Tag Archives: Music

An Interview With Lowkey on the ‘Manipulative’ Joseph Kony 2012 Campaign

It has been over a week since the Kony 2012 video went viral. The video, by Invisible Children, is now nearing 80 million views on YouTube. One of the most vociferous critics of the campaign is musician and political activist, Lowkey.

I spoke to Lowkey about the video.

What did you think of the video?

“I think the Kony 2012 campaign has had a manipulative and negative affect on the younger generation. But it has made the older generation question this level of emotional manipulation. That the answer to everything is the US military and has made people question what Africom actually is. And why the US feels the need to expand its military presence in Africa. It then leads people to the idea that the US is essentially trying to have a counter weight to Chinese elevation in the region.”

Why are you against US military intervention?

“I think Africom was founded by George Bush in 2006 and it clearly sets out its aim to increase US military prescence in Africa. However, the majority of African countries rejected Africom which means it had to have its Headquarters in Germany, imagine that.

However Nigeria was one government which welcomed Africom and Uganda is another  government that is now welcoming US military expansion. Now unless you are those specific people within those governments, you will not view the presence of the US military on your land as something positive. We also need to remember that these countries welcoming US military presence have very, very, very questionable human rights records and very questionable histories, with regards to democracy – this word that we band about, if you ask Kony what his objective is, he says democracy – now it’s amazing how we have someone in Africa saying his objective is democracy and he is the number one enemy. Yet we have people in other parts of the world, like in the Middle East, who have not said explicitly that their aim is democracy and we are, without question, supporting them.

Do you feel there is hypocrisy taking place?

If you are a US citizen and your first point of call for war criminals is not your own government, then you do not really have the wider interests of humanity at heart. The US is accused of far more heinous crimes than Joseph Kony. Essentially, this video is encouraging youth to look at things in a very simplistic and damaging way. If you use Joseph Kony 2012 by Invisible Children as the pretext, you can take anyone to any point of the world and say there is a bad person doing something bad to these people – that’s the only explanation you need to give. And then you say the only solution is US military involvement in the land. My God. You can justify anything, absolutely anything. That was the whole idea of the video. It was him explaining to his son the situation in this very simplistic way. There was no intention to explain the wider context of the situation.

It’s not saying this bad thing is happening we need your money to make it better, which is one thing. It is saying we need your money and your voice to expand what is a stated aim of US policy. It’s not as if Africom didn’t happen. That’s what they’ve been trying for years, and it hasn’t been working very well. And this is what the Nato campaign in Libya was largely about: the expansion of Africom. What’s so manipulative and horrible about it, is that they use genuine emotions that people have that are natural. How could you not feel for somebody whose brother has died? People are not made of stone.

What should happen to Joseph Kony?

Kony himself is utterly irrelevant. That’s why it’s so strange. They put Hitler and Bin Laden there [on the poster] and Kony there. Well you know which ideological perspective they are coming from. And you know who they are talking to and who they are talking for, most importantly. Most people who are worried about human life are not going to view the solution as being the US military. The solution has never been US military because it has never worked way, never.

And, finally, why did you delete Twitter?

I find it’s a distraction. Twitter is different to Facebook in that any little thing that people think they just Tweet it, and I would rather not know. I would prefer to concentrate on my music. Saying that, music hasn’t been the number one thing on my mind at the moment, rather than being a good musician or good artist – I’ve been reading a lot – and I would rather be a good and more all round person.

You can find Lowkey on Facebook here

His latest album, Soundtrack to the Struggle can be found on iTunes

Follow me @omar_shahid

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Interview With Talib Kweli on US Politics, Hip-Hop, Drake, The Five Percent & The Occupy Movement

Talib Kweli – an internationally renowned American rapper and a celebrity within the hip-hop scene – once said: “I don’t fuck with politics.” Yet, when asked about his views on the upcoming US elections he becomes animated: “Politics is as entertaining as a soap opera. [President] Obama plays an ill political game, if there were no term limits, he would be President for a very long time!” he says. He also expresses his views on the Republican candidates. “Some of the political rhetoric coming out of conservative right in Americasounds like the same thing that set the stage for Nazi Germany.”

Kweli, known for his politically conscious music, has just finished touring the UK with British-born rappers Lowkey and Mic Righteous – also known for their “conscious” lyrics. “I’m not actually that familiar with them,” he admits in his softly spoken voice, perhaps the antithesis of the bravado with which many other rappers speak. “But I’m looking forward to getting more familiar with them.” It is not just his meek voice that stands out, his diction does too. Kweli, the eldest of two sons, grew up in a highly educated household: his mother Brenda Greene is an English professor and his father an administrator at Adelphi University. Isn’t strange, then, that he decided to pursue a career in rap? “My parents are writers and the writers of my generation are rappers,” he says.

During secondary school Kweli met Mos Def aka Yasiin Bey, a Grammy award winning emcee and DJ Hi-Tech, an American producer and rapper. These encounters would prove pivotal to Kweli’s career: in 1998, he combined with Mos Def to release the seminal album Black Star and teamed up with Hi-Tech, to release Train of Thought, both considered hip-hop classics. While the albums didn’t sell millions, they received critical acclaim and earned the respect of many fellow rappers. Now, five solo albums later (although not all of his records lived up to their expectation) Kweli, 36, is married to DJ Eque as of 2009 – and has two children from his former partner Darcel Turner.

Kweli, who insists his name be pronounced “Kwali”, rose to prominence amid the renaissance of Afrocentric, politically motivated hip-hop in the 90s but, since then, there has been an increase in music which – he believes – portrays, “sex and drugs…the gangster lifestyle…and just having a good time.”

“When I first came, hip-hop was about opening people’s consciousness but now even the great lyricists – J Cole, Kendrick Lamar – are rapping more about having fun,” he says. “Kwali” has never had an ostentatious demeanour – the big chains, flash cars and extravagant lifestyle associated with most high-profile rappers doesn’t seem to apply to him. Likewise, his physical features don’t particularly make him distinguishable: he stands at a height of around 5’8 inches and his soft features resemble that of any other Afro-American.

What does he make of the rampant materialism endemic in mainstream hip-hop? “I’m able to differentiate between what an artist creates based on how he grew up and what he creates as an individual. Jay Z the rapper, is different to Sean Carter. The same way as Arnold Schwarzenegger is different to The Terminator. It’s entertainment – I’m not here to judge.”

In a recent radio interview DMX, humorously, talked about why he doesn’t like fellow rapper Drake. What does Kweli think of Drake? “He is a shining example for mainstream artists – he is a really good rapper, singer and he can write, he is like a triple threat.” Many people have criticised Drake and Lil Wayne, both signed to Cash Money, for doing music purely for the money. Kweli disagrees and raises his voice: “I think that’s a very, very unfair, ill-informed criticism. They [the critics] are not really in hip-hop if they think like that. They just listen to the radio and end up getting sick of them and their lyrics. They forget they [Drake, Wayne and Kanye West] come from somewhere – how many people listened to Wayne’s first album? But everybody knows Carter IV.”

Many critics of hip-hop have claimed that it isn’t the “same” and isn’t as “good” as it used to be. Kweli again becomes annoyed: “Why should hip hop be the same? When I was first listening to hip hop in ’87, you had older artists saying this music is shit. The Cold Crust Brothers didn’t like LL Cool J, now he is  classic MC. They thought he was a young snotty nose punk. People look at things in their own perspective. If we could all see through the same eyes we would welcome new artists.”

Unlike many of Cash Money’s artists, Kweli’s music has always been synonymous with truthfulness and honesty. His views on the current political climate in America reflect this honesty. “A lot of American’s are greedy and selfish so they only want to listen to these messages [from the Republicans]. He describes these messages as “moronic,” “stupid,” “ignorant”. Kweli then speaks about the problems in American society. “The education system isn’t geared so that we know anything that goes on in the world; it doesn’t set you up to be part of the world either. The reason why America is having a crisis in education, science, and finance, is because we’re not prepared to deal with a world that is interconnected.”

One political movement Kweli has taken an interest in is the Occupy protests. Kweli says that he grew up in a protest culture and believes they are a “natural” part of society. “People aren’t just accepting things as they are; people are peeling layers back and seeing things for how they really are.”

Kweli, like many other black rappers have dabbled in the Five Percent Nation, an American organisation that believes 10% of the world’s inhabitants know the truth of existence, 85% live in ignorance and the remaining five percent know the truth and are determined the spread it. “I’ve got huge respect for the five percent,” he says. “When I was a teenager, I dabbled in the five percent, I also dabbled into Rastafarianism and Islam, I was trying to discover myself. I’m very much in touch with my spirituality now. I don’t claim to follow a particular religion.”

Why has he now disassociated himself from the five percent? “Disassociate is a strong word. I don’t like dogma. Even atheists will disagree with me but there is dogma to atheism, there’s a dogma to the five percent, whether people say there is or not. I would like to take something from every thought process. Nothing turned me off [the five percent] it makes a lot of sense, it makes as much sense as Christianity to me,” he says. “But I’d rather be open to see and receive everything,” he adds.


A Letter to Humanity – Wake up, 2012 is near

Dear Humanity,

We will soon be entering 2012 – the beginning of the end. I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I do not think the world is going to end next year, but I believe we are going to witness a nexus of events that will change the world forever.

2011 was one of the most historic and memorable years in living history: from the Arab awakening; to the killing of bin Laden; the continuos downturn of the world economies as well as the Japan earthquake; we have seen events unfold that will shape the course of 2012.

There is no rescuing the euro crisis: nobody actually knows what is going to happen to the economies across Europe. America, too, is in an unimaginable amount of debt and there are little signs of improvement. Many political analysts are predicting that the US will attack Iran next year and this — as analysts suggest — could lead to World War III. You can read more about that here

If you haven’t realised by now, our countries are controlled by big corporations who care about profits over people. I was just in the U.S. – a country where the media, big food corporations and the pharmaceutical industry are all ‘in it together’. The media repeats adverts of junk food over and over again until it is indelibly printed within our subconscious; we are then given man-made drugs when we become ill, which, at best, suppresses our sickness. Never will the corporations and pharmaceutical industry recommend natural remedies – which are far more effective and better for us – simply because it will detract from their profits. Unlike here in Britain, the health care system in the U.S. is private – money is therefore made when people become ill. Get it?

Food, however, is just one of the means used to keep us in our sullen and stuporous state of somnolent sleep. The music industry and the major record labels will keep churning out the likes of Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber to keep us entertained and divert our attention away from what’s important in life.

We saw people demonstrating against the wealthy ’1%’ across the world this year – people’s consciousness is slowly changing and, because of the state of the world economy, people are unwilling to put up with corporate greed and capitalism.

Gil Scot-Heron’s famous line The Revolution Will Not Be Televised has been banded around a lot this year. One meaning of the phrase could be: true revolution occurs in the mind first before manifesting outwardly. And it’s true, little progress will be made in our society until we change our inward states. We have to first free ourselves from the shackles of our avaricious desires before we can change ourselves and, ultimately, implement freedom and change in society.

My intuition – whatever that may be – tells me that we need to prepare ourselves for whatever occurs next year. Things are changing and changing fast. We have been sleeping for far too long, it’s time to wake up. Unfortunately, what we don’t realise is if we worked together –  and stop killing and betraying one another – we would achieve far more together than we could ever do individually. Our short-sightedness and untamed inner self doesn’t always allow us to see it that way, however.

Truly, we are one human family but we often forget this. The Arabic word for human, Insaan, comes from the root word to forget. Our natural state is therefore inclined towards forgetfulness and headlessness. But these states manifest in people who are diverted away from Reality through mindless entertainment. People who are awake have a piercing insight into Reality. So let’s prepare ourselves and awaken to a new year which is in our hands, not theirs.

Your brother in humanity,

Omar Shahid

Interview with Black The Ripper on Mainstream Music

Do you consider yourself a conscious MC?

People have been calling me that for a minute now. That’s a way to categories me. If I talk sly shit I can talk it better than niggas. I’m consciously aware and I say it.

I think most of them [other rappers] are conscious but most of them don’t know how to express it.

Because you have to remember certain issues attract haters. When you keep it fairly simple  you don’t have the haters. When you address certain issues you have people who are powerful who are there.

Why aren’t artists like you promoted in the mainstream?

Because it’s against their agenda. For them to push us, it’s working against them. For record labels it’s all about money. They are trying to pollute your message.

Given the recent unrest in this country – riots, occupation at St Pauls – are things slowly changing?

We are in England and it has just started now. We are just starting our wave now. We still remember were we come from. There are a whole bunch of white people who are cool with how things are.

The media has got everything to do with it. If there’s a political rapper in the media the whole world would fall in love with them. But they [the media] then have a problem ‘coz they’ve now got to silence them.

Why are a lot of your lyrics about political issues and things other MCs wouldn’t talk about?

I’ve got self-belief. I stand for something. I don’t think they [other rappers] do – they just need that quick money. For them to talk political they could get black boarded.

You’ve got a song called Wake Up. When do you think people will ‘wake up’ and what do you think will happen when they do?

I think it’s about time. I don’t think nobody is going to wake up – everyone is comfortable, they are cool. Get benefits, not really starving. You don’t get no help in certain countries like Libya. Man are getting free shit here.

I’m second generation. Our grandkids, they are not going to give a flying fuck. They aren’t going to take it. We were born here we aren’t going to be content. They’re [our grandkids] going to be less content. Ultimately means nothing though. Nobody stood up [after the riots] when they came to your mums house and arrested you… they weren’t on a bad ting then.

Twitter: omar_shahid

Spin – The Outside View on Current Affairs

James Lee (co-founder) and I first conceived the idea of Spin early in 2011, but since then, we have changed our minds about the direction of Spin several times.

It started of as a simple current affairs website – there wasn’t going to be anything particularly special about the site.

We then decided to combine current affairs with photography, and although we didn’t end up doing this, we hope to introduce this concept sometime in the future.

After four months of what can only be described as a series of comedic yet frustrating delays, Spin is finally here – thankfully.

What is Spin? Essentially, we are a current affairs website, but, distinctively, we combine our articles with thought-provoking custom-made art designed by one of our artists.  With a plethora of current affairs websites all over the Internet, Spin hopes to offer a different take on things – an outside view.

The outside view on current affairs - our tagline – conveys the idea that we will approach current affairs in a new light. All of our writers and artists are under the age of 24, but we haven’t selected merely anyone – we believe we have some of the very best writers and artists.

We are also deliberately left wing; we hope to start a discourse around issues that are not always propounded by the mainstream media. Everything about our website is slightly different, including our category names:

Left Wing – coverage of the most important political events.

Rhythm – critique of the mainstream music industry.

Catch 22 - a philosophical take on current affairs.

Onside – opinion and reporting on football issues, especially the big names and clubs.

The Outsiders – a look at our writers and artists.

Omar Shahid, Editor

www.spinonline.co.uk

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Become a fan on Facebook

 

 

 

My Phone Call With ‘The Best MC In The Country’: Ghetts

For those of you who don’t know who Ghetts is, he is an MC associated with the music genre ‘Grime’, and has been played on national radio like BBC Radio 1 and KISS 100. His fans will testify to his unique flow and witty lyrics.

I’ve lost count how many times my friends have said to me: “Omar, Ghetts is the best MC, hands down.” But then again, I’ve come across plenty of people who have said to me: “I don’t like Ghetts, I don’t feel his music.” I personally stand more with the first group of people, but defining what constitutes the best MC is subjective and depends exactly what you’re looking for. I rate MC’s higher if they have something positive to say and if their lyrics convey deep meanings which can change people for the better. Ghetts, I found, feels the same way: “You see me, I like Akala, I like Lowkey, we have deep conversations. I like that sort of thing when it’s got a message behind it. But no one is saying anything real these days, I can’t listen to these kids chatting about guns and drugs I cant listen to that,” he admits.

A bit hypocritical, some of you may say, Ghetts saying he can’t listen to music about ‘’guns and drugs’’, when he has incorporated exactly that into his own music. What’s his response? “The pictures we painted and the way we talked about all of that [guns and drugs] wasn’t us running on the mic, man was doing it with an edge to make man forget man was talking about a madness.” That’s fair enough, but as I elucidated on in an earlier post called ‘The truth about music nobody will tell you’ was that music can enter the subconscious mind and have an effect on people’s behavioral patterns. “That argument about music making people do things, that argument is deadout. That argument is dead! Music is a very powerful thing though. When you got a visual it’s often much more powerful. How many man are shotters because of scarface? It [music] can have an effect on you but not like a film.”

There is no doubt that Ghetts is one of the most talented MC’s in the country, but, saying that, a lot of people wont even read this because they don’t know who Ghetts is. “Of course I want to keep getting bigger but you see me yeah, I know what would work on radio and what would get played on TV. I always try and go against the grain,” he tells me.  It’s not for the money, nor is it for the fame Ghetts expounds to me, but he does exactly the type of music he believes in. “In my album Ghetto Gospel, I filmed ‘Top 3 Selected’, but if I shot ‘Understand’ instead, I could have got more mainstream attention but I didn’t because as a person I’m like that.”

Our conversation then heads in a similar direction to the one I had with P Money [click here to read my discussion with P Money].  Why is that DJ’s are too scared to play different types of music? Why is it that 95% of all mainstream music is crap? And why is it that they wont give people like Ghetts a chance? He says: “As a DJ yeah, you want to stick to what everybody likes. When you watch the music channels most of the videos look the same, they fix it all so nothing seems out of place. So if they were to play me, it would seem out of place.” It’s all about marketing he tells me: “How do you market my type of music? They don’t put it out there because they don’t think they can market it. But its deeper, much deeper than that. If you’re an artist and you’re not willing to play the ‘game’ you wont make it into the mainstream.”

Ghetts is notoriously known for his claim that he is ‘the best’, but does he think there are some other MC’s who are over-rated? “I do actually like a lot more people these days but I don’t want to call anyone shit. I don’t really listen to grime. Honestly.  I understand why people would think I’m lying but its true. I rate Maxsta but not many other people. The grime that’s put out these days I don’t like. And the people who I did like, they don’t do grime anymore…Grime is deadout. Grime is dead!” he re-iterates. But why is grime dead? “In grime only one thing is appreciated. There has to be different things. It can’t be one sort of sound.”

Ghetts will be performing at Hackney Empire on the July 7 in an event called RE:DEFINITION with a host of other talented artists, with the headline act being Kano. How does he feel that Kano will end up stealing the show and not him? “The truth is this: Kane isn’t meant to be the main act,” he jokes, “it should be me and Kane going on together. “

Ghetts was watching Wimbledon as we talked, and I found out he’s a fan of Serena Williams. But it’s not her tennis skills he is a fan of… “See the women there playing, I like all of that,” he jokes.

One thing is clear when speaking to Ghetts -as I have encountered when seeing other interviews with him. He is actually a fun and bubbly person, who, believe it or not, is a pretty clever guy. Don’t be fooled just because he said stuff to me like: “Man is just here to make music,” the slang he uses is a product of the environment he was brought up in and doesn’t reflect his intellectual capabilities. I mean, to be able to think of thousands upon thousands of lyrics which make people laugh, get people excited and are satirically clever, you have to possess a pretty special talent.

Follow me on Twitter: @omar_shahid

Follow Ghetts on Twitter: @TheRealGhetts