“I’ve been to prison man, I’ve been locked in a cage, I used to rob motherfuckers all day, that ain’t real. What's real is taking care of your family and getting an education, because education is the revolution.”
Our torments may in length of time
Become our elements.
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Fifteen years after the glory days of hiphop, when poignant and articulate political insight was presented with penetrating intensity by the likes of Public Enemy and KRS-One, lucid interpretations of the workings of the ‘system’ seem hard to come by in today’s street music. The idealistic heyday of rap generated an ephemeral but nonetheless powerful feeling that an understanding could perhaps be reached, that though the injustices of the world were rife, they were capable of being changed. As the years passed, however, the revolutionary impetus at hiphop’s heart became sidelined, diluted and compromised by corporate interest, castrated from within by the very system it had once stood against.
Ignorant entrepreneurial wet dreams replaced prophetic visions and rallying cries for revolution. It’s no accident that a lot of rap music is mocked and disregarded these days. A good majority of modern hiphop is inane and infantile, base, empty and disposable. It’s become a swaggering, bloated oaf of a genre, and the most insightful criticism of it is coming from the longest-serving soldiers with its own ranks.
Living in the ‘shadow of no towers’ has created a strange climate in hiphop. There remains an intrinsic mistrust of the ‘system’, yet, more than ever, an overt subscription to its methods. Bitter, if somewhat vague, denigrations of the establishment are often present in the same verses as boastful tales of procurement of its materialist trappings. There is an awareness of an evil present, yet at the same time a denial that is has taken hold of the culture. Is it cool to have been shot up, like 50? Is drug dealing fashionable? Should I aspire to wealth or to self-knowledge? Is it better to read a book or to fuck a bitch? Rap music has always been a forum for many disparate voices, and rife with contradictory values. But these days, it seems that the positive voices of upliftment, of insight into the workings of society, and of revolution have long been lingering in the wilderness. In such twisted days of a pre-apocalyptic new world order, a new breed of MC is returning to assert his voice in rap’s lyrical wasteland. Like the groundbreakers before him, Immortal Technique has risen from rap’s subterranean depths with the intention of reasserting the informed awareness and political vitriol that seems to have been lacking for so long.
Tech’s no angel. He’s an awesomely brutal battle rhymer, as well as a fervid political spokesman for the world’s oppressed. Let’s not fuck about in fact, he’s about as vicious and brutal on the mic as they come. You get the feeling that he really would cut the head of the devil and throw it right at you. Seeing him drop a verse up close in London’s Deal Real when he came over is something I won’t forget for a long time. The man was physically trembling with passion and aggression. He’s a scary and belligerent motherfucker, but at the same time a friendly, highly intelligent and articulate guy with a wicked sense of humour. Essentially, he’s the sort of guy you’d love to have on your side as a friend, but who would necessitate your swift departure from the country if he ever became your enemy.
Though, as he himself admits, he’s “on the brink of insanity, between extreme intelligence and split personalities”, it’s clear that his revolutionary personality is born of struggle and hardship. He balances “humility with brutal instinct”, and there can be no denying that he’s got a right to be hostile. His people have been persecuted. His metaphors of rape, vicious murder, and leading armies of aborted babies aren’t there for shock value alone. They’re imagery of the desperate disrespect he and those he loves have been through and the anger that has been planted in his heart as a result. This isn’t wanton, malicious nihilism, it’s ghetto reportage at its rawest. Far from being some adolescent escapist fantasy, it is about as real as reality rap has ever been.
Understanding Technique's life story goes a long away in understanding the man and his work. Born in Peru in a military hospital, during a period of socio-economic instability in an already long-suffering nation, he was brought to Harlem New York as a child in the early ‘80s. "I moved from there because there was rampant inflation and there was a fucking civil war going on,” he explains. “So my father though that might not be the best place to raise a child. That shit looked like Iraq do now." Harlem, however, was similarly in the grip of social unrest. In a tense atmosphere where unemployment was rife and the community-destroying effects of crack cocaine were becoming ever more prevalent, Technique found a sense of security and belonging in the flourishing culture of the street. He immersed himself in hiphop, writing graffiti and rapping as a young adolescent. His new found outlet of expression wasn’t enough to keep him on the straight and narrow, however, and as he grew older he became involved in increasingly wild and violent pursuits, culminating in a stretch in prison just before the end of the millennium.
His time in jail allowed him to reflect not only on the political machinations of world government, but also on himself and his aggressive tendencies. "I try to stay away from that now,” he says, somewhat unconvincingly. “As opposed to then, when someone said something sideways to me, I’d probably break their fucking jaw. And that’s documented. Now, I don’t even bother with that. You gotta really come in my face and bother me for me to beat the shit out of you. You know if you get in my face I will fuck you up. I don’t know what you read on the internet or in the article, I hold the project belt. Undefeated, so you can try your luck, pussy." He is, however, quick to state that he is not proud of his formerly consuming predilection for beating down punks. "I sometimes think what my life would be like without prison, what the fuck would I be doing now? At the same time, I wouldn’t have wrote Volume One!” he laughs. “I wouldn’t have got the inspiration: I wrote half of that in jail, there's a lot of real shit on there. I’m definitely not proud of the times that violence has escalated to the point where someone has got to get hurt. As a matter of fact, the last time I had to knock a nigga out, I went home and had to ask myself, what did I achieve? It frustrates me though, because motherfuckers should know to respect the boundaries. I like to pride myself on the fact that I don’t go around disrespecting people for no reason. If I got beef with a rapper, I'm not gonna make a record about it, I’m gonna fucking find you homie. And we’re gonna address it."
His time incarcerated not only gave birth to the incendiary Revolutionary Volume One, but also gave Technique the chance to read and receive inspiration from the two of the most influential texts of the past 2,000 years. "I can say the books that gave me insight when I was locked up were the Bible and the Koran,” he says, asked to name some favourite books. “I wanted to understand the way the word was written, as opposed to the way it was carried out. When you talk about Islam, it’s set up in a certain way, but at the same time it’s corrupted by the people that own it, the same way that the people that own Christianity corrupted it. I don’t make that distinction, and I don’t make excuses for people. While I defend against the demonisation of Islam, I don’t make excuses for people in the Sudan. I understand how the Islamic Middle East enslaved Africa: the same way that America uses blacks and Latinos in the frontlines of their armies is the same way the Persians used them, because they were the strongest warriors."
Being presented with an educated opinion on such issues in a world where ignorance, xenophobia and bigotry are so prevalent is refreshing. One can't help but wonder whether a man of such balanced judgement subscribes to any instituted belief system himself. "There’s a lot of speculation as to what allegiance I pledge myself to,” he says, “but I look at it this way: I believe in God and I believe you can learn a lot from the holy books, but I’ve read too much about the history of religions to place my faith in a specific one. I’ve seen too much of the corruption of Christianity and Islam. I respect all religions in their core message of love and oneness with God. But no religion has been brought to someone as a friendly gesture. It’s always, ‘You are gonna join my religion because God don’t look like you, he looks like me because I’m beautiful and you aren’t’, and that’s how you tear someone’s soul away. And when God is supposed to look like you and he doesn’t, you become the spiritual prisoner of that people. And I ain’t nobody’s prisoner."
Undeniably more fire-breathing demagogue than smiley, organic food eating conscious rapper, Tech is one of a very short list of MCs respected by his fans for a great deal more than his rapping ability. In a manner similar to KRS-One, Chuck D or Afrika Bambaataa, his learning and articulacy, all combined with the uncompromising charisma of a guerrilla warlord, mean that his listeners flock to his call, not just as a spokesman, but as a leader. Tech doesn’t see himself running for office any time soon, however, and maintains a humble awareness of his limits. "I stay up on everything,” he says. “If there’s a topic I feel I'm lacking in a wide range of subject matter or haven’t researched, I'm not gonna sit there and bullshit with people. I’m willing to educate myself by listening to other people’s experiences, by reading what other people recommend. I don’t think I have all the answers. There’s no ego involved here with that." It’s an impressively modest approach from a rapper who has such command of a remarkably diverse fanbase that he can incite capacity crowds to chant “¡Viva la revolución!” at his shows, but Tech has a profound insight into the true meaning of mind revolution. "I tell kids all the time, you can be 10 times the revolutionary I am right now,” he explains. “You can be a doctor. What can I do? I can rhyme to a muthafucka, but I can’t make that nigga live. If you get yourself into medical school, you can save people, because those big drug companies send you free medicines in order to promote their products and you can hook muthafuckas up with it. If you a lawyer, you can hook people up who you know are innocent pro bono, because people getting off know that it’s more about having the right attorney than being innocent or guilty. And that's just reality. It’s still racism, but there is much more class-ism that’s involved. So what I’m trying to say is, as much as I rhyme to a dead body that got killed, I can’t make him live. As much as I rhyme to a nigga behind bars, I can’t make him see through the bars and go free. Those people have the potential to do a lot more and I let them know that. No matter where I am, whether I’m doing a show in the hood at Club Speed or whether I’m at Oxford, or at a festival in front of 40,000 drunk muthafuckas in Sweden."
Listening to the two Revolutionary Volumes, a view that gravitates to the left of political thinking is palpable. Technique’s in no hurry to model his revolutionary ideology on such institutions of thought as traditional Marxism, however. "I think the interesting thing about revolutions is [that] a lot of times, right afterwards the revolution is corrupted by people who see a power shift,” he observes. “After the prophet Muhammad died, the Caliphs fought amongst one another so that they could control Islam. After Jesus Christ died, the Romans realised they had a system they could use to manipulate these people. After the Russian revolution and the Cuban revolution, after Lenin died, a man like Stalin comes to power takes a person’s vision and twists it. He runs Trotsky out and has him murdered and then turns it into a totalitarian state. So people can see these things and say communism failed us, but I see how capitalism has failed in a place like Latin America. It’s failed Africa and it’s failed Asia, all those places. The only reason we don’t see those negative stories is because the people in the top 10 percentiles own the press and decide what is shown. While I do think there are certain principles of communism and socialism that are more efficient, there's a lot of racism in communism…White people think they came up with that shit, but black and Latino people had communism when European people had houses without windows. We had that in our tribal conferences; we had a different relationship with our women."
The issue of women in today's society is a prevalent theme in Tech’s work, and, rather than handling it in the derogatory fashion that seems to have become traditional in much of rap’s lyrical content, he approaches the subject with the aim of emphasising the role of women not just in the family but in the human race as a whole. Particularly marked examples are his collaboration with Jean Grae on You Never Know, where he stresses the importance of female self respect, and Dance With The Devil, where he uses the rape of Billy Jacob's mother as one of the most powerful metaphors ever delivered in a hiphop track. "I see the rape of a woman as the rape of a nation,” he opines, clearing away misconceptions of the message of the controversial song. “The strongest resource that the black and Latino community has is the woman. Even white women, it doesn’t matter what colour you are, because the woman is what raises the next nation to either a DJ, a lawyer, a doctor or a crackhead, to a shop owner or a journalist." He elaborates further: "When I made Dance With The Devil, I wanted to show people the reality of the hood and not the shit you see on BET and MTV when they show people in the ghetto as if they’re having a wonderful time. Everybody who lives in the ghetto understands that no one wants to live there. It doesn’t mean that you’re hard or tough because you grew up in a fucked up neighbourhood, it just means that your parents were poor. It means because they’re not Caucasian, the bank refuses them a loan, so they can’t buy a house, and that’s why they have to live in the projects. I knew a lot of people involved directly with rape, and a lot of them are dead or locked up because they were chasing a dream of wanting to be down and being gangsters. They didn’t know that the realest thing you can do to be a ‘real nigga’ is to take care of your family."
With the glamorisation of ghetto life a commonplace phenomenon in commercial hiphop, surely even the youngest of listeners understand that imagery of blinged-out billionaire lifestyles are to be taken with a bucket-load of salt? Is it really resulting in a mis-education of impressionable youngsters and creating a fantasy life that is becoming a reality in people's minds? Tech is in little doubt of the pernicious consequences it is having. "All this gun talk,” he says, the frustration is clear in his voice. “I ain't never seen a gang or a group of niggas lower the price of milk or bread in the supermarket. Niggas think that they are really gangster out there, it’s like half the people out there talking about being a gangster don’t even know what a gangster really is. A real gangster, a real nigga that’s been through the struggle, why do you think they're the people working the most to keep kids out of gangs? Why do you think the realest gangsters are the people who are like, “Y'know what? We need to rebuild the community.” You know why they're the only niggas saying that and why the older gangsters aren’t saying that? Because the older gangsters don’t exist - they're in prison or they're fucking dead. There is no happy ending for Tony Montana. He doesn’t have a family with a nice house and a crib like you imagine he does in the video, homie. He dies, he gets murdered and everyone else around him dies. And people glorify that and think, “That's the way I wanna live.” I keep it gutter because I'm from the hood, but I drop knowledge trying to tell people just because you from the hood doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. Just because you black and Latino doesn’t mean you have to live in some servile state of mind. We can enterprise for ourselves, we can build something."
Your Mum might find his lyrics unbearably offensive, but Technique is adamant that a positive message is needed for the impoverished communities of the world, especially for the youth in the inner cities of America, where such thug aspirations are widespread. "After 9/11 there was a large crackdown where a lot of grassroots programs got their government funding cut. When I got out of jail, I couldn’t get a regular job. But eventually I got a job teaching kids in the Bronx. And a kid about 10 years old came up to me and asked what he had to do to be a real nigga. He was like, ‘I wanna hold down the block, I wanna be a real nigga.’ I took the brother aside and I said: ‘I’ve been to prison man, I’ve been locked in a cage, I used to rob motherfuckers all day, that ain’t real. What's real is taking care of your family and getting an education, because education is the revolution. That’s something they can never take away from you, and when you argue with your woman, you never have to raise your hand to her, because that’s some bitch shit.’ And eventually I told him that I did so many things to make myself a real nigga and I looked back and said, ‘Y’know, I’m not even a nigga anymore.’ And I had never been one. If you don’t know what your people have done, you’re easier to convince that you can never achieve something. We have no knowledge of our people. In the commercial enterprise, there’s no connection to who we are as a people. It makes it seem as if our entire history started with slavery and then black people are divided by mulatto or quadroon. 5-0 don’t give a fuck what shade you are."
It’s become standard procedure in a culture which has now become a multi-billion dollar industry: an image, a lifestyle, even a state of mind is being ruthlessly sold not just by artists and record labels but by any other company that feels it can claim a stake, all the way from clothing and jewellery to rapper-endorsed soft drinks. But how viable is it to distance oneself from entirely from the evils of corporate control? "If we were to boycott the companies whose clothing is made by slave labour, everybody in here would be naked,” observes Tech to a packed crowd at a Deal Real question and answer session. “It’s unfortunate, but my anger is not going to change anything about it. A lot of times boycotts are directed at the wrong people, so nothing gets done. We aren’t speaking their language, which is capital. If I sit outside your house all day, I’m an annoyance, but if I cut your fucking lights off, I’m a problem. And that’s where we need to address those situations."
Such corporate influence is something Tech is determined to avoid, and his choice of an independent label in Viper Records is a considered move to retain control and substance in his music. “We like to think we control hiphop and this culture can never be taken away from us,” he says, “but look at rock n roll, and look at jazz. I think it’s ignorant to think like that that were not susceptible to those sorts of things. Because right now we don’t decide what goes on in hiphop, some corporation does. I think that's where the lack of substance comes in. That’s one of the beautiful things about being independent, I don’t have no fucking sponsors to offend, no one has that control over me."
Nevertheless, the all-consuming prospect of monetary gain, and the hugely attractive mirage of personal wealth and respect seems to be endemic among budding artists nowadays. “I’m sure a lot of people in this room know a rapper or a DJ who run around saying, “I want to get a deal when your poor ass don’t even know what a deal is,” Tech exclaims. “A deal is slavery. When you sign to a major record label, you don’t get to do what you wanna do motherfucker, you hand them 30 songs and they pick which 14 go on your album. Then they take your publishing and your masters, you don’t own that shit. They tell you how to dress. You talking all that gangster and gun shit, and meanwhile you got some faggot putting makeup on your face. How hard are you?” Technique points out that he and his cohorts are taking an active step in educating those with unrealistic aspirations who may be susceptible to such record label rinse-out. "I’m involved with a grassroots artists organisation called G.A.M.E. (Grassroots Artist MovEment: http://www.kickgame.com/),” he says, “and we’ve set up workshops where artist can learn about royalties and networking and hooked them up with healthcare with doctors in Colorado, Philly, Chicago and Nigeria. You pay your dues like a regular member, and you get healthcare."
It’s near enough a unique occurrence to see a rapper who not only talks the talk but actually takes an active role in effecting such genuine change. Even so, his most powerful weapon in a war against ignorance remains his music. So what next for the Harlem partisan, can we expect a third Volume to complete the Revolutionary trilogy? "There will be the Middle Passage, and then Volume Three to complete everything,” he promises. “I didn't want to put Volume Three out first. I was riding around my hood and I started thinking, ‘You know what, before I take 'em to Volume Three, before I really kill 'em with that, I need to take 'em back to the essence, I need to show them exactly how Immortal Technique is.’ Whereas Volume One was coming out of nowhere with all these tracks I had wrote in prison, Volume Two was sort of an answer to the media, and the way they depicted Islam and all immigrants and basically the justification of racism and fascism in America. Volume Two attacked that, now we really had to take it back to the streets, and the streets doesn’t mean being ignorant and rapping about this and that.”
Within the space of only a few years, Immortal Technique has joined the ranks of rap’s past masters and hiphop’s most celebrated incendiaries, asserting himself as (to quote New York graf legend STAYHIGH 149) "the voice of the ghetto". "It’s just so funny to me,” he points out. “I was born and grow up in a rougher environment than exists in America or [the UK]. I think anyone else who comes from Africa or the Caribbean can stand with me and say, ‘You know what? You don’t know what the fuck poverty is.’ You think you poor because you don’t get to buy Jordans? Niggas don’t have running water where my grandma used to live, before my pop and my uncle moved to LA. Niggas just don’t get it. They don’t realise that hiphop started as a way for us to express the truth about our culture and what the fuck we been through. With The Message, what was Melle Mel saying on that? He was breaking down how the entire hood was set up and how from beginning to end we were almost directed into the cage. People like KRS-One and Chuck D continued that legacy. And that’s why I have the utmost respect for them." In an unruly and corrupt kingdom where greed and banality are rampant, Tech is back for rap’s crown. Or, more possibly, he’s here to smash down the castles of ignorance and indolence and build a whole new republic.
http://www.viperrecords.com/
www.immortal-technique.com
The Middle Passage is scheduled for release in early 2006 on Viper Records.
Assignment: Dave Cano, Great Scott and Ewan Huzarmi
Evidence: Cary O. Stuart
Our torments may in length of time
Become our elements.
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Fifteen years after the glory days of hiphop, when poignant and articulate political insight was presented with penetrating intensity by the likes of Public Enemy and KRS-One, lucid interpretations of the workings of the ‘system’ seem hard to come by in today’s street music. The idealistic heyday of rap generated an ephemeral but nonetheless powerful feeling that an understanding could perhaps be reached, that though the injustices of the world were rife, they were capable of being changed. As the years passed, however, the revolutionary impetus at hiphop’s heart became sidelined, diluted and compromised by corporate interest, castrated from within by the very system it had once stood against.
Ignorant entrepreneurial wet dreams replaced prophetic visions and rallying cries for revolution. It’s no accident that a lot of rap music is mocked and disregarded these days. A good majority of modern hiphop is inane and infantile, base, empty and disposable. It’s become a swaggering, bloated oaf of a genre, and the most insightful criticism of it is coming from the longest-serving soldiers with its own ranks.
Living in the ‘shadow of no towers’ has created a strange climate in hiphop. There remains an intrinsic mistrust of the ‘system’, yet, more than ever, an overt subscription to its methods. Bitter, if somewhat vague, denigrations of the establishment are often present in the same verses as boastful tales of procurement of its materialist trappings. There is an awareness of an evil present, yet at the same time a denial that is has taken hold of the culture. Is it cool to have been shot up, like 50? Is drug dealing fashionable? Should I aspire to wealth or to self-knowledge? Is it better to read a book or to fuck a bitch? Rap music has always been a forum for many disparate voices, and rife with contradictory values. But these days, it seems that the positive voices of upliftment, of insight into the workings of society, and of revolution have long been lingering in the wilderness. In such twisted days of a pre-apocalyptic new world order, a new breed of MC is returning to assert his voice in rap’s lyrical wasteland. Like the groundbreakers before him, Immortal Technique has risen from rap’s subterranean depths with the intention of reasserting the informed awareness and political vitriol that seems to have been lacking for so long.
Tech’s no angel. He’s an awesomely brutal battle rhymer, as well as a fervid political spokesman for the world’s oppressed. Let’s not fuck about in fact, he’s about as vicious and brutal on the mic as they come. You get the feeling that he really would cut the head of the devil and throw it right at you. Seeing him drop a verse up close in London’s Deal Real when he came over is something I won’t forget for a long time. The man was physically trembling with passion and aggression. He’s a scary and belligerent motherfucker, but at the same time a friendly, highly intelligent and articulate guy with a wicked sense of humour. Essentially, he’s the sort of guy you’d love to have on your side as a friend, but who would necessitate your swift departure from the country if he ever became your enemy.
Though, as he himself admits, he’s “on the brink of insanity, between extreme intelligence and split personalities”, it’s clear that his revolutionary personality is born of struggle and hardship. He balances “humility with brutal instinct”, and there can be no denying that he’s got a right to be hostile. His people have been persecuted. His metaphors of rape, vicious murder, and leading armies of aborted babies aren’t there for shock value alone. They’re imagery of the desperate disrespect he and those he loves have been through and the anger that has been planted in his heart as a result. This isn’t wanton, malicious nihilism, it’s ghetto reportage at its rawest. Far from being some adolescent escapist fantasy, it is about as real as reality rap has ever been.
Understanding Technique's life story goes a long away in understanding the man and his work. Born in Peru in a military hospital, during a period of socio-economic instability in an already long-suffering nation, he was brought to Harlem New York as a child in the early ‘80s. "I moved from there because there was rampant inflation and there was a fucking civil war going on,” he explains. “So my father though that might not be the best place to raise a child. That shit looked like Iraq do now." Harlem, however, was similarly in the grip of social unrest. In a tense atmosphere where unemployment was rife and the community-destroying effects of crack cocaine were becoming ever more prevalent, Technique found a sense of security and belonging in the flourishing culture of the street. He immersed himself in hiphop, writing graffiti and rapping as a young adolescent. His new found outlet of expression wasn’t enough to keep him on the straight and narrow, however, and as he grew older he became involved in increasingly wild and violent pursuits, culminating in a stretch in prison just before the end of the millennium.
His time in jail allowed him to reflect not only on the political machinations of world government, but also on himself and his aggressive tendencies. "I try to stay away from that now,” he says, somewhat unconvincingly. “As opposed to then, when someone said something sideways to me, I’d probably break their fucking jaw. And that’s documented. Now, I don’t even bother with that. You gotta really come in my face and bother me for me to beat the shit out of you. You know if you get in my face I will fuck you up. I don’t know what you read on the internet or in the article, I hold the project belt. Undefeated, so you can try your luck, pussy." He is, however, quick to state that he is not proud of his formerly consuming predilection for beating down punks. "I sometimes think what my life would be like without prison, what the fuck would I be doing now? At the same time, I wouldn’t have wrote Volume One!” he laughs. “I wouldn’t have got the inspiration: I wrote half of that in jail, there's a lot of real shit on there. I’m definitely not proud of the times that violence has escalated to the point where someone has got to get hurt. As a matter of fact, the last time I had to knock a nigga out, I went home and had to ask myself, what did I achieve? It frustrates me though, because motherfuckers should know to respect the boundaries. I like to pride myself on the fact that I don’t go around disrespecting people for no reason. If I got beef with a rapper, I'm not gonna make a record about it, I’m gonna fucking find you homie. And we’re gonna address it."
His time incarcerated not only gave birth to the incendiary Revolutionary Volume One, but also gave Technique the chance to read and receive inspiration from the two of the most influential texts of the past 2,000 years. "I can say the books that gave me insight when I was locked up were the Bible and the Koran,” he says, asked to name some favourite books. “I wanted to understand the way the word was written, as opposed to the way it was carried out. When you talk about Islam, it’s set up in a certain way, but at the same time it’s corrupted by the people that own it, the same way that the people that own Christianity corrupted it. I don’t make that distinction, and I don’t make excuses for people. While I defend against the demonisation of Islam, I don’t make excuses for people in the Sudan. I understand how the Islamic Middle East enslaved Africa: the same way that America uses blacks and Latinos in the frontlines of their armies is the same way the Persians used them, because they were the strongest warriors."
Being presented with an educated opinion on such issues in a world where ignorance, xenophobia and bigotry are so prevalent is refreshing. One can't help but wonder whether a man of such balanced judgement subscribes to any instituted belief system himself. "There’s a lot of speculation as to what allegiance I pledge myself to,” he says, “but I look at it this way: I believe in God and I believe you can learn a lot from the holy books, but I’ve read too much about the history of religions to place my faith in a specific one. I’ve seen too much of the corruption of Christianity and Islam. I respect all religions in their core message of love and oneness with God. But no religion has been brought to someone as a friendly gesture. It’s always, ‘You are gonna join my religion because God don’t look like you, he looks like me because I’m beautiful and you aren’t’, and that’s how you tear someone’s soul away. And when God is supposed to look like you and he doesn’t, you become the spiritual prisoner of that people. And I ain’t nobody’s prisoner."
Undeniably more fire-breathing demagogue than smiley, organic food eating conscious rapper, Tech is one of a very short list of MCs respected by his fans for a great deal more than his rapping ability. In a manner similar to KRS-One, Chuck D or Afrika Bambaataa, his learning and articulacy, all combined with the uncompromising charisma of a guerrilla warlord, mean that his listeners flock to his call, not just as a spokesman, but as a leader. Tech doesn’t see himself running for office any time soon, however, and maintains a humble awareness of his limits. "I stay up on everything,” he says. “If there’s a topic I feel I'm lacking in a wide range of subject matter or haven’t researched, I'm not gonna sit there and bullshit with people. I’m willing to educate myself by listening to other people’s experiences, by reading what other people recommend. I don’t think I have all the answers. There’s no ego involved here with that." It’s an impressively modest approach from a rapper who has such command of a remarkably diverse fanbase that he can incite capacity crowds to chant “¡Viva la revolución!” at his shows, but Tech has a profound insight into the true meaning of mind revolution. "I tell kids all the time, you can be 10 times the revolutionary I am right now,” he explains. “You can be a doctor. What can I do? I can rhyme to a muthafucka, but I can’t make that nigga live. If you get yourself into medical school, you can save people, because those big drug companies send you free medicines in order to promote their products and you can hook muthafuckas up with it. If you a lawyer, you can hook people up who you know are innocent pro bono, because people getting off know that it’s more about having the right attorney than being innocent or guilty. And that's just reality. It’s still racism, but there is much more class-ism that’s involved. So what I’m trying to say is, as much as I rhyme to a dead body that got killed, I can’t make him live. As much as I rhyme to a nigga behind bars, I can’t make him see through the bars and go free. Those people have the potential to do a lot more and I let them know that. No matter where I am, whether I’m doing a show in the hood at Club Speed or whether I’m at Oxford, or at a festival in front of 40,000 drunk muthafuckas in Sweden."
Listening to the two Revolutionary Volumes, a view that gravitates to the left of political thinking is palpable. Technique’s in no hurry to model his revolutionary ideology on such institutions of thought as traditional Marxism, however. "I think the interesting thing about revolutions is [that] a lot of times, right afterwards the revolution is corrupted by people who see a power shift,” he observes. “After the prophet Muhammad died, the Caliphs fought amongst one another so that they could control Islam. After Jesus Christ died, the Romans realised they had a system they could use to manipulate these people. After the Russian revolution and the Cuban revolution, after Lenin died, a man like Stalin comes to power takes a person’s vision and twists it. He runs Trotsky out and has him murdered and then turns it into a totalitarian state. So people can see these things and say communism failed us, but I see how capitalism has failed in a place like Latin America. It’s failed Africa and it’s failed Asia, all those places. The only reason we don’t see those negative stories is because the people in the top 10 percentiles own the press and decide what is shown. While I do think there are certain principles of communism and socialism that are more efficient, there's a lot of racism in communism…White people think they came up with that shit, but black and Latino people had communism when European people had houses without windows. We had that in our tribal conferences; we had a different relationship with our women."
The issue of women in today's society is a prevalent theme in Tech’s work, and, rather than handling it in the derogatory fashion that seems to have become traditional in much of rap’s lyrical content, he approaches the subject with the aim of emphasising the role of women not just in the family but in the human race as a whole. Particularly marked examples are his collaboration with Jean Grae on You Never Know, where he stresses the importance of female self respect, and Dance With The Devil, where he uses the rape of Billy Jacob's mother as one of the most powerful metaphors ever delivered in a hiphop track. "I see the rape of a woman as the rape of a nation,” he opines, clearing away misconceptions of the message of the controversial song. “The strongest resource that the black and Latino community has is the woman. Even white women, it doesn’t matter what colour you are, because the woman is what raises the next nation to either a DJ, a lawyer, a doctor or a crackhead, to a shop owner or a journalist." He elaborates further: "When I made Dance With The Devil, I wanted to show people the reality of the hood and not the shit you see on BET and MTV when they show people in the ghetto as if they’re having a wonderful time. Everybody who lives in the ghetto understands that no one wants to live there. It doesn’t mean that you’re hard or tough because you grew up in a fucked up neighbourhood, it just means that your parents were poor. It means because they’re not Caucasian, the bank refuses them a loan, so they can’t buy a house, and that’s why they have to live in the projects. I knew a lot of people involved directly with rape, and a lot of them are dead or locked up because they were chasing a dream of wanting to be down and being gangsters. They didn’t know that the realest thing you can do to be a ‘real nigga’ is to take care of your family."
With the glamorisation of ghetto life a commonplace phenomenon in commercial hiphop, surely even the youngest of listeners understand that imagery of blinged-out billionaire lifestyles are to be taken with a bucket-load of salt? Is it really resulting in a mis-education of impressionable youngsters and creating a fantasy life that is becoming a reality in people's minds? Tech is in little doubt of the pernicious consequences it is having. "All this gun talk,” he says, the frustration is clear in his voice. “I ain't never seen a gang or a group of niggas lower the price of milk or bread in the supermarket. Niggas think that they are really gangster out there, it’s like half the people out there talking about being a gangster don’t even know what a gangster really is. A real gangster, a real nigga that’s been through the struggle, why do you think they're the people working the most to keep kids out of gangs? Why do you think the realest gangsters are the people who are like, “Y'know what? We need to rebuild the community.” You know why they're the only niggas saying that and why the older gangsters aren’t saying that? Because the older gangsters don’t exist - they're in prison or they're fucking dead. There is no happy ending for Tony Montana. He doesn’t have a family with a nice house and a crib like you imagine he does in the video, homie. He dies, he gets murdered and everyone else around him dies. And people glorify that and think, “That's the way I wanna live.” I keep it gutter because I'm from the hood, but I drop knowledge trying to tell people just because you from the hood doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. Just because you black and Latino doesn’t mean you have to live in some servile state of mind. We can enterprise for ourselves, we can build something."
Your Mum might find his lyrics unbearably offensive, but Technique is adamant that a positive message is needed for the impoverished communities of the world, especially for the youth in the inner cities of America, where such thug aspirations are widespread. "After 9/11 there was a large crackdown where a lot of grassroots programs got their government funding cut. When I got out of jail, I couldn’t get a regular job. But eventually I got a job teaching kids in the Bronx. And a kid about 10 years old came up to me and asked what he had to do to be a real nigga. He was like, ‘I wanna hold down the block, I wanna be a real nigga.’ I took the brother aside and I said: ‘I’ve been to prison man, I’ve been locked in a cage, I used to rob motherfuckers all day, that ain’t real. What's real is taking care of your family and getting an education, because education is the revolution. That’s something they can never take away from you, and when you argue with your woman, you never have to raise your hand to her, because that’s some bitch shit.’ And eventually I told him that I did so many things to make myself a real nigga and I looked back and said, ‘Y’know, I’m not even a nigga anymore.’ And I had never been one. If you don’t know what your people have done, you’re easier to convince that you can never achieve something. We have no knowledge of our people. In the commercial enterprise, there’s no connection to who we are as a people. It makes it seem as if our entire history started with slavery and then black people are divided by mulatto or quadroon. 5-0 don’t give a fuck what shade you are."
It’s become standard procedure in a culture which has now become a multi-billion dollar industry: an image, a lifestyle, even a state of mind is being ruthlessly sold not just by artists and record labels but by any other company that feels it can claim a stake, all the way from clothing and jewellery to rapper-endorsed soft drinks. But how viable is it to distance oneself from entirely from the evils of corporate control? "If we were to boycott the companies whose clothing is made by slave labour, everybody in here would be naked,” observes Tech to a packed crowd at a Deal Real question and answer session. “It’s unfortunate, but my anger is not going to change anything about it. A lot of times boycotts are directed at the wrong people, so nothing gets done. We aren’t speaking their language, which is capital. If I sit outside your house all day, I’m an annoyance, but if I cut your fucking lights off, I’m a problem. And that’s where we need to address those situations."
Such corporate influence is something Tech is determined to avoid, and his choice of an independent label in Viper Records is a considered move to retain control and substance in his music. “We like to think we control hiphop and this culture can never be taken away from us,” he says, “but look at rock n roll, and look at jazz. I think it’s ignorant to think like that that were not susceptible to those sorts of things. Because right now we don’t decide what goes on in hiphop, some corporation does. I think that's where the lack of substance comes in. That’s one of the beautiful things about being independent, I don’t have no fucking sponsors to offend, no one has that control over me."
Nevertheless, the all-consuming prospect of monetary gain, and the hugely attractive mirage of personal wealth and respect seems to be endemic among budding artists nowadays. “I’m sure a lot of people in this room know a rapper or a DJ who run around saying, “I want to get a deal when your poor ass don’t even know what a deal is,” Tech exclaims. “A deal is slavery. When you sign to a major record label, you don’t get to do what you wanna do motherfucker, you hand them 30 songs and they pick which 14 go on your album. Then they take your publishing and your masters, you don’t own that shit. They tell you how to dress. You talking all that gangster and gun shit, and meanwhile you got some faggot putting makeup on your face. How hard are you?” Technique points out that he and his cohorts are taking an active step in educating those with unrealistic aspirations who may be susceptible to such record label rinse-out. "I’m involved with a grassroots artists organisation called G.A.M.E. (Grassroots Artist MovEment: http://www.kickgame.com/),” he says, “and we’ve set up workshops where artist can learn about royalties and networking and hooked them up with healthcare with doctors in Colorado, Philly, Chicago and Nigeria. You pay your dues like a regular member, and you get healthcare."
It’s near enough a unique occurrence to see a rapper who not only talks the talk but actually takes an active role in effecting such genuine change. Even so, his most powerful weapon in a war against ignorance remains his music. So what next for the Harlem partisan, can we expect a third Volume to complete the Revolutionary trilogy? "There will be the Middle Passage, and then Volume Three to complete everything,” he promises. “I didn't want to put Volume Three out first. I was riding around my hood and I started thinking, ‘You know what, before I take 'em to Volume Three, before I really kill 'em with that, I need to take 'em back to the essence, I need to show them exactly how Immortal Technique is.’ Whereas Volume One was coming out of nowhere with all these tracks I had wrote in prison, Volume Two was sort of an answer to the media, and the way they depicted Islam and all immigrants and basically the justification of racism and fascism in America. Volume Two attacked that, now we really had to take it back to the streets, and the streets doesn’t mean being ignorant and rapping about this and that.”
Within the space of only a few years, Immortal Technique has joined the ranks of rap’s past masters and hiphop’s most celebrated incendiaries, asserting himself as (to quote New York graf legend STAYHIGH 149) "the voice of the ghetto". "It’s just so funny to me,” he points out. “I was born and grow up in a rougher environment than exists in America or [the UK]. I think anyone else who comes from Africa or the Caribbean can stand with me and say, ‘You know what? You don’t know what the fuck poverty is.’ You think you poor because you don’t get to buy Jordans? Niggas don’t have running water where my grandma used to live, before my pop and my uncle moved to LA. Niggas just don’t get it. They don’t realise that hiphop started as a way for us to express the truth about our culture and what the fuck we been through. With The Message, what was Melle Mel saying on that? He was breaking down how the entire hood was set up and how from beginning to end we were almost directed into the cage. People like KRS-One and Chuck D continued that legacy. And that’s why I have the utmost respect for them." In an unruly and corrupt kingdom where greed and banality are rampant, Tech is back for rap’s crown. Or, more possibly, he’s here to smash down the castles of ignorance and indolence and build a whole new republic.
http://www.viperrecords.com/
www.immortal-technique.com
The Middle Passage is scheduled for release in early 2006 on Viper Records.
Assignment: Dave Cano, Great Scott and Ewan Huzarmi
Evidence: Cary O. Stuart
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2 comments:
"The Middle Passage is scheduled for release in early 2006 on Viper Records."
this is too funny! especially since this article was written/posted in october 2007
It was actually published in 2005. This is an archive of previously published work, smart ass :)
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