Ian Verstegen
"I'm Still Number One!'
B-D-P's Ambivalent Leadership of Political Rap
In the fall of 1987, Scott la Rock, the DJ of the rap group Boogie Down Productions (B-D-P) was shot in a car after trying to break up a fight (Small 77). In light of B-D-P's role in reforming rap in the succeeding years, his biography is significant; he was college educated and was employed--in addition to his musical activity--as a social worker. He had released a groundbreaking record that year, and had already worked on a follow-up, which would defy older categories of rap music. His violent death seemed a cause for pause to reflect on rap music's new direction.
The effect on the other member of B-D-P, the rapper K-R-S One (Chris Parker), was devastating but quickened his mission. Nearly two years after the murder, he preached against black-on-black crime, promoting education, spirituality and vegetarianism. Rap had to be political and it required self-denial, even asceticism; he had made rap music an extremely serious endeavor.
Enlightened rap seemed poised to enjoy mainstream popularity. But something about its message did not capture the popular imagination, and it has remained a sub-genre. Conversely, the highly materialistic rap that was popular when B-D-P appeared in 1987, glorifying jewelry, cars and brand names, is in vogue again. However, B-D-P--vintage B-D-P--enjoys a paradoxically respected position. This is strange because in some respects B-D-P's version of political rap was stricter than the other groups that comprised the so-called New School, the consciousness-raised groups that followed in his path. Something about B-D-P's asceticism had an edge that made it strangely attractive. I wish to explore this ambiguity.
K-R-S One was the guiding force of B-D-P, writing its lyrics and producing its albums. He is generally regarded as the popular artist who, along with Chuck D of Public Enemy, politicized rap in the middle 'eighties. It is well known that popular rap was capable of political content from its earliest beginnings. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released both "The Message" (1982) and "White Lines" (Don't Do It) (1983), the first a lament about ghetto life and the second a powerful indictment of cocaine (then called "freebase"), well before crack became a mainstream epidemic. Run-DMC rapped in "Hard Times" about the early 'eighties inflation economy.
Of course, the political discourse of rap music has been pointed out before, but almost always in exalted form. With the exception of widely recognized misogynist lyrics in many otherwise "progressive" rappers, the complexity of the (especially nascent) unifying impulses of activist rap are seldom noted. This may be because the early efflorescence of theoretical writing on rap, when many academics were excited by its political content, has ended. Much scholarship was impressed by the potential of political rap and simply took all rap to be political rap. This further obscured some important questions of identity contained in the struggles toward unity. (1) Political rap has declined and we doubt the political efficacy of rap music. At this time, perhaps a more nuanced and more interesting approach can be taken to early political rap.
In particular, we must remember that previous to what we shall call the "New School" of rap music led by Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, the dominant delivery of free-style rapping was ultimately based on live, extemporaneous "battling" of one rapper against another: I call this "brag" rapping. This paradigm of rap assumes rappers are in competition against one another, which then carried over into recorded rap music. We can see a successful example in Run DMC's "King of Rock" (1985):
I'm the king of rock, there is
none higher
sucker M.C.s should call me Sire.
To burn my kingdom you must use
fire
I won't stop rocking till I retire.
The implicit assumption of this music is the somewhat artful but ultimately flaccid elevation of oneself. This paradigm of competition was embraced by political rappers to combat those deluded by materialism or without self-knowledge. But it was very hard to avoid the individualistic combative mode that is, by its nature, antithetical to unity.
Competition can be called the primary intrinsic difficulty facing political rappers. But there are other complicating factors. Like all popular music, rap is constantly changing and evolving; subject to fashions, artists come and go, and they find it hard to remain current for long. This has opened the way not only to continually evolving identities and a constantly changing art form, but also the very real problem of obtaining and maintaining legitimacy. These factors all leave their signature on the pacifying, unifying motivation of political rap.
Public Enemy is the canonical political rap group, about which more has been written than any other rap group. Their importance and the effect of their first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show (1987), is undisputed. But they created themselves from political motives in the relative political neutrality of Long Island. K-R-S One, on the other hand, grew up in the South Bronx, arguably the birth place of rap. From the very beginning he was exposed to the various currents of rap identity and affiliation. His processes of identification thus represents a much more interesting case and, indeed, the development of his politics in his music shows ample evidence of these struggles. In the following I want to focus on three themes that revolve around K-R-S One and B-D-P, and these are (1) the problem of territoriality in rap music, (2) the problem of violence in relation to music and revolution, and (3) unified struggle versus individual domination.
Territoriality
By 1989 with the "Stop the Violence" movement initiated by K-R-S One, B-D-P became synonymous with "New School" unity and social progressiveness. (2) Yet the very name of the group, Boogie Down Productions, indicated a territorial identity. It can be demonstrated, that the emergence of the perspective of unity was only made possible by a first "regression" to territorial identity.
"Boogie Down Bronx" gained widespread popularity in 1984 in a rap song of the same name by the Freeze Force. Amidst standard early 'eighties lyrics, Freeze Force indicate that "I'm not from the Bronx but I still boogie down." Clearly, by then the Bronx was already known for its predominance in rap music and shows. "Boogie Down" Bronx became a standard prefix among others to precede (or alter) other New York boroughs; thus "Crooklyn," "Strong Island," etc. There was no mistaking the meaning of Boogie Down Productions as a pro-Bronx enterprise.
At the time of K-R-S One's maturity as a rapper, Bronx pride and identity were thus established and it was at this time that a group of rappers known as the "Juice Crew" from Queens released a record entitled Queensbridge in which they laid claim to Queens as the birth place of rap music. The Juice Crew was produced by Marley Marl and their principal rapper was MC Shan. (3)
B-D-P seized upon this opportunity to come out strong with a defense of the Bronx's claim as the birthplace of rap, and their twin songs "South Bronx" and "The Bridge is Over" (the Bridge referring to Queens; Criminal Minded, 1987) were some of their first major hits. In "South Bronx," K-R-S One gives a virtuoso lesson in rap history. After first mentioning some of the Queens rappers, he says:
Way back in the days when hip
hop began
with CoQue La Rock, Kool Herc and
then Bam.
B-Boys ran to the latest jam
it always got shot up, they went
home and said, "damn!
There's got to be a better way to
hear out music every day
B-Boys getting blown away but coming
outside anyway.
They tried again outside in Cedar
Park
Power from the street lamps made
the street dark.
But yo they didn't care, they turned
it out
I know a few understand what I'm
talking about.
Remember, Bronx River, running thick
With Kool DJ Red Alert and Chuck
Chillout on the mix.
When Africa Islam was rocking the
jams
and on the other side of town was
a kid named Flash.
Patterson and Melbrook Projects
Casanova all over, You couldn't
stop it.
The Nine Lives Crew, the Cypress
Boys
The Real Rock Steady taking out
these toys.
As wild as it looked as hard as
it seemed
I didn't hear a peep from a place
called Queens!
It was '76 to nineteen eighty
the Dreads in Brooklyn was Crazy!
Here K-R-S One surveys the most important early rappers and the early, early days when actual shows were powered by PA systems plugged into street lamps and he boldly finds no activity to speak of in Queens. (4) K-R-S One made his claim with an acute sense of history, perhaps the first demonstration of such self-consciousness by a rapper working in such a young art form. This also means that he was explicitly aware that he was young, did not have any "old school" status, and thus took this as an opportunity to insert himself into a tradition.
Criminal Minded pioneered the use of reggae music in rap. In "The Bridge is Over" K-R-S One sings in his reggae sing-song: "Saying hip hop started out in Queens bridge, popping lots of trash, you know them can't live." He went on to promote rap-reggae collaboration, which is a mainstay today. K-R-S One publicized that he has a mother from the West Indies, and is able to "rock an American or reggae beat" ("Dope Beat," Criminal Minded, 1987). These gestures can be interpreted as another claim to legitimacy because K-R-S One further identifies himself with the West Indian roots of rap music in the South Bronx.
In the best spirit of sub-cultural self-identification, Run DMC of Hollis, Queens, celebrated the West German brand of shoes called Adidas, and even had a song entitled "My Adidas." MC Shan of the Juice Crew, too, wore only Puma shoes. Thus K-R-S One made the gesture to define his territory by wearing only Nike brand shoes. On "The Bridge is Over," singing to Billy Joel's tune of "Still Rock and Roll to me," K-R-S One says "Best off changing what's coming out your speakers, / best off talking 'bout the wack Puma sneakers, / Bronx created hip hop, Queens will only get dropped, / still telling lies to me."
Thus in the same way that K-R-S One could lead the "Stop the Violence" campaign against black-on-black crime while maintaining in the name of his rap group a territorial identity, so too could he sing on the second album which included the song "Stop the Violence" (By Any Means Necessary, 1988): "How many of you got you Nikes on? Put your Nikes in the air. If you don't have Nikes on, I think you need to keep your feet down" ("Nervous," By All Means Necessary, 1988). On the same album, in "The Style You Haven't Attained Yet," at the end of a song about the new kind of rap song which teaches, we hear in the background, "I ain't down with the Juice Crew!" And on B-D-P's live album of 1990, before introducing "The Bridge is Over" in which the Juice Crew and M. C. Shan are unmercifully slammed, we hear K. R. S. One say to the crowd, "They're ready." This demonstrates what a show stopper the song was: during his "Stop the Violence" campaign he could work up to in concert, finally using it to give the coup de grace. As late as January 1998 at the opening of his Temple of Hip Hop--an institution partly founded by K-R-S One to celebrate the universal significance of rap music--he was playing this song in concerts.
Violence
We might expect that the lyrics of K-R-S One would be conflicted in their use of violence. But while violence exists, its meaning is extremely complex, and easily misunderstood. It is convenient to contrast it with that of Public Enemy. On Yo! Bum Rush the Show (1987), in the provocative song "Miuzi weighs a Ton," Chuck D says, "How can I make you understand / I get ill on a posse with my goddamn hands?" Clearly he means to indicate that his "Uzi" is not a gun but his words. A year later, in "Bring the Noise" (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 1988), he indicates the same metaphoric violence of words, saying, "How can I tell them that I really never had a gun, / But it's the wax that the Terminator X spun?"
In these examples, violence is a metaphor used in a very sophisticated manner: the musical message is a weapon against the social structure holding blacks back. Perhaps it can be read on different levels: the casual inner-city listener can hear "My Uzi weighs a Ton" and receive a message appropriate to the violence of daily life, or they can listen closer and understand the true message involved. It is probably true that Public Enemy uses violence ambiguously, to confuse the difference, thereby maintaining street legitimacy. Thus the message of "Fight the Power" (Fear of a Black Planet, 1989) seems suspended between a fight against power and literal fighting power.
Public Enemy metaphorized violence to make a message that was multi-layered: on the surface it appeared to talk about Uzis, on another level it actually spoke of knowledge and self-determination. B-D-P took a radically different turn. Instead of metaphorizing political rap as a form of violence (but also of taking the flaccid pseudo-violence of early rap and metaphorizing it), they concretized it. In a sense this removes the violence from the music but makes B-D-P's relationship to violence much more ambiguous.
At various times on Criminal Minded (1987), K-R-S One makes this novel point, as on the title track "Criminal Minded," when he refers to a rap battle between two rappers and says "If you really want to battle I will pull out a nine [millimeter gun]." He thus opposes the rap battle and the real gun battle between two people. On the first track, "Poetry," he says: "I do not contemplate a battle 'cause it really aint worth it / I'd rather point a pistol at your head and try to burst it!
Later on "Elementary" K-R-S One indicates how he is fully aware of the seeming contradiction indicated in his words:
But never in your life try to
dis me.
'Cause I don't battle with rhymes,
I battle with guns
Knowledge reigns supreme over nearly
every one.
If you take the first letter of
what I just sung
You spell my name "K-R-S One."
It's elementary.
The recognition of the difference between the two kinds of battles is "elementary." It is so elementary that it involves "knowledge," as in his chosen name, which is created by the phrase "Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Every One."
K-R-S One somehow dismisses the relevancy of the rap battle. He doesn't just express a point that would be oft-repeated in the later age of "gangsta" rap: he lives in a violent world. He moves on from here to affirm the irrelevancy of talking of such pseudo-violence in a song. Violence should not be metaphorized, but left to life itself. Music is for teaching. This difference is explicitly referred to in "Poetry" when K-R-S One says:
You seem to be the type that
only understands the annihilation
and destruction of the next man.
That's not poetry, that is insanity
simply fantasy, far from reality.
After explaining just what poetry is, he follows up:
Difficult, isn't it
my point? You're missing it.
Your head is in front of my hand
so I'm dissin' it!
These few lines contain in them a subtle clarification of K-R-S One's position. He understands the metaphoric use of violence in rap, and dismisses it. He chooses to make rap a kind of poetry, the object of intelligent discourse. But he does not deny the role of violence in life. In fact, he affirms it, and thinks the inconsequential rapper ought to receive its discipline.
Without understanding this distinction, it could be asked to what degree Criminal Minded is actually a political album, as Yo! Bum Rush the Show of Public Enemy undoubtedly is. I would argue that if one takes into account this very concretization of violence, it too is political, but at an obvious price. By concretization, B-D-P puts across the idea that it stupid to sing about violence and the whole idea of the rap battle is stupid: in real life, one can have a real battle and one might be happy to shoot someone else. But violence is only exorcised from music and it is not directed to any struggle.
While there is indeed a difference between this strange violent attitude and gangster rap, B-D-P's model proved hard to follow. It was precisely the misunderstanding of this point that led to "gangsta" rap. (5) In "My Philosophy" (By All Means Necessary, 1988), K-R-S One had said "It's not about a salary, it's all about reality." This was picked up by the Los Angeles rap group, N. W. A. (Niggers with Attitudes), in their anthem, "Gangsta, Gangsta." These words of K-R-S One were sampled and interspersed throughout the song.
K-R-S One does not mention NWA specifically but a song may make reference to them. On "Breath Control" (Ghetto Music, 1989) he challenges:
When I sing I try to bring enlightenment
but the suckers be bitin' it,
radio's fighting it,
the fans be likin it.
Your face, I'm wiping it, because
it's dirty
You're unworthy to think that you
could serve me.
If truly directed at NWA, K-R-S One's warning shows that in spite of their invocation of his authority, they haven't learned his lesson.
Domination
From his earliest album, K-R-S One expressed a notable humility, which he regarded as necessary to put across his new message. He opposed the flaccid brag rapping embodied by Run-DMC. In fact it was they who provided the foil for K-R-S One and B-D-P, who were particularly incensed at the exclusionary language of a "King" of rock. K-R-S One, in fact, frequently held the King metaphor up for ridicule. On "Poetry," he says, "I am not king or queen, I'm not rulin'," and on "Criminal Minded," he says:
Kings lose crowns, but teachers
stay intelligent
[Kings] poppin' big words on the
mike but still irrelevant!
Finally, on "Elementary" we hear, "If that's a title they earned, then it's well deserved, but, without a title see I still burn." Concurrent with his concretization of violence, he expressed his complete lack of interest in claims of, even metaphoric, nobility.
On the next album, K-R-S One must have sensed that even "burning" was too much of a concession to the brag rappers. On "My philosophy" (By All Means Necessary, 1988) he said, "I'm not flammable, I don't burn, So please stop burning, and learn to earn respect, 'cause that's just what K-R[-S] collects." But even if K-R-S One at least ideally distanced himself from all anti-egalitarian posturing, he nevertheless found it difficult to stand by it.
Perhaps the most glaring expression of this paradox was in K-R-S One's song, "I'm Still Number One" (By All Means Necessary, 1988). The song begins with a gesture of solidarity to other rappers, a popular gesture now, but at the time novel at the time. He repeats the names of numerous rappers, like Big Daddy Kane (a recent product of the Juice Crew), and after each says "He's down with us." But then the refrain comes in: "I'm still number one!" K-R-S One says:
Sometimes I choke and try to
believe
when I get challenged by a million
M.C.s.
I try to tell them, we're all in
this together
my album was raw because no one
would ever.
Think like I think, or do like I
do
I stole the show and then leave
without a clue!
He seems to imply that he is trying to show solidarity but in their very act of challenging him, they are bringing on his wrath. Later in the song, he says:
So I love to step in the jam
and slam
I'm not Superman, because any one
can.
Or should be able to rock off turntables
Grab the mike, plug it in and begin.
But here's where the problem starts,
no heart
Because of that, a lot of groups
fell apart.
It is in the very next line that some of K-R-S One's motivations emerge. He then sings that:
No one's from the old school,
'cause rap on a whole
isn't even thirty years old.
Fifty years down the line you can
start this
then we'll be the old school artists.
Even in that time, I'll say a rhyme
a brand new style, ruthless and
wild.
Runnin' around, spending money having
fun
But even then, I'm still number
one!
K-R-S One seems to be addressing some of the insecurities mentioned above in remarks on territoriality. He is aware that he is not exactly "old school," and yet tries to point out the relativity of this category (in fifty years we'll all be considered old school artists). B-D-P had circumvented this by allying themselves with Chuck Chillout and DJ Red Alert and, ironically, Red Alert has become a friend to all progressive rappers.
This relativizing of the category of the "old schooler" bolsters K-R-S One enough to make his paradoxical point that, if you have the heart, then an equality amongst rappers is possible, but since this is practically impossible, K-R-S One has to assert his primacy.
Conclusion
In their first album of 1987, B-D-P provided a novel approach to rap music that did several things. On the positive side, it concretized violence, thereby diffusing its effectiveness as a subject matter; it elevated "teaching" over bragging, notably condemning kingly comparisons between rappers. By the next album, spurred by Scott La Rock's murder, the "Stop the Violence" campaign was in full gear, and rap solidarity was taken for granted. However, in the midst of these unifying gestures, as I have tried to show, old issues continued to preoccupy K-R-S One, B-D-P's lead rapper. First, concretizing violence brought it out of the song but relocated it in K-R-S One's person. Mustering the authority to speak for everyone was provoked by a crisis of legitimacy, which was answered by affirming ties to the Bronx, and subverting all other pretenders to legitimacy like the Queens' Juice Crew. Even as the leader of a peace movement, K-R-S One would continue to play his most provocative songs, wear Nike shoes, and condemn the Juice Crew. Even when reconciling himself with newer Queens products, like Big Daddy Kane, and listing who's "down with us," he has to affirm "I'm still number one!"
Works Cited
- B-D-P. By All Means Necessary. Jive/RCA, 1988.
- ---. Criminal Minded. B Boy Records, 1987.
- ---. Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop. Jive/RCA, 1989.
- Public Enemy. Fear of a Black Planet. Def Jam/Columbia, 1989.
- ---. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Def Jam/Columbia, 1988.
- ---. Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Def Jam/Columbia, 1987.
- Ro, Ronin. Gangsta: Merchandizing the Rhymes of Violence. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.
- Rose, Patricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. University P of New England, 1994.
- Run DMC. King of Rock. BMG/Arista, 1985.
- Small, Michael. Break it Down: The Inside Story from the New Leaders of Rap. New York: Citadel, 1992.
Notes
1. Perhaps the most distinguished of these works was Patricia Rose's Black Noise. In spite of an important discussion, in her desire to document the political rap movement she tended occasionally to dwell on unpopular songs or else overlook the subtleties of other songs, like those B-D-P.
2. The "Stop the Violence" movement was officially inaugurated with B-D-P's song of the same name on By All Means Necessary (1988) and became a charity to which sales of the albums of certain artists contributed. K-R-S also helped organize the song for charity, "Self-Destruction," in which numerous rap artists participated together to protest black-on-black crime.
3. The battle has been compiled on one album: The Battle for Rap Supremacy: KRS-One and MC Shan (Cold Chillin', 1996).
4. To be able to remember as far back as when early rappers were "pluggin' in the streetlamps" is by now a standard invocation of old school legitimacy. Most recently Peter Gunz and Lord Tariq have released "Uptown" (1998) in which they say "But if it wasn't for the Bronx, this whole rap shit would have never taken off."
5. On the origins of gangsta rap, see Ronin Ro, Gangsta: Merchandizing the Rhymes of Violence. While Ro's account is excellent, he does not treat this point.
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Ian Verstegen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Art History department and just spent a Fulbright year in Italy. He has been trying unsuccessfully for many years to reconcile his staid academic interests in Renaissance art and his personal enthusiasm for rap music.
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