With ten years worth of releases in the record bag, Stones Throw has forged a reputation for itself as a label which is happy to take risks in order to put out records regardless of their commercial potential. ‘I don’t think I ever thought hard about the Stones Throw sound or anything like that’, Wolf comments, ‘I put out what I like.’

The result is a roster of artists which includes, to name a few, Oh No, MED, Gary Wilson, the late, great, beat tape genius J Dilla, and of course Madlib – in any number of his guises. Indeed, it’s Madlib’s helium-breathing alter ego Quasimoto’s first album, The Unseen that Peanut Butter Wolf rates as one of his favourites from the last decade. ‘I really like that record’, he reflects. ‘It was an exciting time for me. There was all this stuff that Madlib recorded in his bedroom and then we mixed it down in my bedroom and neither of us knew what we were doing from a technical standpoint. I think that the passion for the music is what made that sound different to an extent’, he adds.

You can read the full version of this article in The LIP Magazine Media Issue. Order Your Copy Online!

A champion of hip hop and reggae, it seems appropriate that Benjamin’s latest offering is a double release, not of books, but records. His album, Naked, features production from Trevor Morais of sixties legends ‘Faron’s Flamingos’ providing a dub-heavy back drop to the hypnotic recitation of eleven new poems. A side project, The Naked & Mixed Up E.P. sees hip hop aficionado and 1Xtra founder, Rodney P step up to the mixing desk to remix four of the tracks from the album. The records blur the lines between performance poetry and rap, a distinction which Benjamin himself is keen to erase. ‘It’s what we call the griot. You don’t sit there and go, “Do you want to be a poet, or do you want to be a musician?” You use whatever means necessary to tell the story. Rap is just a form of street poetry anyway.’

During the 1980s, it’s fair to say that Benjamin Zephaniah had more in common with the anger-fuelled rap scene exploding in LA than with the poetic establishment in London, ‘Hip hop, reggae, who really cares / The essence is loud, the anger is clear’ he proclaims on ‘Uptown Downtown’. I wonder whether being a darling of Radio 4 and black envoy to the middle classes has compromised his message? Is there any way that his poetic vision could be taken as seriously as, say, NWA’s Fuck Tha Police? ‘I think most people move on and want to say things in different ways,’ he comments. ‘I wrote this poem, ‘Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death!’ which was like my Fuck Tha Police, but I wouldn’t write that now. What hip hop did really well and what NWA and Public Enemy did was tell it like it really is. When I performed ‘Dis Policeman…’ on television, black people were coming up to me and saying “At last, somebody’s out there and saying it.” Truth, telling it like it is, is an essential element of Benjamin’s poetry – ‘It’s the truth I’m telling you, poets don’t lie’ as he puts it, tongue in cheek, in ‘Touch’.

Truth and identity are inseparable for Benjamin, and as the title ‘Naked’ would suggest, it is a sense of truth that he is trying to uncover and unclothe. ‘I’m trying to strip myself down and just be as open and honest as I can’, he explains. Such a delight in the poetic truth puts one in mind of Keats’ famous lines in Ode on a Grecian Urn, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ An appropriate comparison given the Rastafarian poet’s love for the Romantics. ‘I love this idea that your poetry has a purpose, this is where we want to go, and I may not see it, but I’ll die for it’, he muses.

Benjamin Zephaniah has been called many things – a commentator, an activist, a black poet, a performance poet – and he has seemingly comfortably segued from one sphere into another. Integrity must be important to him, but difficult to maintain in a culture dominated by the bestseller list and the charts. When I ask him about the poet’s image and whether we should listen more closely to what poets have to say, Benjamin recalls the one stanza wonder, Murray Lachlan Young. Styled by his publishers as ‘The Million Pound Poet’ after his lucrative but ultimately unsuccessful deal with EMI just over ten years ago, Young soon disappeared from the scene. ‘It didn’t work’, he notes. ‘And the reason it didn’t work was because when people listen to a poet, they don’t care what you dress like, they don’t care what you look like, they don’t care what race you are…they just want to hear something true that speaks to them.’

Benjamin Zephaniah has certainly spoken to a lot of people. He has toured the world, read in schools across the country, published thirteen collections of poetry and three novels. His charisma and personality have set him apart from other vernacular poets such as John Agard, and have gained him support on both sides of the musical/poetic border. Alongside accessible poems, many for children, are fiercely political collections – the titles ‘Propa Propaganda’ and ‘Too Black, Too Strong’, as well as his much publicised refusal of an OBE paint the picture of an antiestablishment stalwart. Although Naked is celebratory in tone, thanks in part to the musical backing, the familiar rebarbative jibes can be found. ‘I’m one more nigga on your boot / Dis night you want dis coon to die’ he spits on ‘Homesick’, revealing that same distrust of politicians and police. ‘Dis is me. I hate dis government as much as I / Hated the one before it and I have reason / To believe that I will hate the one to come’, he states on the title poem. For Benjamin Zephaniah, hatred of government seems to be a central tenet of his identity. ‘More and more people are realising that there is a difference between…human beings and politicians. There’s all these political figures who claim to represent us, who are actually manipulating us for their own purpose’, he explains.

It is this elision of the personal and the political that appeals to Benjamin in the work of the Romantics, in particular that of Shelley. It is something that he admits trying to emulate on Naked. ‘Shelley is one of my favourite poets of all time, he was so passionate – people went on strike chanting his poetry. I’m trying to connect the personal and the political, Shelley showed that it could be done, that poetry could be revolutionary and personal at the same time.’ A particular favourite of Benjamin’s, ‘Song to the Men of England’ illustrates quite clearly why Shelley has a place in his heart – the themes, the rhyme and the emphatic short lines are echoed both by rap acts such as Public Enemy or NWA and by poets like Benjamin himself. Shelley’s lines,

The seed you sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.

could almost as easily have emerged from 1980s Los Angeles as England in 1819. ‘It’s still relevant today’, he says of the poem. ‘It’s a really beautifully written plea to the people of England to think for themselves. It’s saying, “Why are you looking up to these people? You’re looking at them and saying ‘you’ve got wonderful clothes, you’ve got wonderful this and that’, but actually, you put it on them.” And there you are, naked.’

Questions of national identity are of massive importance to Benjamin and he openly rubbishes attempts by Gordon Brown and Trevor Phillips to singularly define ‘Britishness’. ‘Britain, by definition is multicultural’, he tells me. ‘How far back do you want to go? The Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Cillas, all different tribes came here. I think it’s only become an issue now because the cultures that are coming here are black and Asian. I say to anybody who talks about some fixed idea of Britishness, “Come on, when did that exist? When the Queen was German?” I always say it’s like the weather. It has different personalities. It’s still the weather, but it’s different across Britain.’ Benjamin remains philosophical about the recent racial tensions in light of the Mohammed cartoon scandal. He himself is unafraid of Islamic iconoclasm – ‘I see women in Purdah naked’ he rhymes on ‘Naked’. But, clichéd or not, ‘if you have freedom of speech, there’s got to be responsibility’ he concedes. Naked is littered with references to the war on terror and the implicit links between Muslims and terrorism. ‘The Muslims I know already hate the idea of being associated with suicide bombers’, he says. In ‘Rong Radio Station’, a meditation on the influence of the media on our political opinions, he complains of having been ‘battered’ and ‘brutalised’ into harbouring racist ideas himself. ‘I was beginning to believe that all Moslems were terrorist / And Christian terrorists didn’t exist’, he admits.

Perhaps Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetic quest is concisely summarised in his stated aim, ‘I want to kill educated ignorance.’ His vision is that of an open minded Britain in which political faction and intolerance are replaced with some kind of philanthropic humanism:

Live de life you love
Love de life you live
Live with massive passion
And live it positive.

But there is a problem here. The political comment, like the rhyme which can be innocently simple, even naïve, frequently lacks the punch that it requires to elevate it above Glastonbury-festival-soapbox socialism. It is appropriate that Banksy, once renegade graffiti artist whose pictures now more frequently grace the pages of the Guardian than the streets of East London, has provided the artwork for the album. Like Banksy’s stencils, many of the poems on Naked, will appeal to a wide audience but are no longer revolutionary. The template is familiar and one can’t help but be moved by the enthusiasm behind their creation, but the overall images are becoming tired, and crucially, no longer make us think. There is no doubt that Benjamin deserves his place in the poetic canon, and Naked is certainly an honest, and truthful collaboration. There is, however, a fine line between truth and truism, a line which is crossed too often for the project to be a true success.

Naked and The Naked and Mixed Up EP are out now on One Little Indian.

Balance is something that Sway has almost mastered. He has marked his territory at the cross-roads between seemingly disparate cultural forces: Islam and Christianity, ‘trapped in between the imam and the priest’, American hip hop supremacy and British talent, ‘The Pound is stronger than the Dollar – holla!’, commercial success and critical acclaim. Yet these apparently incompatible elements have set Sway apart from the populous pack of emcees clamouring to get their 21 seconds on the mic. Quick to acknowledge his numerous influences, ‘Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Ludacris, Madness…’ Sway also knows that there’s a good reason that he can proudly proclaim to be ‘the rapper that people take to’, namely that ‘no one’s had that same combination of influences in one man, mixed with being someone who’s Christian-Muslim, Ghanaian-British…all of these things.’

Draped in the Union Jack and the Ghanaian tricolor flag, Sway is a model of British multiculturalism, proud of both his African and British heritage, with one eye trained on the States. ‘One thing Africans love’, he says with a wry grin, ‘is to see somebody come from nothing and become something. It’s usually labelled the American Dream, but it’s actually the African Dream.’ He recalls how his upbringing in London ‘was like living in two different countries’, the world outside his familial home in Hornsey, North London, bearing scant resemblance to the little slice of Africa that could be found behind his front door. ‘There’s a lot of time in Africa’, he muses, ‘so there’s a lot of conversation, and through conversation you get a lot of story telling, that’s an element I took within myself.’ The tradition of West African stories is weaved throughout This is My Demo, and not just in the comic appearances of ‘MC Charlie Boy’, Sway’s Ghanaian alter ego, who we hear is planning to swim to London ‘to eat champagne with the Queen.’ ‘He’s actually based on about twenty of my uncles’, he adds. He attributes his razor sharp wit and lyrical dexterity which permeate the record to his African background, skills which landed him ‘in HMV instead of HMP’, bagging a MOBO along the way, and all without a major label claiming a cut of the spoils.

Yet there is a danger that the qualities which have gained Sway a considerable commercial appeal are the same ones that make him unlikely to really make an impact on the die-hard avant-garde hip hop heads. ‘I’ve been described as “the more accessible Dizzee” which is a good thing…I am cutting edge, there’s nothing like me’, he says. Is there not a danger that you could be labelled ‘Hip Hop Lite’ I venture. ‘It’s not about being edgy for the sake of being edgy. I want people to understand where I’m coming from. Everyone has to be true to themselves. I can rap about guns but that’s not “keeping it real” to me.’ His major criticism of his UK contemporaries is exactly that reliance on an image inherited from across the pond – guns, drugs and violence. He would rather plump for honesty and integrity, even if that compromises the preconceived notion of what an emcee should be, ‘everyone’s a killer drug dealer with a 9 milla / That’s not sensible / And I can sense the bull / That’s why these rappers couldn’t see me coming if they were vaginas with spectacles’, he spits on ‘Hype Boys’. But even Sway, the thinking man’s emcee, the voice of hip hop with a sensitive side can’t resist a touch of machismo. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a rapper someone can talk stupid about. I got a lot of friends, and if you talk recklessly, they’ll come and see you, it’s as simple as that. I’m no wimp.’

Wimp or no wimp (and I’m inclined to agree with the man himself on this one), Sway is a man for whom respect and consideration are important factors. He eschews the attitude of many other British emcees which he comically paraphrases, ‘Well, I can rap about whatever I want, nobody’s gonna hear it anyway, and nobody’s gonna buy it, so fuck everybody!’ This in turn leads him to question whether other rappers would be making records that glorify violence if they thought they’d actually get played, and their mums might be tuned in to 1Xtra: ‘Do you think that if they thought their whole family could hear that they’d be saying those things? When I write my lyrics I think, “that might offend this kind of person”, or “that might take this person out of the picture.” Me, I think for the world.’ That’s not to say that This is My Demo skirts around serious issues, rather that they are dealt with in Sway’s inimitably humorous style – be it unwanted attitude in the pub, ‘If you’re a gangster, then I’m Prince William’, or domestic violence in the tragic-comic ‘Pretty Ugly Husband’.

Given the man’s predilection for in-jokes and diverse tastes, it is with some apprehension that I ask him to imagine that he’s been stranded on a traffic island in Wood Green with only one record on his iPod. I wait to hear his tune of choice. ‘That’s a really, really hard one’, he says after a lengthy pause. ‘Chaka Khan. Ain’t Nobody. It’d have to be that.’ I wonder whether he’s pulling my leg. ‘It was a toss up between that and Heal the World by Michael Jackson. I love that too, it’s the only song that makes me feel like I could jump out the window and not fall down. It’s a tough call, but I’d go for Chaka Khan’, he adds without the slightest hint of irony.

With the album in the shops and the buzz continuing to buzz only time will tell whether Sway manages to tread the most precarious path of all between integrity and success – without swaying too far either way. He is a man with a plan, having set himself the target of five albums to prove to the world that he deserves his ‘name up in bright lights and capitals.’ If progress to date is anything to go by, it’d be brave man who stands in Sway’s way.

A fearless champion of the oppressed, he was an outspoken critic of the corruption and repressive policies that left millions of Nigerians without basic human rights. He held despotic leaders up to intense scrutiny and identified the societal problems not only of his native Nigeria but also of the world, revealing them boldly in his performances and recordings. Fela paid the price for his truculent critiques through frequent police harassment, beatings, and incarceration; military raids of Kalakuta in 1974 and1977 destroyed his compound, brutalized its inhabitants, and left Fela hospitalized and imprisoned. An alleged currency-smuggling violation while trying to board a plane for his 1984 American tour led to his arrest and imprisonment for over eighteen months.

Despite numerous attacks on his body, compound and character, Fela remained undeterred in spreading his music and message. He recorded more than seventy albums and delivered several electrifying performances a week at his nightclub in Lagos, the Afrika Shrine. It was not only the hottest club with the funkiest music in Africa, but a place of political empowerment and spiritual uplift where the Yoruba Orisha (gods) and heroes of the African Diaspora such as Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, and Fela’s mother, Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the leader of the Nigerian national and feminist movements, were venerated.

But Fela was much more than a rock star and political dissident. He was also a pan-African philosopher and utopian visionary. Fela proclaimed his compound, where he resided with his extended family, band mates and street toughs, an independent nation for the marginalized masses, free from the laws and jurisdiction of the Nigerian government. He called this counterculture haven the Kalakuta Republic, named after a prison cell he once occupied, meaning ‘rascal’ in Swahili. Physically, Fela marked his political turf by installing a barbed-wire fence around the compound, but conceptually, he created an alternate universe where diversity and rascality prevailed and radical ideas flowed freely. It was a safe refuge for the marginalized masses and disenchanted youth, and a revolutionary haven of political empowerment, spliff smoking, sex, and some of the funkiest music around. But Fela’s concept of a revolutionary community was more than a symbolic form of dissent; for many, this pan-African utopia was a way of life as well as a state of mind.

At the height of his popularity in the mid-1970s, Fela took to calling himself the ‘Black President,’ a moniker worthy of his pan-African appeal and political ambitions. When he passed away at the age of fifty-eight following a prolonged battle with AIDS, more than a million people attended his processional funeral through the streets of Lagos. Fela has since achieved an iconic status that situates him alongside such counter-cultural figures as Bob Marley and Che Guevara. His music has been sampled, covered, and paid tribute to by an unbelievable array of artists and he is cherished by such diverse musicians as Brian Eno, Sir Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Gilberto Gil and Mos Def.

Today, Fela’s significance is being experienced musically, politically, and culturally, building an Afrobeat community around the world. Fela’s music has become a new vehicle of identity and change as people move both physically and virtually through the Diaspora. His legacy has opened new spaces for artists to bolster political resistance, yet it is also a complicated one, open to multiple interpretations. Fela’s life was one of excess: he lived in a commune, smoked copious amounts of ganja, travelled with an entourage, had twenty-eight wives and a following of millions. He was Africa’s most notorious rock star and one of the continent’s most outspoken and dedicated political critics. In many ways Fela’s legacy is both sobering and inspirational, but despite the controversies surrounding him, no one can deny his bravery in the face of government brutality or the fact that he created some of the best dance music ever recorded. His life and struggles are truly as relevant today as ever.

An historical figure as rich in complexity as Fela necessitated investigation through a wide range of voices and creative media. So, back in 1999 I started to research and organize what came to be called The Fela Project, consisting of the art exhibition Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the published collection of essays, interviews and memoirs, entitled, Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway, an informational website and a series of related events and programmes.

Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was the first museum exhibition of its kind, with largely new work from thirty-four contemporary visual artists, documentary photography and video, a major catalogue and an extensive exploration in sound of Fela’s musical history and legacy. The selection of music in the listening programme was compiled by myself and my colleague and friend, Piotr Orlov and was unprecedented both in terms of examining Fela’s music, and also in its inclusion in an art exhibition. It was represented in a timeline from the 1950s to 2003, providing a context for the cultural and political environment in which Fela’s Afrobeat was created and developed, with synergistic music of the eras during which Fela composed and the musical realms in which his legacy has been disseminated.

Much has been written about the exhibition, so I will say little more except that the artists and venues were truly wonderful, as was the public response. It opened to the largest crowd ever recorded at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in July 2003 and brought in similar numbers throughout its tenures at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Barbican in London and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. While the critical and popular press was very positive, I am most proud of the way in which the exhibition proved to be accessible, relevant and interesting to new audiences who rarely, or in some cases, never had been to a museum before. To turn new people on to Fela and to help break down some of the walls of elitism of today’s art institutions was more than I and the artists who created work for the exhibition could have asked for.

The book, Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway, published by Palgrave Macmillan, has been somewhat overlooked amidst all of the hype and press that the exhibition and musical concerts generated. But it and the exhibition catalogue are what will endure and I strongly urge people to take a look at this compendium of essays, memoirs and interviews that attempt to balance personal reflection with critical exploration and scholarly analysis. The writers who contributed to Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway comprise a collection of incredibly diverse voices, and through their many perspectives you will experience Fela’s legacy and meet the man – a man of the people, a political gadfly, a musical revolutionary, a spiritual leader, a distant father, a loyal son, a husband to 28, and a lover to more. You will hear how he challenged dictators, composed more than 77 hit albums, and was king of a commune. You will hear how he was a leader to millions and yet was led astray. You will hear about Nigeria, the tales of Fela’s life and the diasporic reverberations of his actions and music. In the end it is up to you to listen with an open mind and let in the politico-sonic explosion that was Fela Kuti. In a world of largely negative images, Fela shines brightly as a positive force. I urge you to learn more.

1. Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway is published by Palgrave Macmillan
2. More information on Twrvor’s project can be found at http://www.felaproject.net

The Battle for Algiers follows the story of Ali la Pointe, commander of the FLN (National Liberation Front) and his comrades. Its realistic style allows us to experience a guerrilla struggle for freedom from the inside; the oppression, the determination to fight back, the increasing violence, the conflicts amongst the leadership, the involvement of the ordinary people, and the tactics used by the colonisers to destroy the resistance.

Perhaps its authenticity comes from the fact that it was written by and stars Saadi Yasef, an active participant in the original uprising, who helped set up the first post-colonial government. It covers the years 1954-1957, when the rebels retreated into the casbah in Algiers (home to 100,000 Muslims), and the fighting intensified. Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, also part of his own country’s resistance against Fascism, presents a drama shot as a documentary and uses many of the original locations of the uprising.

To prevent the ever-increasing attacks by the rebels, the French introduces a curfew in the casbah. The solidarity amongst the Algerians strengthens and new methods of resistance must be found. Young women are enlisted to deliver bombs to their destinations, dressed in Western clothing to slip past the police as they leave the casbah on their violent missions. The brilliant acting, along with the direction, and ADF’s music, conspired to create a feeling of claustrophobia, high-tension and fear. I held my breath willing these brave women to succeed, to avoid capture, to make an impact, to free their people… even knowing the terrible acts that they were about to commit.

Seeing the moment the bombs explode (shot in slow motion), one in a cafe crowded with people, is utterly shocking. How could I have sympathised with the bombers? This screening of the film was uncut, including its controversial torture scenes that had been banned from some prints. Watching the horrific torture of the guerrillas by the colonial forces, and the bombing of the casbah to break a strike by the population, twisted my emotions back the other way.

A testament to the sensitivity of the piece is that it also makes one empathise with the experience of the colonialists. There is a growing sense of fear and tension amongst the Pieds-Noirs (French Settlers) as they come under attack, and the desperation of the political leaders for the army to crush the guerrillas is plain.

Eventually, a crack team of French paratroopers is brought in to identify and capture the guerrilla leaders. General Phillipe (Jean Martin) tells his troops how he fought against the Nazis in World War Two, and how his unique understanding of the psychology of struggle against an occupying force will help him succeed against the Algerians. Again, I was forced by the filmmakers to re-examine my feelings, as ‘cruel occupying soldier’ morphed into ‘brave resistance leader’ on screen.

‘It is not by chance,’ it is noted in publicity for the recent screening of the film, ‘that the Pentagon chose to stage internal screenings of The Battle for Algiers ahead of the invasion of Iraq.’ The IRA, the Sandinistas and the Viet Minh have also reportedly used the film.

The Algerians succeeded in winning their freedom from France in 1962, having lost one million of their nine million people. This is a deeply affecting film, which forces us to examine our own attitudes, prejudices and sympathies. Whatever our political position, The Battle for Algiers has a lot to teach us about the pain and complexity of struggle.

Furthermore – and this is seldom mentioned – it needs to be understood primarily as a sonic force, an aesthetic. Much as its critics might like to dispute it, rap is a musical tradition which, more than any other, explicitly references the past to create a dialogue between old and new. It borrows liberally, and is frequently blue. Though it may ‘all sound the same’ to a middle-aged English white man, it is also a wide church. Yet while someone immersed in the culture such as the rapper Common will ask ‘who am I to judge one’s perspective?’ there are plenty of reactionaries eager to bang the gavel.

In 1988, Los Angeles’ NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitude) sent the suburbs into spasms of rage by inciting their listeners to ‘Fuck Tha Police’. Cultural illiteracy and the age-old fear of out-of-control urban blacks crippled many commentators, who confused the message that the band would no longer turn the other cheek to police brutality with an endorsement of murder. The song attracted the attention of the FBI, police authorities and mainstream media. Crucially, it also found its way onto young suburban whites’ stereos. As Kim Howells implied when he remarked that the most worrying issues of the ‘cultural problem’ were the ‘methods of popularising this stuff’, violent black music is only society’s problem when it reaches beyond a predominantly black audience. However, neither the respectable young white rebels nor their parents really understood the record, which they both read as expressing a hatred of authority per se.

‘Fuck Tha Police’ is the product of a specific situation in postindustrial America. Even before the arrival of crack cocaine in the early ‘80s, LA’s working classes were ravaged by poverty and violence. In 1982 the median income for residents of the South Central district was just $5900, youth employment in LA county stood at c.45% and government investment in recreation, affordable housing, programs for employment and inner city youth were all slashed. Crack turned the inner city into a war zone, complete with police helicopters and tanks. Housing projects were built in the style of minimum security prisons with fortified fencing and an LAPD substation. Fifteen blacks died from police chokeholds, which a police spokesman claimed represented the discovery of a weakness in African-American physiognomy rather than police brutality. In short, the lyrical content of ‘gangsta rap’ and the riots of 1992 are the results of the same environment.

It is an environment that affords little status to young black males, who realise at a young age that respect, success and justice will probably not be forthcoming in mainstream society. Rap offers an opportunity to win respect and influence, while graffiti (one of the four elements of hip hop alongside DJing, MCing and breakdancing) reappropriates an urban terrain which its exponents are not allowed to own. Hip hop is based on competition, whether it’s who’s the best dancer, the best DJ or the hardest motherfucker out there. Braggadocio is an essential part of the culture. Since the days of slavery, African Americans have ‘played the dozens’, boasting about their prowess and insulting that of their peers. It is a test of wits not without significance, for as stories such as Brer Rabbit and the Signifying Monkey suggest, it is by his wits a black man must live if he is to survive and prosper.

If this game of survival appears twisted and misanthropic, that’s because it frequently is. Yet contrary to popular belief, rappers do not advocate killing or glorify drug dealing. Furthermore, many lyricists are quick to point out the parallels between the illegal life and the naked capitalism which pushes them to the margins. America is labelled a ‘gangsta’, committing drive-bys on countries such as Panama and Iraq, facilitating the drug trade through inaction or the CIA. This comparison also rings uncomfortably true with regard to the misogyny in hip-hop, one of its most undeniably unpleasant elements, if not so omnipresent as is often implied. Sexist lyrics should be censured, but not censored. Where the right of free speech conflicts with the right not to be subjected to hate speech, the latter must give way. As JS Mill observed, truth will be reduced to stale dogma if not opposed, and even the wildest opinion must contain a kernel of truth.

As such, misogyny in rap – and the fervour of its opponents – reveals much about Western society. Widespread sexism may be explained partially with reference to the socioeconomic conditions in which young urban black males must negotiate their masculinity, and partially in black vernacular culture. It is not, as Kim Howells might suggest, ‘something new’. Jelly Roll Morton sang, ‘Come here you sweet bitch, give me that pussy’ in 1938, but, of course, it did not cross the tracks. The subject deserves much more room, but it should also be noted that hip-hop has always seen sexism and violence as the price of a reckless life in a society where men feel powerless in public, and turn on their women and children. In addition, it is worth considering that the use of the word ‘bitch’ excites much more attention than the over-representation of men on rape juries or gender discrimination in wages. Sexism permeates all of society, from the way children are raised to depictions in television, film and the mainstream music industry. Furthermore, these industries are partially responsible for the de facto censorship of rappers. While individual institutions from Sheffield University SU to the government of New Zealand may limit airplay or sales, considerably more is done by marginalisation and the major labels’ stranglehold on the music industry. In America particularly the homogeneity born of the monopolisation of music radio and television is startling, with airplay going only to those who can afford it. BBC Radio 1 is little better. And which rappers get the exposure? For the most part, ‘modern-day Sambos’ such as Nelly whose ‘message’ boils down to consume, have a party, and then consume some more. His embrace of the American Dream may be more damaging than a thousand small-time crooks talking like pimps on the mic. ‘Forty acres and a mule – fuck that! Nellyville – 40 acres and a pool!’ he rhymed on ‘Nellyville’, and over 5 million Americans rapped along. Nelly preaches love, of Mammon and of self. No one will blame him for any atrocity, as Marilyn Manson was blamed for Columbine, but his influence may well be far more disturbing, more debilitating to the individual soul and the community.

Nelly’s success, of course, has little to do with his lyrical content and maybe much to do with the lack of it. Good looks, force of personality and canny marketing have all played their part, but the at its heart lies the The Neptunes – a production team who have revolutionised mainstream hip hop, and, some would argue, the face of pop music. Hip-hop is music first, energising, neck-snapping noise aimed squarely at the dance floor, as well as at the car stereo and personal headphones. It is music rooted in the black tradition, always paying respect to the innovators of the past. To understand it, to judge whether each song preaches love or hate you often need to know your history. When Large Professor chopped up Gwen McRae’s sublime love song ‘90% of Me’ for Mobb Deep to spit aggressive street tales over, he knew his audience would be struck by the contrast. Love and hate cannot be neatly separated; they are not diametrically opposed emotions. Their complexity is captured by culture, by hip-hop. If David Blunkett, Kim Howells et al want to change its lyrical content they should first learn to how to listen to it. Then, perhaps, they might focus on the true causes of the problem.

With an inlay card that reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary British underground lyricists, from Task Force to Skinnyman, Dark Circle to Dr. Syntax, each of the twenty-one tracks in turn takes listeners on a tour of a cutting edge hitherto unparalleled in its cutting and pasting of various sounds and samples. While Dag Nabbit hails from a classical background, Orifice Vulgatron is well known as MC Drop in the drum and bass scene, and also works with the break beat/DNB sound collectives Shiva Sound System and the Dum Dum Project (currently in talks with Universal Records). The album’s first two singles, ‘Where Did the Sun Go?’ and ‘Seasons Beatings,’ have been deemed ‘Sure Players’ by DJ Magazine. In addition, the Beggars have received airplay in the UK on Radio One, Choice FM, X FM, Itch FM, and have been played worldwide in global metropoles including New York, Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai), New York and San Francisco.

Working with Tommy Evans, the founding member of Y ‘n R productions, a UK hip-hop label that has been putting out some of the best UK hip-hop for a long time, Foreign Beggars are placed firmly at the forefront of the underground music scene. Upon introduction to Orifice Vulgatron, Dag Nabbit, and Metropolis, your first impressions are not those of ego or self-obsession, but hints of modesty, self- confidence and respect. And it is these attributes that drive artists to express themselves unsupported and unrecognised by corporate record labels, in a context that provides no reward save that of appreciative faces in the crowd whose own histories find recognition, even solace, in the Foreign Beggars project. In the shadows of an industry in which an artist’s success or failure is assessed only in the bottom line of capitalist production, the underground movement demonstrates an altogether different value system, where momentum is gained as people vote with their trained feet, in an underworld where music is its own reward. And Foreign Beggars is commendable for shelving personal gain in the interest of artistic integrity.

The LIP magazine: Where did you start doing gigs?

Orifice Vulgatron: Dag and Myself along with Movez1 (M1 productions) and a couple of other heads formed the first hip-hop crew in Dubai back in ’96 when we started recording tracks and performing regularly. It was a year later, once the crew dispersed, that we started on the drum n’ bass thing. We were single-handedly responsible for bringing drum and bass to the UAE.

LIP: How did you finish the album?

OV: It’s been a pure team effort, with creative people all around us. I mean all the people on the album are straight up people who we are feeling. This [Asylum Speakers] is not a business venture right now – this is just something that has come out of us, just something that we feel we need to do. I want to be releasing records and so I don’t want to be just walking around on the street, ciphering with every man, because you can do that anyway, but it’s about consolidation and getting your music down and getting your music out there for people to hear and buy.

The LIP: So who would you say led you along the way?

OV: I have to say Tommy Evans was a great help because he was somebody in the scene who’s been putting out records for the last eight, nine years or so and he runs his own independent label. In the last three years I’ve seen a lot of new labels coming up and a lot more artists who are putting out decent quality stuff but they’re [Y ’n R] just people that have been doing it for a long time, so working with Tommy was good because he gave us a lot of guidance and showed us the way, basically.

The LIP: Did you find that the UK hip-hop community was open to collaboration?

OV: It’s come to the point where we’ve got people on this album that are some of the finest, most respected UK hip-hop acts I’ve heard. They’re some of the first old school acts that weren’t doing horror core UK hip-hop, but they are just so dedicated and progressive in their art form. So they were like ‘No, don’t even talk about money’ because they know that with UK hip-hop, you don’t make any record sales off the record if you’re trying to give it the push it deserves. In making records and putting them out, just the promotion and production itself costs a lot, so the profit you get from record sales is minimal.

The LIP: Do you, then, see a distinction in motive behind UK hip-hop and that of the States?

OV: The lives that people have lived that are different. But shit, we’re lucky to be where we are right now. UK hip-hop is kind of weird because in the past everything was really detached and disjointed – there were lots of crews doing stuff but there would be no connections, so everybody was insulated in their own thing and there wasn’t any kind of network or system so people couldn’t even go on tour. In the past major labels have made attempts to push UK hip-hop acts but have failed, due to not understanding to whom or how to market the music… although it also comes down to the fact that the people weren’t ready for it.

The LIP: Do you think the music is ready for people now?

OV: The quality of the music is a representation of the substance of the culture. Hip-hop isn’t just rap, it’s a way of living, a multi-faceted medium of expression. We live in an age where our 15 and 16 year-olds have been born into families where hip-hop has played a tremendous role in shaping the mentality and belief systems of the parents, so certain traits have become innate, rather than something which we’ve recently tried to adjust to… We live in a different place and time, with different socio-economic and political backgrounds, with an immense pool of resources to draw from.

The LIP: Are there a lot of UK hip-hop artists making themselves heard?

OV: Although a lot of artists are still fighting the lone soldier flex and they have to be because there are only so many labels and even the biggest labels, with the facilities to put people out just won’t take the risk. It’s still up to people to take it on themselves, start putting their own records out and start getting out there.

The LIP: Finally, do you think UK hip-hop is growing in popularity?

OV: People are getting used to hearing lyrics, spitting lyrics and it’s the people that are working with flows and rhyming patterns and complex metaphors and subject matters in the way they are expressing themselves that are taking it to a new level. It’s definitely part of the general culture now, not just the youth culture anymore. And the standards are rising. It’s just so acceptable to everyone, because at the end of the day, nothing is riding on a cipher, a cipher’s just a cipher.

‘Everyone has their own internal struggle, and my music tries to help them use our understanding of ourselves, to help other people through situations they are striving to overcome.’ His message for the youth of today: ‘Find out what you have to offer. Everyone has their own special thing to give. Find that in yourself and you can make a change in your own life and others; change should come without judgements, be humble enough to embrace it’. He added ‘I like to think of our music as music to change perspectives, which brings messages through to people that they can relate to in their own struggles, and help to overcome them’. Spooks added ‘We are satisfied and comfortable with our work. It’s grounded and respectful, it’s something that has to continue with an endless series of goals. In our touring we see different people and cultures and countries. We have a message, to tell the whole story in a piece of music’.

Ms Dynamite: One shout is louder than a thousand whispers…

Nina Simone’s death silenced an abrasion. ‘Peaches’ never could keep quiet – she was a troublesome loudmouthed noisemaker. So was Fela Anikulapo Kuti. In 1996, a year before his death, he sang this:

‘Shhhh. Listen. Listen to me with open minds
I want you to take your minds out of this musical contraption, and take your mind into any goddam church
Everyday my people suffer. Suffer, suffer, suffer for what? enjoy for heaven?

Chorus: (loud) AMEN, AMEN.
Them go follow for shop. Them go follow Imam. Them go go for London, them go go for Mecca’

This juxtaposition of religious metaphysics with global reality is called ‘Schuffering and Schmiling’. Its central concept: Africans, slaves to an oppressive economic system, live in misery for the profit of a distant world whose luxuries they never see. Here, in this context, the song’s second half places its original Nigerian audience:

‘We now have to carry our minds out of those goddam places, back into this musical contraption right here… This is what happens to we Africans everyday. A confidential matter. Don’t tell anybody outside, now between me and you, now listen. Shhhhhhh’:

Every day my people work work work. Everyday my people they inside bus, 49 seats and 99 standing. Them go faint, them go sick, them go go for cook, them go home, they no go water … them no get pocket money. Weeping weeping. Suffer for what? Enjoy for heaven?’

Fela’s call for intimacy was both a genuine show of solidarity for his audience, and a big fat middle finger up to authority. So he was arrested. 150 times. By an oppressive Nigerian military regime that exploited its people for the sake of profit.

Elsewhere across the globe, it sometimes seems the true spirit of protest against oppression has got lost in the big bad greedy money machine. Nas is selling himself as Jesus with heavy gold chains, and even the Fugees, releasing a ‘Best Of’, are cashing in on banality and ease. (And that’s not to mention Madonna dressing herself up as Che).

But there’s hope yet. Six years on from Fela Kuti’s death and Kelis, a queen of the multicultural Kaleidoscope, is singing a funeral dirge on the Red Hot + Riot compilation. Discordant trumpets in minor keys accompany her song: ‘It is for the dignitary that I carry a coffin. To bury corruption, I carry a coffin. It is for the police that I carry a coffin.’ Playing on verbal ambiguity (‘for’ expressing both dedication and blame) her smoked honey voice leaves a hope hovering over a slowly funking base: ‘One day…’

… ‘Utopia’? The word is as mystifying as war. People once used it to try and improve things, yet now we cynically dismiss our dreams with it – ‘yeah, nice idea, but it’s utopian’. Give it up and get back to your desk. Sell out. Nowadays we’re more cynical, and we try to deal in realities: ‘globalisation’, ‘multiculturalism’. As did Hanif Kureishi, who said in LIP#1 that multiculturalism enables us to see in new ways and be creative; and globalisation is the opposite, reducing everything to sameness. Globalisation, for Hanif, is money ruling the world: life, melted down to a dollar. The once-innovative voice of the suppressed and repressed has been buffed to a bling.

Or not quite. Over sixty African loudmouths precede Kelis: ‘Can’t keep quiet / This time could be more than a riot’. And elsewhere on Red Hot + Riot Dead Prez and Talib Kweli rework Fela’s steady growls to a hyperactive stream of syllables: ‘Imperialism in the form of spirituality, slave mentality, escape reality / What is it worth to have the biggest religion when the people have miserable living conditions?’. Beneath the lyrics lie shuffling percussion, kick drums and a slapping bass, a reworking of Fela’s own reworkings, who as the inventor of ‘Afrobeat’, synthesised traditional Nigerian rhythms with free jazz and funk.

Later on the album comes Meshell Ndegeocello, accompanied by sax-bending Ron Blake. They insist on continuing Fela’s fearless confrontationalism: ‘Did your mind write a check that your soul can’t cash? / Suit and tie / Demon in a suit and tie / C’mon / You just thieves in a suit and tie / You murder in a suit and tie.’ Then Sade wraps us in soothing solace: ‘Think I’d leave you way down on your knees? You know I wouldn’t do that’, and Baaba Maal lulls us through insomnia with ‘No Sleep Yanga Wake Am’; both artists sending love and spirituality as the alternative to selfish greed.

Red Hot are an organisation who have released over twelve albums to raise money and awareness in the fight against Aids worldwide. Fela Kuti died of the disease, and Red Hot + Riot is the proactive tribute by a collection of dedicated musicians who, like Joseph Stiglitz, know that globalisation is what people make of it.

www.redhot.com

It was in the villages of Punjab, centuries ago, that festivals such as harvest brought together communities in colourful excitement. After months of toil in the fields, the fruits of labour were celebrated by music and dancing, induced partly by the effects of ‘bhang’ (Punjabi slang for weed) on the farmers. Arms swinging and bodies twisting, this exuberant form of music came to be known as ‘bhangra’.

Today, bhangra is no less than an art form, encapsulating not only a unique form of music and dance but also the cultural identity of millions of Asian people. The contagious beat is provided by the ‘dhol’, a large double-headed drum worn around the neck. Lyrics, rooted in traditional folk songs, usually revolve around love, marriage and Sikh pride, and are sung energetically with sporadic insertions of such phrases as ‘balle balle’. Stirring up lively enthusiasm with the mere tremor of a dhol player’s hands, bhangra is still commonly associated with Indian festivals. Familiar at any Indian wedding is the sight of young and old, aunties and uncles, getting up and shaking their hips to the rhythm of a popular tune.

The history of bhangra in Britain starts in Birmingham in the 1970s when Asian immigrants in search of the sounds of home transported their love of music across the seas to produce bhangra for a small market. Over the next decade, their children began adopting bhangra as their own. By appealing to this generation, artists such as Malkit Singh became legends in the British Punjabi community. Over time, the West made its pervasive influence felt: Bhangra tunes were mixed with rap, reggae, hip-hop and R’n’B to generate a unique sound that found an eager audience. Bally Sagoo in particular began an overnight phenomenon by creating the hugely successful ‘Ragamuffin Mix’ from one of Malkit Singh’s more traditional tunes. His hit spawned even more hopeful stars, including B21: with their name based on a Birmingham postal district, this boy band occupied an almost parallel existence to other groups of the nineties, regularly topping the Bhangra charts and finding themselves unlikely superstars.

The most revolutionary phase of bhangra however is taking place today. The children that grew up listening to bhangra over the past two decades are now creating an incredible pool of talent, which is taking the music from a few underground clubs in the Midlands to the masses. With the pitiful watering down of pop music, the proliferation of manufactured bands, and the seemingly stage-managed career of every group, bhangra is a breath of fresh air to the British music scene. The highly skilful mixes and intelligent use of instruments means that bhangra appeals to people of all races.

The success story of the moment is Panjabi MC. The artist has managed to achieve the seemingly impossible by breaching the gulf from underground to mainstream with the single ‘Mundian to Bach Ke’ (Beware of boys), featuring a sample from the American hip-hop artist Busta Rhymes. The single reached the top ten in the UK pop charts after being played to popular acclaim on the London radio station Kiss FM.

And yet bhangra still has its heart in northern India, and the motivations of many of the people who listen to and create the music go far beyond the superficial. Asian communities such as those in Wembley and Southall represent the staunch refusal of Indian immigrants to assimilate and lose a connection to their rich heritage. Grocers piled high with fresh mangoes and chillies, and shops selling countless reams of beautifully embroidered silks line the streets of these parts of London. Also here are small music stores, walls plastered with posters advertising Bollywood movies and stacks of CDs and cassettes of Hindi and Punjabi songs. Here lies the seed of bhangra’s propagation.

From the dawn of time music has been an outlet for human emotion and articulated the concerns of generations. The Black youth of America, with a history of oppression and in the face of an aggressive ghetto culture, founded rap and hip-hop as a channel for their creative talents. In the same way, a growing number of young Asians in Britain have found themselves without a voice and feel that bhangra provides a unique form of personal expression.
The frustration felt by Asian immigrants came to a violent climax in 2001 when race riots in North England dominated the headlines. Growing antipathy towards asylum seekers, the rise of the BNP, and racist campaigns by the right-wing press have all lead to an uncomfortable atmosphere for minorities. For second and third generation immigrants, resolving their Asian background with being British has become increasingly difficult. In the absence of cultural icons in the media industry, the newly emerging form of bhangra has managed to express this immigrant experience:

‘I’m a first generation Indian and I’m proud of my roots. My music is the natural transgression from the traditional, to the music we witness in the west. People will always refer to this music in times to come, much like we do with the music of our forefathers.’
– Producer, Panjabi MC.

What is interesting about the music scene is the absence of misogyny and violence, so common in rap and hip-hop. Instead, bhangra lyrics often celebrate women and the positive aspects of Punjabi identity. Bhangra seems to reject all the rules common to popular music and maybe this is the key to its popularity among wider audiences. Whatever the reasons for its appeal, bhangra is unintentionally breaching cultural divides between all races in Britain. Like the adoption of chicken vindaloo as the British national dish, and the screening of Bollywood movies in UK cinemas, bhangra is a sign of flourishing integration. Rather than just assimilating, Asian immigrants are able to share their culture. Whether bhangra will continue to be a worldwide contagion is unknown, but what is certain is that a minority has found a voice… and it’s a language that everyone wants to dance to.