For those of you who haven’t heard of Lord Jamar, or have seen his interviews but never listened to his music, check out this classic from his Native Tongues-era group, Brand Nubian. There’s even a Roy Ayers sample, as long as we’re closing some circles from yesterday’s discussion! (I don’t think Jamar gets a verse here, though — it’s all Grand Puba, if I’m not mistaken.)
Peace to the Gods, Peace Allah
A-yo, there go that brother Grand Puba
I heard that brother got knowledge of self
Yo, let’s have that brother come over and add on to the cipher
But I’d forgotten how much I love Puba’s flow! He swings all over the beat, occasionally dropping in triplets (‘Nothing’s changed, it’s just another sequel/
The devil’s still causing trouble amongst the righteous people’), or doing something that sounds like double time gradually stuttering and then slowing back down (‘I keep striving to do my duty to awake ’em/To the universal family, I say As-salamu Alaykum’). Or maybe that’s just another brief triplet run? Anyway, checkitout.
At the end of class, most of you were out before the Roy Ayers sample kicked in on DJ Rashad’s ‘We Run This’, so I’ll post that as well. After the opening bass throbs and profanities, Rashad shouts out various affiliated footwork dance crews as well as his production homies (Ghettotech). And then the ‘Searching’ sample that we heard on Ed O.G.’s track kicks in.
Prep
- Gilbert B. Rodman, ‘Race … and Other Four-Letter Words: Eminem and the Cultural Politics of Authenticity’, in Forman and Neal (2012).
Not only is this about Eminem, making for a natural segué from our discussion of him yesterday, but this article helpfully starts out with some discussion of the ‘Birmingham School’-style cultural studies that I briefly alluded to in discussing Paul Gilroy’s methodological/intellectual background.
In Class
- Attendance
- The Big Picture: Culture is all about miscegenation, not purity.
- Keywords: author function (p. 184), cultural appropriation, imitation vs. influence (see p. 195, n. 6), miscegenation, moral panic (pp. 183, 195-96, n. 11), organic intellectual, ‘reverent cultural borrowing’
- For Next Time
For Next Time
- Lennie Irvin, ‘What Is “Academic” Writing?’
- Christina Verán, with Darryl “DLT” Thompson, Litefoot, Grant Leigh Saunders, Mohammed Yunus Rafiq, and Jaas, ‘Native Tongues: A Roundtable on Hip-Hop’s Global Indigenous Movement’, in Forman and Neal (2012)
