Yeah. Hello world. Now we are up on some shit, "like they bringing' '88 back, listening to the new track "Shock and Awe" with Z-Trip and Chuck D. Tingle down the spine when Chuck steps in to the ring, when I hear the basso profundity. Now we got Chuck on our side, no irony that the apotheosis of PE occurred during the last "morning in America" administration. Something clicked, like, ok, it's time to listen again. Chuck, we welcome you. Cornel West makes this great point in Democracy Matters that basically you can understand the Patriot Act and 9/11 through the long lens of racism...bear with me here:
The ugly terrorist attacks on innocent civilians on 9/11 plunged the whole country in to the blues. Never before have Americans of all classes, colors, regions, religions, genders, and sexual orientations felt unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated. Yet to have been designated and treated as a nigger in America for over 350 years has been to feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated.
Getting searched a the airport, having your phone conversations taped, being kicked in the thigh so many times that a blood clot reaches your heart and kills you, getting flown to Nigeria for torture... just a messy sidebar in the great American experiment.
And what of this experiment we have here, on the page? I say, bring em' on.
2 comments:
Nice, now that's what I'm talking about, johnee dropping knowledge!
I gotta get to DITC and start listening to PE again. it's been years. (a thread I wanted to start--your answer to that seminal Q, "where were you when you first heard hip hop"? for me, it was sitting in a movie theater is suburban st. paul, summer of '87, a screening of "do the right thing." rosie perez doing her boxing thing to "fight the power." went out and bought "it takes a nation..." on cassette later that week...)
but it was a trip to be browsing the racks in the music store at SFO last Saturday while waiting for our flight to board, and seeing a "best of PE" disc, all done up like an oldies act.
chuck appeared at the commonwealth club in SF last month, but the admission charge was a bit much...
got get back to reading brother west too. missed democracy matters...the passage you quoted reminded of gates's concept of the miner's canary.
let's get it on...
Right you are, JC. I knew it couldn't have been '88, b/c I was in India all that summer with the fam. I figured it must have been the previous summer, but in fact it was the summer after. When did "Nation of Millions" drop?
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