“Blasphemy”: Tupac, Radical Hip-Hop and the Complications
Humanities 795 (Graduate Level) — Social Justice Theory & Practice Academic Essay
Abstract
As one of the most radical and important voices within Hip-Hop, Tupac Shakur was not perfect or a finished product. The radicalism showcased in his art throughout his short, but dense career provided a glimpse of what the genre could have been, and also where it faltered. The inability to consistently situate the politics of gender and sexuality within his work produced numerous contradictions, as well as possible illegitimacy in the eyes of many. Analysis of the song “Blasphemy” from Tupac’s album “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory” provided the opportunity to wrestle with an amazingly poetic closing to the last verse, as well as an opening to the song with lines that contradict the very peace he was hoping to find. The sexual agency of the women he often degraded, however, has been redefined and reclaimed in all new ways.
Almost 25 years ago, on November 5, 1996, Tupac Shakur’s first posthumous album “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory” was released. The album carried a much darker and grittier aesthetic than most of his prior releases; the artistic direction was heavily influenced by the media “crucifixion” he faced. Often regarded as a lawless radical with no bounds, which can be heard in the fifth track on the album, titled “Blasphemy”, a double entendre on the phrase “Blast for me”, Tupac is speaking out against God and religion, as well as the juxtaposition that the Ghetto creates for black folks in regards to faith. Although this track, and the rest of the album have radical roots that exist in a space addressing the afterlife, religion, and capitalism, the message ends up clashing with the misogynistic “rules” Tupac’s father instilled in him (“Blasphemy”). This paper questions the role of hip-hop aesthetic as it’s detached from necessary groundings, defines the duty of an artist as a cultural worker, and temporally situates the newly celebrated agency of women, specifically black women in hip-hop who often suffer the violence of misogyny in the genre.
As hip-hop evolved rather quickly through the early to mid 1990s, the aesthetic choice of not only the outfits and jewelry, but also music and production, was very specific and helped shape the landscape of the artform. Hip-hop was an extremely authentic, but also cyclical genre, that looked to sample vintage music, wear unorthodox clothing, and unique cadences to remap a map-less culture into something that was identifiable. Although the genre had extreme diversity of sounds and artists, the grit and raw emotion of drums, samples and artists’ voices was unparalleled and held a sense of conviction that placed the genre in its own lane. In addition to its musical and cultural aesthetic, the lyrics that emerged from the artform often smacked listeners in the face, like “My family tree consists of drug dealers, thugs and killers/Strugglin’, known to hustle, screamin’, ‘fuck they feelings!’” from Tupac’s opening lines in “Blasphemy”. Bravado and unrelenting desire to be disruptive was integral to how hip-hop was situated within the context of American pop culture and public reception. However, as the genre expanded far past what many thought it would reach, now becoming the most popular genre in the world, many artists have commodified the aesthetic, rendering it politically useless (Watson).
In 2016, Beyoncé performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, where she performed her hit anthem “Formation”, a triumphant call to assembly, along with her many other hits. Beyoncé and her backup dancers were dressed in Black Panther Party-themed outfits and were paying “homage” to the political revolutionaries during the performance. However, this raised the question of whether the political underpinnings of the Black Panther Party’s aesthetic can be used by Beyoncé, a near billionaire and integral part of hip-hop culture, to make any “statement beyond the statement”. One may ask: what good is the aesthetic if it lacks any analysis of the Panther’s ten points? Specifically, point three states “We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community” (The Ten-Point Program). As the aesthetic of revolution and resistance is commodified for entertainment and “commemoration”, the movements suffer from a sort of political dilution that rids the use of aesthetic from its purpose. The son of a mother who was a Black Panther, as well as his stepfather, Tupac had a cultural grounding that made his aesthetic and politics materially congruent. His “spectacle” was not in commemoration of anything; it existed because he was raised to understand what those things meant, not just in theory, but in practice.
As artists that exist of the world and not in it, rappers speak about what they experience at the hands of their circumstances, consciously or not. However, specifically naming the position of artists within society as “‘Cultural worker’, in its intended language, assumes an art or literature production which lends itself to upholding this culture of eventual revolution and subsequent post-revolution, and uphold the notion that culture indeed can be a powerful weapon” (Springer). When an artist has the temporal awareness of their work as a part of the revolutionary process, they can better understand how their creations will work into the cultural framework. As an artist, Tupac was very conscious of the cultural implications of the lyrics he rapped, as he recited in “Blasphemy”, track five of “The 7 Day Theory”:
“Mama, tell me: am I wrong? Is God just another cop
Waitin’ to beat my ass if I don’t go pop?
Memories of a past time, givin’ up cash to the leaders
Knowin’ damn well they ain’t gonna feed us
In my brain, how can you explain time in B.C.?
It’s hard enough to live, now, in these times of greed
They say Jesus is a kind man
Well, he should understand times in this crime land
My thug nation, do what you gotta do
But know you gotta change
Try to find a way to make it out the game
I leave this and hope God can see my heart is pure
Is Heaven just another door? I leave this here
I leave this and hope God see my heart is pure? Is Heaven just another door?”
In these lines, Tupac wrestles with many components, including but not limited to, racism, terror, capitalism, poverty, faith, and all-around existential dread. He not only questions who God could be and why he does nothing to assist with the destitute conditions of black folks in the hood, but he also questions the concept of heaven and its “haven”. As he says earlier in the song, in his first verse, “initiated as an outlaw, studyin’ rules”, Tupac consciously recounts his coming to be (or not to be) within the world and his otherness that was marked as a child. These questions of being, living, and even afterlife serve as cultural connecting points for the listeners to understand as universal. Tupac’s radical understanding of the world not only shaped his music, but also the way he used it as a “cultural foundation” for his supporters and listeners.
Faith and the reality of death were very much a part of the hood’s cultural identity, and Tupac understood that these questions and frustrations were things that his listeners would understand and feel comfortable with thinking about. This gave him the credibility he needed to speak for who he intended to speak for, and against the institutional powers of the U.S. empire. Tupac is also very conscious in these lines that stratifications happen in response to money and individualism, which Angela Davis underscores in Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, writing “Progressive struggles — whether they are focused on racism, repression, poverty, or other issues — are doomed to fail if they do not also attempt to develop a consciousness of the insidious promotion of capitalist individualism” (13). Tupac was conscious of the result that shallow analyses have on not only listeners and supporters of his music, but also to movements at large. A failure to connect poverty and racism with the “bootstrap”, “hustler” mentality often promoted in Hip-Hop, would only lead to an inability to move people towards a more radical understanding.
As we often applaud Tupac, as well as other rappers for their artistry and fearless commitment to speaking truth to power, often what gets lost in the analysis is gender and the sexuality of women. Due to hip-hop’s overwhelming male dominance and patriarchal structure, there is not much space given for women (or anyone that does not fit the cisheteronormative mold) to discuss the contradictions of liberation and advocating for change of the norms, while degrading women and policing the type of sexuality they are allowed to exhibit (Conatz). Not only is it irrespective of the multiplicities people can hold (sexual beings, intelligent and deserving of respect regardless), but it also lacks analysis that goes beyond the patriarchal idea of “freedom” and “self-determination”. As the revolutionary perspective in hip-hop grew, there was no intent to expand the space given for more than one conversation of what liberation actually looked like.
The lack of space and access that often-unheard voices were given created a very shallow analysis within the mainstream of the genre. In the same song, quoted previously, where Tupac poetically touches on mortality and existentialism, he also says, “Now, rule one: get your cash on, M.O.B./That’s Money Over Bitches, ’cause they breed envy”. The context of this line is Tupac recalling the two very important rules his father gave to him as guiding principles for living his life. As there is a lot to unpack from that, the most blatantly obvious point is that Tupac was taught at a very young age that women are inherently envious and that it would be more beneficial to worry about his money. This creates a very important contradiction in Tupac’s “philosophical rhyme book”, if you will. He made songs that speak to women’s empowerment and the importance of protecting those vulnerable within the community before this, with lyrics like:
I give a holla to my sisters on welfare
2Pac cares if don’t nobody else care
And I know they like to beat you down a lot
When you come around the block, brothers clown a lot
But please don’t cry, dry your eyes, never let up
Forgive, but don’t forget, girl, keep ya head up
At the same time, he was indoctrinated into the harmful, generalized thought process of his father, who also learned it from someone else, and seemed to have a difficult time struggling with the contradictions, as heard in his music. The philosophy he lived his life by was being guided by those principles and it was informing how he was in the world from the very beginning.
One problem with a situation like that is that the lack of self-awareness and realizations of contradictions could lead to an entire population being uninterested in engaging with your work. The women in The Combahee River Collective stated that “… We feel solidarity with progressive Black men… We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism” (How We Get Free, 19). As Tupac is often heralded as a progressive and even revolutionary rap artist, it may have been easy for many Black women, and women in general, to be uninterested in simply engaging with him or his fans because of the way that he decided to inconsistently speak about women in his music, and rightfully so. The wherewithal to struggle with men intracommunally about misogyny does not exist in all women, and furthermore, that labor is no woman’s responsibility or obligation.
Additionally, Hip-hop has had a history of male cisheteronormative behavior being the only behavior that is acceptable in the genre, as well as what is acceptable as a point-of-view narrative in the music that was produced. For example, rapper Snoop Dogg released a music video for his track titled “Moment I Feared”, where he mocks eccentric and flamboyant rapper Young Thug, claiming that “This sucker shit is running rampant, it’s the moment I fear” (Beaumont-Thomas). Given Snoop’s significance to the culture and example of hip-hop stars’ proliferation, it is a clear example of how the genre still has a problem with things falling outside of the “boundaries”, and what the consequences are for anyone who decides to. Since the culture mirrors the very rigid patriarchal and cisheteronormative structures of the world, it required women like Rah Digga, Lil Kim, Queen Latifah, Foxy Brown, MC Lyte, and Monie Love to work twice as hard to break through the glass ceiling.
As the genre has evolved and progressed in terms of sound, aesthetic, and overall consumption, a primary difference seen now versus the 1990’s is the overwhelming presence of women, specifically Black women in the mainstream. There has been a very specific type of wave of women in rap, ushered in by the likes of Lil Kim, Diamond, Missy Elliot, Trina, Nicki Minaj and Khia that has given black women the power to reclaim their sexual agency and control of their romantic lives. As of late, artists like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have seen tremendous success in telling stories from their point of view, that involves getting what they want, sex on their terms, and being financially compensated for simply giving men the slightest bit of attention. This, in many ways, connects to the earlier contradiction of Beyoncé’s aesthetic with no material connection. The objectification women often receive in the songs, and in everyday interaction, results in an overcompensation in material desires. Not necessarily negative or unwarranted, but simply reactions to the way many have been objectified. For example, in the song “Cash Shit”, by Megan Thee Stallion, she raps:
“Bitch, I’m a star, got these niggas wishin’
He say he hungry, this pussy the kitchen
Yeah, that’s my dawg, he gon’ sit down and listen
Call him a trick and he don’t get offended
He know he giving his money to Megan
He know it’s very expensive to date me
Told him go put my name on that account
Because when I need money, I ain’t tryna wait”
Extremely braggadocios and explicit, these lyrics stem from a history of Black women, especially those from the south, who rapped about doing what they wanted to do and doing it unapologetically. This is in response to the years of men telling women what they could and couldn’t do in songs, in the booth, and in the world. Black women, specifically, are finding ways to reclaim what had been denied from them for hundreds of years before the 20th century, and then many years after by the men in their own communities. As more and more women are realizing their self-worth through the lyrics of Megan Thee Stallion and those alike, the praxis of those most marginalized among black folks is beginning to take form in ways that hip-hop never saw coming. As the genre continues to expand and ascend to heights unseen, the important questions will be: who is telling the stories? who is being heard? and who is truly listening?
