When I got a line-up for two dollars back in 1998, Jay-Z, Nas, Pac, Biggie, DMX, plus Spragga Benz, Beanie Man, and the occasional Mary J. Blige augmented the talks at barbershops. Hip-hop is still talked about today, just in a different fashion. Our conversations have changed because its narrative has deviated. Rappers went from rapping about selling drugs to songs about doing them. It diverged from feigns to feigning. I still enjoy the conversations I have with my barber and his barber-friends and the folks sitting around waiting. But lately, I feel like we’ve missed the irony in our talks, both back then and now. 

We always shared stories about our culture but in between those cuts we slowly stopped asking ourselves, “what’s really good?” While keeping our hair tight we forgot to tease out messages and their messengers when it came to hip-hop. Instead we clinched our teeth and closed our eyes while our barbers slapped that blue barbicide liquid on the back of our necks and the fronts of our foreheads and down our cheekbones. Waiting for him to say to “next,” us barely looking at our heads in the mirror. We’ve done the same thing with our music.

Hip-hop requires that the gates for creativity be swung open, but that we also have our own gatekeepers that are willing to object to certain forms of the art. Folks who are able to separate the messenger from the message. A collective community that is willing to disregard certain tenors while validating other ones. If hip-hop music is simply retelling our stories, we need to interrupt these voices by having critical conversations about what is really going on in our communities. About, what’s really good? This is the function of hip-hop tv, radio, and podcast hosts. This is part of the function of the barbershop and barbers.  

Barbers and barbershops still resemble priests and cathedrals to me. And most folks still visit to get cultured and clean waves. When we validate certain music, we ought to be willing, at the least, to check and balance for a diverse word. Especially when we already know what happens with our Black males as a result of hip-hop. Especially when we already know, just like our hair styles, how important variety is. Especially when we already know, just like those hair clippers, how powerful of an instrument our music is in the battle for equity and liberation. 

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There has been no rapper who has taken it upon themselves to narrate their version of the #BlackLivesMatter movement with such sonic substance and clarity than Kendrick Lamar. The dichotomous relationship between blacks and whites in America seems to gain more saliency every time we turn on CNN. And the relationship between blacks and whites has never been rhymed with more elegance than on a “sleeper track” from Kendrick’s latest critically subversive and politically acclaimed album, To Pimp a Butterfly. Appropriately titled, “Complexion”, K dot rhymes through insurgent tones pertaining to a multitude of experiences brought on by skin color. He speaks on the seemingly innate yet trivial complexities of black self-hate that is created by simple differences in melatonin levels. The hook clearly proclaims the message of the track: Complexion means nothing. Unfortunately Kendrick is grappling with the utopian ideal of living in a post-racial society while still living in one that is institutionally segregated along racial lines. Kendrick is right – completion doesn’t mean a thing. But unfortunately his hook would be more accurate if it said, complexion shouldn’t mean a thing.

Listen closely to the first 16 bars of the track as Kendrick puts himself in the historic shoes of a slave who is lusting after a lighter-skinned “house servant”. The line, “Sneakin’ through the back window, I’m a good field nigga. I made a flower for you outta cotton just to chill wit ya,” is so metaphorically potent that upon each listen you can feel another layer of its meaning. On the surface it describes the obstacles that impede society’s unity and the division that is founded on race. On a deeper level, those very lines can be used to sum up the entire TPAB album. The butterflies in this case are rappers, or on a grander level, the exploitation of black culture and the symbolism can be meant to represent the route that black culture had, and has, to take just to get “a seat at the table” – through the back window. The flower out of cotton made just to chill is the packaging of our culture’s hard work and determinism. Yes. Shit gets deep.

“Brown skinned but your blue eyes tell me your mama can’t run” is another example of the historical markings that slavery has left on our society. The controversial nature of skin color is fervently challenged in this telling track off of TPAB. There are rappers who make catchy songs that sonically sound great but have little social relevance and there are rappers who purposely and unknowingly are pressed into appropriating our culture, and then there are rappers who maintain a vision of the roots of hip hop and use their words to tell a story. A story about what growing up black feels like. The realest rappers are not the ones who claim to slang the most dope, drop the most bodies or bag the most shorties; the realest rappers are those who still feel that this tool of music can be used as a weapon for both economic stability and social change. A song like “Complexion” reveals why Kendrick is one of the realest rappers out.

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1. Hip-Hop Classroom

“I feel that all the hip-hop albums I have ever listened to, from Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle to Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly have taught me more valuable life lessons and offered more insight into my world than any public school educational resource I was ever handed.”

A look at how hip-hop culture affects education. Merely using rap lyrics in English courses is not the solution. Infusing hip-hop culture and education must be more meaningful.

2. Black Boy, Interrupted

“If the Black boy was striving for acceptance amongst his peers as validation for his Blackness, what he struggled with was notions of how academia fit into it all.”

Memoir-style narrative on how black males experience high school; an experience that is undoubtedly unique due to discourse surrounding black masculinity and subjective identity construction.

3. Barack’s Blackness

“Two different lives, two different experiences, two varying opinions. But one thing is in common. Black lives matter but society seems to tell us otherwise. Barack’s blackness shouldn’t be up for debate.”

A blog that was sparked by a convo I had with a friend over the President himself.

4. Flipping the Script on Black History Month

“There is great luxury in being oblivious to privilege. So the dominant group stands aside and gives Blacks their month to mourn, reflect, and re-envision. And when it’s over we all go back to the status quo.”

Dilemmas faced by schools and teachers during our short month of February.

5. A Case for Black Teacher Identity

“I am a young, black male working in a profession largely dominated by older, white females. My identity and essentially everything about me clashes with the norms of “elementary teaching” almost on a daily basis.”

The quote pretty much sums it up.

Hopefully these posts can stir up discussion, provide some insight, or even be used in your classroom as a resource. I know we’ve got a little over a week left in February; remember that doesn’t mean that representing, validating and centering the voices of black students (and many others) need to halt.

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