The hip-hop generation has in effect synthesized the major ideals of both the civil rights movement -- the assimilation of blacks into society -- and the black power movement -- enhancing the cultural, political, and economic autonomy of black Americans.
— Yvonne Bynoe, Stand and Deliver (85)
When you can steer public opinion one way, that's power. Music is power. So I see it coming together one day where one musician is going to say, "Let me run. I have some things to say. Let me run."
— André 3000, "André 3000: The Awakening" (MTV.com, October 2004)
I don't have a long history of voting. But I do have long history of making things hot and relevant.
— P. Diddy, "Puff Piece," Ta-Nehisi Coates, Village Voice, 20 July 2004
Whatever my decision is, I would like to see Bush out of office. I don't wanna see my little brother get drafted -- he just turned 18. People think their votes don't count, but people need to get out and vote. Every motherfuckin' vote counts.
— Eminem, Rolling Stone, 22 October 2004
Move over, Moveon. Eminem is busting into this political season in a way that might just cut through the morass of repetition and nonsense. His video for "Mosh," strikingly animated by Ian Inaba, offers a fantasy in which the hip-hop nation -- in hoodies, jeans, and military camouflage -- marches for justice and equality, against the war in Iraq and George W. Bush. Heading the movement is Em himself: "Imagine it pourin', it's rainin' down on us, mosh pits outside the Oval Office. / Someone's tryin' to tell us something, maybe this is god, just sayin' we responsible, / For this monster, this coward, that we have empowered." Visible on tv, on cue, George W. Bush, announcing "tax cuts," while a mother and her children are evicted from their home. From there, the video cuts to Bin Laden, "noddin'," as the tv frame falls away and Dick Cheney appears, not quite behind the scene. Some observers say Em is late to this party, that he's spent too much of his early energy being angry at his family members. Now, however, he's looking to keep his younger brother from facing a draft, to keep more young troops from being killed for no good reason. His concern in "Mosh" is explicit: "Fuck Bush."
Even before Em's noisy self-launch into the melee, this U.S. presidential election has focused intensely on "the youth vote," indeed, the "hip-hop vote." It's good to be courted, even better to feel knowledgeable and responsible. Asserting the right and responsibility to vote has become cause for a press conference, if not an MTV documentary that charts your education (that is, the "Choose or Lose" pieces, including Christina Aguilera's Sex, Votes, & Higher Power, Sway's Drug Laws, and Drew Barrymore's The Best Place to Start). As well, young artists like Eminem are admitting they've never voted before, but will do so this year.
Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, and Christina Aguilera are all first timers in 2004, pop citizens pronouncing their old apathy bad, and their new interest good. Consider this season's premiere of Real Time with Bill Maher (30 July 2004), kicked off with an interview with André 3000. Recently named Esquire's "Best Dressed Male" and currently spokesperson for Norman Lear's "Declare Yourself," a nonprofit dedicated to registering college voters, André is an ultra-cool get. Real Time sets him in relation to two "adults," one encounter enlightening and the other instructive.
First, André confesses to Al Sharpton that he's never voted before, smiling broadly, "I got no shame." But once the Reverend lays into him about the importance of voting, André backs right off, agreeing with everything his elder has to say. It's no excuse to feel "left out" of the process, asserts Sharpton, the point is put yourself in its way, to make it your process. And no whining about unfamiliar technology, since "kids" know all about punching text messaging keys to describe their latest "doo-rags"; surely they muster the wherewithal to step inside a voting booth and pull some levers. Sharply edited, cleverly shot, these few minutes of admonishment and encouragement are concise, wise, and galvanizing. Al Sharpton has charm and skills in abundance.
But then the camera cuts back to Maher, live in the studio with André, now standing quietly, head bowed in between good-natured smiles, like he's hoping no one will notice him. No such luck. Maher steps right up, showing his allegiance with the Reverend man who spoke truth most consistently during the primaries was mightily disrespected at the Democratic National Convention. And not just by the delegates and the party mucky-mucks, Maher insists, but also by "the media." Maher checks his notes to get it right: Chris Matthews and, oh, maybe Howard Fineman, chided Sharpton for lying at some point in his career. Now comes Maher's point: "Is that racist?" he asks André, apparently seriously, noting that the same might be said of most white politicians. André smiles and nods, suddenly stuck -- the designated expert on "racism."
This is hardly a role André needs to play. He's supposed to be here to encourage kids to register, not help anxious-to-be-hip viewers identify obvious racism, much less serve as straight man for Maher's punch-line. Surely, Maher is well-intentioned, and really, thank goodness for him and Jon Stewart, or this election season would have been entirely unbearable. But this use of André is typical. Hip-hop artists appear repeatedly, earnestly and enthusiastically, signs of coolness, authenticity, and healthy resistance to a corrupt system (Florida, after all, was the subject of Sharpton's much maligned DNC speech).
This isn't to say that hip-hop doesn't have its own agendas. Russell Simmons and Ben Chavis' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and P. Diddy's Citizen Change are only the highest profile hip-hop organizations seeking to guite young fans' interest in the election, to get them "involved," to help them see their stake in it. "I know it hurts to pay attention," soothes Alicia Keys in a recent Rolling Stone. "For young people especially, it seems like politicians aren't speaking about their lives" (RS, 14 October 2004: 68). After years of feeling ignored by the political establishment, who considered them too young, apathetic, poor, or non-white to worry about, young voters now feel (or maybe just believe their idols that they should feel) the need to be heard. This despite and because of pandering by John Not-Bush Kerry: "I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop," he told MTV's intrepid Gideon Yago in March 2004. "I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important."
More important than he can know. In line with recent musical statements by Jadakiss ("Why?"), Babyface ("Wake Up"), and VG Unity ("Stand Up," featuring Lara Croft and Spongebob leading the way to the voting booth), MTV enlisted a range of talent to urge voting, from Tony Hawk to J. Lo to recent lip-syncing bustee Ashlee Simpson. The goal of these get-out-the-vote strategies isn't always clear, aside from incorporating kids into the system, teaching them to believe it's worth their energy. Vote for Change, Rock for Change, or Citizen Change all aim to "make a difference." It's not clear what that might mean. Farai Chideya offers one possibility in her recent book, Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters: "Hip-hop generation activists will have to turn a cultural affiliation into a political affiliation" (55).
And so, they go forth -- André, Diddy, or rebel-yelling Eminem -- all famously excessive, masculine, and hip-hop. The usual claim for hip-hop is that its are particularly democratic effects, selling ideas and products across cultures, races, classes, and ages; by contrast, the week-long Springsteen-R.E.M.-Eddie Vedder-Bonnie Raitt tour, well-organized and much publicized, targeted battleground states, where it played to predominantly white, rock-identified crowds (this is not to discount the participation of Jurassic 5, only to note their singularity). Their stated partisan mission -- to get out voters for Kerry so bothered the St. Paul Pioneer Press that it suspended two reporters who went to a show, as they defied a memo deeming attendance at any such fundraiser an ethical violation.
By contrast, much of the get-out-the-hip-hop-vote movement has been careful not to proclaim preference. Partly, this is because hip-hop need not make the statement -- its history has hardly been conservative or Republican. And partly, this engenders the ideal "nation," a broad coalition. As Jane Eisner reports in the Washington Post, "Citizen Change is working with MTV's Choose or Lose, which is a partner of the New Voters Project, which is also working with a charming effort called Voter Virgin, and the list goes on and on. There's a surprising lack of institutional ego in this work, and a sense of camaraderie that one wishes characterized more of the attempts to improve civic life in this nation" ("No Kidding," 3 October 2004).
Hopefully, such cooperation results in education and ongoing activism, not just a one day turnout. Most observers expect the latter. Appearing on Last Call to promote Team America, Matt Stone and Trey Parker repeated their assertion that uninformed kids should not vote, and campaigns like Diddy's are "dangerous" (22 October 2004). Host Carson daily suggested otherwise, that a figure like Diddy might make it "cool to vote," even to do research. Stone and Parker weren't buying.
Still, if politics is a matter of persuasion, of pitching product effectively, hip-hop is all over it. André, Diddy, and now Eminem are grandly seductive figures, shifting, and fashionable. André and Diddy reinvent themselves regularly, tossing a considerable wrench into the long held assumption that hip-hop is only and simplistically "authentic." At the same time, Diddy has that bit of Puffy with him always (just as André may now also be affiliated with the ill-advised "Indian" performance at the 2004 Grammys). No matter how respected, well-versed, or theatrical he turns, Diddy will always bring with him a little Pigpennish cloud of controversy, stretching forward from his past -- from André Harrell, Biggie, and of course, Shyne -- into his future political stardom. To hear Diddy tell it, this future is a calling. He tells Deborah Norville,
My campaign is to motivate, educate, and empower the over 40 million youth and minority voters that are out there that are disenfranchised. We call them the "forgotten ones" because politicians don't go speak to them. They don't go into their husbands. You don't see politicians going into the south side of Chicago or going into the battered areas of Detroit or Watts or Harlem, you know? And you don't see them going speaking directly to young people, as they speak directly to senior citizens. (Deborah Norville Tonight, 19 October 2004)
As much as you might believe Diddy's desire to recover (or speak for) these "forgotten ones," it's hard not to anticipate exactly the skepticism articulated by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who observed him at the press conference for Citizen Change. While P. Diddy rouses his crowds like a Baptist preacher, Coates writes, his "effort reached beyond celebrity media whoredom into political media whoredom" ("Puff Piece," Village Voice, 20 July 2004). Just so, this summer Diddy spent time at both conventions, his head cut in a Mohawk for he RNC, his crew in full-on protect mode. At the RNC, Ann Gerhardt judged his performance:
There are two bodyguards and two publicists, a personal photographer to shoot an upcoming coffee-table book, "a sort of visual biography," the photographer explains. There is a personal videographer as well, to document his life and mine "valuable footage," an aide explains. ("Citizen Diddy," Washington Post, 3 September 2004)
No surprise here. Diddy's a self-advocate and a tourist, pursuing politics in between Broadway plays, movies, and marathons. His getting out the vote looks like one more step in a long-term, Arnoldian reinvention. But what if that process, so public and so aggressive, inspires others to reimagine their relations to power? Can power accommodate hip-hop? Can hip-hop achieve material and ideological ends? Can it step outside the loop of consumption and incorporation?
On the circularity tip, Diddy's project is not precisely new. Just last week, Public Enemy appeared on VH1's Hip-hop Honors -- Chuck D stage-stalking as powerfully as ever, and Flavor Flav appearing to be in recovery from his scary Brigitte Nielsen-hookup on The Surreal Life. The scene recalled the good old days, when hip-hop took its activist charge seriously and repeatedly, from "The Message" to "Unity" to "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos." Chuck D's also been touring this season, too: "You talk about a guy like Bush," he pronounced in Racine, Wisconsin. "I've been all around the planet, and I'll tell you what, this cat is bad for life all across the planet" (Jeff Wilford, "Voting a first step to black empowerment," Journal Times, 21 October 2004).
Next to such straight-up rage, Diddy's project might look conveniently mushy. But Diddy is nothing if not canny. He understands how ideas, like merchandise, circulate. Aside from ensuring profits for the seller, selling stuff is one means to sell a sense of identity and community; however illusory or transient, such sense can have lasting effects. Puffy observes in his "Choose or Lose" documentary, Hip-hop Politics, the political parties are just that -- parties, ways to spend and accumulate favors; it's a system he understands and can work as well as anyone. Just ask his neighbors in South Hampton. "I am nonpartisan," he tells MTV.com, "I'm gonna stick my nonpartisan foot up Bush's ass, up Kerry's ass. Republicans and Democrats, my foot is so way up your ass right now, it's crazy" (16 July 2004).
Cruising in his swank ride, sporting his huge chunk of an earring, Diddy muses for the camera in Hip-hop Politics: "I'm the American Dream. Some people see me as America's nightmare, young, gifted, black, talented, powerful -- but am I truly powerful?" The documentary is structured to showcase his clout (he interviews Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson), but also to give over the spotlight to other interviewers. David Banner, for one, visits a young man in rural Mississippi, who observes that politicians visit churches and basketball games, but never see citizens' homes or streets (Diddy has since used this line, as on Norville). They can't know what needs to be done, or feel the urgency of poverty. The kid says at last that he doesn't know if he'll vote, because it still doesn't seem worth the trouble; looking around him, you can sympathize. Why would he trust any politician to follow through on any vague promise? Houses are small and shabby, people are hungry. Another segment of Hip-hop Politics has Trick Daddy impressing on a girl in Florida the importance of voting, even as he reveals that he can't vote, being a convicted felon. Ironic, yes, and also indicative of a system designed to keep the underclass just where it is.
Diddy's slogan -- Vote or Die! -- might be hyperbolic or even flippant, as Matt Stone suggests, but it makes a certain sense, has resonance and roots. Alexis McGill, Citizen Change's executive director, tells the Washington Post, "We are the most marketed-to generation in every sense of the word. We have to reach people where they are. We're trying to drive direct action on the ground. What if we could turn the hip-hop generation into the next NRA?' (Eisner, "This May Be the Year For a Youthful Turnout," WP, 1 October 2004). Imagine this. The NRA runs rampant in the Capitol. Hip-hop might also deploy its longstanding loyalties and endless energies toward getting anti-poverty, pro-health care work done. That's power. It has everything to do with money. And hip-hop knows something about money.
Eminem's capacity to move money is well-established, in part because he and Dre have staunchly refused to use his enormous popularity to sell sodas and shoes. Em's contribution to the election begins with his announcement that he will vote, not for Kerry, but against Bush. It's a recognizable, sympathetic position. And for Em, bashing Bush is almost too easy. For all his millions, the artist doesn't rap about bling, but about friendship, family, and disappointment, about trust, anger, and fear. In a word, he raps about being young, no easy task in 2004. Even at the Iraq war's start, back in 2003, then 28-year-old Em was already on the case, critical of what he saw as a bogus call to patriotism, dumped on recruits and reservists in need of cash: Next thing you know, you've got Uncle Sam's ass askin' / to join the Army or what you'll do for their Navy. / You just a baby, gettin recruited at eighteen," he rapped in the aptly titled "Squaredance."
"Mosh," off Eminem's upcoming album Encore, shows that his previous easy targets -- Michael, Pee-wee, and Madonna -- can now take a number. "Let me be the voice, in your strength and your choice," he says, agitating his legions of fans, all those "just like me" kids who understand his wit and rage. "Let me simplify the rhyme, just to amplify the noise," he raps, the beat hard, typically pounding.
Let the president answer on higher anarchy.
Strap him with an AK-47, let him go fight his own war,
Let him impress daddy that way,
No more blood for oil,
We got our own battles to fight on our own soil.
No more psychological warfare to trick us
To thinking that we ain't loyal.
The new video does indeed amplify the noise. Opening as a plane zooms and booms ominously over a school house, the frame enters a classroom window to find a red-tied and blue-suited (read: "presidential") Eminem reading to an assortment of children. Today's lesson, on the chalkboard, every breed of conspiracy theory ("Bush Knew") and fear-mongering counter-tactic (the Secret Service's previous alert that Eminem was anti-Bush, "Congress Okays $87 Billion for Iraq"). The camera tracks an animated Lloyd Banks striding the street, only to be stopped by the police, and then again, Eminem as he exhorts concertgoers to "Give your faith and your trust, as I guide us through the fog, to the light at the end of the tunnel." The camera "pans" over to show the U.S. flag behind the artist on stage, reclaiming the patriotism that the administration has repeatedly declared its own.
The "Mosh" video's charges are varied and acute, as individuals gather together to form a new "army." Black men harassed by the cops, a young man called up for Iraq, a young mother evicted, and Bush grainy and eyes-shifty on television: "Look in his eyes, it's all lies, the stars and stripes, have been swiped, washed out and wiped, / And replaced with his own face." Showing his face, adding his voice to those calling for Bush's removal from office, Eminem throws down. By video's end, he signs up to vote, a gesture more desperate than hopeful perhaps, and a challenge as well. If his renowned "army" follows on 2 November, joining with those many other members of the hip-hop nation, the day might yet yield a surprise.
