What does 50 have in common with Roger Clemens & Barry Bonds? This story is just beginning to break. By week's end it could be the fodder for an entire new season of Def Comedy Jam (uh, Tyler Perry?!), or the catalyst for some soul-searching. Or both. Or neither. What do you think?
Entertainers including the singer Mary J. Blige and the rapper 50 Cent are among thousands of people whose names are turning up in an investigation into obtaining steroids or human growth hormones, an Albany newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Times Union reported that the investigation, being conducted by the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares, also found evidence that in addition to Ms. Blige and 50 Cent, other possible recipients included two other musicians, Wyclef Jean and Timbaland, and Tyler Perry, an author, actor and producer in theater, film and television.
The newspaper cited records it had gotten and information from witnesses on Long Island who were cooperating with the investigation. A spokeswoman for Mr. Soares declined to comment on the report on Sunday.
...
None of the celebrities was accused of violating the law. Instead, the investigation has focused on stopping the flow of the drugs by cracking down on doctors who illegally prescribe them without seeing patients, and on the so-called anti-aging clinics, pharmacies and other distributors that supply the drugs.
UPDATE 1/15 :: Your boy in Ben Sisario's reax piece for the NY Times.Labels: hip-hop, steroids
Cooking! (l-r) Tony Tone, Vinnie, Rodstarz, and DJ Disco Wiz
I was told that last year's inaugural Trinity College International Hip-Hop Festival was the best of the wave of springtime hip-hop conferences. And this year's festival, which I'm told was much bigger than last, certainly did not disappoint. Ben Herson of Nomadic Wax, DJ Magee, and Zee Santiago invited me to bring a Total Chaos Hip-Hop Forum for the festival (btw big shout to Connie and Victoria and the World Up crew). I'm glad they asked.
I got to attend a great panel led by Marinieves Alba on the Afro-Latino Diaspora in hip-hop, with activist/DJ Loira "DJ Laylo" Limbal, Ariel Fernandez from Havana, Eli Efi from Sao Paulo, Rodstarz from Chicago's Rebel Diaz, and filmmaker Vanessa Diaz. The conversation quickly moved beyond a "here they are, isn't this great" to a deep discussion about the role hip-hop has played in reinvigorating educational and youth movements from Brazil to Chicago to the Bronx.
Eli Efi, in particular, spoke about how independent hip-hop "posses" transformed the entire educational system by taking it upon themselves to organize hip-hop programs in favela schools in Sao Paulo. Youths began to voice their concerns about the school system, and demanded more participation in decision-making. Parents as well suddenly began to understand their children's culture, and many more mothers began to be involved in the schools.
The work of these posses led to the government (under cultural minister and MPB superstar Gilberto Gil's oversight) adopting hip-hop formally into its cultural programming, a phenomenon documented by the New York Times just weeks ago. Needless to say, it was amazing to get the real straight from Eli Efi.
Our Total Chaos panel featured Toni Blackman, POPMASTER FABEL, Juba Kalamka, and Vijay Prashad (whose new book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, is absolutely essential).
Because the event was held on the Saturday after Karl Rove had performed a rap at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, I started with a question about whether this was an indication if hip-hop really was dead. Although the question was part rhetorical, part comic, it was meant to immediately establish a sense of what the current stakes are in debates about hip-hop.
Toni and FABEL both responded by noting the irony that men who cared nothing for the culture would use it in a mocking way, another example of how hip-hop currently is received in the global popular culture. FABEL called Rove a "hip-hopportunist". Vijay Prashad then noted that there was a history of blackface minstrelsy at such White House dinners, that in fact Rove's crunkface was in line with a history going back more than a century.
Panelists discussed the global roots of hip-hop, with Fabel drawing on various examples of how the dances of African diaspora could be seen in hip-hop, and also noting how similar American Indian dances were to hip-hop. Vijay spoke about how Bob Marley was the first truly globalized hero, and was "the prophet of structural adjustment". Hip-hop, in turn, reflects the shift in the state from a supportive one to a repressive one. This, he said, was its limitation—it had not yet done the work of imagining what a world without a repressive state might look like.
All the panelists talked about how to maintain a radical aesthetic in the face of rampant commercialization and continuing voicelessness. Juba noted that young gay rappers no longer have the expectation of speaking to each other, but in breaking big in the industry. Vijay decried the idea of art as property, noting that Jay-Z doesn't write a check to the Black community when he receives royalties for his records. FABEL noted that the decline of public jams and block parties has seriously affected the culture—there are fewer places for competition and evolution of the culture not tied to capital.
"Make films not war!" Charlie Ahearn, still wild after all these years
This thought brought the conversation full-circle. We were blessed with the presence of a large number of pioneers in the audience (Bronx-to-Connecticut connection stand up!), including the first Latino DJ and master chef (for real!) DJ Disco Wiz, Cold Crush Brother Tony Tone, and pioneering Latino b-boy Trac II (Starchild La Rock). Charlie Ahearn was filming the conference and getting folks to do some loud, crazy stuff with a bright red bullhorn.
Trac II addressed the panel and the audience at length, speaking about how he has been dismayed with the way some have treated hip-hop history. He had some words for all of us: hip-hop was always about empowerment. Not necessarily political empowerment, but the kind that makes you move.
We all moved out for some Peruvian food (which was really close to Chinese American home cooking, except the steaks weighed like 25 pounds each), and then returned for a great showcase, with incredible sets from La Bruja, African Underground (with Ben holding down the drumkit like a master), Baba Israel and Yako, and Les Nubians.
All in all, a perfect day. If anyone could come to this event and still be cynical about whether hip-hop can do its thing on a college campus, which if you think about it is just another space to take over, well they probably don't have a soul.Labels: african rap, brasil, cuba, hip-hop, karl rove
Spring in Laramie looks like winter in Alaska.
Thank you to Adrian Molina, Bethany, and the whole Laramie fam for taking care of their boy while we were all snowbound yesterday. The Shepherd Symposium was longish, I know, but great.
Unfortunately I won't be able to make it this afternoon to the Vassar event. Skies are clear here now in Wyo but there is no physical way to be there today. We'll resched the event as soon as we can.
See yall in Hartford at the Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival tomorrow.
Meanwhile it appears that the neocons have discovered hip-hop (or, uh, whatever that is), and they are still confused.
So I finally get out of town this morning to find that the neocons have discovered hip-hop (or, uh, whatever that is that they are trying to do). And that some of them have even begun trying to figure out how to create a neocon way of understanding hip-hop.
Signs of the end of the world or just that hip-hop really is dead? You decide.
Joseph Abrams begins by critiquing my new book Total Chaos, but he starts heading toward a way of defanging hip-hop by reducing it to just a pleasurable way of understanding "the black street world", his words, not mine. You may remember these are the same folks that last year tried to rewrite rock history recently as a proto-conservative movement.
Might have helped if folks actually read Can't Stop Won't Stop, or for that matter, the book being reviewed, rather than just say they did.
In any case, reducing hip-hop to a simple "identity movement" is one way to make hip-hop safe for the Karl Roves of the world. (And you see what the results are...) Now, although many academics have made the claim, I have never claimed hip-hop began as political movement. I've always repeated the lesson that Kool Herc schooled me in: it simply began as a way for Black youth--African American, Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean--in the Bronx to have fun. No more, no less.
So, identity, yes. And yes, hip-hop is a worldview by now. That's what Can't Stop Won't Stop was all about, for anyone paying attention. So the National Review is half right.
But here's where they're got it wrong. I have always said that it is impossible to separate aesthetics from the world it emerges in. If new-century neocons, or anyone else for that matter, would like to separate the rap and hip-hop arts that they think they like from the living, breathing context that it all issues from--the way they did with rock and roll--they will always have beef from me and the large large fam out here. Aesthetics is not a neutral truth that lives above the people.
People make art. Art represents actual lives. We can disagree about what it means, but no one should ever be able to erase those lives, just so that we can enjoy their labor conscience-free. Even if we buy the art, we don't purchase innocence along with it.
But anyway, no use wasting any more time on time wasters. Hit us back here or in person when you see us. It's all about extending the conversation.Labels: aesthetics, hip-hop, karl rove, neoconservatives, total chaos
