“Why The Roots make cool art, but lousy politics,” goes the headline of John McWhorter’s three-page discourse on “conscious hip-hop.” McWhorter’s a conservative fellow — I mean that literally, he’s a fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute — with a deep appreciation of rap but a contrarian take on the employment market, the prison-industrial complex and so forth. Lots of statistics and sociology in the piece, and some undeniably good one-liners: “Did black men start leaving their children to be raised by their mothers alone because the Lutzkys no longer lived down the block? Are black boys shooting each other practically for sport because the Houlihans moved away?” Well, yes, in part, if the post-Lutzky neighborhood was subsequently abandoned and left to rot by city, state and federal governments…
Ok, plenty to argue over, and it will be.
When McWhorter turns to the rap group dead prez, however, he misses something big: he doesn’t touch upon the group’s actual political affiliation, which is something I wrote about online in 2004 for
The New Republic. The link is inoperative, but what I argued was this: dead prez is a willing propaganda arm for the African People’s Socialist Party, a cult
outfit run by the charismatic orator Omali Yeshitela (born Joseph Waller). Chairman Omali, as he’s referred to admiringly on dead prez’s album
RBG, appears here frequently in Philadelphia. Last year I went to hear him speak and saw a befuddled audience, mostly newcomers, get strong-armed into a standing ovation before the first word — a guy in the back of the room started shouting, “Stand up if you believe this! Stand up!”
Here on YouTube is Omali speaking on the evil that is Barack Obama, under the headline “White Power in Black Face.”
McWhorter writes of conscious rap not being truly progressive, but in the case of dead prez I’m not sure he knows the half of it.
He’s right, however, to identify dead prez and The Roots as part of the same political milieu, even if The Roots haven’t taken positions nearly as extreme. dead prez appear as honored guests on Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
DVD, on which The Roots are the house band. Mos Def had dead prez on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and
said, “They make me feel like I’m in high school again, be wantin’ to be down with them so bad, whatever I could do, cheerlead, mascot…” Of course, Mos Def
thinks 9/11 was an inside job, so there you go.
McWhorter’s right: Radical hip-hop can make for amazing music. And arguments about jobs, the criminal justice system and so forth need to be had. But the problem with dead prez, and the de rigueur praise the group has inspired, goes even deeper.
