Giving West a Shout Out

by Alexander Talcott

Rap, says William J. Bennett, former secretary of education and author of the Book of Virtues, is “filth and sewage” that is “degrading and dehumanizing.” Bushwick Bill, a 4’8” rapper from Houston, who was once shot in the eye by an ex-girlfriend, says that rap is “opera to people living in the ghetto.” For Dr. Cornel West, Professor of Afro-American Studies and the Philosophy of Religion at Harvard University, rap is his latest enterprise.

On September 25, Artemis Records released Sketches of My Culture. The label is known for its roster of rock and pop artists, ranging from Stevie Ray Vaughn brother and Double Trouble alum Jimmie Vaughn to gangster rapper Kurupt to the one-hit wonder Baha Men, of “Who let the dogs out?” fame.

Out of the 2,200 faculty members at Harvard, West is one of only fourteen University Professors. He has written almost twenty books, including the 1993 best-seller “Race Matters,” and his speaking engagements are routinely aired on C-SPAN. The recording and release of Sketches of my Culture is not altogether surprising. West participated in last summer’s Hip-Hop Summit in New York, which featured panel discussions with Sean “P. Diddy/Puff Daddy” Combs and Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons.

Chock-full of R&B riffs and hip-hop beats, West’s twelve-track freshman effort is thirty-five minutes of spoken word and rap. “I don't fool myself and think I'm a hip-hopper or nothing,” says West. There is little end rhyme and virtually no intra-track tempo changes. And the pedantic tone evokes Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton more so than it does modern hip-hop MC’s like Jay-Z and Method Man.

The album opens with “The Journey,” a track that follows the black music experience in America from spirituals to blues to jazz to R&B, finally arriving at hip-hop, which he calls “the greatest creative breakthrough in the last twenty-five years of the younger generation fusing linguistic virtuosity with rhythmic velocity.” The 48 year-old speaks often of the younger generation on the album and of his desire to pass the torch, so to speak, to black Americans born after the Civil Rights Movement. “The Journey” ends, but the album’s journey really begins, with an invitation by West: “Come with us. As we unfold the story and lay bare the drama.”

In “Stolen King,” West praises blacks for persevering. “From the heights of rich African humanity,” he ejaculates, “to the depths of sick American barbarity, in the whirlwinds of White Supremacy, black people preserved their sanity and dignity.”

West feels a sense of responsibility to black youth. “The older generation must bequeath and transmit the best of the old to the new for the younger generation will meet the challenge,” West says in “Elevate Your View.” He sends shout-outs to several prominent blacks, including Harriet Tubman and Marcus Garvey, and affirms that their examples and achievements will influence continued progress. West cries out, “The path is prologue to your future!”

“3 M’s” pays homage to Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers (misspelled “Medger” at least once in the liner notes), and Malcolm X. The falsetto chorus of the leaders’ first names is fairly irritating, but several clips from noted speeches are a nice touch.

In an interlude called “Frontline,” West says black Americans are not alone on the frontline of struggle in the world today. He acknowledges “AIDS in Africa, Solidarity with Mexican workers, Colombian peasants, Iraqi babies, and brothers and sisters in East Timor and Tibet,” but urges black Americans to “stay on the frontline.”

“N-Word” addresses the informal usage of the word “nigga” by blacks. The track format is a radio talk show skit. A DJ asks why fellow blacks must use the word. The first caller uses the word in every sentence and is disconnected. The second caller is a woman who says she uses it because, “When I call my man ‘nigga,’ he works hard.” The third and final caller is West, who says it is a very interesting conversation topic, “especially among the younger generation” of which the album is so mindful. West objects to the word because “it associates black people with being inferior, subhuman, and subordinate.” He asserts, “We ought to have a moratorium on the term. We ought not to use the term at all.” West has a hard time associating the term with people such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Within the hip-hop community, there is an interesting discourse on this topic. A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip chooses to use the derogatory term “nigga” in his music to recognize the history of discrimination against blacks. In the song “Sucka Nigga” from the 1993 album Midnight Maurauders, Q-Tip explains, “See, nigga first was used down in the Deep South, fallin’ out between the dome of the white man's mouth. It means that we will never grow, you know the word dummy. Other niggas in the community think it's crummy, but I don't, neither does the youth, ‘cause we embrace adversity.” Though West clearly disagrees with Q-Tip, he does not close the book on the issue, and engages the listening audience by asking, “But what do you think?”

In another interlude, “Reflections,” West’s nephew spits a little jive‹perplexing, but abbreviated. An example: “Heliocentric puts specific comprehension to circular flow with mass bind of mind velocity.” Just like “Kool Keith” Thornton, but incoherent.

The next track, “70’s Song,” is a nostalgic tune about the good old days of the 1970s, a strange concept given West’s persistent discussion of the ongoing struggle of black Americans. This is cleared up as the track develops and focuses on memories of the groove of 70’s music.

In the second-to-last track, “The Finale,” West brings closure to the album: “So we come to the end of this moment of our struggle.” However, in the outro, a spiritual called “Automobile,” we are reminded “But ya gotta keep on drivin’.”

West lists the Baptist church and Theodore Roosevelt as early influences. West should perhaps take some of Teddy Roosevelt’s advice with respect to future musical productions and “speak softly.” Or maybe not at all.