'Twas ever thus. Back when we were youngsters the family cat, Rivelino (we named him after the World Cup winning, combative Brazillian midfielder. Later I had a pet Hamster whom I named Reggie The Bastard, but that's a different story for a different time), somehow managed to trap himself in the back of the piano and was mewing desperately for help. I was distraught. I was crying hysterically. Poor Rivelino. My brother, as rational as always, huffed, "What's wrong with you? All we need to do is pull the piano out. Jeez..."
I could give you loads of examples of where I'm the one shrieking with outrage like a raped goat, whilst my brother gives an insouciant shrug of his shoulders. Our roles have probably been reversed lots of times over the years, but at present I can only bring to mind two examples. A few years ago I was leafing through the NME (yeah, I know). In the ad section I came across a music emporium which announced proudly that it sold lots of different genres of music, but specialised mainly in Indie, Electronica, Heavy Metal and Nigger.
Being permanently drenched in cynicism it was pretty easy to make my voice sound light and breezy when I rang my brother to casually suggest he go to a newsagents and just have a quick flick through the ads section of this week's NME. "You'll know what it is when you see it," I teased. He rang me back an hour later in a frothing rage, which as I've already stated, is most unlike my brother. He had rung both the shop involved AND the publication to ask what they were playing at and to find out exactly what they planned to do about this gross transgression.
On the second occasion, we had just soundchecked for a show as Damaged Gods and strolled into the town centre for some deep-fried, potato based sustenance. Sitting down to eat at a grubby formica-topped table our senses were assaulted by a dishevelled man who announced "He's a nigger. A big, black fookin' nigger."
"What the-? Okay, Brother B," hissed my brother in a harsh whisper. Putting down his fork he curled his fingers into a fist as he used one of my many rap aliases (Big Brozilla, Triple XL, B.B. Mon£y and Daddy Long Stroke are amongst the others), "What are we going to do about this?"
"Leave it, G-Influence," I replied - plucking that particular nomenclature from a very long list of my brother's AKAs which includes Doc Connors, Wachowski and Chachi - "He's clearly disturbed."
Anyone notice the common thread between both incidents? That's right! The N-word.
Words exert influence. You can calm, scare, call to arms or induce sleep with words. Noam Chomsky posited that words and language are an integral part of our psychological being; they give shape and meaning to the things around us, and, in a very real and literal sense, the person and people that use them.
In magickal terms - I've been reading a lot of Aleister Crowley recently - invocations and spells are referred to as "Grimoire", literally "grammar" in French. One can harness power and create magick for one's own ends simply through the use of words.
The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning black. This word became the noun negro (black person) in English, and the colour black in Spanish and Portuguese. derogatory nigger and earlier English substitutes such as negar, neegar, neger, and niggor that developed into its lexico-semantic true version in English. It is probable that nigger is a phonetic spelling of the white Southern mispronunciation of Negro.
By the early 1800s it was firmly established as a pejorative term. In 1837 Hosea Easton wrote that nigger:
"is an opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon [blacks] as an inferior race. . . . The term in itself would be perfectly harmless were it used only to distinguish one class of society from another; but it is not used with that intent. . . . [I]t flows from the fountain of purpose to injure."The word "nigger" is imbued with so much hatred and prejudice that its mere utterance evokes centuries of discrimination and ignorance: conjuring an image of abused, enslaved forebears who were considered lazy, stupid, dirty, subhuman and unworthy of the dignity afforded any other human being. The use of the word was a form of ritual humiliation employed by slave masters.
Fast forward a couple of hundred years and Jay-Z and Kanye West are picking up Grammys for Niggas In Paris. I feel like crying. Trust Americans (a people whose country was founded by genocide and built on the backs of slaves) to trivialise the word, ignore its history, use it as a matey salutation and subscribe to the notion that its meaning changes depending on the complexion of the person saying it.
Slavery has caused severe emotional and psychological trauma, resulting in a self-hatred which manifests itself as Black people disrespecting themselves with the same words which were once used to denigrate them. No other culture does that. You never hear, "What up, my *insert racist epithet here*?!?!" as a greeting in any other culture. It would be quite horrific, but indicates that slavery and its attendant racism have succeeded.
The Godfather of the Black use of the N-word is Richard Pryor. In his rather slight autobiography Pryor Convictions, he said, "Nigger... I decided to make it my own. Nigger. I decided to take the sting out of it. Nigger. As if saying it over and over again would numb me and everybody else to its wretchedness. Nigger. Said it over and over like a preacher singing hallelujah."
In 1979, Pryor went to Kenya. He sat in a hotel lobby and saw, "gorgeous black people... The only people you saw were black. At the hotel, on television, in stores, on the street, in the newspapers, at restaurants, running the government, on advertisements. Everywhere."
Pryor said to his wife, "You know what? There are no niggers here. The people here, they still have their self-respect, their pride."
He left Africa regretting ever having uttered the word "nigger". "To this day I wish I'd never said the word. I felt its lameness. It was misunderstood by people. They didn't get what I was talking about. Neither did I. ... So I vowed never to say it again."
Of course, by then the damage had been done and the floodgates opened for an abundance of Hip Hop Proto-Pryors who considered the word mere slang and paved the way for the negative stereotype to become profitable and impose itself as a shorthand for Black culture. Professor Griff calls it the niggerfication of rap music. Wynton Marsalis calls it "ghetto minstrelsy." He says,
"Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching [Black] people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, spending money on expensive fluff, using language like 'bitch' and 'ho' and 'nigger'."Witnessing the rise of an "artist" like Chief Keef is depressing, but, as a teenager, he doesn't know any better. He's young, impressionable and plainly has no idea that he is perpetuating negative (Niggertive) images of black people, or that he could be a focus for the laser beam of racism.
I hold the rap elder statesmen and veterans to a higher standard. Jay-Z and Kanye West should know better, but the lure of filthy lucre means they'll shit yards of reinforced negative stereotypes to keep the shareholders happy and consolidate their personal brands. Music executives want to cash in on gangsta rap and its essentially disparaging narrative: the media complies, ignoring all other expressions of the music. The big money involved means that the corporations care nothing for the soul of hip-hop or the people who create it; their only concern is with profit.
Jay-Z's lyrics are a far more eloquent treatise on why he would rather rap about nothing and perpetuate the notion that, as a rapper, one has to be steeped in criminality and wallow in juvenilia for one's music to have any validity. It all comes down to the money...
"I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars / They criticise me for it yet they all yell holla / If skills sold truth be told I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli / Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I sold five mill, and I haven't rhymed like Common since." - Jay-Z, "Moment of Clarity"
The resulting dumbassification* sees rap artists all trying to sound the same: chasing the same coin in the consumer's pocket in an effort to justify the major label coddling of their record contracts. They sound so similar that they cancel each other out and create a cacophony of nihilism.
We also have a real-life CB4 movie plot in progress in the form of Rick Ross. In CB4 Chris Rock appropriates the identity of an incarcerated criminal, MC Gusto, in order to sell records, only for the real Gusto to turn up and claim a little violent restitution. All of which is precisely what Rick Ross has done. He's presently living out the rest of the movie as the Chicago Gangster Disciples issue death threats via YouTube(!), passing acerbic comment on his sales strategy. Mr Ross was the target of a drive-by shooting in late January as he sat in his Bentley: great for sales and it bolsters his street credibility.
From Melle Mel's hard-hitting and innovative The Message in 1982 to Niggas In Paris in 2013, the Grammys represent the celebration of Hip Hop's regression. It's ironic that Public Enemy's Chuck D was on hand to close the Grammy awards ceremony with an incendiary performance which was ably supported by LL Cool J, Tom Morello, Travis Barker and Z-Trip; reminding us of the true power of Hip Hop. Historically Public Enemy's call to Fight The Power and their highlighting of the Fear Of A Black Planet were ignored by the Grammys' voting panel in favour of less incendiary, less difficult and less challenging works. He brought a poignantly dignified presence which acted as a peerless counterpoint to the preceeding buffoonery.
* as coined by Mr Chuck
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