i wanted to begin my first blogs with a few words that will orient my readers towards my perspective on this day and age. before you can really begin to take seriously my body of work, it is important to know my perspective on the times. i give thanks to the gifted and honorable minister louis farrakahn for putting it so clearly: “time dictates agenda.” farrakahn reminded us that if you do not know what time it is, you might end up doing the right thing at the wrong time. with these words of wisdom in mind, i will not allow you to take serious the agenda that I advocate without first agreeing with me on what time it is.
my first novel is the story of an artist growing up as a young man in these times. when i speak of these times i am speaking of the current era, circa the year 2000 on the Ethiopian Calendar. it is a time that can be defined as the climax of cultural absurdity. a time whose current events highlight the blunders of the last few millennia of human history, all of which can be summed up in a simple one liner “get money, fuck bitches.”
i will not have you believe that this culture of materialism is new to the human race. get money. the history of this obsession with the material is certainly as old as humanity itself. fuck bitches. similarly, our efforts to subjugate the role of the woman within culture and society are almost as old. what is different about the culture of today? what makes these times any more absurd than the preceding era?
the irony lies in the identity of those that have settled for accepting this as their culture. the vanguard that was seen as the least likely to succumb to a cultural dumbing down have now become the poster children of “get money, fuck bitches.” this vanguard that i speak of is none other than our artists. “get money, fuck bitches” has been at the forefront of one of the most significant and widespread arts movements in human history, the hip hop culture. it is the artists, and those that have control of dissemination of art, that have become the thought police, confining us to a narrowing view of what we can attain as human beings. the shackles that bind our dreams are being applied by artists. and in the familiar mantra upheld by all policemen they have told us that we are being served and protected by their brutality.
just as the police that colonize our communities hide behind the blue shield, the police that have taken over our ipods and televisions boxes are hiding behind a code that they call freedom of speech. i refer to them as thought police because these so-called “artists” have told us to value freedom of speech over freedom of knowledge. and now we are faced with an entire generation of people that are fighting for the right to speak before they think.
since time immemorial, as artists, we have been fighting for the right to speak truth into the world. we have wanted nothing more than to create a landscape where all beings can express their highest selves. somehow along the way we were hoodwinked. now we are fighting against common sense for the right to speak ignorance into the world. the ancient art of thinking before you speak is threatened by extinction. at some point while we were celebrating freestyle, we lost site of the responsibility of the artform to advocate freedom of style. we failed to notice that the art of improvisation has been reduced to an art of incognizance.
the protagonist of my novel develops as an artist in these times. he will discover himself in relation to these times. his journey parallels the struggle of all of the artists that i roll with. all artists of these times are confronted with a very specific duty: depict the absurdity of these times to the cultures that are being consumed by them. secondly, and arguably more importantly, we must provide within our art a roadmap to a cultural safe haven, a space of refuge in which our culture can survive. as a generation that is hip hop at its core, we must decide how we will evolve post-hip-hop. what culture will we create and pass on to our children?
my brother-in-lore, whom i affectionately call chief, once told me that the artist must speak with the voice of an ancestor. with our descendants in mind we must record the absurdity of these times in a way that acts as a warning to all of the generations that follow. we must never let them forget what WE learned about the SACRED role of the artist. these are the times and what they demand of us.
