american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

158 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY
associated with American pragmatism” (626). Both show that hiphop
has its own dynamic conception of time that turns not with Wall
Street financial centers, but with the empirical realities of dispossessed
African American communities. Rappers project their viewpoints of
the world through the lens of this other world. Within this framework,
one of J-Live’s most potent lines asserts that Bush’s policies will
be so detrimental to these communities and so disorient the country
that the hip-hop community will no longer be able to tell time: “By
the time Bush is done, you won’t know what time it is.” For J-Live,
Bush’s policies dramatically affect not only African Americans, but the
ability of those in the hip-hop community to orient themselves, to
make sense of their worlds, to tell time.
J-Live’s approach is most effective not in his denunciation of an
administration that “trades books for guns,” but in his recontextualization
of post-9/11 America. Though careful to say there is nowhere
else he prefers to live (“the grass ain’t greener on the other genocide”),
he refutes the popular claim that 9/11 changed the world
forever: “Now it’s all about NYPD caps and Pentagon bumper stickers /
But yo, you’re still a nigga.” He goes on to rap that the attack was
“tragic, but it damn sure ain’t magic.” Here, he takes the most piercing
logical step in the song, pointing out that 9/11 has no agency to
affect positive change. Events, he implies, may temporarily change
conditions, but they may not change beliefs, practices, and attitudes,
especially negative ones that impact poor urban communities. Most
critically, events do not change the prevailing global economic structures
that ensure increased wealth for multinational corporations at
the expense of the poor, nor do they eradicate political corruption. He
raps in incantatory parallel structure: “It won’t make the brutality
disappear, / it won’t pull equality from behind your ear, / it won’t
make a difference in a two-party country / if the president cheats to
win another four years.” Here J-Live juggles the necessary conditions
for agency that Rose outlines; he calls for action, vigilance, protest,
and a contestatory agency within the constraining contexts of racism,
economic and power inequalities, corruption, and the complications
of terrorism. He points out that even an event as unifying initially as
9/11 is incapable of changing the fundamental dynamics of racism
and inequality. Without oversimplifying, he constructs a protest song
that also analyzes the competing variables that affect the exercise of
agency.
“Home of the Brave,” Boston-based Mr. Lif’s commentary on
post-9/11 America, is more didactic and aggressive than “Are You
Satisfied?” Whereas J-Live ascribes to several tenets of authoritative