Quick Note

For the unacquainted, this smiley face above is Talib Kweli (pronounced Tal-ib kwah-lee), a hip-hop artist out of Brooklyn (or as he calls himself, "BKMC"). It's hard not to respect Kweli for the heavy themes and messages he can work into his music; generally fitting educated thoughts on poverty, racism, corruption, economy and superstardom in his music, while keeping it relatable to the common man. While growing up, his mother was an English professor, his father a Sociology professor and his brother in law school -- come on, the guy was surrounded by scholarly thought on this stuff.

That said, I was listening to his song "I Try" (featuring Mary J. Blige) and a specific verse jumped out to me: (which has some explicit language, just as a heads up!)

"I try to navigate the treacherous waters of America's ghettos that set up the slaughterers; but there's more of us, although we speak in different languages, we're all pretty familiar with what anger is; Young and dangerous, trick a strangle is, Get up on some gangsta shit; Guns to bang ya wit', And we put it on records to entertain ya wit'"

A prominent goal of Kweli's music is to expose the difference between rappers who sell the "gangster" image and the actual tragedies that real gangsters/crime causes -- he constantly argues that neither fictional gangsters nor real gangsters should be glorified by any stretch of the imagination ("You busy screaming 'gangsta, gangsta,' all that talk is trite; you already lost the fight if you don't know the cost of life"). It occurs to me that there are similarities, then, between the idolatry of gangsters and the reverence of fronteirsman. Both groups have images that blow up big enough to overshadow their unfortunate truths and both are streamlined and marketed for mass consumption.

In a similar way that Patricia Nelson Limerick and Dickenson et. al have worked hard to impact upon us the truth behind the image of "The Frontier" and the dangers of regarding Buffalo Bill as an American hero, Talib Kweli is working to expose the truth behind the "gangster rap" genre and the real harm that can come from elevating gangsters to pop culture icons.

I might be way off base here, but it's an interesting thought to consider nonetheless!