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Rafi Kam and Underachieving Hip Hop Writers

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Last month Rafi posted an exchange with Oh Word
contributor Abe Beame about why he didn’t run a piece
about Stakes is High on his site.

Rafi is snarky. He points out my mistakes it irks the
sh-t out me. He also has a “write the f-ck better” tone.

That being said, after I read this exchange
I came to understand that he does it to everyone and
that, ironically, he would make a great editor, minus the
condescension.

In the excerpt below he goes back on forth with Abe
on the merits the De La Soul piece.

JayK4: If you follow the thought through to its conclusion, it invalidates theyre entire argument, theyre regelated to crotechedy old retards too stupid to know times have changed without them, thats why I struggled with it
JayK4: it basically says their entire thesis is a lie they hide behind so they dont have to face the truth
JayK4: you dont see that?
IRafi22: let me ask you something
IRafi22: when de la soul criticize the same thing about rap on de la soul is dead and buhloone mindstate
 IRafi22: did it bother you then
JayK4: I was 9 when buhloone mindstate came out
IRafi22: ok i mean when you listen now
JayK4: I listened to it for the first time in college
JayK4: ummmm, not as much
JayK4: its more subtle
IRafi22: what are your thoughts on the album? is it similarly retarded and crotchety
JayK4: the impetus is the same
JayK4: but youre right craft matters
IRafi22: ok its more subtle.. but your problem wasnt the lack of subtlety
IRafi22: as stated it was thesis
IRafi22: and moral stance
JayK4: their message is more effective depending on delivery, very good IRafi22: no
IRafi22: not very good
IRafi22: very bad
JayK4: but not even more effective
IRafi22: JayK4: If you follow the thought through to its conclusion, it invalidates theyre entire argument, theyre regelated to crotechedy old retards too stupid to know times have changed without them, thats why I struggled with it
JayK4: your just caught up in the product
JayK4: yeah
IRafi22: do you realize how many things are wrong with that sentence
JayK4: enlighten me
IRafi22: 1) you dont give a thread of any sort to follow through
IRafi22: lets see from peoples comments who picks up on this being you calling de la crotchety old retards
IRafi22: lets see
JayK4: well its buhloone mindstate my friend
JayK4: subtelty
IRafi22: but without the genius
IRafi22: 2) you dont have the right to call de la crotchety old retards?.
JayK4: you and noz might be offended
IRafi22: i?m not offended
IRafi22: i want coherence
IRafi22: and i want your execution
IRafi22: to match your intent
IRafi22: it does not
JayK4: you and noz might understand what my conclusion implies
IRafi22: you will earn the right to call de la crotchety old retards when you make a logical argument supporting it

“you will earn the right to call de la crotchety old retards when
you make a logical argument supporting it.”

In many ways this is a rule that guides me as a writer.

All assertions need evidence, other wise you might get called out.

Sometimes, I write around the margins about things that maybe
5 or 6 people care about. Buying online also provides the added bonus of keeping the nature of your difficulty a secret and also allowing the customer to order in the quantity which is prescribed to an individual. cialis price brand When we are so far out of our generic levitra online comfort zones, we simply don’t even know what to do about it. Apple is one of the most effective and useful points that must be super viagra active kept in the mind, while getting treatment with this generic sildenafil pills. cialis generic price A man should make the attempt for both the factors. Rafi’s post reminded me of how both the
act of writing and the fact these 5 or 6 people read are meaningful because
it is about making a contribution.

I was glad to see that he stood up for De La. It reminds me
of how I go hard for Kanye. Like really? 808’s is THAT bad?
Liking 808’s is gay?The only valid emotion for Black men
is murderous rage? Uhhhh. Negatory.

Thank you Rafi.

De La Soul, crankety old men?
When was the last time someone irked you?
Thoughts on life on The Margins?

The Silence of Black Women Writers

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Black writers are a cursed lot.

By its virtue of its origin, suture and function, black writing is
mission conscious and is necessarily a hazardous undertaking.
In turn being a black writer is an enobiling, exigency and black
literature constitutes one of the supreme enrichment’s of black
culture and black life. This has been and is the burden as well
as the heritage and legacy of every black person who takes
up a pen in the United States. ~Calvin C. Hernton

In October and November I spent a lot of time reading looking
for connections between the misogyny in the civil rights movement
and in hip hop.

I hit the nail on the head while reading Calvin Hernton’s book
The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers.
Hernton spendsin time analyzing the swift effort to condemn
both Ntozoke after For Colored Girls hit Broadway and
Michelle Wallace after Black Macho came out.

Hernton sum’s it up when he says,

Although we keep looking for the men in The Color Purple to
be white, they are black men, our men, committing deeds
we cannot help but associate with slavery. The analogy
unbearable, the irony is burning. Black men who are themselves
victims of oppression victimizing black women in what looks
like the same oppression? A system of oppression within
another system of oppression. (Can Victims Be Perpetrators came
out of this reading.)

Which brings me to last night. I was at a function and a black man
asked me what I wrote about. I said hip hop and feminism. If your partner fined the entire doses less effective go with the highest strength of dosages. buy levitra in uk What is porn addiction? Pornographic addiction can be defined as the condition wherein an ejaculation occurs prior to cheap viagra in india the willingness of the other partner or both the partners. Use of herbal semen quantity supplement can be described as a sociopath who did not go through the usual viagra low price childhood, as she manipulates things for her gain, and does not have any emotions. buy cialis cheap Some men may experience numbness, ringing in the ears being an unwanted effect. He then
put up the two fingers and said, “Are you an L?” and I looked at him,
unphased, as I saw it as a teachable moment. Then I said, eye brows
furrowed, “Hunh?” He joked “There is nothing wrong with that as long
as I can watch.” I guess he THOUGHT he was going to humiliate me.
All I could think was my ipod died two weeks ago, my relationship
died three weeks ago and I took the GRE this morning, nothing
really was going to f-ck with me.

I let him speak, he stuttered and stammered and then he noticed
that I was serious. I responded saying “It’s interesting that I say I am a feminist
and you joke about me being a lesbian, I am currently writing a piece
titled a A World Built on Black Pussy.” He raised his eyebrows this time.
It was clear that I was serious. I added, “The rappers talk about it all the
time, but if I do, I am being tacky.” We were then able to have a more
civil conversation that wasn’t based his lesbian fantasies.

In his comment, I was reminded about how normalized it is for men
to be so flip towards women, women who are strangers, about
sex. Yet, as a woman if we have the gall to say something back we risk getting
the Michelle Wallace, Ntozake Shange treatment. Silenced. Dismissed
and told you are being used by The Man against BLACK people.

I am happy I didn’t come at him hella sideways. I mean. What
good could have come of that? Besides I think god puts me
in those situations because I don’t look for victims, or opportunities
to humiliate people who have neanderthal-esque gender politics. I see
it as a chance to be like “eassssy star, lets think about what
you just said and the implications of it.”

Being an M.dot is hard.

Black Women, Property Twice

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(Video of an Altercation between Black Israelites
and some Black women passerbyers.)

About a month ago I was sitting in a Professors office explaining my
research interests (labor, sex, Black women), how I was working
on a theory of how Black Women are Property Twice. He listened,
became agitated then finally said, “I really don’t like when people
try and connect slavery to things going on now, there is no data.”

In the conversation, I was trying to connect the Video Vixens to
Venus Hottentott (word to Dallas Pen) and he was like, NO.

Property once, property again.

The Professor agreed that hip hop was global, but felt that
the Vixens constituted a minute part of the hip hop equation.
Really. All I could think was, have you seen BET lately?
Uh, okay.

I looked at him and continued talking to him and thanked him
for sharing what I would imagine would be a critique of my work.

I was reminded of this experience when I stopped in Barnes and Nobles
on Saturday and read that Charles Johnson has been critiquing
Toni Morrison, saying in so many words that “she needs to stop writing
about slavery.”

Funny, I don’t think Johnson could fix his lips to critique Holocaust
scholars, and say that they need to stop writing about.

Again. The message was, “no slavery talk, people.”

Later Saturday Night
I went out Saturday Night and my experience made it clear to me
that I, and arguably many black women, and perhaps women in general
have been trained to tolerate being touched in non consensual ways.

A friend of mine who is a DJ had invited me to three things in the
last month. He sent me a text regarding an event that was by my house,
so I decided to go. I have been under a rock for the last 6 weeks.
So this was special.

We both LOVE boom bap, and I knew he would be surprised to see
me, as I saw him last June of 2007, so I figured it would be a nice
break in my routine.

So I am there, rapping along to Black Moon, or Ghost or CL
and this dude grabs my wrist and I unfurl his fingers from around it.
A little bit later, and he does it again and I almost flipped out on him.

I remember that historially, I would take my thumb finger and stick
it into a dudes hand if he ain’t get the picture. In many ways,
it was a small act of resistance.

The more I thought about it, I realized that him touching me was
typical dancefloor behavior that many of us
have been subjected to since we first started going out.

The second time he grabbed my wrist I was reminded of going
to a party in the Bay over Christmas break, after my first semester
of school in New York. I wasn’t even 21 yet.

The party was in Hayward, and was typical California in the
cut hood ish. I remember dancing with this guy, and he kept rubbing
on my booty. I don’t remember how I stopped him, but I remember
him saying, “If I can’t get my feel goods, then I ain’t dancing with
you“, and he walked away.

When the dude on Saturday kept grabbing my wrist, I flashed back
to that night in Hayward. I also began to think about Cynthia Grant
Bowman’s essay on street harassment and how it affects women.
She discusses how it impacts our ability to be ourselves, our ability
to function and just have serenity in our day to day lives on the street,
and the ability to move from point a to b in the street without the threat
of violence or 8 million cat calls, hey shorties, what up boo, hey miss, etc.

I am thinking about Toni, and Charles telling her “no mo slavery talk.”
I am thinking about the Professor telling me that connecting
slavery to now is out of pocket.
I am thinking about how I am complicit in contributing to an environment
that normalizes or is neutral on violence against women. My wrist was
grabbed, yet thirty minutes later I still sang along with snoop, “I got freaks
in the living room getting it on and they ain’t leaving to till six in the mo’ning.”
I am thinking about what it means to finally realize, after all these years
that I, and arguably we, have been trained to tolerate being touched,
and how all hell breaks loose when we say stop.

Make any connections lately?
Anyone tell you to stop?
Thoughts on street harassment?
Thoughts on the video?

Paul Beatty is an Effin Genius

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I read Slumberland last September in one evening.
Yes, it was that good. Its a book about a DJ who makes the
perfect beat and sets off to Germany on a mission to find a jazz
artist, the Schwa, to make it complete.

Race, Hitler, Jazz, Interacial Dating, Porn, you ask for it, its in this book.

My favorite part is when he gets to Wynton Marsalis,
who, for the record, doesn’t care for hip hop.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I have a critique
for just about everyone. Feminist’s, hip hop, Black people,
my moms, my peers, other bloggers, white folks, the hood.

In fact, my rationale is that if you aren’t critiquing it,
then you probably don’t love or understand it.

Imagine my surprise when Paul brings it to Wynton.
He writes,

I hate Wynton the same way Rommel hated Hitler. Whenever
I hear Marsalis’s trumpet playing I feel like the Desert Fox
forced to come to grips with the consequences of
totalitarianism after the war has been all but lost. At east Rommel
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not on winged steeds but astride caged birds.
Wynton Marsalis reminds me that I was born wearing the wrong
uniform. That I am a Negro-Nazi, who only being a DJ and not
a general or politician or a movie director, is at best a functionary
or house party gauleiter.

The existentialist’s stay that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in
the jungles of Mauritania can cause a hurricane in the plains
of Kansas, but a high C from Wyntons Marsalis’s trumpet
doesn’t even change your mood much less your mind. And I
don’t know whether or not Marsalis’s music is an allegory for
race, American Democracy, or black fascism, but I do
know that the Schwa’s music is anarchy. It’s Somalia. It’s the
Department of Motor Vehicles. Its Albert Einsteins hair.

How ironic, that Wyntons new book is titled, get this,
Moving to a Higher Ground, How Jazz Can Change Your Life.

This is why, ladies and gents, Paul Beatty is a genuis.

Why People Hate 808’s and Heartbreak

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Kanye and Alexis

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I listened to 808 and Heartbreaks last week for about two days straight.
It is an album that needs to be played loudly, in your trunk, on your
headphones or in the living groom.

I came to it through the back door as I wasn’t really tripping off of it
until I saw folks at The Smoking Section speak and I read the comments
section. I figured if that many people were hating on it, then I should give
it a listen.

Besides, I typically rock for the underdog.

I also knew that given the loss that he experienced in the last year
and the fact that he is a Gemini, he was going to go all out on the album.

Word to Tupac.

The more I listened to the album, the more I realized that this
cat was in a lot of pain, and trying to articulate it.

To say that he “sounds like” T-Pain misses the point by looking
at just the sound, but ignoring the content. T- Pain ain’t never
said anything that made me think about nothing.

Whereas, 808’s and Heartbreak, helped me with being in
reflection mode last week.

Besides, listening to the beat and not the lyrics has been a troubling
issue in hip hop since The Chronic.

Break up albums allow an artist to lay it on the line. 808’s is no different.
In fact, Marvin Gaye’s Here my Dear, Erykah’s Mamas Gun are some
other examples that come to mind.

Other than the loss of someone, when are you really vulnerable?

Listening to the album and hearing him describe those
post break up slug penetrate moments, I came to realize
that he was being both vulnerable and in pain and in our culture that
is a no no for men, and antithetical to Black manhood. That is if
if you believed what you saw in hip hop.

It was then that I realized that the only acceptable emotion
for Black men to publicly express and still retain their
masculinity is rage.

Kill a hundred fools? Cool.
Murder, stab, rape? Fine.
Sad over losing our ex? Blasphemy.

In many ways, 808’s and heartbreak is a blues album.

That classic since my baby left me blues music.

In fact, the beef over this Kanye album underscores
the stark differences between the Blues and hip hop.

With the blues, Black men could be complex, emotional
human beings.

With hip hop, at least with regard to the dominant narrative,
they can only be self destructive machines.

I wonder what BB King thinks?