When I first saw that Common’s appearance at the White House was being protested based on his raps, I started searching my mind for instances where his lyrics may have hinted at misogyny or sexism; as a fan a came up with a few examples. Interestingly the New Jersey Police are protesting Common’s appearance as well (Clutch), but not on what I was expecting. Common’s A Song for Assata is what got the police department to join the argument.
If you don’t know Assata Shakur’s story, she was a Black Panther from 1971 to 1973 who was thought to be involved in a shootout on the New Jersey turnpike that left a new jersey cop and Black Liberation Army supporter and friend dead. Shakur was convicted of the crime but escaped to Cuba where she has lived under political asylum. Common’s song tells her story.
The Huffington Post updated a story they posted yesterday on the controversy identifying Common’s A Letter to the Law as another problem and reason for Common not to read poetry at the White House according to Fox News. The Post does the best job of explaining his rap, noting Common’s lack of controversial music in the larger scheme of things:
Of course, Common is a pretty hard sell when it comes to striking the right divisive note, and while the Daily Caller could have mined his most recent album Universal Mind Control, for some dirty-ass songs that encourage some athletic sexual activity, it doesn’t really contain the short, sharp shock of those gangsta rap classics about running drugs and capping police officers. But they dug and dug, and found an example of what they’re looking for, in the form of a poem called “A Letter To The Law”
It shouldn’t take a genius to explain what’s going on in this poem: It is what the title suggests, a “letter” to the source of moral authority written from the perspective of inner city black youths who feel that the police don’t protect them, that the media loves to blow up and then tear down their community’s celebrities and that the government has been acting more gangsta — in terms of their invasion/occupation of Iraq — than they could ever hope. There’s an obvious sad note at the end, that the writers of this “letter” might perpetuate the cycle of decline themselves, but the hope is that, by seeking knowledge over violence, they might prevail. (The reference to “My Uzi Weighs A Ton” is key, here: Common is referencing an old Public Enemy song that posits that the mind is the greatest weapon.)
Let’s look at another point the Huffington Post brings out in it’s update:
Our own Corbin Hiar directs me to this tweet from Spencer Ackerman, who digs up another interesting intersection of rap music and politics, this one involving Eazy-E, from legendary gangsta-rap outfit N.W.A.:
In March 1991, Eazy-E accepted an invitation to a lunch benefiting the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle, hosted by then-President George H. W. Bush. A spokesman for the rapper claimed that Eazy-E supported Bush for overseeing Operation Desert Storm.
I won’t even get into the correlation here on several levels, but based on the need to find any and everything wrong with the President it doesn’t fully surprise me that they would pick Common’s appearance at the White House as a point of major contention. What is interesting is our acceptance of those who are considered “classic” or more or less socially acceptable poets in comparison to Common. William Shakespeare and Emily Dickenson are talked about in The Post’s article noting the fact that both of these poets wrote poems that were considered controversial in their day, and in between the thee’s and thou’s are just as controversial today. You can find the full Post article here and read it; if nothing else you’ll have another way of viewing the argument by way of a (very intersting) British literature history lesson in the process.
