Thoughts on the Grammys
On Sunday, February 12th of the year 2017, I witnessed the power of music and the importance of artistic protest. The first half of the Grammys (I don’t know if its actually the first half, it was 3 hours long and mostly uneventful) was filled with watered down politics or general obliviousness to the outside world. We saw the beginning of another era of White people trying to claim ska through 21 Pilots and Katy Perry (assisted by Bob Marley’s grandson, so I guess its kinda okay?). We also saw Bruno Mars hit consistent deep 2’s during his performance of That’s What I Like, in a leather sweatsuit. This is what I more or less expected from an awards show that embodies the idea of separate but equal (they gave us the urban and rap categories for a reason). But between commercial breaks, they Grammys kept teasing me about a performance from A Tribe Called Quest.Tribe was one of the first English rap groups that I listened to. I was a hipster-wannabe who exclusively listened to jazz and k-pop, at a time when rap was becoming a part of k-pop. I gravitated towards Tribe because when I first searched “jazz” and “hip hop,” they appeared with the song “Jazz (We’ve Got).” Since then, I’ve listened to them whenever I needed to boost my hipster cred by listening to 90s rap. But the Friday after Election Day, Tribe released their first album after almost 20 years of anthologies.
We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service was one of my favorite albums of last year (number 8, to be exact). It helped me get through the election and still keeps me going. The album was strangely prescient for something that was mostly recorded in late 2015 and early 2016. From the top, the album focuses on themes of unity in minority communities and fighting oppression. They emerged, following the album release, to give an emotional performance on Saturday Night Live and celebrate Phife Dawg, who passed away in March 2016. That performance felt like the beginning of the rally calls that is still ringing across America to fight back. But, I slowly forgot about that performance amidst everything else going on even though I kept listening to the album. So during the Grammys, I was curious what this performance would entail.
I wasn’t ready though. When the Grammys came back after the commercial break nearly an hour and a half in and they finally showed Q-Tip and Jarobi White on stage, with Shaheed Muhammad, in his usual spot behind the turntables, and Anderson .Paak on the drums, I still wasn’t ready. Q-Tip started by talking to the people who have been fighting against the new reality from when they released the album. He said, “We’d like to say to all the people around the world, all of those people who are pushing people who are in power to represent them, tonight we represent you.” He also dedicated this performance to Phife Dawg, symbolized by an empty mic stand as the beat for “Award Tour” began in the background.
A wink to their previous hits and their being at the Grammys, Q-Tip shouts “We on Award Tour” and “Grammys” as Jarobi raps the opening hook. And almost as if their performance was a déjà vu of previous Grammys, they rewind and ask the crowd, “Can I Kick It?,” a callback to their first album. It felt like a greatest hits performance, until Q-Tip began shouting “ANDERSON .PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!” With this generous introduction, Paak began his drum solo before both Q-Tip and Paak began singing their song, “Moving Backwards.” Almost in a ceremonious manner, Q-Tip gave Paak the spotlight and the whole world focused on this changing of the guard. In this moment, Paak sang/rapped a verse about feeling lost, wanting to move forward, and needing direction. He expressed my excitement about the future of hip hop, coupled with paralysis and confusion about what the future meant. Paak, alone on stage, kept pleading, “Somebody just give me direction.”
Ask, Anderson, and you shall receive: in that moment, Busta Rhymes and Consequence rose from the ground.
While the performance celebrated the new generation, it also proved that the old guard still has something to offer. Buss began to speak about the toxicity of the current political climate and the failures of President Agent Orange, a reference to a carcinogenic herbicide from the Vietnam War. Tribe erected a wall on stage and kicked through it and behind them was a group of minorities. Faces that you would find on any street. Q-Tip walked to the front of the stage and delivered the opening lines, “We don’t believe you, cuz we the people.” Those famous three words, written by a slave master, were being shouted by a black rap group with Muslim members, their part-Asian, part-Black friend and a crowd as colorful as this nation. As I was watching this, my heart began to race and eyes started to well up.
Despite all that Trump has done and all that has been written opposing him, no argument has felt powerful enough to take him on. Yes, he is a racist, sexist, liar. Yes, he and his cronies don’t know what they’re doing. But, by design or not, we are not able to focus on one reason to unite against him. Or at least that’s how I felt until Tribe started shouting before me. With this performance, they delivered the message that our individual reasons for fighting are less important than the deep, human reason: we fight because it is the right thing to do. We fight because he perpetuates evil. We fight because our friends and family are hurting.
I watched this performance the next morning at work, and I felt like I was going to cry. I listened to a podcast discussing the performance the day after, and I felt like I was going to cry. But these emotions aren’t from a place of sadness, it’s from a place of anger and passion. Moving forward, I’m living by these words from Ezekiel Kweku:
There is no shame in arriving at despair. It’s human nature. But you must keep going and find the place beyond it. And when you reach that place, you fight not because you are guaranteed to win, or even have a chance of winning. In fact, losing might be inevitable. You continue to fight, even in the face of the inevitability of defeat, because it is right and it is good. The place beyond despair is not hope, exactly, but it is a place from which you may draw nearly unlimited will, because you are no longer afraid of losing. If we want to keep fighting, this is the destination we must reach.
