My experience listening to rap music has helped to color my understanding of race issues in America. One of my favorite rappers is Kanye West, who is an all-time great producer and lyricist. Throughout his influential career, Kanye has rapped and chirped online unapologetically on a plethora of topics including but not limited to: fame and ego, religion, parties, and politics. The song “Crack Music” from his 2005 album Late Registration, is a striking example of Kanye’s lyrical genius and political commentary. The deeper I delve into this song, the more I learn about an experience in America that is wildly different than my own. In that sense, my experience with Kanye’s music has been instrumental in my personal journey towards anti-racism and compassion towards all beings. Hang with me on this one. If this type of music isn’t your style, or the anger and aggression doesn’t resonate with you, or you don’t feel like the intended audience… that’s the point. Before you read on, I invite you to listen to “Crack Music” by Kanye West if you have not already done so: https://youtu.be/2tmPSK-w90o What is Crack? It is important to understand the difference between crack and cocaine before reading the rest of this post. The chemical difference is none… same drug. It’s an upper, and highly addictive. There are a number of notable differences, however. Cocaine is pure, very expensive, and usually insufflated. Crack is sold in single hits, which is cheap in the moment, but, over time, costs more than if the purchaser simply had the capital to buy cocaine in bulk. Crack is usually smoked, and its effects last shorter than cocaine. Additionally, crack is usually ‘cut’ with other substances, so that the seller makes more money out of one stock of product. One final and hugely important difference between the two is that historically, in America, cocaine has been used by white people and crack used by black people. Understanding the economics behind how these drugs are processed, sold, and used can shed some light into this fact. It’s very worth mentioning (/ the point of this post), that the legal punishments for crack users versus cocaine users are not equal, and disproportionately affect communities of color. More about the War on Drugs later... The Artistic Double Entendre “Crack music” as a concept could be defined multiple different ways. One way, and perhaps the way that Kanye most obviously intended, is crack music as “that real black music” (West 0:01-0:05). By this he means that crack music is what black people make and listen to, especially revolving around dealings with crack. Crack music is what’s being played in the houses and cars where crack is being weighed, cut, and sold. This definition of crack music ingestion relates to a black experience. A second definition of crack music could be- how the modern music industry works. A theoretical album with 15 songs on it costs $10 on iTunes. But each single song off that album costs $1.29. Album = cocaine, single = crack. Kanye shares that “Sometimes I feel the music is the only medicine - So we, cook it, cut it, measure it, bag it - Sell it, the fiends cop it…” (West 0:44-0:51). I admit to being a “fiend” here, and most folks I grew up with might agree. Rap is mainstream now, my first ever iPod was full of rap music that I gladly paid $1.29 a song for. In the outro of Crack Music, Malik Yusef explains this influence further when he says “And now we ooze it through they nooks and crannies - So our mommas ain’t got to be they cooks and nannies” (West 4:06-4:13). As a race in America, black people have earned money and respect through influence in the music industry. This definition of crack music ingestion relates to a mainstream experience. Perception The chorus lends itself to tokenism. It’s loud, aversive, and explicit. It’s exactly what non-rap listeners/ racists/ old white people think that rap music is (all of those can be mutually exclusive, I’m not calling you a racist). Loud beats, n-words, drug talk etc. I can almost hear my parents asking me to turn it off, if I were to put this on in the car. And if you are a parent, would you let your kid blast this tune while on the way to soccer practice? This song is easy to overlook or turn off, especially when the opening seconds make it clear that you are not the intended audience. Kanye tells us that “this the soundtrack, this the type of music that you make when you ‘round that” (West 2:01-2:06). Clearly the intended audience is those who are in this crack world. However, because of his mainstream influence, Kanye knows that this song will reach those far outside of the world of crack. It is artistic of him to exaggerate the black stereotypes perpetuated in the song (aggression, drugs, swears), as a means of sharing his experience. There is great value in hearing the perspectives of others. If this song makes you uncomfortable, good. It’s far too easy to seal ourselves off in safe bubbles. Politics In the first verse of “Crack Music” Kanye raps “How we stop the Black Panthers? Ronald Regan cooked up an answer” (West 0:23-0:27). This is a direct reference to the government’s War on Drugs. According to this MTV News article, the theory that Kanye professes here is that the government supplied the black community with crack, then punished them for it. Kanye explains, “We invested in that (crack game), it’s like we got Meryll Lynched - And we been hangin’ from the same tree ever since” (West 0:37-0:43). I can’t argue with certainty that this theory is true or not. Kanye has gotten in trouble over his career for his political ramblings, so they can’t always be taken as gospel. But I will argue with certainty that institutional racism exists prominently in our justice system, and the government went so hard with the War on Drugs in an effort to silence groups that threatened their power, namely the black community (also hippies, but that’s a different blog post). You may agree with that previous sentence, or maybe you vehemently disagree. We can all decide what is true. At the end of the day, reality is only how we see it. If we never listen to how anyone else sees it, then we do ourselves and the world a great disservice. As mentioned previously, punishments for crack offenses are nowhere near equal to those of cocaine offenses. According to the 2006 ACLU report “Cracks in the System”, “In 1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11% higher than for whites. Four years later, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 49% higher” (Vagins, McCurdy p. ii). Further, the report clearly explains the inequality this created when they lay out how "African Americans are more likely to be convicted of crack cocaine offenses, while whites are more likely to be convicted of powder cocaine offenses. Thus, the sentencing disparities punishing crack cocaine offenses more harshly than powder cocaine offenses unjustly and disproportionately penalize African American defendants for drug trafficking comparable to that of white defendants” (Vagins, McCurdy p. i). People of color disproportionately end up in prison for drug offenses, and this clearly took off when war was waged (in a new way) against black communities in the ‘80s. When Kanye said “we been hangin’ from the same tree ever since”, I would like to emphasize the “ever since”. The prison industrial system in this country continues to enslave people of color to this day. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution is pretty messed up. It reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime… shall exist in the United States” (U.S. Const.). Those in power in this country don’t need “slaves'' anymore, our founders worked a loophole into our very Constitution to retain a disenfranchised workforce. I could go down this rabbit hole, but I’m going to leave it there, and instead highly recommend the 2016 Netflix documentary “13th” if you want to learn more about the prison industrial system. Conclusion Everyone’s experience is valid, even if it does not resonate with you. Kanye uses his mainstream platform with the release of his second album to share his version of an American experience. Social justice used to be (and largely still is) a foreign land for me. One of the greatest ways that I’ve grown in knowledge in this realm is through listening to rap music. Kanye’s artistic play of double entendres, stereotypes, and fire lyrics give us, “the fiends”, a perspective into a world very different from our own. Being open to hearing different experiences and perspectives can help us learn more about the world and therefore help us grow in compassion. Sources
http://www.mtv.com/news/1507001/can-he-do-it-again-kanye-west-says-new-lp-backs-up-his-bragging/
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