Reflect on the manner in which an musical artist(Mos Def) deals with issues of identity or racism - Essay Example

Mos Def: A Storm of Culture Word count: 2593 Page count: 9 Introduction News 26/2005 3:01:58 PM The NAACP Image Awards nominations have selected Mos Def for Outstanding Male Artist (The New Danger) as well as Outstanding Actor in a Television... (geffen records) 12/8/2005 11:23:10 AM Grammy nominations were announced this morning, and "Ghetto Rock" has been nominated for "Best Urban/Alternative Performance." (geffen records) Singing “I’m not gon sing a song or nothing. . . “ Mos Def : A Soldier’s Dream Raised in Brooklyn, Mos Def, (shortened from ‘Most Definitely) rapper, poet/songwriter, actor, and Muslim has become a major player in the entertainment scene while still maintaining a low ‘def’ image, considered underground. He has a wide fan base, including me for his work in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the movie. People from all over the world clamor to see Mos Def perform. Born Dante Terrel Smith in 1973, Mos Def has also been called Mighty Mos Def, The Freaky Night Watchman, Boogie Man, Black Dante, Dante Beze, Pretty Flaco and Flaco Bey (wikipedia 2006) all in an effort to develop his identity. Urban Thermo Dynamics was his first group with his siblings. He began working solo in 1996 with De La Soul and da Bush Babees before his first single came out, Universal Magnetic. Working with Talib Kweli, he formed Black Star in 1998. His first solo album came out in 1999, Black on Both Sides, and his second, The New Danger, in 2004. Despite saying that he wasn’t “down with that commercial nonsense” and that he wouldn’t do an album with JayZ and RocAFella for that reason, he still made a commercial for General Motors that made his fans wonder. Still, Mos Def “keeps it real” with his fan-base by his ‘real’ lyrics and his excellent movie portrayals. From the Public Enemy and CL Smooth days of sophisticated and socially conscious rap to the ‘gangsta’ rap of the ‘90’s, this genre of ‘music’ has been changing again thanks to artists such as Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common and more. It has been called “aware” and “intelligent” hip hop (wikipedia 2006). There are references to Mos Def’s Islamic roots in his work. One song from The New Danger album, The Rape Over, is said to be anti-semitic for referring to Lyor Cohen (as the “tall Israeli”). Record executives made Mos Def remove this song temporarily. Other controvery has stemmed from the song Katrina Clap which was critical of the response time by government administration to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in LA. Of the dozens of songs Mos Def has written, this paper will review four of cultural relevance. Acting The second focus of Mos Def’s career has been performing in movies. He began this part of his life at 14 with a television movie, God Bless the Child. After that he got a part in a sitcom called You Take The Kids with Nell Carter. But he was most noticed when he played the part of Bill Cosby’s sidekick in The Cosby Mysteries. It was after these jobs that he began the hip hop work. The new century has seen Mos Def break through in acting with roles in Bamboozled, Monster’s Ball, and Brown Sugar, for which he received two awards (wikipedia 2006). Following this he was “Left Ear” in The Italian Job, and “Detective Sgt. Lucas in The Woodsman, winning the Black Reel Awards for Best Actor in 2005. His portrayal of real life doctor, Vivien Thomas, in HBO’s Something the Lord Made will be considered later within this paper. Beside these movie roles, Mos Def has also performed on Broadway in Topdog/Underdog, a Tony-nominated and Pulitzer-winning play. He has been on Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show, and hosted the MOBO awards in London. And he has been the host of HBO’s Def Poetry show since it began 6 years ago. He is also now showing in 16 Blocks with Bruce Willis. There are 3 more movies for which he is filming or in pre-production. The reason I chose Mos Def for the focus of this paper is because of my strong admiration for his work overall, for his strength of dedication to his lifestyle and for the impact he has made culturally. Despite the amount of work he has done in his lifetime, there is a limited amount of personal information, from interviews or biographies. It was also not possible to contact him myself to gain further information. The listing of all his records and films is extensive, and his lyrics are available to anyone on the internet. It is from these that I will approach Mos Def’s relationship to contemporary culture. Violence, Beauty and Demographics Born and raised in Brooklyn; in love with Brooklyn “sweet and gritty”; proud of Brooklyn “Go Brooklyn!”, Mos Def knows his Brooklyn, the ‘good, the bad, the ugly’. It’s where he lives the “now time and space” and “strives” for his “fam” (song Brooklyn). He says “Im from the slums that created the bass that thump back” where he throws on his Izod and goes to neighborhood functions to “say a little something”. His song Brooklyn is very poetic in its description of “Bucktown” and shows how contemporary he is with lines like, “Four on the jake got the Timb rack; Blue collars metro carding it”. And they call it The Planet because there “aint a place that I know that bear resemblance” to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn he has his “Flatbush posse, generals and armies.” In this he shows the fine line between peaceful living and violence in the lines, “Live sway and the sharp balance of the battle axe; irons is brandished at, thugs draw they hammer back; it’s where you find the News 2 crew cameras at; it’s where my fam is at.” (song Brooklyn) But Brooklyn keeps on taking it because “worldwide we known for that.” But in idyllic terms, there are lines in Soldier’s Song that are awash with poeticism, such as “the pattern on this soft cloth shirt; Is made of workin’ men’s sweat; And prayin’ folk’s tears.” This line seems to call up the historical roots of blacks in America, while the next “That this pattern resembles; Tenement row houses, project high rises, Cell block tiers, Discontinued stretches of elevated train tracks; Slave ship gullies, acres of tombstones” talk about more recent history of inner-city blacks. After this the lines, “this fabric has been carefully blended; With an advanced new age polymer (oh man, that’s nice); To make the fabric lightweight; Weatherproof, and durable,; All this to give some sort of posture and dignity; To a broken body that is a host for scars” seem to be more about his own childhood (song Soldier’s Song). And even though soldiers look at his “soft, bright eyes” and say that he’s no soldier, his “flesh bullet-ridden remains hidden: Underneath these soft fabrics” testifies differently. The hard questioning gaze from his lover feels “like a nervous policeman’s hands” “anxious for discovery”. His “discretion is a fortress” but he doesn’t want her to leave or stop looking at him or stop searching “beyond this tender armor.” Mos Def, singing with Talib Kweli, in Astronomy (8th Light), combines his descriptive phrasing of blackness with a call to revolution, Dr. King style. Again, the violent with the beautiful intertwine in the lyrics about the Black Star. All the possible plays on those two words are used to define the times. “Is it the cat with the black shades, the black car?; Is it shinin from very far, to where you are?” In this song, Mos and Talib call on their audience to “work to respect the angelic; climb the mountaintop” after Mos says, “Black like my baby girls stare Black like the veil that the muslimina wear Black like the planet that they fear, why they scared? Black like the slave ship that later brought us here Black like the cheeks that are roadways for tears that leave black faces well traveled with years Black like assassin crosshairs Blacker than my granddaddy armchair He never really got no time to chill there Cause this life is warfare, warfare.” Then Talib really names the day when she says, “We on point like heat seekers; Targettin’ the black marketing strategists.” So the revolution of today, the ‘warfare’, is aimed at the Wall Street marketers who aim their products at the Black market, increase greed in the people, and sap their economic strength with the desire to own things they don’t need. It is because of this targeting that Mos Def decries commercialism. In his song, Brooklyn, there’s a line about this also, “Its off the handle black, wit big police scandals that; Turn into action screenplays sold to Miramax.” Corporate Responsibility Rap started in 1970 when DJ Kool Herc moved here from Jamaica carrying a tradition of “toasting” at parties. “Toasting” or “rapping” at a crowd meant reciting rhymes over some instrumental sections of reggae. It was also called “MCing” and DJ’s generally performed this entertainment. Then Grand Wizard Theodore discovered ‘scratching’ when he was using two turntables at once. Rappers Delight by Sugar Hill Gang was the first recorded rap song. It was party music. But the ‘80’s rappers kept rap from disappearing as a fad by introducing ghetto lyrics into it. The Message by the Furious Five sold over a million copies. This rap’s lyrics talk about the desolation of ghetto life: “You’ll admire all the numberbook takers; Thugs, pimps and pushers, and big money makers.” Based on the sales of this first rap, record companies and other rap singers got on board. Within a few years rap went from underground to mainstream. Now there are more white consumers buying rap than black. But Black-Americans still lay claim to this genre. After LL Cool J’s sexy rap “ballad” I Need Love, rappers KRS-1 and DJ Scott La Rock put an album together that centered around the “gun culture.” A gun culture in America revolves around anyone who buys handguns. For many in urban areas, gun ownership is rarely legal, and not used for legal purposes. This album is considered the beginning of the gangster rap era. La Rock ended up shot dead, and KRS-1 went solo with My Philosophy to end violence. He continues to work toward awareness of ghetto life. But Public Enemy, in 1988, continued to plug into inner-city rage and alienation, making their 2nd album in only 30 days and reaping in millions of dollars. After them came EPMD, NWA, P Diddy Combs, Tupac, 50 Cents and zillions more cashing in on the culture of violence. And corporate America cashed in on them. Even after several gangsta’ rappers ended up dead or in trouble with the law, record companies, radio stations, clothing manufacturers and many more businesses kept promoting this style. Reverend Al Sharpton accused record companies and radio stations of “glamorizing criminality and promoting feuds” (Tapper et al 2005). He asked for government intervention in the form of banning violent rapper felons for specific amounts of time. The best example of this type of ill-fated promotion are from events that occurred with 50 Cent at Radio Station Hot 97, NY City’s #1 hiphop station. Invited to be interviewed, the DJ proceeded to push the problems with protégé rapper Game. After the interview, a member of Game’s entourage was wounded when shooting started. But 50 Cent’s new album sold out in 5 days. 50 Cent and Game called a truce and together donated $250,000 to the Boys Choir of Harlem. If this was just hype, it wasn’t for another shooting that occurred minutes later at another record company (Tapper 2005). Many people, rappers, critics and the public have excused the violence engendered by gangster rap as a natural extension of ghetto life. Al Sharpton disagrees, as many people who lived in Harlem and other inner-city areas do, and believes that the violence is only perpetuated by this kind of rap. The perpetuation comes through younger kids who, with their IPods and internets and other hi-tech apparatus, turn this rap into background music for their lives. They adopt the mannerisms, the body language, the lingo of inner-city rap stars. And they pay for all this, which leads to more ‘entertainers’ creating more of it. Rappers imbedded in the drug culture write harsh lyrics that reflect the harshness of their lives. Young teens look at the Hollywood version of these lives as cool, never realizing how raw it really is. Music of the past also had its critics. Rock-n-roll wasn’t loved by the mainstream when it first came into fashion. Lyrics were also considered too mature for young teens. The sexuality was too blatant. The anti-establishment sensibility was too appealing. So rap cannot be accused as being the only undesirable entertainment ever created. But the music of Black America during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s was generally soulful, rich in instrumentals or harmonies, seductive more than sexy, and great to dance to. Jazz had become a sophisticated genre and has enjoyed a varied fan base over the years. The music was uplifting with messages of love or hope (McWhorter 2003). In answer to the gangster style of rap has come Queen Latifah who promotes unity rather than competition between black women, and The Roots, whose unique style uses actual musical instruments and avoids stereotypical macho rapping, and Warren Griffen who encourages teens to stay away from drugs and guns. Jeru the Damja’s Wrath of the Math avoids glamorizing guns and drugs by praising honesty and clean living. Some artists, such as Christopher Wallace went from crime to rhyme with Ready to Die and Life After Death. The Fugees, named because they were Haitian immigrants (refugees) in New York, rap about positive non-violent ideals and mix it up with a fusion of hip hop, soul, reggae and jazz. They won Best Rap Album in 1997 and have the biggest selling rap album of all time. It is in keeping with these attitudes that Mos Def brings his inner city upbringing into his art. Wanting to show the life of Doctor Vivien Thomas, Mos Def and Alan Rickman made the movie Something the Lord Made. In it Mos Def recreates the life of Dr. Thomas who started out a carpenter in the Great Depression, unable to finish his medical schooling. He ends up as a team with Dr. Alfred Blalock, a rich white surgeon, and make history by doing the first heart surgery. Dr. Thomas even creates the tools they use to perform it. Work such as this is what Mos Def wants to do with his money and fame to show young Black men that they can achieve more with focus and dedication. He also wants to show the dignity of Dr. Thomas when life has handed him lemons – that he goes on to make the best lemonade. It seems like Mos Def is going to be “lightweight, Weatherproof and durable.” References Internet sources: Google search for “Mos Def” and “Mos Def Lyrics” Geffen Records Retrieved 4/30/06 from http://www.mosdefmusic.com/community/news_comment.asp Mos Def Lyrics.com Retrieved 4/30/06 : The Mos Def Lyrics in Gnis365 are the property of Mos Def Lyrics respective authors, artists and labels www.mosdeflyrics.com Wikipedia Retrieved 4/30/06 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_Def NPR Fresh Aire from WHYY Retrieved 4/30/06 from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4240725 HBO website Retrieved 4/30/06 from http://www.hbo.com/films/stlm/ Google search for “culture of violence and hip hop” McWhorter, J. (2003) How Hip Hop Holds Blacks Back. Retrieved 4/30/06 from http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html Tapper, J. and Nelson, M. (2005) Is Corporate America to Blame. Retrieved 4/30/06 from http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/News/story?id=694982&page=1 Read More