When Nas rapped, “I never sleep/‘Cause sleep is the cousin of death,” [click to listen] M. K. Asante, Jr. must have been listening. A professor, author, filmmaker, activist and son of Molefi Kete Asante (to whom Afrocentrism can be attributed), Dr. Asante is always on the go. I can attest to this myself, as my first attempt to interview was waylaid by his meeting with Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal. Oh, and Akon was there too.
In between organizing the World Festival of Black Art (or FESMAN), teaching at Morgan State University and countless other activities, Asante found time to speak with me about his latest book: It’s Bigger than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip Hop Generation. The book, which centers on social and political issues facing African-Americans today (and where Hip Hop fits into the equation), is written exactly the same way Dr. Asante speaks—passionately.
Although he tempers the harsh realities of the modern world—Hurricane Katrina, Sean Bell, The Jena Six [click to read]—with optimism, M.K. Asante, Jr. knows that the challenges faced by the post-Hip Hop generation are daunting. That's why he preaches, “If you've made on observation, you have an obligation.” It's a mantra we could all learn from. If we take it to heart, perhaps we'll all have an easier time sleeping—M.K. Asante, Jr. included.
HipHopDX:Would it be fair to call your book a Hip Hop book?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Definitely! I think it would me more than fair. I think it is.
DX: Not to say that it doesn’t have anything to do with Hip Hop—what I mean is, is that your focus in this book?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Oh, I see what you’re saying. This book…I think Hip Hop is its vehicle. And I think the book uses that vehicle to examine some real critical issues—sociopolitical things. It examines things that one doesn’t usually associate with Hip Hop, but under closer analysis would to examine those political and social issues that affect young people, mostly of color, around the United States, but not only in the United States.
It’s not a music book though. I think even a lot of book stores put it in the music section, which is slightly misleading because, like you said, it’s an examination of those sociopolitical issues that affect young people of color in the post-Hip Hop generation. But, you know, it’s using Hip Hop—the culture and the music—as a vehicle to do that. So I think it’s a little bit of both.
DX: Right, because you didn’t really sit down and take the Jeff Chang approach and write about the history of Hip Hop and say, “these are the four elements,” and so on. What did you want to do differently with this book, and how did you go about doing it?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: You know, I love Jeff’s book and…I thought he did an excellent job. I think there’s a lot more to do, even in regards to the history of Hip Hop, but my approach was much different. You know, you mention the “four elements,” and one of the things I rooted myself in understanding is Afrika Bambaataa, the founder of Hip Hop. [He] talked about five elements of Hip Hop. He also talks about how that fifth element gets neglected and negated in conversations about Hip Hop. But that fifth element is essential! In a lot of ways, my book is an approach rooted in that fifth element. And that fifth element, Afrika Bambaataa calls is “knowledge, wisdom and understanding,” or “building.” And that knowledge, wisdom and understanding is connected to the condition of people of color in the U.S. and the issues that we face.
The fifth element is really supposed to inform the other elements. I mean, yeah, you can rap, you can do pretty art, you can dance. But ultimately, it should be rooted in that knowledge, wisdom and understanding. That’s what should be informing what you rap about or the kind of graffiti you write.
DX: What is the “post-Hip Hop generation?”
M.K. Asante, Jr.: The “post-Hip Hop generation” is a term I’ve used to talk about the generation of young people that are inheriting the world from the Hip Hop generation. Going back to [Franz] Fanon, [who says,] “each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it,” now we have a new generation inheriting the world from the Hip Hop generation. It’s a very important and pivotal moment for young people, and they do have choices. Are they going to continue to maintain the tradition? I think that’s very important.
I consider myself a custodian of that culture, and that the post-Hip Hop generation will be custodians and keepers of the tradition. It’s also a term that gets the Hip Hop generation to think beyond themselves. So it’s not just about you—it’s about the youth that are coming up behind you.
DX: Why do you think that Hip Hop is having so much trouble carrying on the tradition into the post-Hip Hop generation?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Well, I don’t know if it’s having trouble carrying on the tradition. I think the trouble is rooted in the dissemination. One of the things I’ve tried to do is not diminish the people, and there’s so many of them, who have kept the tradition alive. Even if they’re not on VH1, or MTV, or BET, or Viacom, or Clear Channel or whatever…there’s the Hip Hop industry, and then there’s the Hip Hop community. The Hip Hop industry is often made up of people who are not members of the Hip Hop community, and their only interest in the Hip Hop community is the bottom line. So it’s important not to allow those institutions to determine what Hip Hop is. It’s the people that determine what Hip Hop is.
Clearly, if we look at the mainstream, we see a gap between the kind of catalyst that Hip Hop emerged from and what it represented in terms of its resistance against oppression that was happening and its cry out against the pathology that was stopping and interrupting so many of the black lives in the cities in the 1970’s. But at the same time, there are so many cats that stay true and are really holding it down. I think that in some ways, there’s a crisis in dissemination. There’s a crisis in the diversity of what we hear and corporate-controlled media—not just in Hip Hop but with news and everything. It’s kind of controlled by a few people who I don’t think have the best interest of the people. That’s a general area, but I think there are a lot of people who are keeping the tradition.
I like to think of it like food. I don’t eat at McDonald’s, because that’s not real food to me. I don’t go to McDonald’s expecting to get real food. So I don’t turn on the radio and expect to hear real Hip Hop necessarily. But what I do know is that there are local farmers in the Maryland area, in the Philadelphia area, in the California area—local farmers and local businesses and local agricultural workers that do have real food. And I like to support them. And we should support local Hip Hop like we support local agricultural workers.
DX: Did this new generation arise out of necessity, or was it a natural evolution?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I think it’s a natural evolution. When we talk about generations coming up, it’s part of the natural evolution that each generation must emerge and define itself. I think it’s come naturally. I think for some people it may have come from a feeling of misrepresentation of what they were seeing in the mainstream. But again, it’s important not to let what’s happening in the mainstream define what’s happening in the culture.
DX: Does post-Hip Hop imply that Hip Hop, or its effectiveness as a medium for generating dialogue about social change, has come to an end?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: No. It definitely doesn’t. In my book, one of the things I do is I rely on Hip Hop heavily to convey messages. I use lyrics of people like dead prez, Immortal Technique [click to read], Mos Def and lots of other cats as well, to illustrate these points and show how effective it can be. I think when we talk about post-Hip Hop generation, we’re not talking post-Hip Hop. We’re talking a generation that is inheriting the world from the Hip Hop generation. We’re not talking about the end of Hip Hop or the death of Hip Hop or the ineffectiveness of Hip Hop or anything like that. I think it’s a vehicle and tool, and we must use it. But we must not allow tools to be used against us as weapons.
DX: There’s no genre of music as self-analytical or as self-referencing as Hip Hop. Is this always an asset, or is it sometimes a detriment? Does this need to continue in the post-Hip Hop generation?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I think it’s a valuable asset in a lot of ways. Self-analysis is good. Self-referencing, I think we could do a little less of that. One of the concepts I talk about in the book is the recognition of the collective, and the philosophy of Ubuntu specifically, “I am because we are.” Hip Hop is so rooted in African culture. We look at the word “hip,” and we see it comes from the Wolof word “hipi,” which means “to open one’s eyes and see.” This is a West African language. Mix that with “hop,” and we have “enlightened action.” It goes on and on as far as the connection and the oral tradition, the rhythm. But one of the things that I think is important is that beyond these things, which are cultural retention, is to try and get back to some of those African concepts as well. And one of those concepts is collectivism rather than individualism.
Paul Robeson says, “Don’t look at my success and judge where my people are based on me as an individual.” It’s very dangerous to look at Barack Obama and make a statement about where black people are in America. The masses of black people in America—you live near Baltimore, right?
DX: Yes.
M.K. Asante, Jr.: ‘Nuff said. That’s the reality. So I think it’s important, in terms of the self-referencing, to be more collective and understand that if I’m not free, you’re not free, and that your freedom is connected to mine. And that we really are in this thing together; we have to share and breathe the same air. I don’t see a lot of that. I think we could do a little less self-referencing and focus a little more on the collective.
But I think the self-analysis is excellent. It reveals the humanity and struggles in all of us. That’s one of the things I love about Tupac. This is somebody who…everybody in the world can identify with those internal and external struggles he dealt with. It all goes back to Nkosi Johnson. “Said the little boy, ‘We are all the same. The best of us, the worst of us.’” We represent all of that. To be able to see that—that’s progress. We embody all of that; the best of us, the worst of us. We are able to acknowledge out faults, but try to move forward.
DX: I thought it was interesting that you reference Tupac several times. It seems that he was an example of the best in terms of his message, but also the worst at some points. Why did you focus solely on his good side? Don’t you have to acknowledge that he flipped the script and did a 180, negatively influencing a lot of youth and Hip Hop artists?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: That negativity you talk about is part of the reason I chose to focus on the other part. Sometimes you find that there’s a lack of balance in terms of how someone is represented, and I thought it was really important. For me, ‘Pac is a real person—in so many ways. I dig him for that conflict. It was an internal thing and an external thing. When I look at someone like that, I see all of us. Whether or not our struggles were as public as his, ultimately I think we all struggle with positive and negative forces, [which] I think he did in a very dramatic and painful way.
A lot of the enormous positive contributions that ‘Pac made, I felt, was being missed by a lot of people. And also, to contextualize his life in terms of, “who was this person?” We sometimes hear the name Afeni Shakur, but we rarely hear the name Assata Shakur as being related to ‘Pac. Even rarer do we hear the name Mutulu Shakur. [Tupac's] stepfather was a revolutionary and political prisoner who is still in jail. Rarely do you hear the name Mumia Abu Jamal [click to read] when we talk about ‘Pac, and this is another one of his teachers. So I wanted to kind of introduce these ideas—not just to the 18 to 22-year-olds in my class—but the young people all around the country who just don’t know this stuff. I wanted to contextualize Tupac. Whenever we tell a story, we choose to focus on certain things, and maybe not focus on other things. I think the other things are out there for people to see quite easily, but this story wasn’t quite as easy to see.
DX: In It’s Bigger than Hip Hop, you tackle institutionalized racism, poverty, the war on drugs, black on black violence, and much more. Does Hip Hop serve as a catalyst or facilitator to these problems?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I don’t think Hip Hop is responsible for any of these things, but it exacerbates an already very serious problem. The decisions that we make are all rooted in culture. We make certain decisions about what we’re going to do with our lives, with our day, with our morning, with our evening. Hip Hop is culture. Music is culture. When you are listening to shit about sellin’ drugs, robbin’ people and killin’ brothers all day—things that are happening already—it’s not productive. It’s not healthy.
Think about it. As soon as you hear the beat, before you even hear the lyrics, what do you do? You nod your head. That nodding of your head—that’s affirmation! If I’m talking to you and I say something you agree with, you nod your head. You hear the beat, you already start nodding your head, you’re already affirming whatever [is about to come on]. So I think [Hip Hop] can work against us. Art is a weapon. If you don’t know how to use it, it will be used against you.
DX: You kinda got me with the head nod. I never thought about that.
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Yes, man! That’s the affirmative right there. In every culture, if you nod your head, you are saying, “Yes, I’m agreeing. I feel it, I dig it, I cosign.” That’s what we do, and I do it too. Turn on something with a dope beat, I can’t help it! That’s part of the power and the danger.
DX: What about Hip Hop’s role as a tool to generate apathy towards things like Sean Bell and the Jena Six? That’s a completely different animal.
M.K. Asante, Jr.: This is how I like to think about it: all art is political, in my view. Everything. If dead prez makes a song called “Fuck the Police,” obviously that’s political. But if someone makes a song that says, “All I do is get money and fuck bitches,” that’s political too. One is political, the dead prez statement, because it’s a challenge to the status quo. The other one, that’s political as well. But what it’s doing is reinforcing the status quo. For example, if you ask George Bush, he’ll tell you the same thing! “Get money! Fuck everyone else!” That is the status quo. But when people make art that reinforces it, a lot of times it’s not seen as political. What you’re talking about, creating apathy, that’s what it does. You are creating an environment for apathy.
DX: So you’re saying there’s no such thing as an apolitical action?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Not as long as there’s oppression going on. If I’m walking down the street and, God forbid, somebody is whoopin’ your ass, I look at the situation, and I have a couple different choices I could make. Number one, I could get directly involved and assist you and defend you against this person who is unfairly hurting you. That’s one option. But I have another option. I could decide to be apolitical. I could say, “Look, this doesn’t have anything to do with me. I don’t even know this person.” I’m going to be neutral in this matter, and I’m not going to do anything about it—I’m just going to walk away.
See, what I’ve just done in that situation is not be neutral. I have not been apolitical. What I’ve just done is support the person who is whoopin’ your ass. I have supported the oppressor. So when we talk about oppression, you are either supporting this oppression, or resisting. Silence only helps the oppressor. It enables the oppressor.
DX: I’d like to discuss two key issues you bring up, lack of ownership and what you call the “prison of image.” Could you elaborate on the effects of these on black America and Hip Hop? Are they intrinsically tied together or can they be separated from one another?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: The lack of ownership—this is something that has plagued us from the first day black music was recorded. I think that the critical point with the ownership is that it’s hard to control something when you don’t own it. We don’t own a distribution method. We don’t own the way Hip Hop is disseminated. We’ve become dependent, in a lot of ways, on institutions that aren’t connected to the Hip Hop community to do things that might be against their financial interests—which they’re not going to do. That’s not how they operate. They operate on the bottom line.
We’re in that situation because we’re not having the level of ownership that we need to in terms of our own culture. And that’s not just Hip Hop. What if someone told you that all of the chopsticks and fortune cookies were owned by Norwegians? That the whole Chinese food industry was being run by Norwegians? You would think that it was a little strange. In our situation, so much of black art and cultural production has been outside of our community. It’s been outside of our hands, which takes power away from our community, because we don’t even own it. In regards to the post-Hip Hop generation, I guess the message is, learn from your mistakes, but learn from other people’s mistakes as well. History is best prepared to reward us if we do our research. And what we can learn is that we must own whatever we create.
With regards to the prison of image, we talk about how the real image of black, which often times isn’t real at all, it can trap us. We’re doing things outside of nature, things outside of our character. We’re letting people define who we are, rather than come to that on our own. We’re allowing other folks to make those definitions. That’s something again that’s rooted in history. When we talk about the history of black entertainment, whether it be music or film, this has been the story. The first music that was successful in this country on a national level was the minstrel music, which was often done by white people in blackface. The first blockbuster was D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which coined the term blockbuster, because the line was so damn long!
All of these things are based on misrepresentation. You’ve got people feeling like this is who they are. This kind of evolves and continues, and we see it today. Later on, they put black people in blackface. Who wrote the script? Who’s funding it? Who’s making money off of it? Who’s benefiting from the degradation of humanity? The degradation of one’s character? Who profits, who makes the money, and who loses? Those are the things I try to address in the book.
DX: In your dissection of the various issues that plague African Americans, there is a definite though unstated connection to Hip Hop. You discuss the importance of never simply accepting everything you’re taught in school as fact—to go out and be self-educated, not just educated. Isn’t this directly applicable to those who look to mass media—magazines, MTV, BET—to define what Hip Hop is and what isn’t?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I think it’s completely, totally, one hundred percent applicable. It’s really a philosophy for life. I think people should challenge everything, whether it be Hip Hop or TV—everything. Without challenging, there’s no progress, there’s no learning. Even if you come to accept something after you’ve challenged it, you’ve learned why you should accept it because you challenged it. And you’ve done the work. Just accepting things, that’s how you become a slave. You have to resist. Not only is that applicable to Hip Hop—that is Hip Hop! When Kurtis Blow said he was attracted to Hip Hop for the same reason he was attracted to Malcom X, that’s what it is: the spirit of resistance.
It’s time to bring in alternative media and people-sponsored media, rather than just corporate-sponsored media. That’s how Hip Hop grew, evolved and thrived—based on people, not the corporations. They weren’t in the parks in New York in the 1974. They weren’t in the Favelas in 2000. We need to rely less on corporate media.
DX: How has your work teaching the youth in Baltimore affected or established your views on Hip Hop and the post-Hip Hop generations?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: It’s central to those views in so many ways. Teaching at Morgan, which is a historically black school, most students there are from Baltimore, Philadelphia or D.C. We have a lot of shared experiences and commonalities. It keeps me abreast of what they’re thinking about, and what their concerns are, and what their issues are. It’s important to always be connected to people who are in different stages in their development. It’s important to me.
There’s a Chinese proverb, “Study the hole when you’ve carved the peg.” That means don’t just be coming up with answers and solutions and theories based on thin air. You should be basing those solutions and ideas on the problems. It’s Bigger than Hip Hop was a response to what they needed in order to further their development.
DX: You contend in your book that Hip Hop is a weapon of the people. When all is said and done, has it been turned on them?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I don’t see it as solely [one or the other]. I think in some instances, we’re doing well. In others, it has been distorted and hijacked. There are different battles to be thought. In some ways it has been co-opted, and in other ways it hasn’t. There’s a great speech that Toni Morrison gave when she won the Nobel Prize. She talked about a blind woman. Some children walk up to the blind woman with a bird in their hands, and they ask this blind woman “Is this bird dead or alive?” And the blind woman says, “I don’t know, but it’s in your hands.”
That’s how Hip Hop is. Whether or not it’s been used against us, that’s not important. What’s important is recognizing our power. It’s in our hands.
In between organizing the World Festival of Black Art (or FESMAN), teaching at Morgan State University and countless other activities, Asante found time to speak with me about his latest book: It’s Bigger than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip Hop Generation. The book, which centers on social and political issues facing African-Americans today (and where Hip Hop fits into the equation), is written exactly the same way Dr. Asante speaks—passionately.
Although he tempers the harsh realities of the modern world—Hurricane Katrina, Sean Bell, The Jena Six [click to read]—with optimism, M.K. Asante, Jr. knows that the challenges faced by the post-Hip Hop generation are daunting. That's why he preaches, “If you've made on observation, you have an obligation.” It's a mantra we could all learn from. If we take it to heart, perhaps we'll all have an easier time sleeping—M.K. Asante, Jr. included.
HipHopDX:Would it be fair to call your book a Hip Hop book?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Definitely! I think it would me more than fair. I think it is.
DX: Not to say that it doesn’t have anything to do with Hip Hop—what I mean is, is that your focus in this book?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Oh, I see what you’re saying. This book…I think Hip Hop is its vehicle. And I think the book uses that vehicle to examine some real critical issues—sociopolitical things. It examines things that one doesn’t usually associate with Hip Hop, but under closer analysis would to examine those political and social issues that affect young people, mostly of color, around the United States, but not only in the United States.
It’s not a music book though. I think even a lot of book stores put it in the music section, which is slightly misleading because, like you said, it’s an examination of those sociopolitical issues that affect young people of color in the post-Hip Hop generation. But, you know, it’s using Hip Hop—the culture and the music—as a vehicle to do that. So I think it’s a little bit of both.
DX: Right, because you didn’t really sit down and take the Jeff Chang approach and write about the history of Hip Hop and say, “these are the four elements,” and so on. What did you want to do differently with this book, and how did you go about doing it?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: You know, I love Jeff’s book and…I thought he did an excellent job. I think there’s a lot more to do, even in regards to the history of Hip Hop, but my approach was much different. You know, you mention the “four elements,” and one of the things I rooted myself in understanding is Afrika Bambaataa, the founder of Hip Hop. [He] talked about five elements of Hip Hop. He also talks about how that fifth element gets neglected and negated in conversations about Hip Hop. But that fifth element is essential! In a lot of ways, my book is an approach rooted in that fifth element. And that fifth element, Afrika Bambaataa calls is “knowledge, wisdom and understanding,” or “building.” And that knowledge, wisdom and understanding is connected to the condition of people of color in the U.S. and the issues that we face.
The fifth element is really supposed to inform the other elements. I mean, yeah, you can rap, you can do pretty art, you can dance. But ultimately, it should be rooted in that knowledge, wisdom and understanding. That’s what should be informing what you rap about or the kind of graffiti you write.
DX: What is the “post-Hip Hop generation?”
M.K. Asante, Jr.: The “post-Hip Hop generation” is a term I’ve used to talk about the generation of young people that are inheriting the world from the Hip Hop generation. Going back to [Franz] Fanon, [who says,] “each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it,” now we have a new generation inheriting the world from the Hip Hop generation. It’s a very important and pivotal moment for young people, and they do have choices. Are they going to continue to maintain the tradition? I think that’s very important.
I consider myself a custodian of that culture, and that the post-Hip Hop generation will be custodians and keepers of the tradition. It’s also a term that gets the Hip Hop generation to think beyond themselves. So it’s not just about you—it’s about the youth that are coming up behind you.
DX: Why do you think that Hip Hop is having so much trouble carrying on the tradition into the post-Hip Hop generation?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Well, I don’t know if it’s having trouble carrying on the tradition. I think the trouble is rooted in the dissemination. One of the things I’ve tried to do is not diminish the people, and there’s so many of them, who have kept the tradition alive. Even if they’re not on VH1, or MTV, or BET, or Viacom, or Clear Channel or whatever…there’s the Hip Hop industry, and then there’s the Hip Hop community. The Hip Hop industry is often made up of people who are not members of the Hip Hop community, and their only interest in the Hip Hop community is the bottom line. So it’s important not to allow those institutions to determine what Hip Hop is. It’s the people that determine what Hip Hop is.
Clearly, if we look at the mainstream, we see a gap between the kind of catalyst that Hip Hop emerged from and what it represented in terms of its resistance against oppression that was happening and its cry out against the pathology that was stopping and interrupting so many of the black lives in the cities in the 1970’s. But at the same time, there are so many cats that stay true and are really holding it down. I think that in some ways, there’s a crisis in dissemination. There’s a crisis in the diversity of what we hear and corporate-controlled media—not just in Hip Hop but with news and everything. It’s kind of controlled by a few people who I don’t think have the best interest of the people. That’s a general area, but I think there are a lot of people who are keeping the tradition.
I like to think of it like food. I don’t eat at McDonald’s, because that’s not real food to me. I don’t go to McDonald’s expecting to get real food. So I don’t turn on the radio and expect to hear real Hip Hop necessarily. But what I do know is that there are local farmers in the Maryland area, in the Philadelphia area, in the California area—local farmers and local businesses and local agricultural workers that do have real food. And I like to support them. And we should support local Hip Hop like we support local agricultural workers.
DX: Did this new generation arise out of necessity, or was it a natural evolution?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I think it’s a natural evolution. When we talk about generations coming up, it’s part of the natural evolution that each generation must emerge and define itself. I think it’s come naturally. I think for some people it may have come from a feeling of misrepresentation of what they were seeing in the mainstream. But again, it’s important not to let what’s happening in the mainstream define what’s happening in the culture.
DX: Does post-Hip Hop imply that Hip Hop, or its effectiveness as a medium for generating dialogue about social change, has come to an end?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: No. It definitely doesn’t. In my book, one of the things I do is I rely on Hip Hop heavily to convey messages. I use lyrics of people like dead prez, Immortal Technique [click to read], Mos Def and lots of other cats as well, to illustrate these points and show how effective it can be. I think when we talk about post-Hip Hop generation, we’re not talking post-Hip Hop. We’re talking a generation that is inheriting the world from the Hip Hop generation. We’re not talking about the end of Hip Hop or the death of Hip Hop or the ineffectiveness of Hip Hop or anything like that. I think it’s a vehicle and tool, and we must use it. But we must not allow tools to be used against us as weapons.
DX: There’s no genre of music as self-analytical or as self-referencing as Hip Hop. Is this always an asset, or is it sometimes a detriment? Does this need to continue in the post-Hip Hop generation?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I think it’s a valuable asset in a lot of ways. Self-analysis is good. Self-referencing, I think we could do a little less of that. One of the concepts I talk about in the book is the recognition of the collective, and the philosophy of Ubuntu specifically, “I am because we are.” Hip Hop is so rooted in African culture. We look at the word “hip,” and we see it comes from the Wolof word “hipi,” which means “to open one’s eyes and see.” This is a West African language. Mix that with “hop,” and we have “enlightened action.” It goes on and on as far as the connection and the oral tradition, the rhythm. But one of the things that I think is important is that beyond these things, which are cultural retention, is to try and get back to some of those African concepts as well. And one of those concepts is collectivism rather than individualism.
Paul Robeson says, “Don’t look at my success and judge where my people are based on me as an individual.” It’s very dangerous to look at Barack Obama and make a statement about where black people are in America. The masses of black people in America—you live near Baltimore, right?
DX: Yes.
M.K. Asante, Jr.: ‘Nuff said. That’s the reality. So I think it’s important, in terms of the self-referencing, to be more collective and understand that if I’m not free, you’re not free, and that your freedom is connected to mine. And that we really are in this thing together; we have to share and breathe the same air. I don’t see a lot of that. I think we could do a little less self-referencing and focus a little more on the collective.
But I think the self-analysis is excellent. It reveals the humanity and struggles in all of us. That’s one of the things I love about Tupac. This is somebody who…everybody in the world can identify with those internal and external struggles he dealt with. It all goes back to Nkosi Johnson. “Said the little boy, ‘We are all the same. The best of us, the worst of us.’” We represent all of that. To be able to see that—that’s progress. We embody all of that; the best of us, the worst of us. We are able to acknowledge out faults, but try to move forward.
DX: I thought it was interesting that you reference Tupac several times. It seems that he was an example of the best in terms of his message, but also the worst at some points. Why did you focus solely on his good side? Don’t you have to acknowledge that he flipped the script and did a 180, negatively influencing a lot of youth and Hip Hop artists?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: That negativity you talk about is part of the reason I chose to focus on the other part. Sometimes you find that there’s a lack of balance in terms of how someone is represented, and I thought it was really important. For me, ‘Pac is a real person—in so many ways. I dig him for that conflict. It was an internal thing and an external thing. When I look at someone like that, I see all of us. Whether or not our struggles were as public as his, ultimately I think we all struggle with positive and negative forces, [which] I think he did in a very dramatic and painful way.
A lot of the enormous positive contributions that ‘Pac made, I felt, was being missed by a lot of people. And also, to contextualize his life in terms of, “who was this person?” We sometimes hear the name Afeni Shakur, but we rarely hear the name Assata Shakur as being related to ‘Pac. Even rarer do we hear the name Mutulu Shakur. [Tupac's] stepfather was a revolutionary and political prisoner who is still in jail. Rarely do you hear the name Mumia Abu Jamal [click to read] when we talk about ‘Pac, and this is another one of his teachers. So I wanted to kind of introduce these ideas—not just to the 18 to 22-year-olds in my class—but the young people all around the country who just don’t know this stuff. I wanted to contextualize Tupac. Whenever we tell a story, we choose to focus on certain things, and maybe not focus on other things. I think the other things are out there for people to see quite easily, but this story wasn’t quite as easy to see.
DX: In It’s Bigger than Hip Hop, you tackle institutionalized racism, poverty, the war on drugs, black on black violence, and much more. Does Hip Hop serve as a catalyst or facilitator to these problems?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I don’t think Hip Hop is responsible for any of these things, but it exacerbates an already very serious problem. The decisions that we make are all rooted in culture. We make certain decisions about what we’re going to do with our lives, with our day, with our morning, with our evening. Hip Hop is culture. Music is culture. When you are listening to shit about sellin’ drugs, robbin’ people and killin’ brothers all day—things that are happening already—it’s not productive. It’s not healthy.
Think about it. As soon as you hear the beat, before you even hear the lyrics, what do you do? You nod your head. That nodding of your head—that’s affirmation! If I’m talking to you and I say something you agree with, you nod your head. You hear the beat, you already start nodding your head, you’re already affirming whatever [is about to come on]. So I think [Hip Hop] can work against us. Art is a weapon. If you don’t know how to use it, it will be used against you.
DX: You kinda got me with the head nod. I never thought about that.
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Yes, man! That’s the affirmative right there. In every culture, if you nod your head, you are saying, “Yes, I’m agreeing. I feel it, I dig it, I cosign.” That’s what we do, and I do it too. Turn on something with a dope beat, I can’t help it! That’s part of the power and the danger.
DX: What about Hip Hop’s role as a tool to generate apathy towards things like Sean Bell and the Jena Six? That’s a completely different animal.
M.K. Asante, Jr.: This is how I like to think about it: all art is political, in my view. Everything. If dead prez makes a song called “Fuck the Police,” obviously that’s political. But if someone makes a song that says, “All I do is get money and fuck bitches,” that’s political too. One is political, the dead prez statement, because it’s a challenge to the status quo. The other one, that’s political as well. But what it’s doing is reinforcing the status quo. For example, if you ask George Bush, he’ll tell you the same thing! “Get money! Fuck everyone else!” That is the status quo. But when people make art that reinforces it, a lot of times it’s not seen as political. What you’re talking about, creating apathy, that’s what it does. You are creating an environment for apathy.
DX: So you’re saying there’s no such thing as an apolitical action?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: Not as long as there’s oppression going on. If I’m walking down the street and, God forbid, somebody is whoopin’ your ass, I look at the situation, and I have a couple different choices I could make. Number one, I could get directly involved and assist you and defend you against this person who is unfairly hurting you. That’s one option. But I have another option. I could decide to be apolitical. I could say, “Look, this doesn’t have anything to do with me. I don’t even know this person.” I’m going to be neutral in this matter, and I’m not going to do anything about it—I’m just going to walk away.
See, what I’ve just done in that situation is not be neutral. I have not been apolitical. What I’ve just done is support the person who is whoopin’ your ass. I have supported the oppressor. So when we talk about oppression, you are either supporting this oppression, or resisting. Silence only helps the oppressor. It enables the oppressor.
DX: I’d like to discuss two key issues you bring up, lack of ownership and what you call the “prison of image.” Could you elaborate on the effects of these on black America and Hip Hop? Are they intrinsically tied together or can they be separated from one another?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: The lack of ownership—this is something that has plagued us from the first day black music was recorded. I think that the critical point with the ownership is that it’s hard to control something when you don’t own it. We don’t own a distribution method. We don’t own the way Hip Hop is disseminated. We’ve become dependent, in a lot of ways, on institutions that aren’t connected to the Hip Hop community to do things that might be against their financial interests—which they’re not going to do. That’s not how they operate. They operate on the bottom line.
We’re in that situation because we’re not having the level of ownership that we need to in terms of our own culture. And that’s not just Hip Hop. What if someone told you that all of the chopsticks and fortune cookies were owned by Norwegians? That the whole Chinese food industry was being run by Norwegians? You would think that it was a little strange. In our situation, so much of black art and cultural production has been outside of our community. It’s been outside of our hands, which takes power away from our community, because we don’t even own it. In regards to the post-Hip Hop generation, I guess the message is, learn from your mistakes, but learn from other people’s mistakes as well. History is best prepared to reward us if we do our research. And what we can learn is that we must own whatever we create.
With regards to the prison of image, we talk about how the real image of black, which often times isn’t real at all, it can trap us. We’re doing things outside of nature, things outside of our character. We’re letting people define who we are, rather than come to that on our own. We’re allowing other folks to make those definitions. That’s something again that’s rooted in history. When we talk about the history of black entertainment, whether it be music or film, this has been the story. The first music that was successful in this country on a national level was the minstrel music, which was often done by white people in blackface. The first blockbuster was D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which coined the term blockbuster, because the line was so damn long!
All of these things are based on misrepresentation. You’ve got people feeling like this is who they are. This kind of evolves and continues, and we see it today. Later on, they put black people in blackface. Who wrote the script? Who’s funding it? Who’s making money off of it? Who’s benefiting from the degradation of humanity? The degradation of one’s character? Who profits, who makes the money, and who loses? Those are the things I try to address in the book.
DX: In your dissection of the various issues that plague African Americans, there is a definite though unstated connection to Hip Hop. You discuss the importance of never simply accepting everything you’re taught in school as fact—to go out and be self-educated, not just educated. Isn’t this directly applicable to those who look to mass media—magazines, MTV, BET—to define what Hip Hop is and what isn’t?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I think it’s completely, totally, one hundred percent applicable. It’s really a philosophy for life. I think people should challenge everything, whether it be Hip Hop or TV—everything. Without challenging, there’s no progress, there’s no learning. Even if you come to accept something after you’ve challenged it, you’ve learned why you should accept it because you challenged it. And you’ve done the work. Just accepting things, that’s how you become a slave. You have to resist. Not only is that applicable to Hip Hop—that is Hip Hop! When Kurtis Blow said he was attracted to Hip Hop for the same reason he was attracted to Malcom X, that’s what it is: the spirit of resistance.
It’s time to bring in alternative media and people-sponsored media, rather than just corporate-sponsored media. That’s how Hip Hop grew, evolved and thrived—based on people, not the corporations. They weren’t in the parks in New York in the 1974. They weren’t in the Favelas in 2000. We need to rely less on corporate media.
DX: How has your work teaching the youth in Baltimore affected or established your views on Hip Hop and the post-Hip Hop generations?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: It’s central to those views in so many ways. Teaching at Morgan, which is a historically black school, most students there are from Baltimore, Philadelphia or D.C. We have a lot of shared experiences and commonalities. It keeps me abreast of what they’re thinking about, and what their concerns are, and what their issues are. It’s important to always be connected to people who are in different stages in their development. It’s important to me.
There’s a Chinese proverb, “Study the hole when you’ve carved the peg.” That means don’t just be coming up with answers and solutions and theories based on thin air. You should be basing those solutions and ideas on the problems. It’s Bigger than Hip Hop was a response to what they needed in order to further their development.
DX: You contend in your book that Hip Hop is a weapon of the people. When all is said and done, has it been turned on them?
M.K. Asante, Jr.: I don’t see it as solely [one or the other]. I think in some instances, we’re doing well. In others, it has been distorted and hijacked. There are different battles to be thought. In some ways it has been co-opted, and in other ways it hasn’t. There’s a great speech that Toni Morrison gave when she won the Nobel Prize. She talked about a blind woman. Some children walk up to the blind woman with a bird in their hands, and they ask this blind woman “Is this bird dead or alive?” And the blind woman says, “I don’t know, but it’s in your hands.”
That’s how Hip Hop is. Whether or not it’s been used against us, that’s not important. What’s important is recognizing our power. It’s in our hands.
