Revolution—Arrested Development
#365Songs: June 4
“Malcolm X’s basic thing was self-determination and pride. One thing the movie does that I’m really thankful for is that it gives a side of Malcolm that’s also the perspective Arrested Development comes from, which is caring.”
—Speech, Arrested Development
I may be an army of one in taking this position, but as far as I’m concerned, 1992’s The Chronic was the beginning of the end of rap and hip-hop. I don’t often agree with Robert Christgau, but on that one, he got it right, when he described the album as “sociopathic easy-listening” and “bad pop music.”
In 1992, rap was all over the place. Ice Cube released The Predator. House of Pain delivered “Jump Around.” Boogie Down Productions hit with “Duck Down,” while Six Mix-a-Lot dropped “Baby Got Back.”
Eric B. and Rakim were lethal as ever:
Dangerous rhymes are performed like surgery
Cuts so deep you’ll be bleeding burgundy
My intellect wrecks and disconnects your cerebral cortex
Your cerebellum is next
Your conscience becomes sub-conscious
Soon your response is nonsense
And The Beastie Boys were rockin’ the joint in an old school way.
Into all this evolving of the guard came something out of Atlanta that no one expected or foresaw: 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…
It hit our ears like a funky nuzzle.
Lord, I’ve really been real stressed, down and out, losing ground.
Although I am black and proud, problems got me pessimistic.
Brothers and sisters keep messin’ up, why does it have to be so damn tuff?
I don’t know where I can go to let these ghosts out of my skull.
My grandma past my brother’s gone, I never at once felt so alone.
I know you’re supposed to be my steering wheel, not just my spare tire.
But Lord, I ask you,
to be my guiding force and truth.
For some strange reason it had to be,
he guided me to Tennessee.
Take me to another place, take me to another land.
Make me forget all that hurts me, let me understand your plan.
The single was a hit, the album was a hit, and the praise and the rewards would come pouring in. Within a mere two years, however, the story’s first and most important chapter would be over. You know the drill. I don’t hear a single. What’s your latest hit, brother?
The sophomore album delivered “disappointing” sales, and the band broke up.
There would be reunion tours, festivals, occasional hits, and many awards in the decades to come, and frontman and co-founder Speech continues to release both solo albums and albums under the Arrested Development name.
But the 1992 debut was something special.
As was the first recording to follow it: the song “Revolution,” recorded for the Malcolm X soundtrack.
It was common to perceive Arrested Development as a softer, more spiritual alternative to the so-called “gangsta rap” that had been in vogue as the 80s gave way to the 90s.
But listening to “Revolution” might tell you otherwise:
As I look out my window
I see the little ones
Playing amongst each other
With their waterguns
In pure poverty
Generations of good people
In cycles of poverty
It bothers me, so I ask myself
I say, “Are you doing as much as you can for the struggle?”
“Am I doing as much as I can for the struggle?”
Then why do I cry when
My people are in trouble
My ancestors slapped me
In the face and said
Harriet Tubman
Told me to get on up
Marcus Garvey said the negro
You get on up
My brother Malcolm X…
Need I name more?
It ain’t like we never
Seen blood before
Come on, let’s talk
Revolution, now
It’s heavy stuff, and it gets heavier:
So, people, let us wet our palates
It’s either the bullet or the ballot
All of these ideas, these issues, these concerns, these calls to action—they all still feel depressingly relevant today, and while that same question lingers (“Am I doing as much as I can for the struggle?”), answering it seems more complicated than ever.
We are in an age where performative digital activism is less than meaningless and real people are getting shot with real bullets on real streets. Meanwhile, a profit-addicated micro-cabal of fasco-capitalists continues to consolidate, regulate, and liquidate their way to near-feudal levels of authoritarian control.
How, as we stand looking up into the cocaine-blazed nostrils of this Mount Rushmore of corruption, can we continue to believe in our ability to matter, let alone do something for the struggle?
We can’t.
And yet, we must. Because we don’t know what might yet happen, and we can’t miss it when it does.
The world didn’t know it needed Malcolm X before Malcolm X arrived anymore than it knew it needed Jesus before Jesus arrived.
We don’t know what we need. We don’t know what the struggle needs. We don’t know what the answer is; when, or how, it will arrive. But as Speech says in “Revolution”:
We must acquire a taste for
Something we’ve never tasted
~
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