Holler If You Hear Me by Michael Eric Dyson

Holler If You Hear Me by Michael Eric Dyson

Author:Michael Eric Dyson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-04-07T04:00:00+00:00


Did Tupac draw from his own experiences, or did he raid the experiences of others to spin his haunting tales of urban woe and social neglect? If he did, would he be different from any other artist whose primary obligation is to make art out of imagination, fiction, and fantasy? Stories don’t have to be real to be true. Wouldn’t Tupac have been artistically authentic in borrowing the lives, experiences, and stories of others as the grist for his powerful rap narratives? The motivating force of Tupac’s art, as producer Preston Holmes phrases it, was “to keep this connection to the folks he saw as the most depressed,” the people “on the streets of Harlem and Baltimore and Marin City.” Ultimately, Holmes says, Tupac wanted to take those folk “somewhere else in terms of being able to look at their situation from a standpoint of having some real political insight into why things are the way they are.” It may have been that very tension—of trying to remain identified with black street life while trumpeting the urgency of political awareness—that made Tupac’s role demanding, if not schizophrenic. “He just really tried to be too many things to too many people,” says journalist Allison Samuels, who interviewed the rapper on several occasions. “And you really can lose yourself like that.”

Rap is ideally suited as a forum to discuss these ideas since it appeals to its adherents as a unique and authentic culture. As Holmes says, “People talk about ‘keeping it real’ ... and that was [Tupac], too.” In their most self-important moments, hip-hoppers conceive themselves building a cultural bulwark that facilitates a high level of honesty through narrative self-disclosure. Although “I” may be a dirty word in certain branches of journalism and the academy, it is a moral imperative in hip-hop. The genius of hip-hop is that its adherents convince each other—and judging by the attacks it receives, those outside their ranks—that its devices are meant immediately to disclose the truth of life through reportage. In truth, hip-hoppers construct narrative conventions and develop artistic norms through repeated practice and citation. The artistic métier that Tupac so brilliantly explored was built on just such a combustible premise: “What I say is who I am.” The shredding of the artistic and moral lines that separate stories and the truths they embody from “the real” is exactly what worries the critics of hip-hop and black youth.7

The aggressive embrace of authenticity is especially characteristic of the struggles to define black masculinity. Indeed, the debate over black authenticity is intimately bound to the clash of visions of masculine identity. The moral equivalency of authenticity and masculinity is an undeniable, if troubling, sign of the degree to which machismo and patriarchy continue to determine the cultural and political priorities of black life. Beyond the plague of gender imbalance in black social concerns, black men of every age confront crises. Older black men face staggering rates of imprisonment, chronic health crises, and persistent forms of racial oppression. If



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.