Battin leadoff as usual, the dude, Blackink got me wondering: Where in the world is Eunice Chantilly? He’s right that if there was one person in the world Clair Huxtable would’ve wound up cuttin before the show was over (besides Vanessa), it was Eunice Chantilly.
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Resident historian, Bijan Bayne, drops science with a photo essay on Black mens’ hairstyles throughout the years. There’s a certain cycle to the whole thing, but Rick James’ coifs stand out.
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Steelers might be fin’a overtake the Eagles. Black coach? Check. Black (partial) owner? Check. Black OWNER?! Yeah, yo. John Stallworth is part of an investment group that is helping the Rooney Family to maintain ownership of the team. So it ain’t like he’s a majority owner or anything like that, but that’s gettin closer. That ups the ante a whole nother level.
I support police. One of my closest friends in life is a cop. But that don’t mean everything officers do is legitimate. What a lot of people don’t realize is that although police work is mostly about enforcing the law, it’s largely about customer service. That is, while your friendly neighborhood officer has a lot more authority and responsibility than a CSR at your cell phone company, the manner in which officers handle their business is essentially a customer service transaction. Just like the person at the cell phone company, with whom you also interact almost exclusively when there is a problem, the police officer can make your situation more or less difficult with how he handles the situation. The difference is that the policeman is a CSR with a gun and a badge — they can make you have a bad day or make this your last day. I’ve had mostly positivie experiences with the police. Most of the time, I’m respectful, they’re respectful, and not much happens. I may get a ticket, I may not. Unfortunately, there are lots of brothers and sisters out there for whom that experience is not the norm. You can count Ryan Moats of the Houston Texans, formerly of the Eagles, among them.
Moats’ case represents an extreme abuse of power and lack of sensitivity and common decency. Unfortunately, for too many brothers and sisters, this is the only side of the law they see. It’s not just so-called radicals who see the police as an occupying force. I know a lotta people who live according to the law, work hard, do for their fellow man, and all that good stuff, and cannot stand police, as a general rule. They try to argue me down when I tell them that personal relationships notwithstanding, I don’t have a problem with police. They think I’m crazy when i tell them that if you treat the police with respect, they’ll treat you with respect. Legislative bodies don’t help my case when they pass inane laws about sagging pants that give police even more authority to harrass people for no reason.
And in the midst of all this, I wonder: where’s the name-brand Black conservative? See, this is where I wonder about all that team-playing stuff. There’s clearly something wrong here. You don’t hafta be a Nationalist to see it, either. But while I tend to see name-brand Black conservatives wondering how best to bring their agenda to Black folks writ large, I’m trying to tell you — this is, or should be, a non-partisan issue. But it’s not. Cuz if you want that captial ‘C,’ or that ‘R,’ you hafta side with law enforcement. Unless there’s some wrinkle to the case (see: Durham, NC 2006). Or at least, that’s how it seems from here. But I don’t know. I’ve never seen or heard any evidence to the contrary. Sometimes I wonder if it’s seen as too much of a ‘Black radical’ issue to address, kinda like progressive academics won’t address cultural issues when talking about the poor because they’re afraid of sounding too conservative.
It’s really a shame, because there are multiple lenses through which to view this problem, and some angles might actually provide a solution. Fortunately in this case, the camera in Officer Powell’s cruiser was on. I hope it helps to open some eyes.
Over in the comments at Booker, I saw somethin that kinda caught my attention. The discussion over there is about the code switching (or the lack thereof) of the Obama family, kinda centering on President Obama’s use of the phrase, “Nah, we straight” when he was at Ben’s Chili Bowl. While I’m kinda interested in the Obamas as a very visible example of code-switching, this ain’t really about them. It’s about the idea of code switching and its function.
In the comments over there, I mentioned that I give the side-eye to Black folks who don’t code switch. It’s not necessarily that I regard them as less-Black or anything like that, I just don’t like the way it sounds. But then, I readily concede that I’m prejudiced. I like my Black folks to sound a certain way, and I like my white folks to sound some other way. That’s just me. At the end of the day, jokers talk how they talk and it’s all good, but I still have my preferences. That’s why my daughter’s valley girl-sounding talk is mildly irritating to me, when you get down to it.
See, here’s the thing: I expect folks to sound profesisonal in the workplace. Depending on the specifics of the job, sounding “professional” may entail using more jargon than vernacular and effectively morphing to that generic “mid-america”-type newscaster speech style. I don’t have a problem with that. I do it myself. One time I was talkin to somebody on the phone and he said I reminded him of Mike Huckabee. (He meant it as a compliment, so I took it as one.) Now the people who know me personally would be staggered by that. One of my friends who I’ve known since grade school but hadn’t talked to in several years (Facebook is the truth) just about died when I told him that I had taught English. You talmbout bein strecthed beyond the ability to suspend disbelief… But that’s me. That’s what I do, and that’s what I grew up doing. And because we tend to normalize our behavior, and that of our families, that’s pretty much what I expect everybody to do. I’ve actually had people tell me that my speech sounded like an affectation, but that’s only because of the context in which they originally met me. People who knew me from grad school generally expected me to sound like I did in grad school when on the street. Maybe within a degree or two. But my work/school talk is radically different from how I sound any context other than those. The fact that they were surprised only means that I had switched very well. (And that’s even before we take into account how much I say “14.”)
My usual metaphor for language as far as code-switching goes is shoes. You wear the right shoe for the right occasion. Just like you put on the right linguistic style – diction, vocabulary, all’a that – in the appropriate circumstances. Now I know that there’s some Black folks who don’t code switch. They stay in that “Rockport” all day. And that’s fine. I don’t begrudge them…too much (cept Ave 2.0 ^X). Me? When I’m anywhere but at work, it’s all about that “Adidas,” and more than likely, it’s gon be them “flip-flops.”
Soaring (At Dawn) – Les McCann You Are The Way You Are (Instrumental) – Marvin Gaye Lookin’ For Another Pure Love – Stevie Wonder Sensations – Sweetback Softly Softly – Sweetback A Song For You – Donny Hathaway You’ve Got It Bad Girl – Stevie Wonder Summer In The City – Quincy Jones When My Words R Few – Tonex Blairtree Road – Tonex Song #3 (Instrumental) – Marvin Gaye Mermaid – Sade Early Sunday Morning – Isaac Hayes
I was ridin in the car, listening to one of the songs on this list when it all of a sudden dawned on me that I’d never really focused on any Public Enemy tracks, with the exception of Rebel Without A Pause – and that one specifically because of it’s singular place in my musical canon. So let me say it like this: without having any of the braggadocio that marks classic emceeing, Chuck D was nice with his. Real nice. Was he on that Rakim/Kane/G-Rap/Jheri Curl Ice Cube level? Probably not. But he was far more than functional. When most people talk about Chuck, they focus on the message behind the lyrics and not the lyrics themselves, so much. That’s only natural, because Chuck wrote with a purpose. But that’s not to say that he didn’t have dope rhymes, because he did. In fact, I’d venture to say that if Chuck wasn’t as dope as he was, PE would have never ascended the way they did, and people would never have gotten intoxicated with the idea of hip-hop as an explicitly political vehicle. Or the idea wouldn’t have caught on to the extent that it did.
Having said all that, my PE favorite 10. In no particular order, except #1. Of course.
10. Crayola – The last PE album I bought was There’s A Poison Goin On. Crayola, a screed against commercial radio and its close relationship with the recording industry, was one of my favorites.
9. You’re Gonna Get Yours – I like to point to this song as being a throwback to when hip-hop was literally real because even though the materialistic aspect is there — it is a song about a car, after all — it’s an affordable car. It was an Oldsmobile 98. In fact, if you look on the cover of the 12-inch, you can see that it wasn’t even a new car. Even when Chuck talked about replacing the 98, it was with something else affordable – a Bronco.
8. Burn Hollywood Burn – Chuck. Cube. Kane. Nuff said. What’s funny is that of the three verses on this song, Cube, who may have been at his lyrical apex at the time, was clearly the least of the three. I’m tryina tell you : Chuck was nicer than you realize.
7. Can’t Truss It – The middle verse here is killin it. There were a few songs where Chuck completely blacked out, and this was one of them. Mathematics error notwithstanding, the way he recounts the story of the middle passage first-person but managed to make a dope verse of it? Nah, man. You can’t front on Chuck.
6. Revolutionary Generation – This was the first song I’d ever heard where somebody recanted one of his old songs. In this ode to Black women, Chuck actually admits his culpability in recording “Sophisticated Bitch,” from Yo! Bun Rush The Show. The Baby Huey sample in there was what completely sold me on the song in the first place, though.
5. Timebomb – One verse over the Meters’ “Just Kissed My Baby.” This was the first song that really made me think about Chuck as a lyricist, partially because it’s closer to the classic emcee mold. But when I actually started to break it down one day, I realized Chuck could actually rhyme.
4. Fight The Power – This is probably PE’s signature song, and for good reason. I was singin along the other day when I realized that 1989 was 20 years ago. You talkin about feeling old? Pssshh!
3. War at 33 1/3 – That first verse? Chuck. Blacked. Out. Like, if I were gonna do a lineup of all my favorite verses, I’m tryin to tell you that that would stand up against any of them. I guess this song’s just as good as any to mention the importance of Chuck’s voice. Not so much his figurative voice, but his literal voice. I don’t think too many artists could have performed over Bomb Squad tracks. And that’s not a slight on them, like they couldn’t have tailored their tracks to suit the performer, but these tracks right here? As noisy and busy as they were? Chuck’s just about the only person who could’ve handled them.
2. Welcome To The Terrordome – Again with the noisy track. And again with Chuck blacking out on a verse. My favorite Terrordome memory has to be seeing them in concert and Flav riding a bike onto the stage.
1. Rebel Without A Pause – This is just my personal ultimate record. Nothing more, nothing less. Since I started this blog, I’ve probably talked about it 6 or 7 times. No need to do it again, but suffice it to say that it changed everything.
About this time every year, I come up on a case that represents a tragic miscarriage of justice. It’s usually a case where some person has been convicted of a felony they did not commit. Unlike the A-Team, they have actually served jail time. In some cases, the actual perpetrator is known, in other cases not. But in all cases, they’re Black. Usually male. This year, we have Anthony Harris.
A couple-few years ago, some lacrosse players at a prestigious Southern university were accused of committing a capital crime. The charges were somewhat specious, but for various reasons, prosecution continued. Right from the get-go, many commentators jumped on from their perspective and argued the merits of the case and what the legal system should (or should not) have been doing. When it finally turned out that there was no merit to the case and the charges were dropped, some of the commentators were up in arms about what this meant for the law, and how it signaled the eventual downfall of our legal system and all kinda other hyperbolic whatnot.
Again, I ask, specifically for the Black folks who were riding soooo hard for the Duke boys: what about all these other cases of Black folks who weren’t doing anything remotely wrong, who were not just charged, but convicted and actually served time? Where’s the outrage on their behalf? Where are the calls for legal reform? I really wanna believe that the name-brand (and off-brand) Black conservatives aren’t just in it to play sides. I swear I do. But when I see the absence of even a thought about the Black folks who have been unjustly incarcerated, I wonder sometimes. Especially vis a vis the Duke boys. Like, if justice became the crusade then, why not for these folks?
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Travis Henry * Octomom = China.
*dead*
Travis 100% Henry. 110%, actually. He got 11 kids and 10 babymamas. But one of em had a multiple birth. If he was as prolific running the ball as he was runnin game, he might would still be in the League now. Well…except for that other situation he had goin on.
Is it possible for somebody to live all the stereotypes at the same time?
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I’m obviously not very happy with the Eagles this offseason, but I hafta wait til the draft really feel one way or the other. If they can pull Boldin, I guess I’ll be able to find a way to get excited come August.
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The Funky Flea Market over there on 6th and Florida NE is the truth.
Finally, this NEVER fails to crack me up. Never. Ever.
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UPDATE
So I goes by the Funky Flea Market like I do most Saturdays. What’s waiting for me? A copy of the book I can never keep in the library, The Life And Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger.
I was ridin in the car, listening to one of the songs on this list when it all of a sudden dawned on me that I’d never really focused on any Public Enemy tracks, with the exception of Rebel Without A Pause – and that one specifically because of it’s singular place in my musical canon. So let me say it like this: without having any of the braggadocio that marks classic emceeing, Chuck D was nice with his. Real nice. Was he on that Rakim/Kane/G-Rap/Jheri Curl Ice Cube level? Probably not. But he was far more than functional. When most people talk about Chuck, they focus on the message behind the lyrics and not the lyrics themselves, so much. That’s only natural, because Chuck wrote with a purpose. But that’s not to say that he didn’t have dope rhymes, because he did. In fact, I’d venture to say that if Chuck wasn’t as dope as he was, PE would have never ascended the way they did, and people would never have gotten intoxicated with the idea of hip-hop as an explicitly political vehicle. Or the idea wouldn’t have caught on to the extent that it did.