Two Songs Released During The Great Crash Of 2008 (or the “height of
Obamamania”): Nas (“America”) and Immortal Technique (“The Third World”)
When looking at the lyric sheet to
Nas’s “America” (released in 2008), I notice a masterful, and subtle, use of
linguistic devices that help make his message clearer. I could write about his
brilliant use of rhyme schemes, but the way he structures his use of personal
pronouns is even more intriguing. Looking at how he uses them can answer such
questions like: who is talking, and whom is he talking to? They can also help clarify
the message of the song that isn’t saying what he might seem to be saying at
first.
In the first verse, he speaks in
the first person singular “I” and only uses the word “you” twice (one time it’s
a “ya”). “I” could refer to the singer, “Nas” himself—but in songs and poems,
“I” is often a character, and in “America,” Nas calls this egotistical (if not
necessarily arrogant) “I” a persona. The word “persona” is not quite the same
as the word “person.” It originally meant a mask used in theatre: one’s public
image, not an authentic identity. So Nas’s use of the word complicates any
simple reading of this verse, but when he spits, “You lucky if you allowed to
witness this/ Savvy mouth,” who is the “You?” It seems like it could be anyone
in this verse—but listen on.
In the choruses, he doesn’t use
the personal pronoun “I” at all, but he does use “you” a lot, as if he’s
talking to “America” (with the help of a soulful female vocalist whose yearning
voice adds a sonic and emotional depth to this rap). But what does he mean by
America; does he mean all of America
or just its government? The next two verses make this clearer.
In the second verse, the first
person singular “I”---the persona that was the subject of the first
verse—almost disappears. The only time “I” appears is when he says:
The hypocrisy is all I can see.
White cop acquitted for murder.
Black cop cop a plea.
That type of shit makes me stop
and think We…”
This “I” is not an actor, but a
witness, an observer, and a thinker. If the first verse’s persona was an actor,
it also made him wonder “How can I not be dead?” But he seems to come more
alive as a witness when he doesn’t use the word “I” so much. He does, however,
use the word “you” more, and the word “us:”
Who gave you the latest dances,
trends, and fashion?
But when it comes to residuals,
they look past us”
This couplet makes it clear who
the “you” is; it is the same as “they.” It is white America, specifically the
white-run corporate economy that controls America. As Nas’s second verse winds
to its close, he moves from the gangsta economy of the American religion and
its Hollywood capitalist (anti-communist) glamour to take a second look at “the
whole race dichotomy,” not as a first person singular “I” but as a first person
plural “us.” And we can speak to them
in the second person plural too (you, or as Nas puts it in “America:” y’all).
You are, they are, the torturer.
In the third verse, Nas speaks of
the torture historically (not just in terms of the black/white “racial
dichotomy” but in solidarity with displaced indigenous peoples):
If I could travel to the 1700s
I’d push a wheelbarrow full of
dynamite
Through your covenant”
In this verse, he uses the word
“I” much more than he did in the second verse, but it’s a blatantly hypothetical “I”—for, just like Ameer
Rahman (in the funny, mordant, and pithy social commentary on “Reverse Racism”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M),
in reality he is powerless to break this racist covenant (much less to be a
‘reverse racist’). Covenant is a brilliant choice of word because it’s both
political and religious (reinforcing his assertion that the torturer’s God is a
Monopoly Capitalist gangsta). But in this third verse, the “covenant” and its
legacy is portrayed much more graphically; and it’s not just in the past!
When he reminds us that America
was built on “involuntary labor,” Nas brilliantly puns on the double meaning of
“labor” to show how America:
Took a knife split a woman naval
Took her premature baby
Let her man see you rape her”
The rape of women is the same as
the rape of black and indigenous peoples, and it’s all done for cheap,
involuntary, labor. But if Nas can’t go back to the 1700s, this hypothetical
self could theoretically at least:
Sit in on the senate
And tell the whole government
Y’all don’t treat women fair
She read about herself in the
Bible
Believing she the reason sin is
here”
The sexist ideology of the
white-male run Christian church (as opposed to the Black Church) has been used to justify this “involuntary
labor” along with the other forms of racist economic exploitation. By the end
of the song, Nas asks what the so-called “free world” means given all this
brutality. He concludes that this so-called first world nation is much more
like “third world savagery”—and that the only hope is for “the empire to fall;”
a far cry from the “hope” Obama promised during this time (which may help
account for why this album wasn’t as popular as Nas’s previous ones).
Nas doesn’t say how this can
happen, but at least he knows that he has to do much more than “Bugging how I
made it out the hood,” which is what his “persona” (or ‘avatar’) was doing in
the first verse. After listening to the whole song, the first verse can be seen
in a different light (if you were deceived by it the first time).
The “persona” of the first verse
is a kind of white American dream fantasy in
blackface. In fact, as others (like Amiri Baraka) have argued---the reason
why white-run record industries have pushed this image of the
every-man-for-himself heroic individual “man’s man” rapper who has risen from
rags-to-riches (and riches as “salvation”) is precisely to prevent people
(especially black people, but all oppressed people) from (re)organizing as a
first person plural “we” that could have the power to overthrow an empire.
If the white God of America—the
god of snitches and suckers—is really a gangster, then the persona that spoke the first verse isn’t really Nas at all; it’s
the voice of the corporation and not the hood—a “dead” self (just as the free-speaking
“corporate person” is, especially after Citizens United). In this sense,
“America” uses the idiom of gangsta rap (“the language of money”) against
itself, against the enemies who have “created our spokesman” (as Baraka put it)
so that “people pray to the gods of their conquerors” (as Immortal Technique
puts it).
Ultimately, Nas isn’t hating on
himself in this song, but on the persona,
a persona that was created not by him, but by America, “the land of the
thieves.” So, those rappers who glorify the lifestyle are not only deceiving,
but are deceived if they really believe this is who they are and what they want
and need. This image of the rapper is how the white man wants blacks to see
themselves, as the white American (or German) who calls him a gangsta is the
real gangsta. “Gangsta Rap” becomes a form a “involuntary labor,” and one may
try to use it to “pass”---but when it comes down to the real nitty gritty, one
(as “I” or as “we”) will still be subject to a racism however much by the rules
one tries to play.
What Du Bois referred to as “the
gifts of black folk” are by now so thoroughly “woven into the fabric” (even the
soul) of America, but still “they can’t stand us/
Even in white tees, blue jeans,
and red bandannas.”
++++
Immortal Technique’s “Third
World,” (also released in 2008), explores many of the same themes as Nas’s
song, but from a different perspective and emphasis, and with a harsher, more
urgent, radical revolutionary tone (“Radical” means rooted; closer to the land;
the suffering land). While gangstas in the hoods of what Nas calls “the land of
the thieves” may be forced to sell crack,
where Immortal Technique is from, they have to grow it (the raw materials for it). Brutality and involuntary slave
labor are even more graphically portrayed in “The Third World” than they are in
“America.” And the chorus is more angry and defiant than Nas’s.
In the second verse, Immortal
Technique also focuses on the sexism and racism of the church, yet he doesn’t
emphasize the sexism as much as Nas does:
I’m from where the Catholic Church
is some racist shit
They helped Europe and America
rape this bitch
The portray white Spaniard Jesus,
whose face is this
But never talk about the black
pope Gelasuis.”
Like Nas, he also speaks of the podrido (rotten) justice system, and
points out (in an intense, righteous, onslaught/overflow of rhymes) how the
Caucasians have made:
Blacks, indigenous peoples, and
Asians
To be racists against themselves
In the place they were raised in
And you kept us caged in
Destroyed our culture and said you
civilized us
Raped our women and when we were
born you despised us
Gentrified us, agent provocateurs
divide us
And crucified every revolutionary
messiah.”
In “America,” Nas would agree with
all of this, as he speaks of all these things and comes to the conclusion that
America is more like “The Third World” than “you think it is” (or at least than
“you” say you think it is), but while Nas just mentions the “assassinations” in
a single word, Immortal Technique
spells it out more, practically rubbing our noses in the horror some may be
trying to ‘forget’ since we can’t really escape it. Compared to Immortal Technique, Nas may use more
subtle craft (including such figurative language as “Lipstick from Marilyn
Monroe/ blew a death kiss to Fidel Castro.”), and adopt the tone of the “G”
persona more (in order to dramatize the temptation to be “racist against”
himself). After all, Nas does come from “America” and did seem himself to
believe, once upon a time, in its god of glamour which isn’t accessible where
Immortal Technique is from.
But the two songs ultimately
complement each other (Nas with his female co-singer; and I.T. with his
Peruvian flute accompaniment); and both end in the same place: with a burning
need to overthrow the empire. After speaking to the oppressor directly (“fuck
your charity medicine”—which can be immunizations as well as bad ‘public
assistance’—or the ‘food drop parachute’ that doesn’t come everyday), Immortal
Technique goes a little further into a specific proposal for how we can begin
the overthrow in our own backyard (even if we don’t ‘have’ one). At the very
least, let’s try to “nationalize the (rap) industry and take it over!” It would
be a start. I wonder if Immortal Technique, Nas and others are joining forces
and working on that as we speak. If they are, I imagine Immortal Technique
would be at least slightly closer to the front-line, but Nas would follow close
behind.
Immortal Technique
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