the beautiful struggle

I finished an inspiring memoir this week from which this entry is its namesake. It is the story of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a young man who was nearly swallowed by black Baltimore-city slums, during the 80s crack epidemic, and under the hands of his Black Panther father.

I wanted to share a long excerpt from my favorite chapter (chapter 4, pp. 107-111), "to teach those who can't say my name." This chapter is when Ta-Nehisi begins to discover himself, amidst the hard street-game, family turmoil, and his own father's ideological shadow. He was the type of young brother who was groping in the dark for meaning in his personal and social identities. At this point in his life, Ta-Nehisi found hip-hop, a door for him to unearth forgotten words and melodies of his spirit.

He lays it down:

"I took Consciousness because there was nothing else, no other sorcery to counter death for suede, leather, and gold. My father bet his life on change. For the glory of ex-cons, abandoned mothers, and black boys lost, he had made peace with his end. I was a coward, mostly concerned with etting from one day to the next. How could I square my young life with this lineage? What would I say to the theology of my father, which held that the Conscious Act was wroth more than sex, bread, or even drawn breath?

There were no answers in the broader body, where the best of us went out like Sammy Davis and spoke like there had never been war. I will avoid the cartoons--the hard rocks loved Billy Ocean, Luther was classic, and indeed, I did sit in my seventh period music class eyeing Arletta Holly and humming "Lost in Emotion." But you must remember the era. Niggers were on MTV in lipstick and curls, extolling their exotic quadroons, big-upping Freed Astaire, and speaking like the rest of us didn't exist. I'm talking S-culrs and sequins, Lionel Richie dancing on the ceiling. I'm talking the corporate pop of Whitney, and Richard Pryor turning into the toy. Was the Parliament had never happened, like James Brown had never hit. All our champions were disconnected and dishonored, handing out Image Awards, while we bled in the streets.

But now the word turned Conscous, De La refused to scowl and Stetsaonic shouted across the Atlantic gap. First, Chuck, then KRS, and then everywhere you looked MCs were reaching for Garvey's tricolor, shouting across the land, self-destruction was at an end, that the logic of white people's ice had failed us, that the day of awareness was now.

Across the land, the masses fel away to the gospel. Old Panthers came out in camoflage to salute Chuck D. Cold killers would get a taste of 'Raise the Flag,' drop their guns, and turn vegan. Brothers quoted Farrakhan with wine on their breath. Harlots performed salaat, covered their blond french rolls in mud cloth and royal kente. Dark girls slashed their Apollonia poters, burned their green contacts, cut their hair, threw in braids. Gold was stashted in teh top dresser drawer. The fashion became your father's dashik, breads, and Africa medallions...

At first I felt the words of otehrs pulsing through me--my reforming brother, the esotric allusions of the God, the philosophy of KRS-One--and in truth, in many years of trying, I never completely touched my own. My hand was awkward; and when I rhymed, the couplets would not adhere, punch lines crashed into bar, metaphors were extended until they derailed off beat. I was unfit, but still I had at it for days, months, and ultimately years. And the more ink I dribbled onto the page, the more I felt the blessing of the Jedi order of MCs. I wrote every day that summer, rhymed over B-side instrumentals, until my pen was a Staff of the Dreaded Streets (plus five chance to banish fools on sight) and my flow, though flicted and disjointed, a Horn of Ghetto Blasting. The words were all braggadocios, but when done with the recital, even though I was alone, I felt bigger.

I'd walk outside, and my head was just a little higher, because if you do this right, if you claim to be that nigger enough, though you battle only your bedroom mirror, there is a part of you that believes. That was how I came to understand, how I came to know why all these brothers wrote and talked so big. Even the Knowledged feared the streets. But the rhyme pad was a spell book--it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. That summer, I knew what Fruitie was trying to say, that when under the aegis of hip-hop, you never lived alone, you never walked alone."

The hip-hop generation thanks you.