Kanye West Feels the Presence of Absence (Part 2)
Written by Ed on October 6th, 2008I know that people wouldn’t usually rap this
But I got the facts to back this
Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets
Man, killin’s some wack shit Oh, I forgot, ‘cept for when niggas is rappin’
Do you know what it feel like when people is passin’?
He got changed over his chains, a block off Ashland
I need to talk to somebody, pastor
-Kanye West, “Everything I Am”
Defining himself by what he is not rather than by what he is, Kanye West challenges some general assumptions about hip hop and identity. Although music critics and listeners would quickly agree that West exemplifies contemporary hip hop music, perhaps going so far as to say that he is the best producer/performer of hip hop in today’s scene, they tend to miss how West’s music is constituting a politically conscious counter-beat within mainstream hip hop. Indeed, West’s sociopolitical syncopation often gets lost beneath a loud yet thin facade of big-label glam. In “Everything I Am,” West attempts to set the record straight, revealing how stereotypes of hip hop are truly twisted, not to mention America’s discourse on violence.
First, he informs the listener that hip hop doesn’t and has never relied solely on fashion statements or “gun-talk.” Lamb(l)asting the idea that rappers need to wear baggy clothes, rock expensive corporate brands, or glorify violence in order to identify with hip hop, Kanye cooly tosses off the words of critics who racistly complain that he is not “ghetto” enough. Even as he coolly and confidently does so, he trashes the idea that hip hop artists need to maintain a calm, collected, tough-guy demeanor. Anyone who saw West’s performance a couple of years ago at Lollapalooza will remember how he “spazzed out” after the sound crew
India.Arie
could not get the mix right for his hometown audience. You might have recently seen him smash a paparazzo’s camera. Indeed, as Kanye proclaims in the song, he can say “goodbye to the NAACP award / goodbye to the India.Arie award.” In other words, West’s political messages may not always come out wrapped in the composure of Arie (recall his post-Katrina comments) or gain the backing of the NAACP (even though he won the institutions “Best New Artist” award). But that’s not what’s important. He’s say’n that although hip hop may be connected to African American musical and social revolutions of the past, it is also a relatively new movement, which has the potential to “act out” as it establishes itself under the watchful eyes of its forerunners. And although some hip hop artists, under the watchful eye of big-label executives, endorse a corporate masculinity, West knows that hip hop has always been about undermining controlled images.
Him and his message, despite–or maybe because of–their anxious, kinetic appearance, remain prescient. In the third verse, he joins artists like Talib Kweli and Common in their attempts to focus people’s attention on the real violence–as opposed to the fabricated violence that some hip hoppers and big-label CEOs like to profit off of–that is ripping through communities that lack the resouces to stem its tide. While the U.S. spends billions of dollars in equipment and personnel to criminally occupy a country halfway around the world, West reminds us that “Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets.” Although he correctly doesn’t argue that hip hop is the cause of this violence, he does ask both hip hop and the public to reevaluate their conceptions of violence and its source. He feels an absence in America’s discourse on violence, and he hopes to remind his listeners of the people who are suffering from the violence of, in Jonathan Kozol’s poetic phrase, “savage inequalities,” which often go unnoticed here in the U.S.
Bud Billiken Parade, High School Anti-Violence Acrobats
The absence of any widespread discourse on these savage inequalities plays a crucial role in the formation of America’s national identity, in much the same way that West’s challenges of hip hop stereotypes constitute his own identity. Perhaps West’s work, alongside that of other hip hop artists, will help change the way we all think about violence.