“Why I Luv…” Pt. I

“Why I Luv…” Pt. I

Kweli: ‘Manifesto’

(B-side of Mos Def, Q-Tip & Tash: ‘Body Rock’ 12″, Rawkus, 1998)

I love the Rawkus era. It was truly a golden age there for a while at the end of the 90′s, when you could go into your local record shop and pick up any new 12″ released by Rawkus and know it would be ill. Some of these artists have slipped into obscurity with time. Expect to see Mr. Man or Shabaam Sahdeeq on a milk carton near you any day now. Others, like Kweli and Mos Def took the opposite route, which led to Billboard and household name status. I still enjoy a lot of the music that these two gentlemen put out, but there is a special atmosphere surrounding the stuff they made individually and together in 1997-98-99 that they haven’t quite been able to match. Other than that magic atmosphere on classic cuts like Fortified Live, If You Can Huh You Can Hear, Universal Magnetic, Definition, RE:DEFinition and the Pete Rock remix of Respiration, there’s another aspect of this era that I love. The sheer focus and concentration.

The beats were quite simple and straight forward, which only adds to the replay value. They form a perfect backdrop for the very focused, intense rhyming on for example Manifesto. The lyrics are so rich you need to be able to focus on them, which wouldn’t have been possible had the beats been too busy or attention grabbing. Talib Kweli has stayed very relevant in his lyrical content throughout the 00′s, but back in 1998, what made him such a unique MC was how every line was hot. Not only were the lines quotables that would stick in your head for weeks, they were also deep, meaningful and poetic. The more lavish, R&B-type beats that Kweli uses a lot today are sometimes very nice, but they put you in a laid back mood where you may not fully listen to every word being said. The feeling of Manifesto is quite the opposite. The man spits every line as if it was his last. There’s a sense of urgency in his voice that may sometimes cause his delivery and flow to be a little bit off, but that’s not really a flaw, as I see it.

As is clear from the above, my focus when listening to this already classic joint is the lyrics. Not to take anything away from the beat or the delivery, I love that piano and that urgency. And normally I’m a beat head first. I’m the kind of guy who will always prefer a so-so lyric well delivered on a classic Pete Rock instrumental over a mindblowing verse said in average flow over an average beat. But we must let this little article focus on the lyrics, simply because they are so ill and because almost every line is a revelation. So I’m going to attempt to break a little bit of it down. And why I love it.

Verse 1:

Manifesto! – this is what we want to see happen
For my peoples still breakin’, graf writin’ and rappin’
I rock the mic right and exact, my life’s my sacrifice
Take my mic and I’m like a Chinese man with no rice
Oh yeah, we flippin’ – through the pages of time to find design
Like vaseline on the faces of Black Georgia we shinin’
Deeper than petroleum jelly we in the air like conversations
on celly and just appear like stretch marks on bellies
After givin birth you had to let go, you playin’ for life
The Manifesto, here comes the beat, because I said so Keep pushin
I got the cushion for the seat of your soul
Back in the day they stole our smile, so we clothe our teeth in gold
and we frontin. From ni**a to kid, to Son of God
It’s wild dependin’ on labels for man woman and child
My style just is, all that’s seen and all that’s heard
God gave us music so we play with our words
So when Tek be in constant meditation like a monk
While Kweli speaks in tongues to get your intellect drunk
Yo, we bound to take over the 90% of your brain that you ain’t usin’
To us it’s life or death we keep you chosin’

First of all, I like how he starts off with the word “Manifesto”, as if giving a lecture. And right after that he hits you with “this is what we want to see happen”. So much of the whole “backpacker” movement of the late 90′s/early 00′s was about negativity and complaining about the state of things and the powers that be. So I really liked how he flipped that very early on in the lyrics to being about “what we want to see happen” rather than “what bugs me” or whatever. There were enough joints out at the time about the sad state of affairs, but not enough that tried to answer the question “where do we go from here?”. Then the mention of three of the four elements of hiphop culture, which I guess is pure audience pleasing, but I was in the audience and I was pleased as h*ll!

In the line “I rock the mic right and exact, my life’s my sacrifice”, the lyrics parallell both the focus and the urgency in Kweli’s flow and voice. The focus is “right and exact” and the urgency is expressed in “my life’s my sacrifice”. The flippin’ through the pages of time tells me that here’s a dude grounded in history who’s willing to look back in order to move forward, but at the same time being selective in that search. Which is, in a way, a description of the whole art form of hiphop music – flipping through records and books looking for breaks, samples and wisdom that can be put to use in that undefinable post structuralist hiphop way we all love.

“Here comes the beat because I said so” is a really ill KRS-type lyric that shows you Kweli is all about control and authority. At the time MTV hip pop was like fast food, or better yet like big budget Hollywood escapism, and rappers were just actors playing the role assigned by their record company in little movies about ghetto fantasies and shaking a**es. Into that era steps this dude who is willing to be an author and an authority, stepping outside of the role and the fiction of the particular song and actually telling you something, like Ra and KRS used to do. Or in the words of OC, being “a master, preacher, poet, a teacher…” on the mic. Empowerment of the whole culture, by way of self empowerment.

The first well-known quoatble of the song is of course “Back in the day they stole our smile, so we clothe our teeth in gold/And we frontin…“. The witty wordplay of “gold fronts”/”fronting” is nice and had been touched upon by Nas on Illmatic, which is always a nice reference of course. Here, a further dimension is added by the close proximity of the word “smiles”. But wordplay aside, the line is still impressive. “Back in the day they stole our smile” is just so true and tragic, like something Toni Morrison could have written. And the sociological implications of connecting that tragic past to the often ridiculed aspects of modern african american culture (eg gold fronts) is pure genius.  “We come from the ghetto and are given nothing, so we want everything, even the stuff that might be considered ‘tacky’ or ‘too much’” – This general sentiment is Jay-Z’s particular area of expertise, but the lines from the Kweli song are some of the best on that topic. And by using “smiles” as the stolen object, rather than just something material Kweli manages to go even beyond a simple economic analysis and into emotional territory as well, which makes it even more poignant.

“It’s wild dependin on labels for man woman and child/My style just is, all that’s seen and all that’s heard/God gave us music so we play with our words“. These lines are also often quoted of course, aswell as: “Yo, we bound to take over the 90% of your brain that you ain’t usin/To us it’s life or death we keep you chosin“. Today, some of this might sound a bit naive and militant, but that was just the feeling of that age and it really hit home with me and many others. “Depending on labels” at first has you thinking about record labels and the whole indie movement, but there’s also that other dimension to it, which is the labels put on all of us in modern, capitalist society and trying to escape them. How you can walk into Macy’s and be told that you should probably go to another department because of your age, gender or whatever. And that connects so well on both levels with the stuff about “the 90% of your brain you ain’t usin’” which to me is all about unleashing creativity and escaping the limiting matrixes of both record labels specifically and label branding human beings in general.

Opening up a whole new world in a couple of lines. If that’s not poetry,  I don’t know what is. “To us it’s life or death” represents that urgency again – he’s like “Look, I’ve discovered a way out of this intellectual prison and I want y’all to come with me to freedom!”. Because you’re not supposed to just sit back and consume this sh*t right here. This teacher/poet keeps YOU chosing and getting involved on several levels. Awesome!

Verse 2:

Ay, yo, all the real MC’s can meet me outside
so we can decide how we gonna change the tide
like the moon. We on the Earth takin’ a ride around the Sun
Now Son we only just begun, and the journey’s far from done
We all miss you, what, your brain gone fishin’ like Walter Mosley?
There’s an MC that can hold me, supposedly?
No one could come close to me, only the family really know me
Hiphop’s last hope like Obi Wan Kenobi
Through your television I’m shinin’ light like a train
Comin out like earthworms when it rains, bringin’ it
like the C.I.A. be bringin’ in crack cocaine bailin out of planes
With the George Bush connections, I push Reflection
Like I’m sellin’ izm, like a dealer buildin’ the system
Supply and the demand – it’s all capitalism!
Ni**az don’t sell crack cause they like to see blacks smoke
Ni**az sell crack cause they broke! My battle lyrics
get concious minds provoked and ghetto passes revoked
Cause we surrounded by the evil. You know that the people’s minds
is feeble they believe in it. Even if it don’t make sense
it’s makin’ dollars, shit, don’t take a scholar to
see what’s goin’ on around you, either you with it or you ain’t
is what it comes down to, have you forgotten?
We pickin’ 100% designer name brand cotton
They still plottin’. My Third Eye is steady watchin’

Wow! This is just ridiculously full of meaning. Where do I begin with this rich material? Just some examples. “like the C.I.A. be bringin’ in crack cocaine bailin out of planes With the George Bush connections”. I love how he just drops that knowledge, as if on a side note. And making it funky and witty at the same time. This is so much more young KRS than Immortal Technique. And he talks about “pushing Reflection like izm”, that’s just so ill. How he’s like a dealer. Remember this is just four years after Ready To Die and three years after Cuban Linx, so he’s speaking to an audience more than used to hearing pusherman stories. To me this is both a nod toward BIG and them and that whole drug dealing culture and something more. He’s pointing beyond that. He recognizes this as a part of the game, and feels free to use it as simile (being like a dealer), but of course takes it to the next level, since he’s pushing something quite different. Maybe that simile is a bit worn, but it fills it’s function here.

Right after that is the killer line “Supply and demand, it’s all capitalism!“. For me, that goes back to the drug dealers again. The young black men of the ghettoes being steadily targeted and vilified by media and mainstream american culture. Kweli points out how that is just the underbelly/other half of established american capitalist society. So much of the political and sociological significance of artists like Rae and Biggie is that realization. It’s all capitalism and before you point your finger at someone selling dope on the corner, you better point at these “George Bush connections“, literal and non-literal. And of course, the dealers are dealers because of the mechanics of the system, as expressed when Kweli points out the obvious: “Ni**az don’t sell crack cause they like to see blacks smoke/Ni**az sell crack cause they broke!“

Such obvious facts shouldn’t have to be stated, but they do. Just watch Fox News for a couple of hours, if you think everyone already understands this. I know Kweli doesn’t want to be “the political rapper”, but this is just Marxism 101 in a way, how he breaks that down. Ill. And really something to dream of these days when most so called “conscious rappers” have lost themselves completely in silly conspiracy theories about the so called “illuminati”, free-masons, satanism and whatnot. The one true conspiracy that rules the world is still capitalism. Other than Papoose (on his more conscious joints) and maybe Termanology every now and then I don’t know that any up and coming rappers are into serious political analysis like this anymore?

And speaking of Fox News: “Cause we surrounded by the evil. You know that the people’s minds is feeble – they believe in it. Even if it don’t make sense it’s makin’ dollars. Sh*t, don’t take a scholar to see what’s goin’ on around you”. And you know I can’t leave that “Have you forgotten? We pickin’ 100% designer name brand cotton” alone either. I don’t know if Kweli was the first MC to use that? First time I heard it anyway. These lines go back to the days of slavery and also to the the subsequent oppression when those smiles were stolen. Have you forgotten? Talib Kweli hasn’t…

And “picking name brand cotton” is such a perfect way of describing the working- and under classes being stuck in the consumerism of capitalist society. How the standards set by the unfathomably rich makes everyone who’s not rocking name brand gear seem dirt poor. And how consuming the products of capitalist industry to make money for the rich is just the role capitalism needs the rest of us to play. How we’re actually all slaves, still picking cotton within the system. And how being addicted to expensive clothes is such a typical case of that. Some people are just so rich it makes all the rest of us piss poor. The intricate wordplay of making sense and dollars and cents and so on is just the icing on the cake.

Verse 3:

From open mics to solutions I got a collage of answers
And a ten point program, just like the Black Panthers
One: First respect yourself as an artist
If you don’t respect yourself then your rhymes is garbage
Two: Make sure your crew is as tight as you
’cause when them ni**az fallin’ off they gonna bring you down too
Three: Understand the meaning of MC
The power to move the crowd like Moses split the sea
Four: Know your sh*t and don’t ever be blunted
If you don’t know what your words mean, then your rhymes mean nothin’
Five: Kick facts in the raps, and curse with clarity
What’s a curse when language is immersed in vulgarity?
Six: We gonna fix industrial poli-tricks
Sh*t, they made an artform out of ridin’ di**s
Seven: We soldiers for God needin’ new recruits
So if you rhymin’ for the loot then you’s a prostitute
But Eight: Acknowledge that you need food on your plate
In order to say your grace make sure your business is straight
Nine: We buildin’ black minds with intelligence
And when you freestyle, keep the subject matter relevant
Ten: Every MC grab a pen
And write some concious lyrics to tell the children
I say again, every MC find you a pen
And drop some concious sh*t for our children
The Manifesto!

A collage of answers just describes the whole lyrics of the song again. And the mention of the Black Panther Party warms this socialist heart of course. It also connects hiphop with the world of broader politics again. This particular manifesto and ten point program may be about hiphop and MC:ing, but everything is everything. It’s all connected and the parallells to society at large are abundant.

The line “So if you rhymin’ for the loot then youse a prostitute” at first sounds like the typical indie taliban b.s. of the late 90′s that I have such a hard time accepting. But of course Kweli has thought further than just that, which is evidenced in the next point on the program: “Acknowledge that you need food on your plate“. With so much of the lyrics touching on the intricacies of trying to live like an honest human being in a corrupt, capitalist world, it would have been too naive to stop at the “commercial rappers are evil” level. And the word “prostitute” suggest them being victims as well, not just people “doing the wrong thing” out of spite.

So Kweli basically sums up the whole state of the “conscious” hiphop debate in the late 1990′s in an almost perfect way. Twelve years have no gone by, but most of this is still incredibly relevant today. Plus the beat and the flow ensures this gem will live forever in the hiphop pantheon. To me, this song is actually all the way up there with Who’s Gonna Take The Weight, D’Evils, T.R.O.Y. (and Monopoly and Watch How It Go Down!) and even Pharoahe’s and Rakim’s deepest lyrics. Classic!

Increase The Peace!