The other day, clear out of the hazy blue heat of a New York summer sky, I was overcome by a primal urge to hear some hip hop. Not trip hop, or acid jazz, or rare grooves, or any of the other hybrid spawn of the 80 bpm, 4/4 track's peripatetic soul. Just hip hop, please. I put on Jeru the Damaja's The Sun Rises in the East and listened to it about 15 times.
The tracks were moody and deep, just as I remembered, with Jeru espousing the time-honored rhetoric of the Scientist : "Leave your nines at home/and bring your skills to the battle." My hunger, however, was merely whetted. Desperately, I consumed all the singles from Black Moon, Smif-n-Wessun, and Mobb Deep. Fashioning incandescent metaphors among intricate beats and haunting chords, their music mirrors and transcends the b-boy's New York experience; the frustrating, strap hanging voyage between Madison Avenue fantasy and minimum wage reality. But even this combined effort wasn't enough, my strange hunger continued to gnaw. So I dined at the year's most delicious buffet: the intoxicating oeuvre of the Notorious B.I.G.
Since his single, Juicy/Unbelievable, blew up the spot late last year, Biggie has found a substantial degree of fame and monetary remuneration. He's achieved the coveted status of bona fide mack, and doesn't mind telling
the world about it. A virtual unknown a year ago, Biggie's making up for lost time; he's unleashed a dramatic collection of inventive remixes, casually brilliant B-sides, and a near perfect album, Ready to Die. RTD is a largely autobiographical, feature length documentary on the travails of ghetto life, in which Biggie guides us through his neighborhood of hard knocks. When he deals a little to support his family, we curse along with him at the people and laws that would deny him even the opportunity to make a living. We feel the pain of his setbacks, and acquire along with him the thousand yard stare familiar to any war veteran. Part Horatio Alger story, part tabloid headline, Biggie's struggles suggest that the rise of a modern day hip hop star is possible only after a perilous fall, an update on the adage that one must suffer for art.
Unfortunate or not, it has always been thus. More than any other American music over the last fifteen years, hip hop has been infused with the notion of redemption. Partly, this concept is baggage from the black diaspora, a reflection of a people's movement into unknown territory.
Forced to adapt quickly to foreign hardships, the successful émigré turns a once hostile environment into a haven, mastering the subtle intricacies; in short, fitting in. From Wu Tang Clan to Boogie Down Productions to Gang Starr, the most compelling protagonists of hip hop culture all share a legacy of pain and displacement, and all work in their unique way to rise above it. Rakim, the foremost hip hop lyricist of all time, understood both America's bounty of hardship and its corollary allowance for reinvention. His famous dictum, "It ain't where you're from/ it's where you're at," was advice not just for an oppressed race bent on loosening the shackles of discrimination, but to a new class of survivor, one capable of fashioning a fresh medium out of seemingly exhausted sources.
