Outside the Box

Creativity & Humanity: Nas, the Father

Mon, 07 May 2012 16:44:43 -0400

By Derek Beres

Aging is an interesting thing. Observing your personal metamorphosis as the years unfold offers great insight into your ability to evolve. Do you adapt as time rolls on? Are there ‘rules’ that you stick by no matter what? Do you roll with the changes, or fight them every step of the way? The only thing scarier than accepting change is not being willing to at all.

Watching artists you love grow (or not) is also indicative of your psychology. Do you reference previous works as untouchable masterpieces, or do you develop with them? Are they willing to evolve, or do they simply stick to a formula that guarantees sales and recognition? In many ways, this week’s Billboard charts are the same as one year and five years ago. Names change, sentiments do not.

This week Chris Brown guests on two tracks, both driven by sex. His track with Rihanna (how quickly we forget) provides the expectable cliches, like ‘fucking right now’ and licking icing off a body. When he croons alongside Fat Joe, he refers to women as bitches, as does Young Jeezy on ‘Leave You Alone.’ These are three of the top five songs in the country right now. Even when musicians like this attempt to appear genuine, they can’t stop themselves from being like everybody else.

Finding and then cultivating originality is what distances an artist from a chart-focused singer. Men and women who play from their heart might never find themselves on such charts (though some do). That never changes their commitment to storytelling and musical integrity, to testing the boundaries of their sonic capabilities at every turn. Rhyming over a beat about bitches takes no ingenuity or even thought; releasing a song about the struggle of raising a daughter in such a toxic pop climate, however, does. Few could pull it off without sounding preachy or sappy. Then there’s Nas.

It’s not like the rapper from Queensbridge never referenced a woman, or a man, as a bitch. Since 1994 Nas has laid bare a dizzying gamut of emotions, thoughts and insights. His lyrical versatility and far-reaching instrumentation have made him one of the planet’s most famous, as well as respected, emcees. While his new single, ‘Daughters,’ has not been without controversy - his daughter Destiny’s mother says it paints a false picture - the fact that the man’s lead single from his tenth album discusses an inner battle about becoming a better father points to his constant quest of carving of himself a better human being.

While most rappers talk about their Twitter blowing up, Nas brings up an incident from earlier this year when his daughter Instagramed a box of condoms on her dresser. The revelation hit him: twenty years ago he would have been the dude scanning the Web for such photos (had the Web existed). Things change when you’re a parent - one who cares, that is - and so we witness two Nas’s, one recognizing his own playerness, the other a father watching his daughter tread slippery territory. He also recognizes that she knows who he is, which doesn’t help the situation. As he concludes, “They say the coolest playas and foulest heart breakers in the world, God gets us back, he makes us have precious little girls.”

I’m guessing Nas will offer an epic proportion of emotion and ideology on the forthcoming Life is Good, as he has on previous works. An experimenter with a nation of hip-hop fans as his laboratory, there will be failures and successes - it’s the price of the innovator. But to lead the charge with something as universal and touching as a father’s relationship to his daughter is a beautiful sentiment enhanced by one of the best beats he’s flowed over since ‘Get Down.’ That’s what keeps a leader ahead of the pack, in the rap game and all others.

Why Trayvon Martin Became a Cause Célèbre, And Not Others

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 09:27:04 -0400

By Dax

For me the 2012 edition of Black History Month will be hereinafter bracketed by the murder of two unarmed boys. The first, 18 year-old Ramarley Graham, on February 2. The second, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, on February 26. Taken together the stories of Ramarley and Trayvon paint an alarming picture of the all-encompassing existential risks associated with being young, black and male.

Ramarley was shot in the bathroom of his Bronx apartment by a New York City cop, Trayvon in broad daylight by a neighborhood watchman. One happened in the North, the other in the South. One in the gritty city, the other in the gated suburbs. Both assailants are young men as well. Richard Haste, Graham’s killer, is 30. Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, 28. The killers are ’80s babies. They are younger than hip hop. They’ve only known an America that celebrated Black History Month. And yet they’ve found themselves caught in the cross hairs of this country’s most inglorious pastime. Whether it was chattel slavery, loitering laws, the system of Jim Crow or the advancement of a criminal justice industry geared toward harshly punishing street crimes (while turning a blind eye to corporate misconduct), white supremacy – the beliefs and practices that promote white superiority and black inferiority – has most visibly exerted its agenda in two interrelated ways: 1) the continuous marketing of black dysfunction that in turn gives rise to 2) the necessity of constantly monitoring and controlling the threat that black bodies pose to civilized society.

Read the rest @ Dominion of New York

By Dax Rummaging around the ‘net late on a Friday night...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 23:53:42 -0400

By Dax

Rummaging around the ‘net late on a Friday night and stumbled on these jewels. Rae and Nas in Norway talking about their careers. What I appreciate is Nas’s respect and love Rae. Shows humility. Vital footage for real hip-hop heads. Shows how important it is to have older heads in the game. These are the keepers of the hip hop’s story. More to come.

By Dax-Devlon Ross When I gave my talk at City College a few...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 23:38:30 -0400

By Dax-Devlon Ross

When I gave my talk at City College a few weeks back I said we need more films celebrating and investigating hip hop. Well, here is one.

Kicking America to the Curb with Rick Santorum

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:32:26 -0400

By Derek Beres

There’s nothing like spending an entire day working hard on projects that are attempting to bridge cultures only to find one of the most touted names in American politics is doing his best to kick our country to the curb.

Due to an odd law that allows US territories like Puerto Rico to vote in primary elections but not presidential ones, Republican candidates have been visiting our southeastern neighbor in an attempt to win over their hearts. If today’s appearance by Rick Santorum is an indication of how many voters should actually turn out to this year’s polls, the answer will be: zero.

That’s pretty much how I’d feel if a presidential candidate tells me that in order to become part of the United States, my nation’s official language needs to be English:

“Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law,” Santorum said. “And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language.”

Being currently enrolled in a class on the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text, it dawned on me what my main contention with religions like Christianity is: the entire notion of man being given dominion over all other animals and land is a terrible way to engage and grapple with existence.

If your starting point is that we should have whatever we want whenever we want it, you begin to understand the American neurosis and see how it plugs into every industry and initiative that we create. Obviously, it doesn’t stop with mankind over everything; eventually, we have to do battle with other humans. It’s only righteous, I suppose. For all the progress we’ve made as a country over the past half-century, men like Santorum are taking a sledgehammer to the basic fundmental understanding of the reality that we’ve worked hard to build - things like all men being created equal, for starters.

I’m not sure who is voting for Santorum, but I must ask you that very fundamental - you can call it biblical - question: Is this how you’d like to be treated? Exactly who gave you the dominion and left none of it for your neighbor?

Why The Book of Genesis is Wrong...Again

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:25:07 -0400

By Derek Beres

I’m not sure what happens in Oklahoma. I’ve never been to the state. I don’t purposefully avoid it, and would certainly visit for good reason. But if the fact that the residents of the state elect a senator like James Inhofe to represent them, I might just have to permanently delete the region from any travel plans.

In his new book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Inhofe cites the Bible as reasons why climate change could never be man-made, which he reiterates here:

Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use [in the book] is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

I would say that the other Scripture that I use quite frequently on this subject is Romans 1:25, ‘They give up the truth about God for a lie and they worship God’s creation instead of God, who will be praised forever.’ In other words, they are trying to say we should worship the creation. We were reminded back in Romans that this was going to happen and sure enough it’s happening.

It is not uncommon for the most purportedly religious of us to be the most blatantly irresponsible, but this is taking that to another level. It is not acceptable to use your ‘beliefs’ to justify your ignorance, or to allow you to do whatever you’d like to our natural resources and think that some invented deity will cover your mistakes. I have no issue with people believing in a deity, even if that’s not part of my understanding of existence. Yet to invent a god and use him to allow you to do whatever you’d like to the planet is sheer hypocrisy - or, sadly, just plain foolishness.

And of course, foolishness is damaging.

For all the talk about being a steward that I hear coming from the religious right, I see very little of it when stories like this pass through my desk.

Watch the Confusion: Yasiin Bey’s N****s is Poorest and...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:24:00 -0500

Watch the Confusion: Yasiin Bey’s N****s is Poorest and the Symbolic Politics of Solidarity
By Dax-Devlon Ross

Last month Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) dropped N****s is Poorest, his response to the the Kanye/Jay-Z song N****s in Paris. Bey raps through (not just about) the experience of American despair, warning his audience against worshipping false idols (“Don’t get caught up in no throne”), an obvious jab at Watch the Throne’s perceived preoccupation with the pursuit of worldly success. The song self-consciously positions itself as the legitimate heir to and spirit of the black protest tradition. Likewise, the accompanying video employs images of struggle as well as Malcolm X and Occupy Wall Street clips to articulate a powerful populist-oriented protest aesthetic.

I enjoyed the song and the video. I thought they were provocative. But they also ticked me off.

My beef with N****s is Poorest isn’t just that it wraps itself in self-righteous symbolism and populist politics. It isn’t just that it cherry picks ’60s style black power that may not be relevant or practical in order to legitimize itself as part of a symbolic resistance tradition. It isn’t just that, at its core, it mocks one vision of black life — black wealth — in order to suggest that true (that is real, that is legit) blackness is down with the people—poor people. My beef is that it reinforces the false dichotomy between socially conscious/commercial hip hop that feeds directly into a) the naïve perception that all commercial hip hop is a social evil that must be belittled and denounced, b) the equally naïve perception that socially conscious hip hop is morally superior and immune to critique and correction and c) the totally backward and divisive perception that the pursuit, attainment and enjoyment of wealth negates a desire for racial and economic justice.

None of this may have been Bey’s intent. He may have been looking to articulate a complementary – not competing – vision and voice that he feels is missing from the public discourse around our faltering economy. And in so far as Bey the devout Muslim is making a broader comment about our society’s preoccupation with idol worship, I fully support him. But what I also can’t help seeing is a black man looking for legitimacy in the arms of the same socially conscious audience he inspired then abandoned in order to act in a string of mediocre movies. I see a black artist who, by no fault of his own, has been adopted by indy, progressive, and hipster audiences (remember, he was featured is the book/blog Stuff White People Like) as the ideal conscious, cool and intellectual rapper both resisting and reinforcing that idealization. I see a spiritual seeker going through his own identity reinvention performing solidarity with the people. I see an emcee who, despite his streetwise sensibility, has never garnered the street credibility he seeks preaching to a choir that already sees Jay-Z and Kanye as public enemies number 1 and 2 because they “rhyme about their private jets, expensive watches and supermodel escapades.” I see an increasingly irrelevant late-career rapper picking on the easiest establishment symbols he can find—Kanye and Jay-Z— in order to get some attention. Which is the irony. His critique of WTT only feeds the beast that it is. But here’s the thing, if you actually listen to Watch the Throne you hear an incredibly ambitious though imperfect album struggling to address black agency and power for the 21^st century not the 20^th century. And this is where Bey falls short. For me he’s failed to update his analysis for the modern era and instead relies on same old tropes and symbols to stir up the same old feelings of anger and despair.

Photo

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:49:54 -0500

Beyond Beef: Re-imagining Black Power for the 21st Century

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:28:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

Remarks delivered during keynote address at the Third Annual Is Hip Hop History? Conference at City College of New York on February 25, 2012

____________________________________________________________________

A few months ago I was introduced to Malcolm X’s third daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz. She’d just seen Jay-Z and Kanye West in concert at Madison Square Garden. The highlight of the night, she said, was when the duo performed their song, “Made in America,” beneath a pair of 10-foot screens reeling off footage of Martin Luther King, Jr. and her father. A tribute to the leaders and their wives, the song celebrates the pop icons’ rise from their humble origins to the heights of American-style prosperity. Considering the criticism the rappers fielded for releasing an “out of touch” album awash in excess at a time of widespread economic insecurity and social protest, the adoption of the Malcolm-Martin imagery, along with Ilyasah’s appreciation of the gesture, intrigued me. In particular, what are we to make of a pair of 21st Century black icons reviled by many for displays of wealth that epitomize a “me first” mentality borrowing the images of a pair of 20th Century black icons revered for their self sacrifice in the name of liberation? In what sense does this make sense?

I write about hip hop first and foremost out of selfishness. I need to make meaning out of my individual and generational experience and to situate that experience within an historical context. We admire the civil rights movement for what it accomplished, yes, but because it was documented. Those who witnessed and experienced that era wrote poems and books, produced plays and made films, wrote curriculums and fought to get them into schools—whatever it took to elevate and enrich the story and ensure it lived on after them. They did not wait for someone else to tell them that their story was important. They did not allow others to dictate or determine what parts of the story were valuable. They did not seek permission to make sense out of their experience. We have to do the same for our generational experience. We all know that hip hop has changed the world we live in. What don’t we always talk about is how. And we don’t talk about how because we aren’t engaged with history in a way that would allow us to make the connections, see the patterns, interrupt the misinformation and create new truth. And we aren’t engaged with history, in part, because consumer culture requires total an unequivocal allegiance to the now, to what’s happening in this moment as if it’s the only moment, as if whatever we’re experiencing has never happened before. It can not afford for us to look back because the past is an indictment of injustices that the system is still unwilling to acknowledge let alone address.

As a writer I see it as one of my responsibilities to clarify and magnify the truth of my experience. In my book, The Nightmare and The Dream, my aim was to situate hip hop’s philosophical tensions within a tradition – a history – of competing and conflicting visions of black-American life that traces back more than a century and is fundamentally based on an age-old dilemma the substance of which was this: how do we get dignity. How do we acquire power. How do we achieve self-determination. Do we assimilate, that is, integrate into the mainstream or create and uphold separate institutions that exclusively celebrate our own? This is not a question about how to be black. It has always been and continues to be a question about the correct path to collective uplift.

This duality has shown up over and over again in the conflicting approaches to uplift offered by competing, charismatic leaders. Frederick Douglass and Alexander Crummel. W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson. Of the iconic photograph commemorating the lone encounter between Malcolm and Martin, scholar and theologian James H. Cone would later write, “It was more than a meeting of two prominent leaders in the African-American community. It was a meeting of two great resistance traditions in African-American history …” What these figures all have in common is simple: They were all fully invested in a collective conversation about the correct avenue to power and dignity and self-determinism. In my book I argue that the symbolic significance of the conflicts between Tupac and BIG and Nas and Jay-Z is that they served as ideological and metaphorical extensions of the same conversation for a new generation.

In a hyper-visual and increasingly ahistorical culture where images take on greater meaning than facts, the photo of Tupac and BIG became an iconic Hip Hop generation symbol. Given the violent deaths they met, it both consciously and unconsciously recalls the photo of Malcolm and Martin while illustrating the fatalism that came to define hip-hop culture at the end of the last millennium. But a deeper inspection of their art, popular appeal and symbolic representation, reveals their conflicting visions of power, black power specifically. While BIG’s antidote to prison, poverty and powerlessness was material excess and indulgence, Pac’s appeal was rooted in the rebel spirit of his Black Panther pedigree. Their conflict, real and imagined, would be played out between Nas and Jay-Z in the years following their deaths. On the strength of modern day rags to riches tales like “Hard Knock Life,” Jay remixed the American Dream into a one that “brought the suburbs to the hood” while capitalizing on the culture’s obsession with conspicuous consumption. Debuting a month after 9/11, Nas’s Stillmatic rekindled a tradition of black protest and power that had been missing from mainstream hip hop since Tupac’s death. For a half decade plus, they would engage in a war on wax that fanned the fatalistic flames of the culture’s preoccupation with conflict. But, again, this was really about power. How does one live (not die, not bleed, not betray one’s self or one’s community) in America? How does one pursue the dream while remaining true to the spirit of struggle? How does one bridge the divide, merge the message, split the difference, make it all make sense? How does one address social injustice in the heart of a commercial environment that thrives off of imbalance and exploitation? Nas and Jay-Z represented two very different approaches to solving the problem of power. And for years this all-too familiar tug of war tore at the seams of the culture.

Then came a symbolic truce. In front of 20,000 fans at the Meadowlands, Jay-Z and Nas publicly ended their feud. One MTV reporter wrote of the event, “It was a moment that you’ve waited for so long that while it was going down it did not seem real.” As president of Def Jam Records, Jay-Z would buy Nas out of his contract with Columbia and sign him to a lucrative long-term contract. This was followed by the song “Black Republicans” on which Jay-Z raps “I feel like a Black Republican, money I got comin’ in” while Nas raps, “I feel like a black militant takin over the government.” Again, notice the distinct approaches to power. During his historic Carnegie Hall performance earlier this year Jay-Z would invite one only other rapper to perform with him onstage—Nas. In light of the history of conflict that they inherited and the marginalized cultures they represent, these must be regarded as self-consciously symbolic acts meant to offer a new way forward, one that doesn’t revolve around untimely death, one that understands its power and uses it appropriately, one in which my avenue to self-determination doesn’t have to exclude or knock yours.

And yet, changing society’s half-baked perceptions about hip hop — the resistance Michael Eric Dyson encountered from parents who didn’t approve of their children learning about Jay-Z at Georgetown, for example — continues to be a daunting challenge. The conditioning is deep and incredibly resistant to correction. There is an entire cottage industry built around black male dysfunction, rivalry, resentment, violence, incarceration and underachievement. This industry can ill afford to acknowledge or examine the efforts by black men, especially those for whom hip hop is a way of life, to understand their condition and begin to make changes in their attitudes and behaviors toward one another. Accordingly, any efforts to not only interrupt the status quo — the lucrative market for black on black violence, in particular — but to assert a self-determining view of unity and power has to be belittled. It is utterly and unequivocally imperative. Watch the Throne — the resplendent Jay-Z/Kanye West collaboration — offers a perfect illustration of how the process works. Cynical critics and bloggers were quick to reach for the lowest hanging fruit on the tree. “Both West and Jay-Z were vocal backers of Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign,” one Chicago Tribune critic wrote in his review of the album, “but now that America is struggling to regain its economic bearings, they rhyme about their private jets, expensive watches and supermodel escapades.” The openly hostile characterization is emblematic of a larger campaign to indict hip hop at every turn as a societal plague. In a time of economic turmoil brought on by Wall Street greed and government malfeasance, the album’s references to the spoils of wealth became evidence of the shameless egoism, self promotion and greed that had poisoned the economy. Once the art was discredited as irrelevant, indeed toxic, ridiculing and dismissing its efforts to be in conversation with the black freedom struggle or to address black agency and power for the 21^st century was easy. J. Edgar Hoover would have been proud.

Minus any intelligible appraisal of the politics their art might have been articulating, hyperbolic, self-reinforcing headlines like “Why Kanye West Doesn’t Belong at Occupy Wall Street” and “Jay-Z’s Occupy Wall Street Problem” appeared perfectly legitimate. In the former, West was assailed for simply showing up at Zuccotti Park “adorned in thousands of dollars worth of the luxurious finery he’s heralded for years now in his music”. In the latter, Jay-Z was ridiculed for daring to appropriate and capitalize on the populist movement by selling $22 “Occupy All Streets” t-shirts.

Both instances illustrate the deep-seeded resentment of black success and the stunning lengths to which people in positions of authority are often willing to go in order to perpetuate negative stereotypes about hip hop and scapegoat black culture as America’s chief enemy combatant. This point was underscored by a recent New York Times Op-Ed praising a pair of Arabic speaking hip hop artists as “two of the most influential rappers in the history of hip hop” because “they articulate discontent over poverty, rising food prices, blackouts, unemployment, police repression and political corruption.” The author claimed that young populations in Egypt are “looking to rappers as voices of clarity and leadership.” Well, why is it then when Jay-Z rapped about the controversial killing of 20 year-old Danroy Henry by a police officer right here in the United States, asked why white beauty is privileged over black beauty, or engaged in a polemic on black self-determination no one bothered to step forward in support? Where was that article? When Talib Kweli released his Occupy Wall Street anthem the New York Times didn’t publish an Op-Ed praising hip hop as the voice of the movement. The implicit message is that global hip hop has “revolutionary” potential but when Rick Ross raps about Black Power and success he’s merely a hyper-materialist gangster. What is this about? Are we saying that hip hop is only socially relevant when the voice of discontent is speaking from a war torn country thousands of miles away?

At the core of these wildly divergent views — hip hop as a voice for social change vs. hip hop as an immoral tool of consumer capitalism — sits the same rigid and false dualism that led Americans of all stripes to demonize Malcolm and deify Martin. Because Kanye raps about luxury brands that the 99% can’t afford, he’s out of touch. Never mind that the Occupy Movement started as a protest against Wall Street corruption and greed not against those who produce value, not against wealth, but vulture capitalism that preys on the vulnerable. Never mind any that. Because he’s out of touch with the reality of the masses, he’s an enemy to the Occupy Movement, which purports to represent the 99 percent of which I am a proud member, therefore, so goes the line of reasoning, he should be my enemy, too.

This is deeply troubling because it papers over the conscious experience of being a young black man in a society where black masculinity and manhood are under the constant threat of control, assault and extermination, where black men have the twin misfortunes of the lowest employment rates and highest incarceration rates, the shortest life spans and the longest prison sentences. To characterize him as merely another wealthy celebrity is to deny a key ingredient in his life, his art, his self perception, his success, his neurosis and even the criticism he receives, all in order to promote a post-racial agenda that allegedly targets wealthy people off all colors even though we all know wealth and race are directly linked in this country. It ignores the inner conflicts his art wrestles with and the extent to which those conflicts stem from a complicated relationship with America. It’s tantamount to pretending race wasn’t a factor in the backlash hurled at Lebron James after his decision to leave Cleveland or that our feelings about the Obama presidency don’t have a racial dimension when, according to the most recent Gallup Poll, 85 percent of black Americans approve of the president’s job performance compared to only 37 percent of white Americans. No matter what anyone tells me, race still matters, even more so, perhaps, when you’re successful.

The unspoken ideology underpinning the casual and convenient disregard of race in this context suggests that “blackness” is fundamentally about or synonymous with the geography of despair, which is to say someone who is financially secure and doesn’t experience discrimination in the most obvious of ways is not really black. He or she is something else. In this light blackness is a condition to be remedied, a class bracket to be surmounted, a spatial designation to be avoided, a problem to be solved. It is the image that licenses Rick Santorum – a candidate for the nation’s highest office – to say, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” And it is the sound of an audience of supporters who would never consider themselves racists applauding.

A dualistic world view blunts our ability to appreciate complexity, nuance and multiplicity. It demands that we decide and defend, categorize and chastise rather than listen and learn. Because Jay-Z raps about his money, his Roc-a-wear clothing line’s “Occupy All Streets” t-shirts could only be a cynical marketing ploy to further enrich himself. It simply wasn’t possible that the enterprise, yes, was a commercial venture and a call to those who follow him and his art – and who notably absent from and ignorant of the Occupy Movement — to get involved. Bear in mind no one claimed foul when Kelly Clarkson’s record sales soared the week she endorsed Ron Paul for president. Did anyone expect her to share those proceeds with the Paul campaign? Of course not. Yet somehow our moral barometer goes haywire when a hip-hop mogul dares to do what’s always been done by others to black culture—-capitalize on the moment. Why does this double standard persist?

The answer, I think, resides in the story purists tell about hip-hop’s humble urban roots, its organic populism and the ideological tensions that flared up once its commercial value was recognized. The culture’s earliest practitioners were depicted as poor righteous Davids being bled by a blood thirsty, soul sucking music industry Goliath looking to make a quick buck off of ghetto culture. From that point on the myth of the hip-hop purist as folk figure indifferent to and even scornful of worldly possessions and living on the cosmic fruit of his love of hip hop alone has endured. No other contemporary American art form is as closely tied to the tension between grassroots communalism and consumer capitalism, been the subject of as much across-the-board criticism or been appropriated by as many self-proclaimed “authorities” (myself included) claiming ownership over and expertise in hip hop. The biggest loser in these turf wars is hip-hop itself. As artificial as categories like conscious and commercial, underground and mainstream, are, they stir up controversy which in turn generates buzz. Arabic hip hop as the voice of the revolution and American hip hop as consumer capitalism’s flunky is what results. There has never been a middle ground in which an artist can redefine what it means to be a socially conscious and savvy businessperson. “I make “Big Pimpin” or “Give It 2 Me”, (one of those)/ Ya’ll hail me as the greatest writer of the 21st Century,” Jay-Z says on 2007’s American Gangster soundtrack, “I make some thought-provoking shit/ Y’all question whether he falling off.” Even conscious rap’s patron saint, Talib Kweli, whose visit to Occupy Wall Street in early October was praised by the online progressive community, but whose albums sales remain flat, isn’t immune to the exacting standards of hip-hop orthodoxy. His appearance in a Pepsi-sponsored NFL commercial last year was considered hip hop heresy. “I’m 35 years old and there’s no music business, and I have grown man responsibilities,” Kweli told Billboard Magazine when his was social conscious credibility was questioned, “so of course I’m going to get paid for my craft. And I’m going to work with companies that are willing to support the lifestyle.”

We live in a world where old values and long-held beliefs and barriers are crumbling under the scrutiny of science, social media, common sense, citizen journalism, and bold action. Ambiguity, fluidity and flux are the new normal. Sex and gender norms are being challenged and transcended in the workplace and the bedroom. Gender bending virtuoso Lady Gaga is free to be a role model for little girls and boys. And yet the moment commercially successful hip-hop artists dare to assert an unpopular ethos — that is, that the pursuit, attainment and enjoyment of wealth can co-exist with and does not negate a desire for racial and economic justice – or, on the other hand, a socially conscious rapper decides he needs to pay his bills — we short circuit and revert to the familiar dualism that we, in our own lives, don’t live up to.

My aim here isn’t to defend or excuse luxury rap. My aim is to expose and interrupt a deeply ingrained architecture of thought that has fostered and maintained a constant condition of conflict that, on some level, affects us all. It has historically pit one image — the good black — against the other — the bad black. It has privileged one telling of the story — the American dream — over the other — the American nightmare. It has determined who and what is acceptable, what ideas and attitudes are appropriate, which agenda is relevant. And for over a century it conditioned many black folks, myself included, to view the future and our place in it as an either/or proposition.

When I look at the larger than life moving images of Malcolm and Martin at the Watch the Throne concert I choose to see the emergence of a new vision of black power—one that doesn’t have to threaten to assert strength, one that doesn’t have to apologize for its success in order to address injustice, one that can celebrate the past and present while hoping for better tomorrows. I also choose to see an active and conscious choice on the part of two contemporary black artists to dismantle a paradigm that has existed within American consciousness and culture for over one hundred years. In life Malcolm and Martin were pitted against one another. They were oppositional symbols. The media purposely presented them to Americans as a choice between good and evil, love and hate, violence and non violence. Martin could not afford to be seen in the presence of Malcolm. It would inevitably strike up fear and jeopardize the campaign for equal rights. Malcolm could not embrace Martin’s philosophy because he saw himself as belonging to the oppressed for whom dignity was paramount and direly urgent. Given our history of black male dysfunction and the culture of violence and self-hatred that has swallowed so many lives and so much potential, placing these two figures together is a powerful act of resistance and hope.

Hip hop is remarkable because it salvages and re-mixes the old into the new. Whether it’s ‘70s soul or Black power/black nationalist themes and symbols, sampling and re-purposing is crucial to the art form and to the culture. For its followers it is a tribute, a creative act, a reclamation of a forgotten past and a re-imagination of an unfolding future. It says clearly and unequivocally that we are not just the acted upon but the actors, not merely those being shaped by history but shapers of reality. The use of Malcolm and Martin is no different. In 2012 we can determine what they mean to us. We don’t have to choose from someone else’s menu. We’re free to see a confluence, a coupling out of which something new will continue to emerge. If anything the lack of controversy and commentary — the fact that so little was said or written about the message implied in the Martin and Malcolm symbolism — indicates just how far we have come. What was once unthinkable is now commonplace.

And yet this, too, poses its own challenge. Malcolm and Martin were continuously evolving, growing, deepening and reinventing themselves and their world views. We should never forget that Malcolm was ridiculed and dismissed by many for being irresponsible. We should never forget that Martin was pilloried for being out of touch with the people. These are eerily familiar criticisms. We should be mindful that the pop culture industry encourages us to quickly consume, criticize and discard contemporary hip hop. It devalues and is indeed threatened by deep engagement and thoughtful analysis, which, in an age where we increasingly consume exclusively that which conforms to our world view, is particularly dangerous. If all we ever hear and see is what we’re predisposed to hear and see, then we never grow. If all we do is deify and demonize then we become rigid, narrow. Hip Hop isn’t perfect, but neither were Malcolm, Martin or the movements they led. It’s up to us to cut through the noise and value the art we’ve collectively created. We can’t expect anyone else to put our art into perspective for us—where we’ve come from, where we are, where we’re going. We can’t allow others to tell us the historical significance of our culture. We certainly can’t wait for anyone else to give our iconic figures their due. We have to do the work. Last fall British DJ and BBC Radio 1 host Benji B produced an hour-long radio documentary about the late producer J Dilla. He interviewed everyone from Questove to Common to Dilla’s mother. I recently listened to the program. It was a beautifully enlightening and moving tribute to one of the culture’s most influential artists. We need more of this and not just when people die. If we believe in this culture then we have to have the courage to tell other people what it’s all about. We have to take the time to write the books and make the films and document the history. We have to claim our art and artists. We have to hold them and protect them and love them. We have to defend them warranted. We have to correct them when necessary. Because just as they didn’t understand Malcolm or Martin until our elders began to explain their significance, they — meaning the mainstream — will never understand hip hop or its chief practitioners until we tell them who they are and what they’re about. Which is who we are and what we’re about.

If there’s any message Jay-Z or Nas have successfully communicated to me as an artist and black man simply by virtue of their existence it’s this—I create my reality. I can take whatever’s been given to me and make something of my own that corresponds to my world view. And as that world view evolves it is my right to redefine and reinvent myself accordingly.

Beyond Beef: Re-imagining Black Power for the 21st Century

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:27:00 -0500

Remarks delivered during keynote address at the Third Annual Is Hip Hop History? Conference at City College of New York on February 25, 2012

____________________________________________________________________

By Dax-Devlon Ross

A tribute to the leaders and their wives, the song celebrates the pop icons’ rise from their humble origins to the heights of American-style prosperity. Considering the criticism the rappers fielded for releasing an “out of touch” album awash in excess at a time of widespread economic insecurity and social protest, the adoption of the Malcolm-Martin imagery, along with Ilyasah’s appreciation of the gesture, intrigued me. In particular, what are we to make of a pair of 21st Century black icons reviled by many for displays of wealth that epitomize a “me first” mentality borrowing the images of a pair of 20th Century black icons revered for their self sacrifice in the name of liberation? In what sense does this make sense?

For those who couldn’t make it out to see me @ the 3rd...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:54:23 -0500

For those who couldn’t make it out to see me @ the 3rd Annual Is Hip Hop History? Conference, here’s some footage from DJ’s Rock.com. This clip: My Top 3 MCs!

By Dax-Devlon Ross Bill Moyers is an American...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:50:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

Bill Moyers is an American Treasure—one of the few people in mainstream media I’m aware of who are genuinely curious, who really care about their audience, who really care about this country, and not just about offering yet another opinion.

This particular segment from his show with Neil Gabler is spot on in so far as the consequences of the media’s disastrous handling of our political discourse is concerned. Whether it’s MSNBC or FOX, it’s all the same—fear mongering, opinionating, and choir preaching. I love what Gabler says about cable news in particular—he calls it the “outsourcing of our opinions.” So true. So utterly and sadly true. Whenever I find myself watching MSNBC I feel like I’m in a liberal indoctrination camp. In as much as I agree with a great many of the points, it’s not what I need from my media. I know everything they’re telling me already. I don’t need them to villainize the other side every night. I don’t need to feel like I’m right and the other side is wrong in order to sleep. I don’t need that self-righteous sparkle that comes from feeling clean and pure, sanctified and secure at the end of the day. I need a total reframing of the discourse that moves me away from disgust and toward understanding. Because I’m certain that points of view that differ from mine have a basis in the reality of their experience. They, in some sense, make sense to those who hold them, just as my views are the result of my experience.

I’ve seen people change through discourse. I’ve seen people open their eyes and absorb new understandings — people of all ages, races, etc — and it’s a beautiful thing. But it doesn’t happen when we’re sitting in our sanctums cheering and booing. It happens when we — the real citizens united — are in rooms together, schools together, work spaces together, on basketball courts together (couldn’t help it). It happens, in short, when we turn away from the noise being engineered by central casting to generate ratings and toward one another for face to face interactions.

I can’t help but think about the fury I’ve been feeling about the latest Affirmative Action case set to be argued before the Supreme Court. The idea that access to a good college education is/should be based on this flimsy approximation of merit rooted in scores and grades pains me. But it’s reflective of our inability to appreciate what happens when college campuses (not to mention board rooms and work places) bring together people from diverse walks of life. Our polarizing media has misframed the debate about Affirmative Action for so long that we don’t even know that what we’re aiming to achieve isn’t just an equitable society but a better society—one that utilizes the unique skills and talents of everyone, not just those who perform well on tests. But because our media hasn’t performed its responsibility of raising our consciousness around this issue — that is that Affirmative Action has evolved from a mere civil rights issue to a nation building issue — we find ourselves in the same place we were in just a decade ago —debating whether some (presumably white) student was denied admission to a specific school because the school admitted some other student (presumably black) whose scores might not have been as high.

We need knew linguistic tools to talk about new issues and challenges. And we’ll only discover them when we’re in a room together.

Nas and Jay together. Gotta love it.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:05:45 -0500

Nas and Jay together. Gotta love it.

Dax @ CCNY's Third Annual "Is Hip Hop History?" Conference

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:52:58 -0500

Nas, Jay-Z ‘Battle’ Examined at CCNY Hip Hop Conference

Dax-Devlon Ross (top) and Pete Rock are keynote speakers for the Third Annual “Is Hip Hip History?” conference, February 24 - 25 at the Center for Worker Education.

Technology and the deejay, the battle between rappers Nas and Jay-Z, B-girls in a male dominated hip-hop world and a retrospective on graffiti are among the issues to be addressed during the third annual “Is Hip Hop History?” conference. Presented by The City College of New York’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies, the conference runs February 24-25 at the Center for Worker Education, seventh floor, 25 Broadway, New York.

“Hip hop pedagogy has become an established entity in academia,” said Warren Orange, a co-organizer of the conference. “Since 2009, our conference has provided a forum that features the work of researchers, hip hop industry practitioners, artists and working adult students. This year, the dialogue will be centered on “the battle” as a classic hip-hop theme, its own popular dialectics.”

The event, which is part of a hip-hop educational program available to students in the Division, is expected to draw approximately 200 participants. It is also part of City College’s celebration of Black History Month. Other hip-hop offerings include “History, Culture and Politics of Hip Hop,” a class taught by Mr. Orange during the spring 2012 semester that studies hip-hop’s impact on popular culture in the United States.

“We are looking to extend our vision of hip-hop pedagogy at CCNY, as other prestigious universities have done in recent years,” said Elena Romero, the other conference co-organizer. “We wish to bridge gulfs of race, class and age that often threaten thoughtful considerations of this relatively new cultural genre. We also intend that this stage serve as a bridge connecting the disciplinary lens of African American history and culture with that of American urban development.”

Mr. Orange and Ms. Romero are both academic advisers and lecturers with the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Legendary deejay and producer Pete Rock will serve as keynote speaker for the conference’s opening reception. He is a pioneer in fusing jazz, funk and soul into hip-hop, and he laid down the blueprint for beautiful soulful production in the genre. He also revolutionized rap production through groundbreaking studio wizardry and by making remixes matter more than the original songs while establishing ad-libs as a standard recording asset.

Dax-Devlon Ross, author of “The Nightmare and the Dream: Nas, Jay-Z and the History of Conflict in African-American Culture.” will serve as keynote speaker the second day. His book argues that the battle between Nas and Jay-Z at the turn of the millennium was the latest in a long line of creative conflicts between complex, oppositional African-American icons. It situates the philosophy and imagery of these two hip-hop icons within a tradition of rivalry and explains how and why their truce can be read as a pivotal generational moment that could and should be utilized as a teachable moment.

Other conference notables include B-Girl Rokafella and legendary videographer and photographer Henry Chalfant. Both will host Q & A’s following the presentation of their respective films, “All the Ladies Say” and “Style Wars.”

Admission to the conference for the general public is $20 for one day or $30 for both days; for students with a valid college I.D. the fee is $10 per day. The City College Office of the President and Office of the Dean of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education have provided support for the conference. Additional conference information »

CWE Contact: Elena Romero, 212-925-6625 , ext. 258, eromero@ccny.cuny.edu.

Surveillance Footage of NYPD Kicking Door to Kill Unarmed 18...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:06:32 -0500

Surveillance Footage of NYPD Kicking Door to Kill Unarmed 18 Year-Old

Classic Material: Really Rich Russian Says He'll Give (Almost) All Away

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:00:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

New Jersey Nets owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, is Russia’s third- richest man and Vladamir Putin’s opponent in Russia’s increasingly rough and tumble presidential race. Prokhorov recently said that he will give $17 billion of his $18 billion fortune to charity if he wins the presidency next month.

“I’ll sell everything, all my assets when I become president and donate almost all of the money to charity,” Prokhorov said during a talk show with fellow candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Prokorohov went on to say that he would only retain $1 billion for personal expenses after leaving office. “I’ll need something to live on,” Prokhorov, 46, said.

Classic Material

The Latest Casualty of the Stop and Frisk Regime

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:10:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

Two days ago I was leaving an event at a Harlem youth organization when I came face to face with the tail end of an encounter between the police and a teenager. As I approached the corner one plain clothes cop appeared to be issuing a final statement/warning to the teenager in question while two others hovered outside of an unmarked car parked at a reckless angle suggesting they’d rolled up on the kid jump-out style. My heart quickened. I braced myself. I had no ideas or plans but I felt I needed to be ready. Ready to intervene. Ready to observe. Ready to be frisked myself.

What GOP Race Baiting Really Means (and What Should be Done About It)

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:59:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

In a recent op-ed NYT columnist David Brooks argues that an increasingly divided nation needs a national service program that would “force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years.” In addition to the increased accessed to wealth, Brooks hints at a civilizing effect that this interaction can have on the lower tribe. He doesn’t say what the upper tribe is supposed to get out of the deal but he does end the piece by suggesting forced mixing would create a “better elite and a better mass.”

I like Brooks. I think he is fair and thoughtful. I enjoy reading him. In this instance I think he was angling for something daring but ultimately skirted around the thornier issue that an integrated society aims to interrupt—the misguided beliefs that those in the upper tribe have about themselves and those in the lower tribe, and the way those beliefs coupled with the concentration of wealth and power in the elite’s hands reinforces the division and inequity that maintains a caste system based largely on race.

That’s a mouth full; I know.

Forced diversity has a bad rap in this country. Its detractors rile up their base with hot-button terms like lowered standards, quotas, reverse discrimination, government interventionism and social engineering. Its advocates have traditionally defended diversity with shaky moral arguments rooted in equality, justice and rights. For the record, diversity for the sake of diversity is dangerous. If done just to meet a quota or appease a group, it’ll likely a remain superficial, fringe project that will ultimately confirm the deep-seeded prejudices of its detractors. Moreover, feigned efforts belittle and undermine the real value of diversity, which is finally beginning to emerge. In one broad study of 250 U.S. companies, increased diversity was shown to improve business performance across the board. In one of the most widely circulated diversity experiments to date, researchers at Tufts found that diverse juries take longer to deliberate, weigh more issues and come to different conclusions than all-white juries. The most important conclusion social scientists have drawn thus far is that having diversity in the room influences the way people think and ultimately decide, perhaps even unconsciously.

In the last six months alone the Obama administration has taken major steps to inject this new understanding of diversity’s importance into our body politic. Last August he signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to advance diversity in the workplace. “We will only succeed in our critical mission with a workforce that hails from, represents and is connected to the needs of every American community,” the director of the Office of Personnel Management said in a statement accompanying the order. This past December the administration issued new diversity guidelines to school districts and post-secondary institutions. School districts can now shape policies and school locations to achieve a better racial mix. In a sharp reversal of the Bush administration’s “race neutral” policy, colleges and universities can now “consider race to further the compelling interest of achieving diversity.” In a statement coinciding with the new guidelines, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “Diverse learning environments promote development of analytical skills, dismantle stereotypes and prepare students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world.”

Both statements point to a rebranding effort on the administration’s part. Diversity is no longer being spoken of or acted upon as an initiative to redress past injustices and level the playing field. It’s now being positioned as a key feature of the country’s future prospects. Predictably, both moves were met with criticism from the far right and apathy from the far left.

I’ve been thinking about these diversity initiatives in light of the latest round of racial humbuggery foaming up in the Republican primaries. I’d like to say I’m shocked but I know better. Black folks routinely get blamed for the country’s problems. It’s just the way things work here. I would argue that this episode of black bashing began with Rick Perry’s feckless remarks about the death penalty in early September. His shortcomings as a candidate aside, the audience’s applause following his grossly mean-spirited statements sent a clear message to viewers and to the rest of the field. It was open season on minorities of any kind and the candidate who tapped into the anger stood the best chance of winning that support. In the weeks that followed a gay soldier was booed by an audience of Republican supporters and Newt Gingrich publicly ridiculed the Occupy Movement. It was only a matter of time before black folks got their comeuppance.

I’m encouraged by the broad spectrum of Americans who’ve stepped up to discredit and denounce racism in the past few weeks. I’m equally encouraged that the remarks have inspired many in my Facebook community to take an active interest in the election. But being shocked and appalled by the racism in our country isn’t enough anymore. It doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. The real issue, as I see it, is that candidates are incredibly inept, inarticulate and flat out ignorant when it comes to diversity. These otherwise articulate men don’t have the slightest clue that diversity is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Ron Paul sees civil rights legislation as an affront to American values. Rick Santorum isn’t aware of the existence of a vast black middle class that defies his welfare stereotype. Newt Gingrich’s problems are twofold. He thinks black people are the only folks offended by his disparaging remarks and that arguing his case against welfare before the NAACP is a sufficient solution. As for Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts he stealthily repealed the state’s 20 year-old affirmative action policy during a summer recess. (In his first official act as Romney’s successor, Deval Patrick, reinstated the state’s affirmative action policy.) Each of these actions illustrates a clumsy disregard for diversity that has become the hallmark of the Republican Party.

Back in 2007 Al Sharpton invited Fox personality Bill O’Reilly to dinner at a famous soul food restaurant in Harlem. Afterward, O’Reilly gushed about his night on the town. “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City,” he said on his radio show. “I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.” As far as I can tell he honestly believed he was paying a compliment. O’Reilly’s statements demonstrate the quintessence of the “upper tribe” privilege coursing through the GOP primaries. A white man of a certain age and class can be a credible and highly compensated expert on American politics without any basic knowledge or experience whatsoever with cultures and viewpoints other than his own.

I don’t expect private citizens to feel comfortable talking about or dealing with diverse groups of people. As a nation we’re not there yet. That work is being done incrementally. But I know I’m not asking too much of a potential commander in chief to 1) understand the value of diversity to the nation as a whole and 2) place a premium on having diverse people around him or her in key decision-making roles because doing so improves the administration of government.

As I see it, the problem – the barrier – is that Brooks’ upper tribe has always seen its role in relation to the lower tribe as the civilizer, uplifter, benefactor and gatekeeper. It has rarely appreciated the work it needs to do to prepare for a multihued future or what it can learn from views and values informed by a different set of experiences. The business community is slowly learning this because global markets demand it. Colleges and universities are slowly learning this because competition for talent is stiff and prospective students and faculty are looking for diversity. The 2008 election notwithstanding, national politics remains one of the last visible strongholds of sameness. An astounding 96 percent of the U.S. Senate is white and 83 percent is male. The House is similarly homogeneous. In and of themselves racial and gender uniformity should not preclude good, fair governance. But when you combine these characteristics with the extreme concentrations of wealth in congress, a dispiriting image begins to emerge. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that Washington appears broken to outsiders. When sameness reigns, change wanes.

From the moment it took office, the Obama administration has by far been the most ethnically diverse administration the nation has ever known. It has striven to nominate diverse individuals to the federal bench and advance the rights of Americans with disabilities, gay and lesbian soldiers and others. It has been, without question and despite its imperfections, a shelter in the storm. Moving forward diversity at all levels and in all forms has to be part of the national vetting process. It is intertwined with foreign policy, immigration and the economy. When we’re talking about diplomacy, we’re talking about how we engage diverse viewpoints. When we’re talking about immigration, we’re talking about who has a legitimate stake in this country. When we’re talking about jobs and unemployment we’re talking about who gets an education, who gets an opportunity, who gets a promotion—all of which have historically been diversity issues. We’re also talking about who bothers pursuing an education, a job and a promotion. People try harder when they feel they’ve got a fair shot. As it stands, the current Republican field has fumbled the diversity ball so badly and habitually at every turn that if this was a football game all of them would be sitting on the sidelines, where they belong.

Has Optimism Hurt Obama?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:44:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

“When the going gets tough,” neuroscientist Tali Sharot writes in her 2011 book The Optimism Bias, “we desperately start searching for the silver lining.” Sharot believes that optimism bias — “the inclination to overestimate the likelihood of encountering positive events in the future and to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative events” — leads us to miscalculate our decisions. These miscalculations in turn cause us to regret our decisions. After reading Sharot’s book I thought about President Obama. Had he been hurt by the optimism we felt when he took office three years ago?

In the fall of 2008 Americans were enduring an unprecedented bout of public despair. The economy was tanking, two wars were spiraling, the environment was collapsing and the American people (not to mention people all over the globe) were in desperate need of a glimmer of light. We found it in Barack Obama. He inspired us. He comforted us. He even gave us reason to feel proud to be Americans. In a CBS/NY Times poll published less than a month before the ‘08 election, a record low 7% of Americans said the country was “going in the right direction.” As President-elect Obama prepared to take office three months later, another CBS/NYT poll revealed that 80% of Americans were optimistic about the next four years with him in office, 68% felt he would be a better-than-average president, 71% believed the economy would improve during his first year in office, and 61% said the country would be better in shape in five years. A week after Obama finished his first 100 days in office the CBS/NYT poll returned to Americans with the same question it asked in late 2008. This time around 41 percent said the country was headed in the right direction—a 34% gain in six months. Substantively speaking little had changed. We were still in a recession. The wars were still going on. And yet the public mood was irrefutably different.

The optimism was unprecedented and, as we would come to discover, short-lived. By November 2009, the president’s approval ratings had slid from 66% to 52%. His 38% approval rating this past fall was 12 points below the average for presidents at the same juncture across time. And as Obama’s approval ratings receded, so too did the wave of optimism that had swept him into office. When a CNN/ORC poll asked Americans how well they thought things would be going in the country at the end of 2009, 2010 and 2011, respondents replied with increased negativity each year. The 36% who said “badly” in 2009 crept up to 42% in 2010 and 55% this past fall. Similarly, an annual Gallup Poll of Americans’ optimism about the future for youth plummeted from 59% two months after Mr. Obama took office to a record low 44% two years later.

What’s curious is that even as Obama’s numbers fell, Americans’ optimism about their personal fortunes remained strong and steady. An AP-GFK poll released in December 2011 reported that 78% of Americans were optimistic for the upcoming year, a figure wholly consistent with what the CNN/ORC poll found when it asked respondents how well things are going today for them personally. In every single poll from 2009 through 2011 an impressive 78% reported “Fairly well” or “Very well”.

Does this mean we chose poorly? That Obama has been a disappointment? Or does it beg a different question: Did we underestimate the damage and overestimate his ability to fix it overnight?

Sharot would argue that, in general, we harbor positive illusions about ourselves and our lives. The economy may be in free fall, but the future has better plans for us. In fact, among those surveyed by Gallup about the dismal future of youth, high-income earners — those with presumably the most wealth and access — were the most pessimistic. According to Sharot, this is precisely how optimism bias operates. Public pessimism feeds our sense of exceptionalism relative to others which in turn feeds our optimism about our own lives. And so and so forth.

I would argue that the collision of social, historical, and economic forces that brought that particular moment into being are rare. The optimism that carried Obama into office wasn’t just biased toward a rosy future; it was a statistical outlier. And once that crisis was averted, order generally restored, and our markets substantially stabilized, public pessimism didn’t just recover; it recoiled with a vengeance. And its main target was the man whose very image was at one point synonymous with hope.

It’s been said that Americans are suffering from Obama fatigue. I don’t buy it. What we’re suffering from is optimism withdrawal. Now that the president’s mere presence doesn’t provide the same “high” anymore, we sulk, we groan, we nitpick, we even picket. I remember thinking this while reading Drew Westin’s well-circulated New York Times essay, “What Happened to Obama?”, last summer. In Westin’s view Obama’s refusal to tell Americans a story like FDR or MLK was his primary failure. What the president did in his very first State of the Union Address was level with us. He stood before America and said we’d lived through an era “where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.” Rather than coddle us, he leveled with us. We’d let our optimism run amuck. And for too long that same reckless optimism — the sense that everything should be fixed by now — has hijacked the conversation about an accomplished presidency that has advanced legislation to assist working people, women, people of color, gay and lesbian citizens, veterans, and younger Americans, and would have been unthinkable under McCain. (If you’re interested, an exhaustive list of the current administration’s achievements so far can be accessed on The PCTC (Please … Cut The Crap!) Blog.) Now the president is setting his sights on ensuring the 1% contribute their fair share. And through it all he’s continued to champion a bipartisan message that unites rather than divides the country. What more do we expect? Or are we just hellbent on perpetual dissatisfaction?

The breakthroughs in cognitive science are showing us who we are and how we operate in a language that is irrefutably honest. A lot of what we think we know about ourselves, our actions and our motivations just isn’t true. Memory is faulty. Bias is pervasive. Self-deception runs deep. And as difficult as it may be to wrap our brains around the implications of this growing body of knowledge, it’s important that we do so before we make a disastrous mistake just because we hope a quick fix can save the day. There is no silver bullet. We got lucky with Obama. Frankly, I’m encouraged by the direction our imperfect country is headed in. I may not see the end of the corporate state or Wall Street greed just yet, but the signs of economic recovery are real. Unemployment claims are down, the most recent jobs report showed notable growth and home sales are up. On balance the world is a safer, freer and more just than it was four years ago. That. Ain’t. Bad. If it means we can live long enough to fight for the better tomorrows we all eagerly anticipate and rightfully deserve, than I’ll take it. Yes, indeed.

Essentials: 7 Albums I Couldn't Live Without

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:52:00 -0500

By Derek Beres

This first in my Essentials: Music Series was the hardest to decide. Later posts will be broken down into genre. Like those, this is not a complete “Greatest Hits” of albums, but more a compendium of albums that have such strong emotional pull in my life that I could, possibly, live without them. I just would never want to.

A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders
Very few weekend nights went by at Rutgers without this record bumping in my, um, 1986 Chrysler Laser. When I dropped that car off to charity in ’99, I was auto-less for 12 years. Miraculously, when my wife and I bought our first together in 2011 (not a Laser), this album came right into steady rotation. Tribe was always ahead of its time by being very much embedded in its time. Timelessness is rare in music, especially so in hip-hop. Sure, there are plenty of cultural references that will define the early ‘90s, but the beats, rhymes and life they were living continues to be relevant. The total joy of “We Can Get Down” (the song Erica and I chose to walk up the aisle to after being wed), Q-Tip’s unmatched swagger on “Electric Relaxation,” the head and hip nods of “Award Tour”—they captured an energy that will never be harnessed again (not romanticizing a ‘better time,’ just saying they nailed it).

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Body and Soul
My introduction to the great Pakistani Qawwal was after he cut his record with Canadian producer Michael Brook, Night Song. An amazin intro, I soon fell in love with traditional qawwali (though Brook’s stellar guitar playing and usage of old Peter Gabriel electronic loops did add a new dimension to this art form). Nonetheless, I was hooked the moment that “Mayey Nee Main Dhak Farid Dey Jana” blazed out of my speakers. To know Nusrat is to love the legacy he left behind: hundreds of bootlegged concerts you can find at any Indian and Pakistani grocer for $5 a burned disc. While I also have a love affair with the two-disc Rick Rubin sessions for their incredible production dexterity, Body and Soul is my favorite complete album, with each of the four songs reminding me why a simple configuration of voice, harmonium, tabla and handclaps offers the most transporting listening experience imaginable.

Jeff Buckley: Grace
There’s a thirteen-minute live version of “Mojo Pin” on a bootleg in which the unfortunately deceased Buckley moans and shudders for six before exploding on this incredible, delicate song, a tribute to a close friend who couldn’t kick heroin. Hearing Buckley compare chocolate and god in the same line is only to begin to understand the lyrical wizardry of one of last century’s greatest voices. To this day it’s challenging for me to hear “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” without a tear. While his version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” might be played at every wedding and yoga class, you have to give the man credit. He heard music differently than the rest of us, and returned it in a way that none of us could match. Instead we just enjoy the luxurious, at times relaxed and at times irate voice of a genius.

John Coltrane: Africa/Brass
Pick one Coltrane album. Really? My gut goes with whatever “Out of This World” is on. Problem is, this post is devoted to records, and none has been played as often as Africa/Brass. Three songs clock in at just under 34 minutes, every second absolutely brilliant. With My Favorite Things and Giant Steps behind him, Coltrane upped his own ante by inviting twenty others into the studio for his first Impulse recording. This was a few years before free jazz, Trane leaving his more reserved self behind while staying within the context of structure and harmony that made him famous. The lead track, “Africa,” remains one of his best, while the version of “Greensleeves” presented on the LP will influence generations of jazz players to come.

Gil Scott Heron: Winter in America
In the late years of last century and early years of this, I had the opportunity to see Gil Scott-Heron perform live at SOB’s on three occasions. Each time he came out between two and four hours after he was supposed to hit the stage (a stretch even in SOB’s time). Each time it was only him and his piano. And each time I impatiently waited for the next time. Few men can sit in front of 700 people and keep you interested the way he could. And few albums are as beautiful, melodic and thoughtful as Winter in America. His tragic drug abuse was certainly self-caused; it’s a true shame. Few poets of this depth remain, and this warrior’s passing felt like something great had left the planet.

Kayhan Kalhor: The Wind
With his groundbreaking work in the North Indian/Persian project Ghazal alongside sitar great Shujaat Khan, as well as his performances with the Masters of Persian Music with Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Hossein Alizadeh, the Iranian kamancheh (spiked fiddle) maestro evolved his genre once again on this collaboration with two Turkish baglama greats. The baglama, an oud-like lute resembling a saz in tone and texture, plays gorgeously off Kalhor’s seemingly effortless bowed playing. Considering this fantastic recording is predominantly improvisational only lends power to the notion that all three players are masters of their instruments. There is but one way to listen to The Wind, and that is in its entirety.

Portishead: Dummy
It saddens me that trip-hop had such a limited shelf life. Sure, you’ll find a throwback once in a while. The entire Portishead/Massive Attack/Tricky contingent has gotten musically depressed and complicated. Gone are the days of a simple beat, solid bass line and a punchy kick drum. And gone is the day when Beth Gibbons sat back over that simple beat and bled her heart dry for us all to bare witness. Again, I’m in no way against changing a sound. Plenty of projects have been very good at it. Portishead has not been one of them. But we have Dummy. We’ll always have Dummy.