FEATURES 4
NOVEMBER 23, 1992
]
Mastery or Murder in Rap Music
Whafs really hehind the message?
By Jon Michael Spencer
Ink Contributor
Whi le supremacist d iscoursc and
demeanor do noi go unreproached
by African Americans, though our
responses sometimes go unnoticed.
Our retorts and
liberational intentions
generally go unnoticed
when masked behind
discourse and demeanor
that appear un-threaien-
ing, even accommoda
tive.
On the other hand,
our retorts and
liberational intentions
are generally alarming
to whites when we speak
or act explicitly against
their supremacist inten
tions and inventions.
In Houston Baker’s
words, these two types
of African-American re
sponses to white su
premacist di.scourse and
demeanor are the “mas
tery of form” and the
“deformation of mas
tery.”
The "mastery of —
form” is a viable strategy for some
African Americans because what
the guardians of our oppression hear
and see in our discourse and de
meanor is not what they get.
They hear certain stereotypes,
sounds they an ticipatecoming from
unenlightened black mouths;
sounds ranging from blues-like
complaintiveness to rap-like play
fulness.
But what they get—what really
sounds from behind the minstrel
mask when the “form” is mas
tered—is noise, noise that begins to
confront and disrupt white “mas
tery.”
The television show “In Living
Color,” produced and hosted by
Keenan Ivory Wayans, is an excel
lent example of the “mastery of
form.”
The actors on the comedic vari
ety show articulate the familiar ste
reotypic sounds of minstrelsy, but
they are actually “signifyin”’ by
sounding deeply subversive cri
tiques of white culture.
The paradigm of the show’s
“mastery of form” appears in the
character of Homey the Clown.
Homey is a black parolee forced
by “the system” to wear a clown
suit and face and entertain children,
but his appearing as a clown allows
Spike Lee exhibits “mastery of form.”
ment is secure, removes his min
strel whiteface: Uncle Thomas is
about to commence his terroristic
reign of legalistically bopping “the
man.”
Whenever the “form” is worn to
mask what is really reproach to wh ite
supremacist dis
course and de
meanor, the result
is the “mastery of
form.”
This strategy
has its roots during
slavery in the be
havior called
“puttin’ on ole
master.”
The attempt to
call out and un
mask someone
suspected of the
“mastery of form”
can leave the thief
vulnerable to the
verbiage and ges
ture of signifyin’,
which is intended
1 to reestablish the
stolen equilibrium.
Such
thieves
are
him to go unnoticed when his dis
course and demeanor are actually
critical of “the system” of “the man.”
The epitome of the Homey the
Clown skits is when Homey, still in
clown-face, dons a three-piece suit
because he is becoming wealthy
from advertising a children’s ce
real.
Homey is presumed to have sold
out to the “the man” when he says of
the black motorist brutily beaten
by Los Angeles police, “Rodney
King was way out of line.”
But when Homey meets “the
man” at a social establishment
called Chez Whitey, he hones in on
the man’s head and bops him, just
as he had always bopped the chil
dren who disrespected him.
That the “mastery of form” is
the strategy behind “In Living
Color” was implied in the show’s
portrayal of Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas.
In a skit on the newly appointed
Justice Thomas, once he becomes
certain that his lifetime appoint-
destined to learn that
“signifyin’,” as the
saying goes, “is worse
than lyin’”—worse,
because one can never
prove that another has
i signified. An example
! of a failed attempt of a
I “master” to steal a
black man’s mask is
illustrated in an article
on filmmaker Spike
Lee, published in the
October 1992 issue of
Esquire magazine.
The title of the ar
ticle, written by a Jew
ish woman named
Barbara Grizzuti
Harrison, is “Spike
Lee Hates Your
Cracker Ass.”
The magazine
cover, a photo of Lee with closed
fists and crossed arms forming an
X, has the caption “Spike Lee strikes
a pose behind Malcolm.”
The tide and caption of the ar
ticle hint of the intent of the author
to unmask Lee, behind which fa
cade she presumes to see a little
black man who “hales your cracker
ass” and is using the larger persona
of Malcolm (the mystique of the X)
and the powerful medium of film as
his mouthpiece for articulating
“noise” rather than “harmony.”
Lee’s pose and the magazine’s
caption, both signaling his movie
about Malcolm X, together infer
that the article will comprise a dia
lectic between “master” and masked
man.
Lee, however, maintains his
poise, his “mastery of form,” which
unhinges his interviewer, Barbara
Harrison.
This is the way I propose we
understand black music.
Contrary to Houston Baker, who
suggests that the spirituals and the
blues are instances of the “deforma
tion of mastery,” I contend that all
forms of black music, from the spiri
tuals to rap, can be understood bet
ter as the “mastery of form.”
Bebop, for instance, is not sim
ply the musical expression of the
PUBLIC
1
>3
r
Public Enemy uses symbolic murders in raps.
bopping of black heads; it is “the
riot,” the whomping back of white
heads; wop! bop! be-bop!
Rap, in its “mastery of form,”
similarly absorbs violence in that it
makes one too weary to kill. Rap,
like bop, may provoke “the riot,” as
many whites fear, but it simulta
neously absorbs violence by ex
hausting the body.
Despite its aspect of intellectual
insurgency, rap is first and fore
most exhausting to the body; for it
is the body, not the rational under
standing, that is the absorber of
rap’s rhythms.
Violent aggressivity—the
“scratching” of rap DJ s giving sound
to blades ready to slit throats—is
physiologically canalized, trans
formed and exorcised.
Symbolic murders, such as Pub
lic Enemy’s “By the Time I Get to
Arizona,” Ice T’s “Cop Killer” and
JohneBattle’s“UltimateDriveBy,”.
are brought out into the open so that
the accumulated libido can be dis
solved on the very border that
crosses over into outright violence.
“Civilization,” esteemed in the
master’s discourse about the ad
vantages of western rationalism, is
itself but a mask.
One of its false faces is religion,
which, if unmasked, would reveal
the possibility
of murder, po
lice brutality.
“You say you
believe in the
necessity of re
ligion,” says
[Nietzsche.“Be
sincere! You
believe in the
necessity of
I police!”
And you
say you believe
in the cultural
and economic
necessity of
black music,
I television and
film; of Public
Enemy,
Homey the
Clown and
Spike Lee pro
moting them
and capitaliz
ing upon them, despite the warn
ings that you unmask these “angry
black men.” Be sincere! You be
lieve in the necessity of ritual vio
lence!