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B-Boy Rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals:
The Heads that Don't Get Mention
By
Dr. James Peterson
I grew up in the Bricks. Newark New Jersey. Growing up in the hood, just as Hip Hop germinated in the post-industrial ghetto, was an acculturating and intellectually developmental experience. I heard Rappers Delight at the tender age of 8 and from that moment forward I owned the culture as a fully vested acolyte of the combination of Hip Hop's fundamental components, including (the four languages of Hip Hop) and others. I was consciously cognizant of the intellectualizing forces at work in my lived experiences with Hip Hop. The culture just sort of crept up on me in Newark. But after the success of Rappers Delight a chain reaction of radio acceptable singles exploded from the culture. I can remember when Kurtis Blow's The Breaks was a hit. Black/Urban radio in NYC played The Breaks only once or twice a day, but it was always at the same time and my brothers, sisters, and cousins when they were visiting would all gather together in the kitchen; that was where the loudest radio in our house was. And we would party around that one song. We engaged in this daily ritual not only because this was the hottest joint out at the time; not only because we could feel the power of a music and culture that belonged exclusively to us; but because Kurtis Blow's 'The Breaks,' much like Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message' were the first intellectual moments that the culture produced and projected at the national level. The ritualistic fervor with which we approached these listenings, memorized the words, and talked about the songs and the artists merely hinted at the signifying force of this moment. Consider the subtle theoretical abstractions from Kurtis Blow's first hit single that speak to the form of Hip Hop culture i.e., it is organized around break beats literally and the content of the lived experiences within the urban settings for Hip Hop culture at that time. "These are the Breaks!" although not a popular saying in any of speech communities of The Bricks, was the first codification of these lived experiences gesturing towards the nihilism that has so often been referred to in Hip Hop culture. An early intellectual moment to be sure: not simply because of the philosophical and theoretical potential of the tune, but because of its multifaceted aural-readability. Its ability to blur the boundaries of content and form even as it coerced us to move our bodies (dance) to its music suggests the multiple intellects that cohere around a thorough comprehension of The Breaks. The multiplicity of intelligences applies here as one considers the intellectual dexterity necessary to dance to this music even as one contemplates the breaks of inner city living in the 1980s. This is an important point of entry for a discussion on the intellectuals of Hip Hop Culture because it produces the intersections between popular culture and academic theory, social critique, and community that are necessary for most of the intellectual litmus tests detailed to date (Cruse and others). Moreover, it points to a thesis around which the "B-Boy rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals" emerges. B-Boys or B-girls are those essential performers from sui generis moments of hip hop culture who danced to the manually-looped breaks of old soul and disco records. Breakin (or Break dancing) along with poppin/pop locking were early foundational forms of dance deriving from the culture itself. Break Dancing derives its name from the break beats that drove the music and culture at the outset. But B-Boying and B-girling came to take on more meaning and significance within the culture of Hip Hop than that singular meaning attached to those early performers who drove the kinesthetic energy of early Hip Hop jams. B-boys (in 2005) are known as guardians of the culture. They have earned this distinction over the decades because of the ascribed rules to b-boy-dom. B-boys had to be proficient in at least two elements of the culture. Authentic B-boys were participants in many aspects of the culture. A b-boy would not only break dance, but would also write graffiti and or MC and or DJ. Many embodied combinations of two or three elements. These rules were simple and only loosely patrolled, but the ideology that produces them demands multilevel engagement with the culture across elemental comfort zones. In this essay I simply want to extend these rules (through an intellectual transformation) to those figures who would/could be considered Hip Hop Intellectuals. First, some clarification of the B-Boy rules is necessary. By most conventional definitions B-boys are simply break dancers who embody the cultural roots of Hip Hop: i.e. they dress a certain way usually harkening back to hip hop style circa 1980, and they dance to the breaks recreating settings that reflect the original impulses of the culture. The only rule for B-boys is that they "live the lifestyle of b-boying." When asked to define himself (on an interview on www.bboy.com), Virginian B-boy Tazk narrated the following:
You can spot a bboy from a mile away. A bboy for me is someone who doesn?t wear a spin jacket for looks, but to actually spin, or a mesh hat. Yo there have been times I roll up to jams looking busted, people are probably like, wtf is that nigga wearing, but you know why I wear what I wear cause das ma gear that I can perform ma best at. Bboyin is deep man, its not juss on the outside. The definition of a bboy is someone who lives the lifestyle of bboying. There are breakers and then there are bboys, a real bboy knows the difference? (www.bboy.com)
The notion of multiple levels of engagement with the fundamental elements of Hip Hop culture derives organically from the culture through various B-boys and artists, most notably KRS ONE who also likens b-boying to a particular lifestyle. Note Tazk's oblique reference to his ability to identify an authentic B-boy on sight and more importantly here, he claims to be able to distinguish authentic B-boys from breakers who by implication here are charlatans who fancy the margins of the b-boy world. This discourse on the authenticity of b-boys yields the B-boy rules requiring the multiple levels of engagement with the fundamental elements of Hip Hop culture. These rules requiring multiple levels of engagement, then may be seen by B-boys (themselves) as being artificial. For my purposes though they serve to strengthen the significance of authenticity for Hip Hop culture and the discursive content of the culture that lends itself to multi-faceted notions of authentic being. These notions of authenticity constituted by the subject's multi-leveled engagement with the foundational elements of the culture then underwrite my thesis of the applicability of the B-Boy rules for Hip Hop intellectuals. Defining the intellectual in/of/for Hip Hop culture has to date been the subject matter of several journalistic articles. The effort that most comprehensively articulates the definition of the Hip Hop intellectuals is Adam Mansbach%u2019s article of the same name. "Hip Hop Intellectuals" was originally published in the San Frisco Gate on June 25, 2003 and later collected in DeCapo Best Music Writing 2004. Mansbach defines Hip Hop Intellectuals as "folks who derive their basic artistic, intellectual, and political strategies from the tenets of the musical form itself: collage, reclamation of public space the re-purposing of technology even if they are not kicking rhymes and scratching records" (Mansbach 2003) Mr. Mansbach deftly captures the aesthetics of Hip Hop intellectualism vis a vis the structural formations of collage, reclaiming public space, and repurposing technology. His list of Intellectuals ranges from Jeff Chang, Toure, and William Upski Wimsatt to artists like poet, Paul Beatty and actor, Danny Hoch. These figures clearly engage in various forms of collage and the reclamation of public spaces particularly here in the media and via the teaching work of scholars, Michael Eric Dyson and Tricia Rose. In addition to these structural aesthetics of Hip Hop intellectualism, the historical ruminations on Black Intellectuals in Harold Cruse%u2019s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, seem readily applicable to this discourse in a number of ways. What follows is a simplified paraphrasing of Cruse's key duties for African American intellectuals. His prescriptions should be thought of, at least initially here, as applying directly to Hip Hop culture. For our purposes, substitute Afro-American, black, or Negro with Hip Hop. The key duties of the African American/Hip Hop intellectuals are:
1) to be knowledgeable of their intellectual predecessors, and intellectually familiar with historical political and cultural movements.
2) to analyze critically explanations for the pendulum swings between the two poles of integration and black nationalism, combine and theorize these explanations
3) to distill and discern the behaviors, cultural traits, and conditions that will advance black culture. This process necessitates a more critical relationship with Afro-American Culture and American capitalism, where "group culture either flourishes or atrophies."
4) to continually acknowledge the uniqueness of the African American experience.
Mansbach's Hip Hop Intellectuals focuses on a radical generation that comes of age. This generation is essentially those between the ages of 25 and 35 who were the primary constituents of the culture through its zeitgeist (era). If we follow Dr. Cruse's first directive, configured for Hip Hop, Mark Anthony Neal exemplifies and writes about the generation of intellectuals that immediately precede Mansbach's radical generation. To wit, Neal writes "Thug Nigga Intellectual," for Popmatters reflecting on the posture of the first generation Hip Hoppers, those scholars and thinkers who are of the same age as the founding figures of Hip Hop culture; the forty somethings of black academics. He includes Todd Boyd and Michael Eric Dyson, but does not include any women in this list of emerging black male scholars with a distinctly Hip Hop attitude. For Neal, his stance as a "thugniggaintellectual" is in profane opposition to the academic good ole boy network as well as the more conservative black academic guard (i.e. Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West). "[C]laiming the space of the "ThugNiggaIntellectual" is about bringing to fruition an intellectual component to the "Thug Nigga" psyche. In other words, it is a commitment to intellectually choking a "Mfer to death, if need be." This intellectual sentiment is ideologically rooted in a psyche that is cultivated in the music of gangsta rap icons like Kool G Rap, Tupac, and 50 Cent. Yet the thug nigga intellectuals discussed in Neal's essay, are not of the 25-35 set to which Mansbach attributes the nerve system of this intellectual energy. Neal's intellectual actually precedes my list of Hip Hop Intellectuals (in age and in entrance into the academy proper) by about 10 years. An amended list of these early Hip Hop intellectuals includes David Toop, Houston Baker, Tricia Rose, Marcyliena Morgan, and Cheryl Keyes as well as Neal, Todd Boyd, Dyson, and the others mentioned by Neal. Toop is responsible for the earliest comprehensive journalistic history of Hip Hop, Rap Attack(s) 1,2 and 3. Houston Baker introduced the notions of reclaiming public space via boom boxes, breakdancing, and wilding in his critical essay on Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. And Tricia Rose solidified the field of Hip Hop studies with Black Noise. Nearly every scholarly text that immediately followed Black Noise had to reference it. These scholar-intellectuals have generally moved on to other fields of inquiry, but their early impact influenced the intellectual exchange that followed. Neither Mansbach, Neal, nor any of the other writers who directly addressed notions of Hip Hop intellectualism take considerable time to explore the cultural or political movements of the past that tend to influence the Hip Hop intellectuals. Now that we can somewhat distinguish the socio-political history of the early Hip Hop intellectuals from a newer crop (25-35 years of age in 2005), the political and cultural movements in common with the early set as well as those that are distinct readily reveal themselves. The political movements are the NOI/the 5% Nation of Gods and Earths, The BPP for self defense, and various Stop the Violence/Cease Fire movements. The cultural movements include, Blues, BeBop, Rock, Soul, Funk, disco, the digital age, and various forms of hustling. Dr. Cruse's second directive is even more compellingly complex in its anticipation of challenges for Hip Hop's intellectuals. The "pendulum swings" phenomenon refers to an intellectual history charted laboriously in the work of Cruse, which suggests a bi-polar model of intellectual thought alternating between Nationalist and integrationist ideologies. Consider Malcolm X's black nationalist stance vis a vis Dr. King's civil rights agendas. The pendulum also swings in Hip Hop culture, manifesting the bi-polar flip poignantly in successive eras of Hip Hop culture. Mark Harris, in yet another Popmatters piece, this time entitled "Edutainment: the Rise and Fall of the Hip Hop Intelligentsia," wrestles with the intellectual pedagogues of Hip hop who took on the mantle of edutaining, rapping, teachers. "Rap needed a Teacha/so I became it" raps KRS ONE (knowledge reigns supreme over nearly everyone). Harris does an expert job of chronicling the internecine relationships between the music of the conscious, political, edutainers, and the music of their up and coming, keepin' it real oriented gangsta rappers in the west. Harris suggests that the verbal virtuosity of movements like the Nation of gods and earths enjoyed extensive valence and cultural resonance with inner city Hip Hoppers (esp. on the east coast) who knew some of the esoteric and often encoded lyrics of edutainment artists. Just as Clinton came into office, the lower-income/class economy began to recover from the Reagan era, and Hip Hop began to reach outside of its ethnic urban demographic, the occasionally cryptic, regularly didactic work of artists like KRS ONE, Public Enemy, and X- Clan, gave way, on the mainstream stage (major radio, MTV, and BET) to Ice-T, NWA, and The Geto Boys. This signal, paradigmatic shift in the popularity of the music in conjunction with the "fall of Hip Hop's Intelligentsia" lead to an important moment for Hip Hop scholarship. This was the first, marked pendulum shift in the culture. Unfortunately it has not returned from its swing away from edutainment content. However, the fact that this phenomenon bares such a striking resemblance to Cruse's concern with his generation of Black intellectuals sheds some light on issues of discernment of the Hip Hop intellectuals. Cruse's third directive then, suggests that intellectuals organize. For the Hip Hop generation this has been a glaring absence. Yvonne Bynoe says as much in her critical tract, Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership, and Hip Hop Culture. Bynoe's central thesis is that due to the extraordinary popularity of rap music, the media and the powers that be have effectively appointed the artisans of Hip Hop culture as the post-civil rights leaders of Black urban America. For Bynoe, Hip Hop politics, an essential requirement for Hip Hop intellectuals, at least according to Dr. Cruse's blueprint, is a mythological formation. "Continuing this farce called Hip Hop politics does a disservice to the important work done by our elders and ancestors, and obscures the real work that this generation needs to take on and move forward" (Bynoe, xiv). Hip Hop intellectuals would probably agree that being a fulltime rapper/entertainer and a fulltime political activist is a near impossibility. However, there are artists who directly contribute to the political discourses via savvy distillations of socio-economic, racial, spiritual, and yes, political challenges in our society. These artists include, the likes of Public Enemy and KRS ONE, as well as the more recent work of Paris, Dead Prez, and MF (metal face) Doom.
The final directive underpins the first three since its focus is on centralizing the unique qualities of the African American Experience. For Hip Hop culture, this directive requires (for Intellectuals) a thorough working knowledge of the history of Hip Hop and as we chronologically move beyond this extraordinary moment of popular attention to the culture, a healthy understanding of Hip Hop's fundamental aspects and the culture's overall impact on American society as well as the rest of the world that has come to claim Hip Hop as a signal component of various youth cultures. With a more comprehensive understanding of Harold Cruse's classic instructions/requirements for black intellectuals and their parallel valence with would-be intellectuals of Hip Hop culture, permit me to suggest a list of Hip Hop Intellectuals who manage to meet most of Cruse's requirements as well as the B-Boy Rules. The following scholars represent the best of what Cruse requires of intellectuals in conjunction with a healthy commitment to engaging multiple aspects of the culture through multiple career paths and/or discursive platforms. The following scholars enter the intellectual, discursive scene after that first cohort of Hip Hop scholars (Gates, Baker, Crenshaw), and after those scholars who study, think and write about Hip Hop (Rose, Boyd, Dyson and others) but tend to identify themselves with both the post-civil rights/post-soul generations as well as the Hip Hop generation. The following intellectuals will claim Hip Hop culture as the dominant, if not singular, milieu from which their critical thinking derives. Without further ado, and in no particular order; the Hip Hop Intellectuals:
1) Adisa Banjoko, author of a self-published collection of essays entitled Lyrical Swords. Mr. Banjoko hales from the bay area and in addition to writing some of the most insightful essays on Hip Hop culture and spirituality, he produces and hosts a weekly political talk show (One Mic), and has in the past written for the Source magazine and various other Hip Hop magazines. Banjoko also serves as a Director/program coordinator for the Riekes Center, a community center committed to innovative athletic, political, and artistic programming for inner-city youth.
2) Imani Perry, author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop, holds a Ph.D. in American Studies as well as a JD from Harvard University. She is currently an assistant professor of Law at Rutgers Camden. In my humble opinion she is our most promising Hip Hop Intellectual, not because of her degrees or her position. Her work in Prophets of the Hood is indispensable as it is the first scholarly text to closely analyze the aesthetics (social, artistic, and political) of Hip Hop music. But she is also the most genuine, humble, and compassionate scholar that I have had the privilege of meeting. Since the B-Boy rules for Hip Hop intellectuals is somewhat based on the prerequisite moorings of Harold Cruse's outline for intellectuals, Dr. Perry's compassion and personal authenticity serve her extraordinarily well as a standout figure on this list. 3) Oliver Wang, a self-professed cultural critic, writes about Hip Hop and popular youth culture for Vibe magazine, URB, Village Voice, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He also writes for LA Weekly, Popmatters.com, and Amazon.com. Moreover, Wang DJs regularly in the Bay area and he is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is also the author of Classic Material: The Hip Hop Album Guide which collects dozens of his in-depth Hip Hop album reviews. 4) James Spady, is what most might refer to as an organic intellectual, but his work speaks for itself. As a journalistic force, he has interviewed dozens of Hip Hop artists. He self-published a trilogy of his collected interviews, Nation Conscious Rap, Twisted Tales in the Hip Hop Streets of Philly, and Street Conscious Rap. Mr. Spady%u2019s prowess as a journalist is evident in all three of his substantial works on hip hop culture as well as his regular contributions to the Philadelphia New Observer. More ethnographer than journalist, Spady%u2019s penchant for historical and philosophical insights regarding Hip Hop culture make him an indispensable figure on this list even though, age-wise he may be closer to one of the earlier groups of scholars.
5) Davey D is the most insightful historical journalist that Hip Hop has produced. Since he was/is both an MC (TDK or Total Def Krew of the Bronx circa 1977) and a DJ, Davey D directly exemplifies the B-Boy Rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals. As one of Hip Hop%u2019s longest standing intellectuals, Davey D has written for countless publications and spoken at countless engagements educational, political and otherwise. Through his Hip Hop political news letter, his local TV/Radio programming, and his presence on the local and national political scenes, Davey D leads the Hip Hop Intellectuals in their pursuit of the Cruse-ian directives.
6) Dr. Roxanne Shante made a name for herself as a teenager when super-producer Marly Marl collaborated with her to produce "Roxanne's Revenge" the first classic 'dis' response record. Just about all women rappers who followed (circa 1984) were influenced in some way by her delivery, inflection, or her powerfully womanist tone. Now she holds a degree in psychology (working with young people of color) and she is one of the most dynamic, engaging public/community speakers to come out of Hip Hop culture.
7) Ras Baraka is yet another figure on this list who defies the assumption that Hip Hop culture lacks political activism. As the son of Amiri and Amini Baraka he has lived up to their legacies of artistic production, education, and political organization. He has done too much to attempt to list his accomplishments here, but in addition to years of teaching his is currently a Vice Principal at a public Newark High School. In addition to years of political organization at Howard University and in Newark, NJ, he is currently Newark%u2019s Deputy Mayor. And in addition to editing anthologies (with Kevin Powell) and dropping gems on the now classic Fugees album, The Score, Baraka released his first solo spoken word effort (Shorty for Mayor), and is continuing to write and record his artistic work.
8) Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, the most comprehensive political history of Hip Hop culture. He is also an accomplished journalist. He has solidified his place on this list by providing an intellectual platform for Hip Hop's forefather, the legendary DJ Kool Herc who penned the intro to Can't Stop . . . 9) Priya Parmar is a scholar of education, directly influenced by the work of KRS ONE. After writing her education dissertation, KRS-One Going Against the Grain: A Critical Study of Rap Music as a Postmodern Text, she was subsequently tapped to lead the east coast contingent of KRS%u2019 Temple of Hip Hop organization. Nowadays she works tirelessly in the NYC public school systems in order to innovate curricula with Hip Hop culture.
10) Bikari Kitwana was the editor of the Source when the Source was the most credible and most widely read magazine in/of Hip Hop Culture. That was over twelve years ago and things have changed. Mr. Kitwana has written three books, on Hip Hop culture, two of which, The Hip Hop Generation, and Why White Kids Love Hip Hop serve as definitive projects for Hip Hop intellectuals and Hip Hop heads alike. Mr. Kitwana was also the driving force behind Hip Hop's first national Political Convention in Newark, NJ during the summer of 2004.
There are others who make this list, including: Juan Flores, H. Samy Alim, William Upski Wimsatt, Marc Lamont Hill and myself. The point of this essay and this list is that there are Hip Hop Intellectuals who (either subconsciously or not) have committed themselves to a set of B-Boy rules that require multi-faceted engagement with intellectual discourses through Hip Hop culture. And finally, this Intellectual Engage, continues to speak, publish, and organize in a manner that the late Harold Cruse might find admirable despite the lamentations of nay-sayers who would relegate Hip Hop to mere popular entertainment.
The Heads that Don't Get Mention
By
Dr. James Peterson
I grew up in the Bricks. Newark New Jersey. Growing up in the hood, just as Hip Hop germinated in the post-industrial ghetto, was an acculturating and intellectually developmental experience. I heard Rappers Delight at the tender age of 8 and from that moment forward I owned the culture as a fully vested acolyte of the combination of Hip Hop's fundamental components, including (the four languages of Hip Hop) and others. I was consciously cognizant of the intellectualizing forces at work in my lived experiences with Hip Hop. The culture just sort of crept up on me in Newark. But after the success of Rappers Delight a chain reaction of radio acceptable singles exploded from the culture. I can remember when Kurtis Blow's The Breaks was a hit. Black/Urban radio in NYC played The Breaks only once or twice a day, but it was always at the same time and my brothers, sisters, and cousins when they were visiting would all gather together in the kitchen; that was where the loudest radio in our house was. And we would party around that one song. We engaged in this daily ritual not only because this was the hottest joint out at the time; not only because we could feel the power of a music and culture that belonged exclusively to us; but because Kurtis Blow's 'The Breaks,' much like Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message' were the first intellectual moments that the culture produced and projected at the national level. The ritualistic fervor with which we approached these listenings, memorized the words, and talked about the songs and the artists merely hinted at the signifying force of this moment. Consider the subtle theoretical abstractions from Kurtis Blow's first hit single that speak to the form of Hip Hop culture i.e., it is organized around break beats literally and the content of the lived experiences within the urban settings for Hip Hop culture at that time. "These are the Breaks!" although not a popular saying in any of speech communities of The Bricks, was the first codification of these lived experiences gesturing towards the nihilism that has so often been referred to in Hip Hop culture. An early intellectual moment to be sure: not simply because of the philosophical and theoretical potential of the tune, but because of its multifaceted aural-readability. Its ability to blur the boundaries of content and form even as it coerced us to move our bodies (dance) to its music suggests the multiple intellects that cohere around a thorough comprehension of The Breaks. The multiplicity of intelligences applies here as one considers the intellectual dexterity necessary to dance to this music even as one contemplates the breaks of inner city living in the 1980s. This is an important point of entry for a discussion on the intellectuals of Hip Hop Culture because it produces the intersections between popular culture and academic theory, social critique, and community that are necessary for most of the intellectual litmus tests detailed to date (Cruse and others). Moreover, it points to a thesis around which the "B-Boy rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals" emerges. B-Boys or B-girls are those essential performers from sui generis moments of hip hop culture who danced to the manually-looped breaks of old soul and disco records. Breakin (or Break dancing) along with poppin/pop locking were early foundational forms of dance deriving from the culture itself. Break Dancing derives its name from the break beats that drove the music and culture at the outset. But B-Boying and B-girling came to take on more meaning and significance within the culture of Hip Hop than that singular meaning attached to those early performers who drove the kinesthetic energy of early Hip Hop jams. B-boys (in 2005) are known as guardians of the culture. They have earned this distinction over the decades because of the ascribed rules to b-boy-dom. B-boys had to be proficient in at least two elements of the culture. Authentic B-boys were participants in many aspects of the culture. A b-boy would not only break dance, but would also write graffiti and or MC and or DJ. Many embodied combinations of two or three elements. These rules were simple and only loosely patrolled, but the ideology that produces them demands multilevel engagement with the culture across elemental comfort zones. In this essay I simply want to extend these rules (through an intellectual transformation) to those figures who would/could be considered Hip Hop Intellectuals. First, some clarification of the B-Boy rules is necessary. By most conventional definitions B-boys are simply break dancers who embody the cultural roots of Hip Hop: i.e. they dress a certain way usually harkening back to hip hop style circa 1980, and they dance to the breaks recreating settings that reflect the original impulses of the culture. The only rule for B-boys is that they "live the lifestyle of b-boying." When asked to define himself (on an interview on www.bboy.com), Virginian B-boy Tazk narrated the following:
You can spot a bboy from a mile away. A bboy for me is someone who doesn?t wear a spin jacket for looks, but to actually spin, or a mesh hat. Yo there have been times I roll up to jams looking busted, people are probably like, wtf is that nigga wearing, but you know why I wear what I wear cause das ma gear that I can perform ma best at. Bboyin is deep man, its not juss on the outside. The definition of a bboy is someone who lives the lifestyle of bboying. There are breakers and then there are bboys, a real bboy knows the difference? (www.bboy.com)
The notion of multiple levels of engagement with the fundamental elements of Hip Hop culture derives organically from the culture through various B-boys and artists, most notably KRS ONE who also likens b-boying to a particular lifestyle. Note Tazk's oblique reference to his ability to identify an authentic B-boy on sight and more importantly here, he claims to be able to distinguish authentic B-boys from breakers who by implication here are charlatans who fancy the margins of the b-boy world. This discourse on the authenticity of b-boys yields the B-boy rules requiring the multiple levels of engagement with the fundamental elements of Hip Hop culture. These rules requiring multiple levels of engagement, then may be seen by B-boys (themselves) as being artificial. For my purposes though they serve to strengthen the significance of authenticity for Hip Hop culture and the discursive content of the culture that lends itself to multi-faceted notions of authentic being. These notions of authenticity constituted by the subject's multi-leveled engagement with the foundational elements of the culture then underwrite my thesis of the applicability of the B-Boy rules for Hip Hop intellectuals. Defining the intellectual in/of/for Hip Hop culture has to date been the subject matter of several journalistic articles. The effort that most comprehensively articulates the definition of the Hip Hop intellectuals is Adam Mansbach%u2019s article of the same name. "Hip Hop Intellectuals" was originally published in the San Frisco Gate on June 25, 2003 and later collected in DeCapo Best Music Writing 2004. Mansbach defines Hip Hop Intellectuals as "folks who derive their basic artistic, intellectual, and political strategies from the tenets of the musical form itself: collage, reclamation of public space the re-purposing of technology even if they are not kicking rhymes and scratching records" (Mansbach 2003) Mr. Mansbach deftly captures the aesthetics of Hip Hop intellectualism vis a vis the structural formations of collage, reclaiming public space, and repurposing technology. His list of Intellectuals ranges from Jeff Chang, Toure, and William Upski Wimsatt to artists like poet, Paul Beatty and actor, Danny Hoch. These figures clearly engage in various forms of collage and the reclamation of public spaces particularly here in the media and via the teaching work of scholars, Michael Eric Dyson and Tricia Rose. In addition to these structural aesthetics of Hip Hop intellectualism, the historical ruminations on Black Intellectuals in Harold Cruse%u2019s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, seem readily applicable to this discourse in a number of ways. What follows is a simplified paraphrasing of Cruse's key duties for African American intellectuals. His prescriptions should be thought of, at least initially here, as applying directly to Hip Hop culture. For our purposes, substitute Afro-American, black, or Negro with Hip Hop. The key duties of the African American/Hip Hop intellectuals are:
1) to be knowledgeable of their intellectual predecessors, and intellectually familiar with historical political and cultural movements.
2) to analyze critically explanations for the pendulum swings between the two poles of integration and black nationalism, combine and theorize these explanations
3) to distill and discern the behaviors, cultural traits, and conditions that will advance black culture. This process necessitates a more critical relationship with Afro-American Culture and American capitalism, where "group culture either flourishes or atrophies."
4) to continually acknowledge the uniqueness of the African American experience.
Mansbach's Hip Hop Intellectuals focuses on a radical generation that comes of age. This generation is essentially those between the ages of 25 and 35 who were the primary constituents of the culture through its zeitgeist (era). If we follow Dr. Cruse's first directive, configured for Hip Hop, Mark Anthony Neal exemplifies and writes about the generation of intellectuals that immediately precede Mansbach's radical generation. To wit, Neal writes "Thug Nigga Intellectual," for Popmatters reflecting on the posture of the first generation Hip Hoppers, those scholars and thinkers who are of the same age as the founding figures of Hip Hop culture; the forty somethings of black academics. He includes Todd Boyd and Michael Eric Dyson, but does not include any women in this list of emerging black male scholars with a distinctly Hip Hop attitude. For Neal, his stance as a "thugniggaintellectual" is in profane opposition to the academic good ole boy network as well as the more conservative black academic guard (i.e. Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West). "[C]laiming the space of the "ThugNiggaIntellectual" is about bringing to fruition an intellectual component to the "Thug Nigga" psyche. In other words, it is a commitment to intellectually choking a "Mfer to death, if need be." This intellectual sentiment is ideologically rooted in a psyche that is cultivated in the music of gangsta rap icons like Kool G Rap, Tupac, and 50 Cent. Yet the thug nigga intellectuals discussed in Neal's essay, are not of the 25-35 set to which Mansbach attributes the nerve system of this intellectual energy. Neal's intellectual actually precedes my list of Hip Hop Intellectuals (in age and in entrance into the academy proper) by about 10 years. An amended list of these early Hip Hop intellectuals includes David Toop, Houston Baker, Tricia Rose, Marcyliena Morgan, and Cheryl Keyes as well as Neal, Todd Boyd, Dyson, and the others mentioned by Neal. Toop is responsible for the earliest comprehensive journalistic history of Hip Hop, Rap Attack(s) 1,2 and 3. Houston Baker introduced the notions of reclaiming public space via boom boxes, breakdancing, and wilding in his critical essay on Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. And Tricia Rose solidified the field of Hip Hop studies with Black Noise. Nearly every scholarly text that immediately followed Black Noise had to reference it. These scholar-intellectuals have generally moved on to other fields of inquiry, but their early impact influenced the intellectual exchange that followed. Neither Mansbach, Neal, nor any of the other writers who directly addressed notions of Hip Hop intellectualism take considerable time to explore the cultural or political movements of the past that tend to influence the Hip Hop intellectuals. Now that we can somewhat distinguish the socio-political history of the early Hip Hop intellectuals from a newer crop (25-35 years of age in 2005), the political and cultural movements in common with the early set as well as those that are distinct readily reveal themselves. The political movements are the NOI/the 5% Nation of Gods and Earths, The BPP for self defense, and various Stop the Violence/Cease Fire movements. The cultural movements include, Blues, BeBop, Rock, Soul, Funk, disco, the digital age, and various forms of hustling. Dr. Cruse's second directive is even more compellingly complex in its anticipation of challenges for Hip Hop's intellectuals. The "pendulum swings" phenomenon refers to an intellectual history charted laboriously in the work of Cruse, which suggests a bi-polar model of intellectual thought alternating between Nationalist and integrationist ideologies. Consider Malcolm X's black nationalist stance vis a vis Dr. King's civil rights agendas. The pendulum also swings in Hip Hop culture, manifesting the bi-polar flip poignantly in successive eras of Hip Hop culture. Mark Harris, in yet another Popmatters piece, this time entitled "Edutainment: the Rise and Fall of the Hip Hop Intelligentsia," wrestles with the intellectual pedagogues of Hip hop who took on the mantle of edutaining, rapping, teachers. "Rap needed a Teacha/so I became it" raps KRS ONE (knowledge reigns supreme over nearly everyone). Harris does an expert job of chronicling the internecine relationships between the music of the conscious, political, edutainers, and the music of their up and coming, keepin' it real oriented gangsta rappers in the west. Harris suggests that the verbal virtuosity of movements like the Nation of gods and earths enjoyed extensive valence and cultural resonance with inner city Hip Hoppers (esp. on the east coast) who knew some of the esoteric and often encoded lyrics of edutainment artists. Just as Clinton came into office, the lower-income/class economy began to recover from the Reagan era, and Hip Hop began to reach outside of its ethnic urban demographic, the occasionally cryptic, regularly didactic work of artists like KRS ONE, Public Enemy, and X- Clan, gave way, on the mainstream stage (major radio, MTV, and BET) to Ice-T, NWA, and The Geto Boys. This signal, paradigmatic shift in the popularity of the music in conjunction with the "fall of Hip Hop's Intelligentsia" lead to an important moment for Hip Hop scholarship. This was the first, marked pendulum shift in the culture. Unfortunately it has not returned from its swing away from edutainment content. However, the fact that this phenomenon bares such a striking resemblance to Cruse's concern with his generation of Black intellectuals sheds some light on issues of discernment of the Hip Hop intellectuals. Cruse's third directive then, suggests that intellectuals organize. For the Hip Hop generation this has been a glaring absence. Yvonne Bynoe says as much in her critical tract, Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership, and Hip Hop Culture. Bynoe's central thesis is that due to the extraordinary popularity of rap music, the media and the powers that be have effectively appointed the artisans of Hip Hop culture as the post-civil rights leaders of Black urban America. For Bynoe, Hip Hop politics, an essential requirement for Hip Hop intellectuals, at least according to Dr. Cruse's blueprint, is a mythological formation. "Continuing this farce called Hip Hop politics does a disservice to the important work done by our elders and ancestors, and obscures the real work that this generation needs to take on and move forward" (Bynoe, xiv). Hip Hop intellectuals would probably agree that being a fulltime rapper/entertainer and a fulltime political activist is a near impossibility. However, there are artists who directly contribute to the political discourses via savvy distillations of socio-economic, racial, spiritual, and yes, political challenges in our society. These artists include, the likes of Public Enemy and KRS ONE, as well as the more recent work of Paris, Dead Prez, and MF (metal face) Doom.
The final directive underpins the first three since its focus is on centralizing the unique qualities of the African American Experience. For Hip Hop culture, this directive requires (for Intellectuals) a thorough working knowledge of the history of Hip Hop and as we chronologically move beyond this extraordinary moment of popular attention to the culture, a healthy understanding of Hip Hop's fundamental aspects and the culture's overall impact on American society as well as the rest of the world that has come to claim Hip Hop as a signal component of various youth cultures. With a more comprehensive understanding of Harold Cruse's classic instructions/requirements for black intellectuals and their parallel valence with would-be intellectuals of Hip Hop culture, permit me to suggest a list of Hip Hop Intellectuals who manage to meet most of Cruse's requirements as well as the B-Boy Rules. The following scholars represent the best of what Cruse requires of intellectuals in conjunction with a healthy commitment to engaging multiple aspects of the culture through multiple career paths and/or discursive platforms. The following scholars enter the intellectual, discursive scene after that first cohort of Hip Hop scholars (Gates, Baker, Crenshaw), and after those scholars who study, think and write about Hip Hop (Rose, Boyd, Dyson and others) but tend to identify themselves with both the post-civil rights/post-soul generations as well as the Hip Hop generation. The following intellectuals will claim Hip Hop culture as the dominant, if not singular, milieu from which their critical thinking derives. Without further ado, and in no particular order; the Hip Hop Intellectuals:
1) Adisa Banjoko, author of a self-published collection of essays entitled Lyrical Swords. Mr. Banjoko hales from the bay area and in addition to writing some of the most insightful essays on Hip Hop culture and spirituality, he produces and hosts a weekly political talk show (One Mic), and has in the past written for the Source magazine and various other Hip Hop magazines. Banjoko also serves as a Director/program coordinator for the Riekes Center, a community center committed to innovative athletic, political, and artistic programming for inner-city youth.
2) Imani Perry, author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop, holds a Ph.D. in American Studies as well as a JD from Harvard University. She is currently an assistant professor of Law at Rutgers Camden. In my humble opinion she is our most promising Hip Hop Intellectual, not because of her degrees or her position. Her work in Prophets of the Hood is indispensable as it is the first scholarly text to closely analyze the aesthetics (social, artistic, and political) of Hip Hop music. But she is also the most genuine, humble, and compassionate scholar that I have had the privilege of meeting. Since the B-Boy rules for Hip Hop intellectuals is somewhat based on the prerequisite moorings of Harold Cruse's outline for intellectuals, Dr. Perry's compassion and personal authenticity serve her extraordinarily well as a standout figure on this list. 3) Oliver Wang, a self-professed cultural critic, writes about Hip Hop and popular youth culture for Vibe magazine, URB, Village Voice, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He also writes for LA Weekly, Popmatters.com, and Amazon.com. Moreover, Wang DJs regularly in the Bay area and he is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is also the author of Classic Material: The Hip Hop Album Guide which collects dozens of his in-depth Hip Hop album reviews. 4) James Spady, is what most might refer to as an organic intellectual, but his work speaks for itself. As a journalistic force, he has interviewed dozens of Hip Hop artists. He self-published a trilogy of his collected interviews, Nation Conscious Rap, Twisted Tales in the Hip Hop Streets of Philly, and Street Conscious Rap. Mr. Spady%u2019s prowess as a journalist is evident in all three of his substantial works on hip hop culture as well as his regular contributions to the Philadelphia New Observer. More ethnographer than journalist, Spady%u2019s penchant for historical and philosophical insights regarding Hip Hop culture make him an indispensable figure on this list even though, age-wise he may be closer to one of the earlier groups of scholars.
5) Davey D is the most insightful historical journalist that Hip Hop has produced. Since he was/is both an MC (TDK or Total Def Krew of the Bronx circa 1977) and a DJ, Davey D directly exemplifies the B-Boy Rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals. As one of Hip Hop%u2019s longest standing intellectuals, Davey D has written for countless publications and spoken at countless engagements educational, political and otherwise. Through his Hip Hop political news letter, his local TV/Radio programming, and his presence on the local and national political scenes, Davey D leads the Hip Hop Intellectuals in their pursuit of the Cruse-ian directives.
6) Dr. Roxanne Shante made a name for herself as a teenager when super-producer Marly Marl collaborated with her to produce "Roxanne's Revenge" the first classic 'dis' response record. Just about all women rappers who followed (circa 1984) were influenced in some way by her delivery, inflection, or her powerfully womanist tone. Now she holds a degree in psychology (working with young people of color) and she is one of the most dynamic, engaging public/community speakers to come out of Hip Hop culture.
7) Ras Baraka is yet another figure on this list who defies the assumption that Hip Hop culture lacks political activism. As the son of Amiri and Amini Baraka he has lived up to their legacies of artistic production, education, and political organization. He has done too much to attempt to list his accomplishments here, but in addition to years of teaching his is currently a Vice Principal at a public Newark High School. In addition to years of political organization at Howard University and in Newark, NJ, he is currently Newark%u2019s Deputy Mayor. And in addition to editing anthologies (with Kevin Powell) and dropping gems on the now classic Fugees album, The Score, Baraka released his first solo spoken word effort (Shorty for Mayor), and is continuing to write and record his artistic work.
8) Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, the most comprehensive political history of Hip Hop culture. He is also an accomplished journalist. He has solidified his place on this list by providing an intellectual platform for Hip Hop's forefather, the legendary DJ Kool Herc who penned the intro to Can't Stop . . . 9) Priya Parmar is a scholar of education, directly influenced by the work of KRS ONE. After writing her education dissertation, KRS-One Going Against the Grain: A Critical Study of Rap Music as a Postmodern Text, she was subsequently tapped to lead the east coast contingent of KRS%u2019 Temple of Hip Hop organization. Nowadays she works tirelessly in the NYC public school systems in order to innovate curricula with Hip Hop culture.
10) Bikari Kitwana was the editor of the Source when the Source was the most credible and most widely read magazine in/of Hip Hop Culture. That was over twelve years ago and things have changed. Mr. Kitwana has written three books, on Hip Hop culture, two of which, The Hip Hop Generation, and Why White Kids Love Hip Hop serve as definitive projects for Hip Hop intellectuals and Hip Hop heads alike. Mr. Kitwana was also the driving force behind Hip Hop's first national Political Convention in Newark, NJ during the summer of 2004.
There are others who make this list, including: Juan Flores, H. Samy Alim, William Upski Wimsatt, Marc Lamont Hill and myself. The point of this essay and this list is that there are Hip Hop Intellectuals who (either subconsciously or not) have committed themselves to a set of B-Boy rules that require multi-faceted engagement with intellectual discourses through Hip Hop culture. And finally, this Intellectual Engage, continues to speak, publish, and organize in a manner that the late Harold Cruse might find admirable despite the lamentations of nay-sayers who would relegate Hip Hop to mere popular entertainment.