NYOIL Responds, so does J-Gilla…

Pete Rosenberg got a chance to catch NYOIL before his show earlier this week. He spits some very brief thoughts on Nas, the song, and hip-hop overall. Good sound bites but nothing too substantial. However, KTL’s own J-Gilla (a real life architect and avid hip-hop analyst) gives his editorial on NYOIL and this whole situation. I think this is good for hip-hop! We are seeing purveyors of the hip-hop culture actually get involved in a healthy, intelligent discourse of the music. Its not beef - its a discussion, a debate of thoughts. Picture 50 and his ignorant nonsense and we are the opposite. We are trying to get our readers and fans to grow through our differences. See what J-Gilla has to say after the jump and you’ll be 10% smarter…

J-Gilla writes: i wrote this to run parallel to nyoil’s writing. actually its sort of verbatim to a point.

NYOIL is that nigga!

Yeah y’all NYOIL is that nigga with his MySpace page repping for real righteousness and righteous niggas worldwide!

I’ve always said that from time to time in the creative world there comes an artist that breaks the mold, that steps to the status quo and smashes its protective walls as if they were building blocks. An artist like this actually creates an atmosphere for change that provides a way for other artists to look at themselves and their larger environment more carefully. Artists like this establish a foundation that inspires other artists to free themselves of the yoke that was the status quo. They- in their own way- speak truth to power and illuminate reality not in way that preaches ideology. Fundamentalists who preach a static ideology ultimately blind us to engaging the complexity of situations.

But let me be clear. NYOIL- and so many of us- are not those niggas.

Artists used to come along and supposedly strike fear in the hearts of the “gatekeepers”. In layman’s terms, money holders supposedly shit bricks because their cornball artists looked like cornballs. Artists like this seem to be the artists that we truly admire, especially in hip hop. But upon closer inspection, money holders actually don’t shit bricks in the face of the “underground”- they just swallow up the underground and turn it into the same paid bullshit as any other sellout creative production. Case in point: hip hop itself. Above ground, underground, side ground, whatever, the music has tried to be outside of market influence and to be a genuine type of folk music, but in trying to maintain hip hop as it was decades ago, it ignores some of the complexities of creating anything in a world driven by so much more than “keeping it real.” Money holders only shit bricks when other money holders are manipulating the game.

But before I go on, I must stress that NYOIL and so many others who preach righteousness are not those niggas, not those artists, that are going to make a change. That shit died in the 1960s. Righteousness needs a new game.

The new Status Quo artist now is not the Stat Quo artist of the past. The new Stat Quo is now those who think that they are outside of corporations, outside of power structures, repping the “real” but are actually not fully engaged in the complexity of multicultural economic, creative, and political realities. The new Stat Quo is exactly where corporations, businesses, bigots, and haters want them to be: outside. In 2008, the Field Nigga/House Nigga debate is a debacle. The tit for tat nonsense has taken our eye off the ball. We think we are not Stat Quo, but what used to be the Artist of Change is actually now bordering on ineffective in today’s culture.

After reading your essay, seeing the title of your LP, and hearing your smash hit song “What Up My Wigger Wigga!”, I can say without a doubt…

NYOIL you are that New Stat Quo nigga!

NYOIL you’re that nigga that pretends that anyone can actually have a grasp on the social “quagmire” that not just our people, but so many people are stuck in, yet cannot for the life of you escape the notion that the path to freedom is outside of the big money game. Does this brother realize that by calling people crackers/wiggers, spics, chincs, japs, wetbacks, that this is a form of non-engagement? Does this brother realize that its not just about the message but the style and presentation of the message that counts (where’s yours and why does Nas seem to have everyone’s ear… oh because he’s a coon, right?) Does this brother realize that actually by Nas calling everyone a nigger he has actually not attempted to be “all inclusive” but to be accountable and part of a situation that is holding us all back? I am pretty sure that anyone- especially someone like Nas who has actually come through what he has- knows exactly that black people have the word nigger tattooed on them. I don’t think Nas needs a lecture about how other ethnicities can change clothes and no longer be niggas. Perhaps you should reference the leaked album cover and recognize that his dress code precisely indicates that being a nigger has nothing to do with clothing or even appearance. Nas isn’t suggesting that Robert Schwartz/Rodriguez/Yung can change gear and that black people can’t. He’s suggesting that nigger is inside- that slave mentality defines it. But that is beside the point. There is nothing that will erase our history and this is precisely what Nas seems to make clear. By adopting all people as niggers, the future is shaped as a collective of dispossessed cultures that need to find commonalty. Perhaps, Nas suggests, “nigger!” becomes a rallying cry. To give everyone their own name- cracker, wigger, chinc, jap, spic is actually to use the same tactics and verbiage that has kept us all separate in the eyes of the other. It’s a Hillary Clinton/Karl Rove type of move. If you recall, Nas was one of only a few artists who actually tried to help Shawn Bell’s family in the aftermath of his murder. Beyond condemning, Nas actually quietly donated money to pay for the funeral. I think he recognizes reality and if you do, its actually hard to articulate it and what direction to really travel.

My nigga NYOIL.

You’ve been everything they ever hoped you would be. Underground, non-corporate, and now you’re actually their nigga because the nigger has changed with the times. Right now, power has redefined niggerdom and we all seem to be content living in it.

At what point are you going to define what a man really is?

I listened to “What up my Wigger Wigga!” and realized that it is indeed different than “Be a Nigger Too”. I didn’t get at all the same message either. What I got from the former was a chastising and simple view of language and power. It was like a wack lecture. So many people have judged Nas’ album without ever hearing the album. I will only speak on the song that was released. Nas’ greatest single gift as an artist is that he functions without the assumption that artists lend purity or clarity to social situations. Artists don’t offer solutions but provide for us an image or feeling- even if murky- about the reality around us. I have always admired Nas’ ability to be human and accountable rather than ideological and righteous. Since day one he has been contradictory- a living breathing human.

Illmatic- the standard by which Nas is judged as an artist- is not a work of clarity but of ambiguity. This is precisely why it touched so many of us because we were able for once to feel the contradictory, sad, humble, yet determined voice of a person faced with the weight of his immediate reality. If “Be a Nigger Too” is any indication, Nas has continued in the same direction interjecting the greyness of a very real situation and painting the very mixed messages that come with living. Your song, my wigga, was mad preachy. Leave that and all that old bullshit to Al Sharpton. Politics, economics, and even our identities don’t boil down to names or “keeping it real” anymore and that is precisely where Nas is coming from conceptually. But the other reality of Nas as an artist and person is that he is in a position that is complicated by success, market pressure, and the fact that people actually listen to his music. He is not relegated to the internet, underground performances, and anonymity. He is in a position where every move is examined and where he has our ear at all times. For better or worse, Nas is of the moment living and examining what is current in his broad world. Hip Hop is Dead seemed simple, “too late”, old news to the righteous. But that album single handedly shifted the discussion within our culture so that brothers were trying to determine what was authentic for us musically. It is my sense with Nigger, that not simply the message but the fact that someone has taken the time to deliver it, will stir us all again to think about our sense of reality, and how we can find freedom in it together.

Marvin Gaye sang it best… “Mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be.”

You would do well to heed those words.

Go forward brother.

PS Its ironic that you would allude to Nas’ need for controversy as a promotional tool considering how much your own critique of him was just an opening for your own self-promotion. That and the self-congratulatory text on your MySpace page were enough to let me know that self-promotion in the name of cultural righteousness is one of the most dangerous tools of all.

Final thoughts on the song:
as far as the song “be a nigger too”, i’m okay with the beat. its a little expected especially from salaam remi but i know nas has this tendency to want to rap over beats that sound like part of a movie score on repeat so i expect it. this song is probably like an intro situation so i didn’t expect it to be anything but the equivalent of a hype man- with a good point. i think the delivery and lyrics are good- he’s been evolving that slow rap since “made you look”. i like how much he slowed it down but has some good word play in there and rhythm switches. if you listen closely you can hear how hard he’s rapping at points and i like that. i’m with the content because he’s trying to get people off the simple minded shit. thats the point. the point isn’t that he makes a singular point. thats where people get artists wrong. they want it all packaged up with an answer so they don’t have to think. but usually the best art is fragmentary and asks questions. and it does it with some kind of style, not with fashion. i like how there’s references to masonic lodges, self defense, and the ultimate question that no one is talking about: we’re still getting lynched and beaten and you want to be a “nigger?” no one is talking about that. they’re just tripping off the doctor pepper hook. it makes me realize why its gonna be hard for obama to be elected with people thinking like simpletons.