurs of contemporary critical theory and philosophy.

2.)  If you believe that anyone bellow the age of 25–especially one without an M.A. or PhD–should not discuss critical theory and philosophy.

Although you might fall into one of these categories, I hope that you will read on and, more importantly, make your presence felt by adding a comment or two to this post.  As for myself, I will try, as I write, to think not only about those people who will read and possibly enjoy this post, but also about those who will read it and find it out of touch, lacking focus, or simply untenable.

After all, this blog is not only constituted by those who read it and write it, but also by those who do not read it and do not write it.  It is as much about the presence of certain readers and writers as it is about the absence of other readers and writers.  Although this blog is dedicated to a discussion of hip hop, it is always already dedicated to a discussion of everything that is not hip hop.  Why?  Because it is impossible to define hip hop without thinking of everything that is not hip hop.

Therefore, everything that is not hip hop is actually here in this blog, pushed away into the background, seemingly absent but actually imperturbably present.  For example, we can’t identify someone as a hip hopper without ignoring or covering up the idea that that person is also a student, an American, a Chicagoan, a man, or an entrepreneur.  Stuart Hall, an eminent cultural studies scholar, provides us with an even more eloquent example.  Discussing British identity in a (post)colonial world, Hall argues that one

"Everything I'm not made me everything I am"

cannot be British without being Indian, Chinese, and Carribbean.  He uses a cup of tea to illustrate his point.  Although we might think that having a cup of tea is a marker of British identity, we also need to remember that the tea leaves are probably from India, and the cup is probably made out of porcelain from China, and the sugar at the bottom of the cup of tea was probably harvested by a worker in one of the cane fields of the West Indies.  We might identify the person enjoying the cup of tea in London as being British, and thus push all other identities into the background, but that British identity would not be perceivable if we didn’t believe that all those other identities were absent.  Of course, the Indian, Chinese, and Caribbean elements are present however much we tend to ignore them.  They may seem absent, but they are in fact critically present.

With the caveat that I do not wield an extensive knowledge of philosophy or critical theory, I think that it is safe to say that Jacques Derrida, one of the “founders” of Deconstruction, was the loudest and perhaps first scholar to voice the idea that absences are always present.  And who is the only artist in the music industry, as far as I know, that has been able to creatively build on this concept and apply it to his own career and music?  Kanye West.  (Please post comments about other artists who also feel the presence of absences!)

Contrary to the title of West’s track “Everything I Am,” Kanye actually uses the song to define himself by discussing everything that he is not.  He explains that he’ll never have the sex appeal of singers like Beyonce or be as stylish as mink-wearing artists like Killa Cam and Will.Iam.  Directly speaking to his audience, West wisely and humbly asks his listeners to define who he is: “Let me know if you feel it man / cause everything I’m not made me everything I am.”  Kanye knows that he cannot control his own identity and that, in fact, the public’s perception of him plays a crucial role in the constitution of his identity.  This idea that we do not control who we are goes against the grain of conventional American wisdom and, on a more local level, the idea that hip hop artists are self-made men and women who rise to the top because of their individual talent and work ethic.  Like his mentor Jay-Z, Kanye West knows that many things that are not under his control and seemingly absent from his performances–from the circumstances surrounding his upbringing to the hip hop artists that came before him and shaped his style–affect who he is today and what he has been able to accomplish.  Although some artists may be either unconscious of these absences or unwilling to discuss them, West forces them out of the shadows, pushing these absences into the spotlight for all to see.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss “Everything I Am” in more detail, analyzing the specific absences that West decides to rap about.  We will also need to ask ourselves both why he chooses these specific absences and what other absences lurk beneath the surface of the song.  In the meantime, feel free to make your absence felt by commenting with questions, concerns, and thoughts.

Listen to the song.