If You’re Appalled by Rap, Run to a Double Consciousness
One month ago, a white Christian mother was listening to the radio when she came across a rap song that she was not familiar with. This woman was so appalled by the lyrics of the song that she uploaded a video of herself explaining her terror over the lyrics being played on FM radio for her children and today’s youth to hear. The woman could not even hold back tears from her distress and cries on and off throughout her video. The song she heard was Norf Norf by the 23-year-old rapper Vince Staples.
Vince Staples has been rapping and releasing mixtapes for years but has now finally received mainstream attention with his first full length album release Summertime ’06 in the summer of 2015. While his whole album is filled to the brim with creative and original songs, Norf Norf has become his most popular and recognizable song. With its catchy production and Vince’s unique voice, it’s no wonder this song has been playing on the radio among other mainstream top hits. Not only is this song appealing to the masses, but even his lyrics can be read into and, if one critiques them, can easily see they are heavy and critical of violence. The lyrics are laden with references to gang life and calls attention to the dangerous environment living in North Long Beach.
Despite Vince’s smart and biting song, this woman was in utter disbelief that a song like this could be on the air for anyone one to hear. The chorus of the song especially upset her.
“…I ain’t never ran from nothin’ but the police/From the city where the skinny carry strong heat/Norfside, Long Beach, Norfside, Long Beach.”
The woman is visibly terrified at these lyrics, even going as far to say that they are “filth” and the lyrics are encouraging kids to run from the police. By the end of the video, she is literally shaking with rage and urges other parents to forbid this music and the station it was played on from their children. However one decides to interpret Vince Staples’s lyrics, it is blatantly obvious that this one woman’s interpretation is rather narrow and shallow, which brings me to point out her lack of solidarity and perhaps a need for a double consciousness.
As W.E.B. DuBois writes in The Souls of Black Folk, people who hail from other countries or come from minority or diaspora communities experience a phenomena he calls the double consciousness.
“…born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
With a double consciousness, it gives one the ability to see themselves personally and through the eyes of others, which can be used critically and usefully when living in a community that may continually categorize them as the “other”. In many of Vince’s songs, one can hear the world through his personal scope and his double consciousness. In Norf Norf, Vince raps about the world by using his double consciousness while also critiquing it at the same time. While a line of Norf Norf, “My Crips lurkin’, don’t die tonight…” may be first thought of as Vince declaring with his affiliation with the Crips, it could also be him issuing a warning that this particular area is unsafe. His lyrics are layered and intelligent when listened to closely and openly.
This may be why the woman failed to hear the deeper meaning behind Vince’s lyrics. She is a white woman living somewhere in the US which most likely means she does not possess a double consciousness and is therefore unable to understand the song’s double consciousness. All she heard was Vince’s lyrics and, without doing any research behind the song or Vince himself, attacked what she heard and misunderstood.
In a news clip about the woman’s video, it covers the uproar it caused from Vince’s fans and how Vince addressed the video on Twitter. Vince defended the woman by saying that she is entitled to her own opinion and attacking or labeling her as a a racist is not the right answer. He tweeted, “This misunderstanding of our community leads to miscommunication which we should convert into a progressive dialogue.”
In today’s society, there are tools missing that keep us from progressing and moving forward in order to better understand each other, one of them being a double consciousness, or at least an understanding of it, for people who hail from majority communities. Vince Staples has demonstrated that a double consciousness can help one approach an attack non-violently in order to progress the communication. His empathy and double consciousness enabled him to address the woman and the video in an understanding and educated way while also encouraging others to do the same.
