Greg Tate is an Old Man

Who hasn't read Greg Tate's "Hiphop at 30" article which made the front page of the Village Voice this week? Many bloggers have linked to it, praise all around. I've read the article twice and a half but refuse to drink the Kool Aid.

See, Tate is a great writer. And the Village Voice is a quality publication. But they have it wrong on this one.

Tate believes that the commercialization of Hiphop has ruined its roots of being powerful music that represents Black people. He says:

"Hiphop may have begun as a folk culture, defined by its isolation from mainstream society, but being that it was formed within the America that gave us the coon show, its folksiness was born to be bled once it began entertaining the same mainstream that had once excluded its originators...But from the moment "Rapper's Delight" went platinum, hiphop the folk culture became hiphop the American entertainment-industry sideshow."

Haven't we read this somewhere before? Claiming hiphop is dead sounds cool, but even little Virginia know it's not true. Plus it's too easy. C'mon, Tate. You can do better.

His thoughts on hip-hop's lack of social consciousness:

"And since those people just might need nothing more from hiphop in their geopolitically circumscribed lives than the escapism, glamour, and voyeurism of hiphop, why would they ever chasten hiphop for not steady ringing the alarm about the African American community's AIDS crisis, or for romanticizing incarceration more than attacking the prison-industrial complex, or for throwing a lyrical bone at issues of intimacy or literacy or, heaven forbid, debt relief in Africa and yada, yada, yada?" ("yadas" added by me).

Haven't we read this somewhere before? True believers, understand this- hiphop doesn't need to get more political, political movements need to get more hiphop. Nelly makes for a bad feminist. 50 Cent is not my spiritual leader, and I don't want him to be.

Let me quote Jeff Chang who once quoted Bill Stephney: "Woe be it unto a community that has to rely on rappers for political leadership. Because that doesn’t signify progress, that signifies default. Now that our community leaders cannot take up their responsibility, you’re gonna leave it up to an 18-year kid who has mad flow? What is the criteria by which he has risen to his leadership? He can flow? That’s the extent of it? If our leadership is to be determined by an 18-year old without a plan, then we’re in trouble. We’re f--ked."

The problem is our leaders have a hard time connecting with the people and are jealous of hip-hop's ability to strike a nerve and mobilize heads to buy, say, or think just about anything. So they blame the music for not using its powers for "good", and the fans for being so stupid as to be distracted and not listen to what they have to say. Our leaders (and I'm grouping politicians, ministers, and journalists under the term) have forgotten that they are the ones who are supposed to reveal the truth, speak the truth, and take us to the truth, not our entertainment. I want my comedies to make me laugh, my music to make me dance. That's it. Don't put the weight on someone else.

Tate goes on:

"I remember the Afrocentric dream of hiphop's becoming an agent of social change rather than elevating a few ex-drug dealers' bank accounts. Against my better judgment, I still count myself among that faithful."

This is sad, because that sentence sounds like it comes out of the Stanley Crouch, John McWhorter playbook. Tate sounds bitter. Disillusioned by the wrong expectations of the music he loves. He sounds old.

I wonder- when is the last time Tate went to the club and saw a thicky-thick girl drop down and get her eagle on right in front of him? I think an experience like that would change his opinion about hip-hop for the better.

UPDATE: David feels the same way about Tate's article and though many are divided.

Comments

[eric]

to borrow a line from Nelly, it's getting hot in here!

i'm feeling the love/hate like Black Eyed Peas collaborating with El-P.

it's interesting to see bloggers come down on both sides of this article. one this is for sure, hip hop is rough place for idealists and crusaders.

[D Kruz]

Right on, man. Any head who bitches about nothing good being released these days by hip hop artists is either stupid or lazy. There are so many cats dropping such nasty shit that I can't keep up with them all. They just don't end up on TV all of the time.

[the crossfader]

the rumors of hip-hop's death have been greatly exaggerated . . .

[Trent]

Damn, you came down hard on Gregg Tate. Spared him no mercy.

Thank you for this.

I have to admit, I agree with some of Gregg Tate's viewpoints on hip-hop. I have a love/hate relationship with the music and culture that I love.

But I appreicate reading this. It has restore my faith in hip-hop.

Hip-Hop is not dead . . . but damn, I'm tired of defending it.

[Steven Samuel]

People that claim Hip-Hop is dead are the same people who rely on MTV, Hot 97 and mixtapes to get their hip-hop from.

[spirit]

I disagree with your interpretation of Tate's piece: nowhere in his piece does Tate say or imply that only rappers can save us or that rappers should lead the movement. Instead, he is only suggesting that rappers should use their platform to speak to address political issues *more often* (not even exclusively, just more often). So, you're arguing a straw man here and shooting down something Tate did not even write. By the way, the tradition of expecting black entertainers to espouse more political content is a decades-old concept, going back at least to the late 60s when the Panthers used to *allegedly* run up on black entertainers and encourage them to get more radical (there is a famous rumor that Panthers forced James Brown to write "I'm Black and I'm Proud", but I have not seen enough substantiation of that rumor to know if it is true or not).

[Trekz]

objectivity is ok sometimes but your words on tate remind me why we will never be able to coexist as a species, especially blacks.

The only way to get things done with regards to hip-hop and our enslaved past is to make moves as a community, (proactive moves people) and recognize that our antagonist - European Americans (most of them) and ignorant black folk have forged a unique symbiotic relationship to cock block those of color and conscience who recognize the wrongs that have been consciously placed upon them and their people for so many centuries. Tate’s harsh text is justified for the simple fact that hip-hop was the only significant collateral that so-called African Americans had which could have moved them ‘closer’ in a game in which they have been repeatedly handed their hat. You have to take a more affronted approach to everything that gets assimilated and profited to the other team because each time you settle for hearing your own pseudo intellectual ponderings, they (you know who) get that much further ahead.

people are conditioned by television more than ever nowadays and for you not to see what he was trying to say in his article makes me think you are not thinking of the bigger picture for people of color (do me a favor and drive thru south philly or any other projects and see the true influence of hip-hop) then get back at me.

I can safely say that hip-hop, R&B, BET, UPN are doing more harm than good to our community. The Jury isn’t out on TVOne yet.

“Those who do nothing are left to be ruled by their inferiors” & "with great power comes great responsibility"

[Candicissima]

>>I wonder- when is the last time Tate went to the club and saw a thicky-thick girl drop down and get her eagle on right in front of him? I think an experience like that would change his opinion about hip-hop for the better.

Ah yes...how can we forget hip-hop is just about getting women to dance like they just got off the pole? Damn that Tate for losing sight of what's really important...

[Q.Rock639]

Ha ha...get your eagle on! That's funny. I know I'm the only one laughing but he answered the Tate debate question with a reference to "get your eagle on". Hashim makes me laugh. *wiping corner of my eye under my Cazals with my blue rag* That's good stuff right there.

~Not for nothing, I think I rememebr seeing Tate at the strip club that's on like 24th and 7th Avenue back in the day, I think its called "Billys" or something like that, duke was gettin his eagle on!

[Prof. AutoVonCoq]

"This is sad, because that sentence sounds like it comes out of the Stanley Crouch, John McWhorter playbook. Tate sounds bitter. Disillusioned by the wrong expectations of the music he loves. He sounds old."

He doesn't sound old, so much as he sounds intelligent.

Way to misinterpret a man's point. He's not saying political leadership SHOULD rest on the shoulders of popular music artists. He's saying it DOES, but that the influence is wasted when the best thing to come out of anybody influential's mouth is "get your eagle on girl." Riveting.

[muMs]

"I can safely say that hip-hop, R&B, BET, UPN are doing more harm than good to our community. The Jury isn’t out on TVOne yet."

i couldnt agree more.

its a shame that the thing you choose to attack tate with is his age. i guess your trying to say that he just doesn't get it. i think the real issue is that there is a whole generation of blacks that 'just don't get it'. who's only connection to the civil rights movement, Jim crow and the middle passage is a very thin string called hip hop and the string is getting thinner with every drug dealing gun totting mysogynist rapper spreading his message to a future drug dealing gun totting mysogynist who will say "fuck malcolm, fuck martin, fuck marcus... that dude was bitch. play that Jezzy homie... "

[haha]

i thought you had a point until you said tate needs to get to a club and see a girl dance for him. that made me think you are in fact, not a sane person, but a fucking idiot if thats the best you can come up with. theres good songs to dance to and theres shitty ones.

[Bredren]

Hiphop is more than alive, it's thriving online on this new site called RapSpace.TV. It's full of headz spitting rhymes and comeing up with new shit. You just gotta look for it!

[SITELIFANUA]

HIP-HOP is dead; it was born and died the moment it took its first step beyond its own space--the very moment its voice(s) declared life to it. Anything that's not unified and dismantled and fragmented across not only America but the world is dead. There was never hip-hop, it was just music which emerged from the suppressed communities of F.U.S.A... .Its contents are still very much alive and inherently breathing continuous life into the people in these communities but it was never attached to the 'music' form it claimed to give it life. Battling existed a century before hip-hop the music claimed it, struggling existed before and likewise to everything hip-hop claimed as its contents. What Nas was talking about as Hip-Hop is Dead is metaphorical and it means for everyone that claimed it should think of what they are doing as something different from what they think they are doing--hip-hopping. Meaning what they are doing and claiming as hip-hop in attachment to its urban-contexts and sub-cultural elements is something which never existed.
Why do everyone look to hip-hop (the music form) as some guideline which can trace back the origin of battling, emceeing, and so on when these existed historically beyond what hip-hop can take us back to? Hip-hop is dead cos it never manifested the conditions of suppressed peoples--and the moment it claimed to manifest these elements as its dynamism, it detached itself from it and therefore it carried on as something else yet still believing itself to be what is held in its face.

Look at Nas' 'Hip-Hop is Dead' and 'Untitled'...basically, it means 'get over yourself' and 'start something else' that’s more real than what you think yourself to be...basically saying that 'hip-hop' is what we say it is--what Kanye said when winning his award for best rap-hip-hop album last year, and likewise what everyone else who thinks they got something to say says in their own opinions. 'Untitled' is a new-growth metaphorically referring to the reality of black and other people's conditions in this f'd up world--something which the rubric 'hip-hop' can never embody. We can no longer look to hip-hop as an inspiration because it’s dynamically polluted with heterogeneously hateful shit rather than spiritually healing materials. What we should look to instead is individuals and how they utilise the elements of the social world for the betterment of oppressed people. And later, we can look at how some individuals with similar causes and styles can be grouped into a movement or sub-culture rather than just jumping into the wagon without being able to know your way around something historically unified into a term within which its elements contradicts each other in conflicts and all other types of shit

[Chilly Cholly]

I really dug that Midnight lightning, still in the middle of it.!! The cover is also off the hook. Just like to mention " The line from Somewhere over the rainbow' is misprinted. It supposed to say : "Back at the saloon my tears mix and mildew with my drink." {Not Dreams} Just had to get that one out!! Peace and Love* C.Cholly