music – Because It Doesn't Affect You

“It wasn’t really a movement, barely even a moment, but the Daisy Age was an ethos that briefly permeated pop, R&B and hip hop. The name was coined by Long Island trio De La Soul; they claimed D.A.I.S.Y. stood for “da inner sound, y’all”, but then De La Soul said a lot of things.“
Ace Records

The so-called “Daisy Age”, or the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age”, was a period used to describe the musical and cultural trend forwarded by the New York-based hip-hop group De La Soul, who despite coining the term, mostly represented a promotional campaign around their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, which was released in 1989. Outside of De La Soul, a number of associated acts – most of them connected to the hip-hop collective The Native Tongues were cobbled together as representing “the Daisy Age”. Indeed, a compilation album was produced of these acts and the sound of that period, which is said to have lasted between 1989 to 1991.

When De La Soul came on to the music scene in the late 1980s, there were two major things still in style in hip-hop. One of them was rappers acting like hard men (and hard women, for that matter). Other than the increasingly competitive nature of emceeing, rappers from Run-DMC to Ice-T had either cultivated a tough, fierce persona, or presented an aggressive hard-hitting sound designed to invoke a bit of edge to their presentation. Even the Beastie Boys engaged in fratboyesque hijinks, and hell even Rakim got into it on occassion. De La Soul started as three teenage friends from the suburbs who liked to rhyme with each other, and doing what they thought was fun. In this sense, it invoked some of the earliest trends of hip-hop: to have a good time, and to promote positivity. The other trend was the usage of backronyms, which by the late 1980s was a thing those involved in hip-hop culture used to show everyone how clever they are (sometimes “too clever by half”). Consider KRS-One, or Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone. Even by the 1990s, groups like the Wu-Tang Clan (who admittedly had a fondness for playing with naming conventions) used backronyms like RZA=Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah, Wu-Tang = We Usually Take All (a) Niggas’ Garments or Wisdom, Understanding, The Truth of Allah and the Nation of Gods, and cream= Cash Rules Everything Around Me. When De La Soul came out, they represented the ‘daisy’, which stood for “da inner sound, y’all” – a clever play on their group name.

De La Soul were discovered by Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest who identified in the group kindred spirits and immediately told Baby Bam of them. De La Soul were then almost immediately added as part of the Native Tongues. They were then introduced to DJ wunderkind Prince Paul, who would go on to be involved in their first four albums. After securing record deal with Tommy Boy Records, they produced a series of songs for their album 3 Feet High And Rising – the title a reference to the Johnny Cash song “Five Feet High And Rising”, and indicative of the still integral component sampling was in hip-hop at the time – With Prince Paul, they created an album that was unlike anything else that was out at the time – at various times, it was mellow, fun, positive, relatable, and more importantly for music executives looking to sell to audiences in Middle America, it was consumable. Prince Paul’s innovative and eclectic sampling drawing from several songs from multiple genres of music and eccentric skits had produced a distinctive sonic experience that had turned De La Soul into overnight celebrities. However, this had led De La Soul’s sound to be described as “psychedelic rap”, and the group themselves as hippies – mostly due to “baby boomer” music executives reminded of the 1960s counterculture they experienced. This had in turn influenced the promotion of De La Soul, and the group would be involved in promotional stunts such as giving out daisies – even the iconic album cover, produced by radical art collective The Grey Organisation evoked the hippie image.

De La Soul would become increasingly frustrated with their association with hippies, and even produced a song that directly commented on this association, called “Me, Myself and I” reacting against their pigeonholing. As a general commentary, it is a fascinating case study on White America’s reaction to rap that wasn’t about dominating someone, taking on “sucker MCs”, or killing. It had to be ‘psychedelic’ and therefore, they had to be hippies. Never mind that De La Soul drew from a very different subculture emphasizing the promotion of peace, unity and harmony. “The Daisy Age” was as much an artistic period where an act would have a certain phase as David Bowie with is “Ziggy Stardust” and “Thin White Duke” eras, and The Beatles with their “Sgt. Pepper” era*. Oh, and De La Soul got sued by actual fucking hippies – the musical group The Turtles took expection to the sampling of their 1969 song, “You Showed Me” for De La Soul’s interlude track “Transmitting Live From Mars”. Apparently, Prince Paul was under the impression that their record label was on top of clearing the songs but Tommy Boy felt that Paul’s usage of the samples were so minimalistic that no-one would object. No-one but the Turtles, it seemed. The ensuing legal saga led to a reported settlement of $1.7 million. From then, a more cautious outlook on sampling in hip-hop had set in.

The Turtles episode, along with a particularly negative experience performing on the Arsenio Hall Show*, in which they were introduced as “the hippies of hip-hop” (They would perform “Me, Myself and I” – a song that explicitly has as lyrics that they are not hippies, which implied that Hall didn’t know very much of their music) and were still performing as the credits rolled, had led to the group developing a rather jaded outlook on the entertainment industry, and had pushed them to “kill the daisy” and themselves. Their contemporaries A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep and others involved in the Native Tongues had also produced sounds regarded as optimistic and positive, even if most of them were more explicitly Afrocentric. In any case, for De La Soul, while their sound and style invoked “feel-good music”, it would be a marked departure from anything like 3 Feet High and Rising, delving into darker subject matter like rape, and drug addiction for a more realistic approach. The Daisy Age was over. The De La Soul they thought they knew, was dead.

Notes:

*All things considered, they actually killed it in their performance for the Arsenio Hall Show

See also

De La Soul
- 3 Ft High And Rising
- Golden age of hip-hop
Alternative hip-hop
- The Native Tongues
Jerry Rubin (no real reason to add him. He’s just the kind of sellout dickhead who got all alternative lifestyle, until he found money and became a Reaganite freak like the music execs De La were dealing with)

“I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died/Uh, real niggas just multiply/And they say by 21 I was supposed to die/So I’m out here celebrating my post-demise” – Jay-Z, implying that he is the reincarnation of Black Panther activist Fred Hampton on the song “Murder to Excellence“.

“Jay-Z? He’s…he’s a capitalist” – KRS-One on Jay-Z, during his speaking attendance in Kingston University in 2015.

In 2017, Jay-Z had apparently turned down an appearance at the Super Bowl. Speculation ensued as to the reasons Jay-Z had for choosing not to perform at the halftime show of the final game of the 2017-18 NFL season, but the general assumption was that Jay-Z was showing solidarity with quarterback Colin Kaepernick – who as a result of his silent protest against police brutality towards African-Americans by kneeling during the national anthem, was suspended without pay. Last year, it was reported that Jay-Z had advised rapper Travi$ Scott to also turn down a Super Bowl appearance. These were seen as “power moves” by a figure who through hip-hop, was amassed an incredible amount of influence within the entertainment and business worlds deploying his social capital in positive ways.

On 14th August 2019, Jay-Z made yet another “power move” when NFL announced that it was now in in a multi-year partnership with Roc Nation – the latter offering its music and social justice programs to the former. Unfortunately, this is apparently not what many viwers, particularly black onlookers had in mind – and they seem to share my scepticism on what these “social justice programs” from Roc Nation entail. Jay-Z claimed that he communicated with Kaepernick about this deal and he insinuated that not only did he have his approval, but also that this was the means by which he could encourage the NFL to re-hire Kaepernick, who is now in his third year of his protest. This claim was immediately disputed by Nessa Diab – Colin Kaepernick’s girlfriend, who took to Twitter, posted on her Instagram page that no conversation happened between Jay-Z and Kaepernick about this deal and also blasted the rapper’s appropriation of Kaepernick’s protest for his commercial ventures on her radio show.

In all honesty, to me, this was a very predictable outcome and I saw something like this coming a mile away when the talking heads decided to poke Jay-Z to give his two cents about the Kaepernick situation. I was waiting for him to return to form. Jay-Z may have called him “an iconic figure”, but let’s break down what this statement means: It’s short, pithy (or least perceived to be) and most importantly – it is calculated. Jay-Z makes statements designed to protect his public image and more importantly his business ventures. Jay-Z does not really need to articulate what it is that makes Kaepernick iconic, elaborate on the importance of his actions too much, provide an social and historical context to prominent black celebrities and activism against racial injustice. Just a few short sentences will do. And that’s that. Kaepernick has got people’s attention. It turns out that his advice to Travi$ Scott was more business advise than solidarity, since he said Travi$ would not be a headliner like Maroon 5. And that’s what really matters. Interestingly, this is the calculation that Nike made when they approached Kaepernick to take up his still existing sponsorship deal with them, and make $6billion out of a two minute advertisement of him not talking about racism and police brutality – but about himself. Curiously, that reaction was very different from audiences – but I’ll come back to that in a minute. This article isn’t so much about Jay-Z’s “betrayal” of Colin Kaepernick, or even Kaepernick himself. But the curious ways in which neoliberal capitalism has not just occupied even the critique of our social relations, but is co-opting the visual imagery and discourse of its own perpetuation. And even worse, is using influential representatives of an oppressed community to do so.

NFL. Nike. These are two brands whose reach has extended globally as a result of commercialisation of sport, inexhaustible marketing, which expanded its access to international markets. Contemporary hip-hop, is now the same – having completely subordinated itself to commodification in the early 90s, once the recording industry realised that the culture was profitable. Its acts, therefore, like most things in capitalism – had its essence slowly sucked out, had its life-affirming themes and collective groups amidst the backdrop of destruction and abandonment broken up in favour of the individual MC or rapper, pitted against other rappers for dominance and therefore profit. The rappers, now the sole focus of hip-hop – became apostles of black capitalism, and avatars of conspicuous consumption.

Jay-Z came to prominence within this context. When he released his first album Reasonable Doubt, it was at a time when glam rap and mafioso rap were most popular to audiences. Rappers emulated the examples of Nicky Barnes, Pablo Escobar, and Willy Stokes – these appeals to ‘gangster realism’ were already there for some time in hip-hop. Even before NWA. By the mid-90s, the cultural ideal that one could be a ruthless, powerful, hyper-masculine figure who could amass considerable wealth and self-actualize as a folk hero of the hood – perhaps even every hood in the country, even as the wealth was acquired through the most parasitic practices of capitalism, eclipsed any overtures around a revolutionary consciousness, brief as it was. Jay-Z’s place in hip-hop comes from this intersection of hip-hop culture in its golden age, and the promises that black capitalism made: That the lot of black people in America can be transformed once they understand and control commerce for themselves.

This redemptive and emancipatory gospel has a lineage as far back as Booker T. Washington, and since the dawn of the 20th century – has demanded that black people turn water into wine as far back as the Jim Crow. To “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. It was only a matter of time before black Americans grew sick of the boots meeting their faces, the whips cracking their backs, and the nooses over their necks and also of the barbarity that America gave them as the price of the small freedoms she gave. Black America decided enough was enough and defied its assigned place as perpetual citizens of the second class, and discussion arose within it whether a new black nation must be built to better serve their lot, or to continue in civil disobedience until America came to understand the worth of black life as it does her white citizens. Today, this discussion continues, with much of the African-American community leaning more towards the latter strategem. However, two generations on from the Civil Rights Era – black power had came to be understood as black purchasing power, and entrepreneurial success – seeing the rise of Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, and indeed, the oligarchy within contemporary hip-hop – Sean Combs, Russell Simmons and Jay-Z.

Curiously, yet in retrospect not surprisingly, this black purchasing power was increasingly individualistic and gave little to no improvement over the lives of the communities they arose from – perhaps reflecting the hyper-consumerist, rapacious and cannibalizing logic of late capitalism. The articulation of resistance from these figures was muted by cynical calculations on which to continue their own personal profits. Indeed, to challenge the system that produced their wealth was to threaten this very process. The century before – the black bourgeoisie at least tried to create a safe haven for black Americans – either in Greenwood, Oklahoma, or back to the land in which their ancestors came from. Nowadays, they seem to claim that their personal presence is “charity” enough, and collaborate with private investors for ‘urban renewal’ in the very borough they grew up in, a black Robert Moses from Brooklyn now tells those grieving the loss of Nipsey Hussle that he was advancing what he would’ve wanted – to “gentrify our own hood”. It makes all the difference if other residents are priced out of their own homes, for middle-class whites if a black face advances the project – since then, you can’t use the metaphor of colonialism – at least not without the gyrations of irony whizzing in the head.

Sure enough, Jay-Z was soon supported by Sean Combs himself, who is also known for espousing statements consistent with the logic of black capitalism, giving the following statement on his Instagram page on August 26th:

“Hov is one of the greatest to ever do it. He has been there more than anybody from the hip hop culture, including me. He always has been so selfless and fights for other people. We as a people can not be divided and conquered at this time!”

“I’m so proud of @kaepernick7 and the attention he was able to bring and the efforts he continues to make. I’ll continue to support him in every way possible.”

“I’m also proud of my brother JAY Z for showing how it should be done! It’s time to play chess not checkers, I believe he is going to do some incredible things.”

“I was just watching everything last week but it hurt me to my heart because I know this man personally. He’s one of the most genuine and intelligent black leaders we’ve ever had. We cannot go against each other, there’s not enough of us. I applaud Jay Z and I applaud the NFL for bringing him in.”

“This isn’t just about the NFL, it’s about how black and brown people are treated daily across this country. We have to come together and make the hard decisions, nobody is going to do it for us.”

“I believe in taking action, taking steps towards the right direction and I support all my brothers that are out here taking ACTION. Together we are unstoppable. #BLACKEXCELLENCE!! Happy Monday!! Be Great!”

Black capitalists, especially black capitalists within hip-hop envision themselves as the voice of the generation, or indeed leaders inheriting the legacy of the civil rights activists before them. Chuck D once said that hip-hop music is the “ghetto CNN”. What’s interesting about modern contemporary hip-hop is that the affluent lifestyle that many of its artists acquired, made this untrue for a very long time. The disconnect is palpable, and the rappers through the conspicuous consumption they display, more have a closer affinity to QVC than to CNN.

It is therefore farcical for the likes of Jay-Z and Sean Combs to claim themselves as spokespeople for even ‘the hood’ regardless of their humble upbringings, let alone an entire people – almost purely because of the amount of wealth that they acquired, since as mentioned before, unlike the activists of the Civil Rights Era, and indeed all movements that have came before of since, black capitalists (as with all capitalists) do not undertake risks that affects their ability to make profits, and therefore cannot engage in the radical challenges to the system necessary for genuine liberation and transformation. They depend on that very system for the legitimacy of their status. Ironically, Colin Kaepernick has not claimed any sort of personal leadership in his activism. This is where Combs is actually in line with Kaepernick when he says that it’s not about the NFL, it’s about how black and brown people are treated daily across this country – and I find agreement with him – regardless of my suspicion of the motives and of hip-hop moguls. Which leads me to my next point.

Colin Kaepernick is the most prominent athlete-activist of this generation. He is also unemployed. The conversation on Jay-Z has become about how loyal he is to Kaepernick and whether or not he’s really trying to help him, or even get him his job back in the NFL. This, in of itself – is something of a misdirection, and draws back to this idea prominent in the Civil Rights Movement – but perhaps drawing as far back as the post-Emancipation era: That there needs to be Black Leadership, of exceptional quality. That there needs to be the Malcolm X, Martin Luther King or even a Elijah Muhammad for this generation – notions that saw the rise of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan for the Generation X of African-Americans, each of whom have had at best very contested views on how successfully they held the baton, and from which Jay-Z and Combs justify their black capitalist ethos. It is this mentality that has produced a problem.

Colin Kaepernick was more than happy to cash in on a Nike endorsement that stripped away everything that he was protesting about in order to sell its sneakers. Sure, some unthinking pockets of White America got enraged and burned the Nike shoes that they already bought, under the erroneous logic that the corporation is affected by this form of protest. However, Nike with Kaepernick’s approval – also created a cynical cash grab from well-meaning yet misguided blacks who saw activism and solidarity through buying these very sneakers because Kaepernick implicitly told them to. The advert itself presented him and other sports icons such as Serena Williams, through an exceptionalist, individualist lens -that because he went against the tide, he became great and celebrated. Be prepared to risk everything. Buy these shoes. Just do it. This fit Nike just well, and gave it a profit of a billion dollars, six times over. This was the first message that Kaepernick put out that I distrusted the sincerity of. What I mean is, while I appreciate his sacrifice, I couldn’t help but think about the limits of athlete activism can go. This distraction produced a situation where Jennifer Lewis attended the 2018 Emmy Awards head-to-toe in Nike apparel, and commending Nike for its “strong political statement”. I ask you readers, where is the “strong political statement” in here?

Sure, you could say that there is an implicit statement here. But it’s vague and utterly noncommittal. This statement could easily be transposed to Vince McMahon’s business ventures. There’s nothing about it that makes reference to police brutality, activism, racial discrimination or anything. It’s just a well-known athlete on the face of a brand. Which is the point. If it is a safe way of making profits, corporations and the capitalists behind them – will pursue it. Their motives should always be called into question, because for them – it is always about the bottom line. To be fair to Kaepernick, as mentioned before – he is unemployed. His very career was built in the hyper-commercialised environment of competitive sports and most likely, cannot himself see all solutions outside of capitalism either. Him taking the Nike deal was perhaps closer to coercion given the circumstances, than a broader agency that the likes of someone like Jay-Z would have. Of course, in a post-Civil Rights Movement, post-Black Panthers era that Shawn Carter would have grown up in, the same is also true of Jay-Z himself in terms of the scope and direction of Black activism.

So we return to the question of the conversation around Jay-Z and Kaepernick: Why has this conversation moved away from what should be front and center? Not Kaepernick’s employment, or even the persona of Kaepernick – but on the welfare of Black America? And how well-suited is Black capitalism to addressing these issues? To me, it seems that even if black purchasing power combined is worth $1trillion, it means nothing if the lion’s share is held by the black elite, with its #blackexcellence calling only to their own individual success and content with the social stratification they engendered within Black America itself. This is where we get confused: Their conceit and shallow overtures to social reformism are just that. Capitalism in whichever hue, will cannibalize, consume, and produce a safe and palatable product of social justice to undermine all revolutionary and transformative potential. This pursuit of social justice begins and ends with the capitalists, and not the social groups in which it acts on behalf of. The optics vs Jay-Z vs. Kaepernick falls within the same trap, and presents the potentiality of organisation and resistance within these two men – when the welfare of Black america does not fall on them. With Kaepernick, although there are suggestions that he believes in Black capitalism, at least with him, he has never claimed a leadership position for any community or organisation that is not under his payroll. And that is where Jay-Z and Combs’ claims to solidarity to him ring hollow.

The true black capitalists of today are simply not willing to take the lumps, even like Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington – let alone MLK. They would rather buy the problem away. Do not expect them on any march, or demonstration. If there’s no chance of it being about them earning more capital, material or social, then forget it. Spokespeople, especially corporate spokespeople and other vultures are not necessary for a movement. Black Lives Matter took the early initiative in showing an example by making it leaderless (in spite of the celebrity around Deray Mckesson and Shaun King), and employing decentralisation as its activist tactic. It begins and ends with the voices of the people, and the communities they embody. And those are the very people that Jay-Z has shut out.

Category: music

Jams: Redman “Tonight’s The Night”

The “Daisy Age”