Death Gotta Be Easy...

Health-care reform has cleared what is hopefully the last major hurdle as it works it's way to President Obama's desk and it came at an ugly price. I'm not talking about any of the number of compromises made, but I am talking about the ugliness portrayed in many anti-health care reform demonstrations which, predictably, featured there fair share of racial and homophobic slurs, directed at members of the House, that seemingly transported us back to the early 1960's (not in a good way). 

But I also got to thinking about the main argument for 'killing the bill': it's too expensive! All fallacies of this argument aside, to trumpet financially stability and debt reduction under the Republican banner is fairly comical. After all, it was the manipulation of the Republicans that led us into an unjust war which has now cost American taxpayers over $710 Billion. Combine that with our foray into Afghanistan and we're over $1 Trillion spent, and this doesn't even take into account the incalculable loss of life that has occurred in both of these countries. So why the complaining about health care reform? After all, it is much more concrete that the maddeningly abstract issue of national security for which we have spent trillions over the past decade. 

As is always the case, hip-hop provides answers for this question. While contemplating why spending money on two wars is so unquestioned yet spending money for health care reform to extend insurance to millions of Americans I turned to 50 Cent who stated this rather fitting statement in Many Men (Wish Death On Me): 

Death gotta be easy, cause life is hard

It'll leave you physically, mentally, and emotionally scarred. 

MANY MEN WISH DEATH ON ME

$yncere aka S.G. | MySpace Video

If anything, this health care debate has confirmed what is often declared by many hip-hop artists. It's much easier to die than live in this country it seems. The ever volatile 50 Cent wasn't the only to point this out, so did Biggie in his masterful 'You're Nobody (Till Somebody Kills You). Hip-hop songs with similar themes are literally endless and the common critique asks why the genre must be so nihilistic. However, as is often the case, hip-hop is able to reveal something about America that it too often wishes to ignore about itself.

 In a country where we invest more in our prisons than our crumbling inner-city schools and don't question fighting two wars half-way across the world but fight tooth and nail to pass (modest) health care reform that would extend coverage to tens of millions of Americans, this nihilism makes a lot more sense. And it's not just hip-hop. William Faulkner expresses a similar sentiment in the equally morbid As I Lay Dying:

It takes two people to make you, one people to die. That's how the world is going to end. 

'Well Bo Knows This, And Bo Knows That...'

'...But Bo don't know jack, 'cause Bo can't rap'. One of my favorite things about hip-hop music is it's constant crossover into the athletic world for the sake of wordplay. And when you think about, the long standing relationship between sports and hip-hop makes perfect sense. Both exhibit hyper-competitive individuals set on displaying they are the best at what they do. And as I gear up to catch my first Detroit Tigers spring training game of 2010 on the radio I really got to thinking about two things. Just who among the several overpaid candidates will fill out the bottom of the Tigers rotation and the close knit relationship between sports and hip-hop.

Of course, there are varying degrees of sports in hip-hop. It can be as simple as comparing yourself to a great athlete (or comparing a lyrical opponent to a terrible athlete). It can also be a short punch line to serve as a point of reference to the listener, such as when Big L rapped:

And everytime I’m in a jam I always find a loophole,

 I got a crime record longer than Manute Bol.

In this case, Big L stating his crime record is longer than a 7'6'' man immediately let's the listener know that Big L has one very long crime record and is therefore a very bad man. However, it doesn't stop there. Hip-hop has even had forays into the extended sports metaphor with my personal favorite being Main Source- A Friendly Game Of Baseball, which compares police brutality to our nation's past time. 

There are a few rather uniform sports references that need to be addressed, so uniform that by the mere mention of them immediately conjures up a specific image in the listener. The greatest example of this is a rapper comparing himself to Michael Jordan such as Jay-Z did when he said he's 'The Michael Jordan of Recordin' which suggests he is the best there ever was. 

You want to display how quick you are? Around the '90's you probably would have made a Jeff Gordon or even a Mario Andretti reference would do, which is what the Tribe did when they claimed in Award Tour: 'Lyrically, I'm Mario Andretti on the Momo'. Of other note in 'Award Tour' is one of my personal favorite baseball related lines: 'Comin' with more hits than the Braves and the Yankees'. Ah, the 1990's. When the Braves were a dominant force and the Yankees were just burgeoning into the purely evil force they would soon become. 

Now, if you want to dish out the ultimate insult to your opponent, a sports reference can handle that too. Just mention how your opponent is ugly like Sam Cassell and you're all set. This is such a definitive reference it can apply to much more than an opponents physical attractiveness. He's just that ugly. 

Of course, the rap-sports exchange can go both ways. From Shaq Diesel released four studio albums to Ron Artest stating he wanted to take time off from the NBA to work on his rap career, NBA players have always returned the infatuation. Normally it results in some abomination in which sports references go into overload as they are about the actual rapper. Shaq Diesel is no exception. 

Of course this is just an abbreviated summation of the relationship between sports and hip-hop music. They often overlap with athletes wishing to be rappers and rappers wishing to be athletes. Normally this relationship produces vivid visual imagery (such as with Sam Cassell) but when the two crossover, proceed with extreme caution. 

Hip-Hop As The New Southern Gothic

The southern environment and the artists that have come out of that environment have provided America with some of it’s greatest and starkest reminders of both how far we have come and far we have yet to go. To this very day, America remains a country divided between the North and the South with the South not fully trusting the North and vice versa. While the characterizations of both the North and the South have changed with the modern political language representing the South as the ‘Bible Belt’ and the North often as ‘Liberal Elites’, the history of this ambiguous geographical yet rather pronounced cultural divide stretches back to before the Civil War. While times have changed, the South remains characterized by the racial classes that have defined its history. 

It is important to mention that in no way is the South this backwards region while the North is completely righteous. Many African-Americans came North to flee the restrictions of Jim Crow to find many subtle yet just as forceful road blocks in Northern cities, and this was a point made very clear by Ralph Ellison in his landmark work Invisible Man. However, racial tensions have often been more accentuated in the South and this in many ways directly led to one of America’s most distinct literary genres; the Southern Gothic.

The Southern literature has often been characterized by extremes. Whether it is the 19th century fictional portrayal of the joyous slave or the 20th century Southern Gothic style, the South has been either a heaven or hell. Southern Gothic authors such as William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor often portrayed the South as the latter. However, this does not mean these artists exhibited uniformity in their feeling towards the South. O'Connor often supported the South and instead condemned the North for the hypocritical superiority it displayed when condemning racism in the south while turning a blind eye to their unique brand of racism in the North. But a common thread within the Southern Gothic novel is the portrayal of the South with grotesque imagery as a dying region.

However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is now almost half a century old and the Souther Gothic novel has all but become history. As a result Southern Hip Hop has picked up where the likes of Faulkner and O'Connor left off with an interesting twist. 

Since bursting onto the seen in the past decade, Southern Hip-Hop has been blasted for it's apparent lyrical vapidity as it has jumped to the forefront of the drug rap subgenre. Dubbed the 'Dirty South' by the legendary Goodie Mobb, Southern hip-hop often contains the same grotesque imagery that characterized the Southern gothic novel. 

The divide between North/South is already apparent in this groundbreaking song with lyrics like:

So when they pulled up playing Rock the Bells

We took what we want and left 'em quiet as hell

While nihilism and the representation of the grotesque is nothing new to hip-hop, this song displays very well how much of a factor place plays within the narration. Setting is as much a defining characteristic within the Southern Gothic novel as it is in Southern hip-hop.

Of course, the twist that exists when comparing the Southern Gothic novel to Southern hip-hop is that southern hip-hop is a predominantly African-American art form which is often regionally focused while the Southern Gothic novel was dominated by white Southern authors portraying the grotesqueness of the South. This change in perspective is essential and this is clear when The Clipse states in their song 'Virginia': 

Ironic, the same place I'm makin' figures at

That there's the same land they used to hang ni**ers at

The South's tumultuous racial history is, of course, not lost on the modern southern hip-hop artists in most instances. They know and often have lived through the grotesque imagery that was often depicted in the Southern Gothic novel. 

In this sense, southern hip-hop is often more authentic than the Southern Gothic novel and is also a more authentic art form than many give it credit for. While the Southern Gothic often strove to reveal the grotesqueness of the South, which was often defined by racism, through the eyes of the white southerner, southern hip-hop lends that voice to the person at the center of that grotesqueness. 

However, with the change in perspective of the artist comes a change in the product. A very unique author in the Southern Gothic subgenre was Flannery O'Connor as she stopped short of completely condemning her Southern homeland and instead displayed the grotesqueness of the South as part of her identity. This is incredibly similar to much of southern hip-hop as the grotesque is often portrayed in a nostalgic light as it represents the familiar. 

However, one constant in both the Southern Gothic novel and southern hip-hop is it represents a unique part of America; a part where the past and the present struggle to reconcile each other. The South may be grotesque and it may have a very accentuated dark history, but both the Southern Gothic novel and southern hip-hop display it for what it always was: unique. And no hip-hop group displayed this better than the ATLiens themselves with a style that is uniquely Southern. 

ATLiens ~ Outkast from ATLien on Vimeo.