embrace. This was the life, until a few weeks ago, that I thought I was having. I should have known better.
1989—a number, another summer—sound of the funky drummer!
What did I hear, that first time, when Donald Harrison’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice”
ended, and “Fight the Power” roared to life, in a cacophony of scratches, samples, and found noise, before that first deep bass hit, that nearly lifted me out of my chair? Something like the screeching of brakes, something like a jet plane taking off: that’s what the Bomb Squad sounded like to a fourteen-year-old in 1989, who was used to the tinny, Casio-looped beats on Eighties rap. Even before the story began, the credits were a body blow—the sheer brightness of the colors, the insistent, defiant, angry sidewalk dancing of Rosie Perez, in a pink miniskirt and tights, in shiny boxer’s trunks, bobbing and weaving. Everything that came after was a little after the fact of that firstsong.
Freedom of speech is freedom of death. Elvis was a hero to most. But he never meant shit to me.
I was listening. I was paying attention.
It wasn’t long after that that the few black kids at Newton South Middle started wearing T-shirts that said
It’s a black thing—you wouldn’t understand
.
By this time I had graduated from the haze of childhood and had begun hanging out, whenever I could, in Harvard Square, and particularly at Newbury Comics, the epicenter of cool. My father was just then negotiating the terms of his new job at Black & Decker in Baltimore—he was, is, an electrical engineer, who invents power-saving devices for small appliances—and I knew my world was shifting, that Newton was already history,
over
, and I started turning my attention to magazines:
SPIN
,
Rolling Stone
,
Alternative Press
,
Maximumrocknroll
,
Vibe
,
The Source
.
And it was in
SPIN
that I read an interview with Chuck D that contained the sentence
white liberals aren’t our salvation, they’re the problem.
It had never occurred to me that I was someone else’s problem.
—
With
Do the Right Thing
came Public Enemy. After Public Enemy came N.W.A., Niggaz With Attitude. And at the same moment, the Native Tongues, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, X-Clan, Del the Funky Homosapien, The Pharcyde, Black Sheep, Arrested Development. Ice-T, Ice Cube, Onyx. In the early Nineties, hip-hop was everywhere but invisible—still controversial, still not quite accepted even as music, still hardly on the radio, and therefore an indispensable part of a teenager’s education. By the time I was sixteen I was buying bootleg tapes of every new album, $5 a pop, and I could repeat whole songs, whole sides of albums. It was the omega to punk’s alpha, the nastiness to our earnestness.
Ends justifies the means, that’s the system, so I don’t celebrate no bullshit Thanksgiving.
I listened to it hypnotically, miming the gestures in trafficon the way to school, spraying my imaginary MAC-10 through the windshield.
We’re the number-one crew in the area, make a move for your gat and I’ll bury ya.
This shit is pathetic, my friend Ayala Kauffmann said, once, a year later, when I was giving her a ride to school. She was biracial, though it was easy to miss; with a mop of brown curls, a nose ring, and an Indian-print blouse she could have been any other Rebekah, Aviva, or Dasi. Hinjews, Mexijews, Sephardi ex-kibbutzniks—at Willow we had them all. Her father had disappeared when she was a baby, leaving nothing to her, not even his name, and her mother had remarried Ira Kauffmann, a balding, kindly Reform rabbi with fishy eyes.
I mean, she said, I get it. I get De La Soul. Everybody loves De La Soul. But this is just like looking at
Hustler
. It’s
gross
. And it’s grosser still because it’s
you
. Nobody meant this for you. Or if they did, it’s just a classic retread minstrel show.
Look at the bad black man!
You’re getting played. I can’t believe you would pay money for this shit.
I
1989—a number, another summer—sound of the funky drummer!
What did I hear, that first time, when Donald Harrison’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice”
ended, and “Fight the Power” roared to life, in a cacophony of scratches, samples, and found noise, before that first deep bass hit, that nearly lifted me out of my chair? Something like the screeching of brakes, something like a jet plane taking off: that’s what the Bomb Squad sounded like to a fourteen-year-old in 1989, who was used to the tinny, Casio-looped beats on Eighties rap. Even before the story began, the credits were a body blow—the sheer brightness of the colors, the insistent, defiant, angry sidewalk dancing of Rosie Perez, in a pink miniskirt and tights, in shiny boxer’s trunks, bobbing and weaving. Everything that came after was a little after the fact of that firstsong.
Freedom of speech is freedom of death. Elvis was a hero to most. But he never meant shit to me.
I was listening. I was paying attention.
It wasn’t long after that that the few black kids at Newton South Middle started wearing T-shirts that said
It’s a black thing—you wouldn’t understand
.
By this time I had graduated from the haze of childhood and had begun hanging out, whenever I could, in Harvard Square, and particularly at Newbury Comics, the epicenter of cool. My father was just then negotiating the terms of his new job at Black & Decker in Baltimore—he was, is, an electrical engineer, who invents power-saving devices for small appliances—and I knew my world was shifting, that Newton was already history,
over
, and I started turning my attention to magazines:
SPIN
,
Rolling Stone
,
Alternative Press
,
Maximumrocknroll
,
Vibe
,
The Source
.
And it was in
SPIN
that I read an interview with Chuck D that contained the sentence
white liberals aren’t our salvation, they’re the problem.
It had never occurred to me that I was someone else’s problem.
—
With
Do the Right Thing
came Public Enemy. After Public Enemy came N.W.A., Niggaz With Attitude. And at the same moment, the Native Tongues, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, X-Clan, Del the Funky Homosapien, The Pharcyde, Black Sheep, Arrested Development. Ice-T, Ice Cube, Onyx. In the early Nineties, hip-hop was everywhere but invisible—still controversial, still not quite accepted even as music, still hardly on the radio, and therefore an indispensable part of a teenager’s education. By the time I was sixteen I was buying bootleg tapes of every new album, $5 a pop, and I could repeat whole songs, whole sides of albums. It was the omega to punk’s alpha, the nastiness to our earnestness.
Ends justifies the means, that’s the system, so I don’t celebrate no bullshit Thanksgiving.
I listened to it hypnotically, miming the gestures in trafficon the way to school, spraying my imaginary MAC-10 through the windshield.
We’re the number-one crew in the area, make a move for your gat and I’ll bury ya.
This shit is pathetic, my friend Ayala Kauffmann said, once, a year later, when I was giving her a ride to school. She was biracial, though it was easy to miss; with a mop of brown curls, a nose ring, and an Indian-print blouse she could have been any other Rebekah, Aviva, or Dasi. Hinjews, Mexijews, Sephardi ex-kibbutzniks—at Willow we had them all. Her father had disappeared when she was a baby, leaving nothing to her, not even his name, and her mother had remarried Ira Kauffmann, a balding, kindly Reform rabbi with fishy eyes.
I mean, she said, I get it. I get De La Soul. Everybody loves De La Soul. But this is just like looking at
Hustler
. It’s
gross
. And it’s grosser still because it’s
you
. Nobody meant this for you. Or if they did, it’s just a classic retread minstrel show.
Look at the bad black man!
You’re getting played. I can’t believe you would pay money for this shit.
I
Similar Books
