Where is Hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? Or is it Time to Move On…

“To read the tribe astutely you sometimes have to leave the tribe ambitiously, and should you come home again, it’s not always to sing hosannas or a song that tribe necessarily has any desire to hear…Griots, it is decreed, are to be left to rot in hollow trees way on the outskirts of town. With that wisdom typical of African cosmologies, these messengers are guaranteed freedom of speech in exchange for a marginality that extends to the grave.”—Greg Tate, “Nobody Loves a Genius Child: Jean Michel Basquiat, Flyboy in the Buttermilk”

The above quote is taken from the title essay in Greg Tate’s 1992 book Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, which will be republished by Duke University Press next year. I thought hard about the current state of hip-hop as I re-read this passage in Tate’s book. Specifically I wondered where were the oppositional figures in hip-hop?—those “marginal” figures who are endowed with the responsibility of telling our truths, especially when we don’t want to hear them. Now I know that the common response is to look at the so-called conscious rappers, but in reality what many of them posit are common sense commentaries on the reality of race in contemporary America. The fact that so little of that actually exist is contemporary rap music is part of the reason that we place so much significance on the work that the conscious rappers do. But very rarely do their analysis of the work take into account the complexities of race, gender and sexuality—in fact a good many of the so-called conscious rappers need to be checked on their politics of gender and sexuality—calling a woman your queen ain’t necessarily any more liberating than calling her your bitch. What I want to know, is where is hip-hop’s theory of intersectionality? Where is hip-hop’s Bayard Rustin? Where is hip-hop’s George S. Schuyler? Where is hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? In other words where are those folk in hip-hop that we will banish the far recesses of our consciousness because they made us uncomfortable and forced us to think and respond to the things we never want to talk about. And I ain’t saying Bill Cosby is nobody’s George Schuyler.

***

Now understand, I have a personal stake in this. As I suggested in my review of Common’s BE—my relationship with hip-hop is no longer about how much I enjoy the beats and the rhymes—I’m having real issues about the legacy of this culture. For the record, I can appreciate my man Joe Schloss’s reminder that hip-hop is comprised of five elements and that much of the commentary about hip-hop, like my other man Marc Lamont Hill’s lament that hip-hop sucks, is too focused on the music. But we also have to acknowledge that no matter how vibrant the DJ, break-dance, and graffiti scenes might be, they remain insular sub-cultures that will never have the impact that the music has—the lindy-hop might have been the thing that broke down race relations in the 1940s, but it was the music—Be-Bop—that brought folks together in the first place. The most visible and lasting legacy of hip-hop will be maintained via the music, in part because music has been the primary conduit for black expressivity, often taking on, as Tate suggests, extra-musical attributes rendering the music as a form of literature, cinema, etc. Say what you want about hip-hop culture in 2005, but there’s little doubt that rap music is still primarly informed by black musical sensibilities (though I’m willing to be challenged by O-Dub’s insights on Cali’s Filipino DJs.).

As a nearly forty-year-old son of hip-hop, I guess I becoming fatigued by all of this. There are certain things that I need from hip-hop—ok, rap music—that I’m not getting. And this is no disrespect to some of the younger cats out there like my man Bomani Jones, or my new homie Joycelyn Wilson, who is gonna bring southern rap into the academy in major way (Ken Wissoker, Eric Zinner, Matt Byrnie—y’all need to get with this woman). Rather it’s a grudging acknowledgement that the things that brought me and mine to hip-hop ain’t the same thing that keeps the younger cats diggin’ it.

The reality is there is a generational divide around this culture—my hip-hop generation ain’t your hip-hop generation (or the “millennial generation” as Bakari Kitwana likes to describe it). And this ain’t really a call for nostalgia—as much as I dig Kane and Rakim—I’m far more likely to be listening to 50 or Jay Z on the RIO, if only because of the production and wit/skill that both, respectively, bring to the table. Perhaps this is just the final realization, that instead of hoping that hip-hop will save the world, perhaps this nearly 40-something hip-hop head needs to start doing the work of Bayard Rustin, Kimberle Crenshaw and Audre Lorde and leave it to the younger cats to hold hip-hop accountable.