Late last week, Okayplayer premiered visuals for "BBQ Sauce" off Sean Price's third studio album Mic Tyson (2012). Sean Price is known for his over-the-top lyrics that are as hilarious as they are biting. The Duck Down Records artist has a knack for re-writing history and taking the familiar and adding his own twist to reality. Some may remember his holiday re-imaging of How the Grinch Stool Christmas featuring an animated Sean Price jacking folks for their clothes and generally being an asshole. Its hilarious!
Sean Price-"How Sean Price Stole Christmas" (Mic Tyson, 2012)
The practice of reclaiming and re-writing is of course what Hip Hop is all about. Phonograph technology existed a century before some inner-city kids in The Bronx decided to turn something that was made to play music into the instrument itself. Graffiti and street art culture shares this same practice. The bombed out building, neglected infrastructure of bridges and public transportation, and the decaying edifices and remnants of the industrial era are turned into galleries showcasing colorful, surprising art work that speaks to the creative resilience of the folks abandoned in inner-city USA. This idea of turning nothing into something, turning the ugly and forgotten and bad into pride, grace, dignity, and beauty is at the heart of black expressive practices and therefore Hip Hop.
This has especially been true for language in Hip Hop. Langauge is not just what we use when we want to say stuff. It is also the way we define our world. Words carry meaning and even mean different things in different contexts. The constant hyperventilating over the word "nigger" reflects this tension and also Hip Hop's practice of reclamation. Hip Hop turned a word historically used as a slur into a "term of endearment". A word meant to bring a person closer rather than push them away. The original intent of the word was to create demarcations between black and white folk by signifying differences between the sophisticated world of white folks and the lazy and subhuman world of black folk. The Hip Hop communities embrace of "nigger" or if you prefer "nigga" is a kind of therapy against the shame the word signifies, but also a defiant reclamation that animates pride, dignity, and unity.
However, just because black folk have reclaimed "nigga" doesn't mean white folk still can't catch a beating for using it. As Pharaohe Monch says on the chorus of "BBQ Sauce", which has more than a few mentions of the aforementioned word, "White people do not recite the chorus/ If you do we'll wash your mouth with Lavorice". This of course seems to be the opposite philosophy for Jay-Z and Kanye West who during their Watch The Throne Tour would play their grammy winning hit "Niggas in Paris" (sometimes nearly dozens of times in succession) and implored the whole arena, black and white, to sing the phrase. The different contexts and the "when", "who", "where" of how the word is used speaks to the conditional nature of language. A shifting landscape in which different rules apply in different spaces and with different speakers. I'm sure some of you out there would argue that the conditionality and the schizophrenia of its proper use means that black folk have not really reclaimed nigger. "If white folks can still catch hell for using the word aren't black folk still letting it hurt them?". I would disagree. The word's embrace among the Hip Hop community is less about "getting-over" historical pain and more about interjecting oneself in the discourse of the meaning of "nigger". As I wrote above, in the past "nigger" was the signifying word that connected black folk to evil, deviance, and unsophistication. In its reclamation black folk have complicated the word such that that is no longer its only meaning. Language is about the power to define, and black folk are not subject to its power, but authors of it.
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
This does not mean that black folk have a monopoly on the practice of reclaiming. The final verse of Sean Price's "BBQ Sauce" is a sad diatribe against transgendered and non-normative gender roles. Here, Price uses the power of langauge to cast other folks as being all the things "nigger" once meant to black folks. He raps in part, "Transgendered, blam-blam leaving your man injured" and "Nigga crossdressing, the essence of Tyler Perry/ Fucking can-can dancing, blam blam and son/ Shucking and jiving, man-tan advancing/ I show no love". These lines are about demarcation and division between what Price deems as "real" men and those he believes outside of that stereotypical mold. This has the affect of codifying played-out patriarchal norms and advocating violence against those that don't adhere to them. And we've been there before. And that's not Hip Hop at all.
Sean Price ft. Pharoahe Monch "BBQ Sauce" (Mic Tyson, 2012)
This post also appears at Paranoid Musik. Check back there every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday for more discussion on Hip Hop and black popular culture with Wordsmith.
Sean Price-"How Sean Price Stole Christmas" (Mic Tyson, 2012)
The practice of reclaiming and re-writing is of course what Hip Hop is all about. Phonograph technology existed a century before some inner-city kids in The Bronx decided to turn something that was made to play music into the instrument itself. Graffiti and street art culture shares this same practice. The bombed out building, neglected infrastructure of bridges and public transportation, and the decaying edifices and remnants of the industrial era are turned into galleries showcasing colorful, surprising art work that speaks to the creative resilience of the folks abandoned in inner-city USA. This idea of turning nothing into something, turning the ugly and forgotten and bad into pride, grace, dignity, and beauty is at the heart of black expressive practices and therefore Hip Hop.
This has especially been true for language in Hip Hop. Langauge is not just what we use when we want to say stuff. It is also the way we define our world. Words carry meaning and even mean different things in different contexts. The constant hyperventilating over the word "nigger" reflects this tension and also Hip Hop's practice of reclamation. Hip Hop turned a word historically used as a slur into a "term of endearment". A word meant to bring a person closer rather than push them away. The original intent of the word was to create demarcations between black and white folk by signifying differences between the sophisticated world of white folks and the lazy and subhuman world of black folk. The Hip Hop communities embrace of "nigger" or if you prefer "nigga" is a kind of therapy against the shame the word signifies, but also a defiant reclamation that animates pride, dignity, and unity.
However, just because black folk have reclaimed "nigga" doesn't mean white folk still can't catch a beating for using it. As Pharaohe Monch says on the chorus of "BBQ Sauce", which has more than a few mentions of the aforementioned word, "White people do not recite the chorus/ If you do we'll wash your mouth with Lavorice". This of course seems to be the opposite philosophy for Jay-Z and Kanye West who during their Watch The Throne Tour would play their grammy winning hit "Niggas in Paris" (sometimes nearly dozens of times in succession) and implored the whole arena, black and white, to sing the phrase. The different contexts and the "when", "who", "where" of how the word is used speaks to the conditional nature of language. A shifting landscape in which different rules apply in different spaces and with different speakers. I'm sure some of you out there would argue that the conditionality and the schizophrenia of its proper use means that black folk have not really reclaimed nigger. "If white folks can still catch hell for using the word aren't black folk still letting it hurt them?". I would disagree. The word's embrace among the Hip Hop community is less about "getting-over" historical pain and more about interjecting oneself in the discourse of the meaning of "nigger". As I wrote above, in the past "nigger" was the signifying word that connected black folk to evil, deviance, and unsophistication. In its reclamation black folk have complicated the word such that that is no longer its only meaning. Language is about the power to define, and black folk are not subject to its power, but authors of it.
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
This does not mean that black folk have a monopoly on the practice of reclaiming. The final verse of Sean Price's "BBQ Sauce" is a sad diatribe against transgendered and non-normative gender roles. Here, Price uses the power of langauge to cast other folks as being all the things "nigger" once meant to black folks. He raps in part, "Transgendered, blam-blam leaving your man injured" and "Nigga crossdressing, the essence of Tyler Perry/ Fucking can-can dancing, blam blam and son/ Shucking and jiving, man-tan advancing/ I show no love". These lines are about demarcation and division between what Price deems as "real" men and those he believes outside of that stereotypical mold. This has the affect of codifying played-out patriarchal norms and advocating violence against those that don't adhere to them. And we've been there before. And that's not Hip Hop at all.
Sean Price ft. Pharoahe Monch "BBQ Sauce" (Mic Tyson, 2012)
This post also appears at Paranoid Musik. Check back there every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday for more discussion on Hip Hop and black popular culture with Wordsmith.
Nice article. Check out my piece 'a voice of ones own' which covers similar ground....whoismillapinch.wordpress.com
ReplyDeleteThanks you for your comment and for reading The Lesson. You piece over at whoismillapinch is great, and asks important questions about concerns for authenticity in Hip Hop.
ReplyDeleteI'm a MA student myself looking into applying to PhD programs in order to do more research on Hip Hop, so I'd like to hear more about your work and where you are doing it.
-Wordsmith