american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 161
When Mos Def addresses the hip-hop community, he tries to
shatter some enduring illusions. The misconception, he reiterates, is
that “what y’all call beef is not beef at all.” Hip-hop’s feuds, he
charges, must engage a wider social context. This redefinition of
“beef” is an aspect of signifying that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., discusses
in The Signifying Monkey (1998)—rewriting the received textual tradition,
in this case the tradition that defines “beef.” In doing so, Mos
Def moves from hip-hop “beef” to larger “beef,” including the Iraq
War and AIDS. Beef, for him, is the tension in the Middle East, not
the tension on New York radio station “Hot 9–7.” Mos Def unequivocally
raps that beef is “geopolitics” and the situations in “Iraq, the
West Bank, and Gaza Strip.” Focusing on beefs between rappers distracts
from problems in African American communities—poverty,
unemployment, inadequate health care, and greedy foreign wars. Mos
Def’s voice redirecting anger from internal targets to the perpetrators
of oppression has long been an impetus for African American artists.
Richard Wright’s “A Five Dollar Fight” (Black Boy 1945) and
Ellison’s “battle royal” (Invisible Man 1952), for example, depict
black men being turned against each other by powerful white men,
both for entertainment and to focus their frustration internally instead
of on their oppressors.
Because an equal chance to outshine one’s opponent verbally is a
cornerstone of hip-hop beefs, Mos Def delivers a supreme insult in
demanding that hip-hop move away from celebrity squabbles: “Beef is
not what these famous niggas do on the mic / Beef is what George
Bush would do in fight.” According to Mos Def, it is time for hip-hop
to battle those who oppress African Americans. Yet changing the significations
for the term “beef” is insufficient for creating change.
Stuart Hall warns that rearticulating values alone will not change
sociopolitical realities: “No ideological conception can ever become
materially effective . . . until it can be articulated to the field of political
and social forces and to the struggles between different forces at
stake” (42). The project of addressing African Americans’ “beefs,”
then, is shared by rappers, activists, politicians, and communities.
The previous songs diagnose problems but do little to propose
solutions. Jean Grae’s “Block Party” (Attack of the Attacking Things
2003) criticizes negative aspects of hip-hop culture and sketches a
plan for making a more educated and self-aware community. In
denouncing “materialistic values,” insularity, and violence, she works
against two hip-hop tropes—defending one’s neighborhood and
flaunting material wealth. She raps, “stop acting like your flesh is
metal / and your hood’s a magnet” because “protecting your turf ”