TRP as Wu-Tang Warrior

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

MantaRay at aol.com writes:

> Well, Ice-T's anti-violence rants were always targeted within the
> balck community, to stop killing itself: "We're just brothers on the
> street killing brothers/In a system that's geared to kill one
> another". He had no prblem taking it outside, though, "Cop Killer"
> for example. A massive blacklash was his plan at one point, a plan
> which goes back very far: Chester Himes', in Plan B, felt that was
> what would truly put black people on equal footing with whites, and
> it was always the white nightmare.

As witness the reaction to Publc Enemy's first album - homeboys with
Uzis? oooh mercy! Nothing quite so funny as the white foax finding out
that niggas also have the right to bear arms. (I saw these guys doing
support for the Beastie Boys. It was un-believable. There were two
gentlemen in cages waving fake Uzis. Don't believe the hype!)

But `always'? There was a time when the white nightmare was *white*
men carrying guns. Back in the 1600s when the Virginia colony was
being established, the plantation traditions were first worked out by
whipping lazy and disgruntled English `servants' (actually treated
pretty much like slaves; although their service was usually for a
limited period, they could be bought and sold, and were regularly
beaten and starved) into shape whilst they worked out their costs of
passage (and usually some extra years added on for insurrection,
laziness or criminality).

Despite the ever present danger of attack by natives, no one dared arm
the servants, for fear they would attempt escape or riot. In fact, as
men were freed at the end of their terms of service they began to
constitute an even greater menace since they threatened to destabilise
the cushy little tax-collecting regime the King's governors and
locally elected councillors had set up with several, increasingly more
serious rebellions (remember the spirit of '76 - that's 1676 when the
Virginia tobacco fields were razed). Eventually, when the economics of
the case were readjusted in the face of increasing survival rates for
settlers the servants were replaced with Black slaves who, though
their initial cost of importation from Africa or the Caribbean was
higher than for white English `servants', gave a better long term
return since their drudgery was for life. This also solved the
rebellion problem since the governors wisely stirred up racial hatred
against Native Americans and Blacks to solidify the whites against
their `common enemy'. The rest as they say is history.

All told in Edmund Morgan's superb history of the Virigina colony,
`American Freedom, American Slavery - The Ordeal of the Virginia
Colony.' A great book full as much of moral as historical insight.
Highly recommended.


> >>Wu-Tang, like so many other rap acts have a hard time
> >>drawing the line between clever channeling and marketable violence. In the
> >>post-Tupac/Biggie Smalls era, this is not only artistically questionable
> >>but possibly thanatologically unwise.
> 
> I agree, although I'm beginning to have less and less compunction over
> rappers
> blowing each other away. On De La's "Buhloone Mind State" they hold back from
> an on-record reprisal because they know it's a pointless enterprise.
> 
> 
> >>I
> >>haven't seen the white press fawning over Wu-Tang Clan yet because I can't
> >>get past all of the stupid articles gloating about how Suge Knight is in
> >>prison now or that the LV cops have no leads in the Tupac Shakur shooting.
> 
> Wu-Tang gets a ton of press. There's a spread on them in Spin. Plus, they've
> been
> disbanded for awhile now; there was a vacuum there. Now that they're back
> together,
> they're everywhere. In either case, the articles on Suge (who is a serious
> fucking
> thug) and Tupac ARE news; 1)because record company screw-jobs are always
> reported
> and 2)because Tupac is some kind of martyr now. Kids can't get enough of him.
> 
> >>Fugees/Salt n' Pepa/TLC/etc. ad nauseam are pop by the accepted standard
> >>and would get press today just like the Platters and the Temptations got
> >>press in the 1960s. The negative press over gangsta rap (i.e. most black
> >>music that doesn't make MTV/Rolling Stone) is overwhelmingly greater than
> >>any real reviews thereof. 
> 
> Well, TLC are not rap. They R&B, whatever they say, The Fugees are straddling
> that
> fence, but they've got some of the goods. S&P deserve whatever they get.
> 
> >>Damn right. Try listening to "3 Feet High and Rising" by De La Soul and
> >>attempt to decode the speech in it that they developed for their vocal
> >>style and compare that to the extensive paronomasia that Pynchon engages
> >>in and a few more correspondences come to mind immediately. 
> 
> The voice of Reason. If any TRP fan, doesn't have 3Feet in their stacks, they
> are
> missing crucial, relevant connections. 
> 
> >>Yeah, Mason and Dixon pretty much only lands Sonic Youth fans. 
> 
> And? SY are innovators up there with DeLa. Shit, Kim Gordon couldn't keep her
> hand
> off Chuck D or LLCoolJ...
> 
> >>Here's hoping that TP secretly goes out on the town with Posdnuos and Mase
> >>to plan their collaborative effort. THAT would set the newsgroup
> >>a-buzzin'. 
> 
> This would be a personal wetdream of mine, also.
> 
> MantaRay
> 
Andrew Dinn
-----------
We drank the blood of our enemies.
The blood of our friends, we cherished.