Pitchfork Column: Interrobang (?!) #5

Fri:06-03-05
Interrobang (?!) #5
"Si, Se Puede" b/w "Gangsters Wear Sandals"
by Julianne Shepherd

Not to retread threads, but to establish some context: The reason Ian MacKaye is an icon is because he is. It's not just his history of, well, basically inventing the American punk tour and all those ethics, either. His stage presence implies that he's really evolved, a sort of Walt Whitman of punk: not too selfish to act on his outrage, full of dignity but still acting like he knows he's just one of a whole. In a recent New Yorker, Joshua Micah Marshall wrote about George Washington, and quoted Declaration of Independence-signer Benjamin Rush as saying Washington had "so much dignity in his deportment that...there is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chamber by his side." While I was watching MacKaye play with his band the Evens recently, that passage never left my head; it was ironic that I was impressed by MacKaye's 'tween-songs banter/political joke-making for the same reason ns people say they like George W. Bush: that he's amiable yet strong, quick-witted yet steadfast; that he's a down-to-earth kinda guy, with real working class appeal. But then, those are some of the same reasons people liked Cesar Chavez and the Gang of Four, too.

If I sound green here, it's because I recently saw MacKaye in concert for the first time, a travesty of my own punk rockness I can at least partly blame on growing up in Wyoming in the '90s, (Fugazi played Laramie once in '93, I believe, but it was an hour's drive from my town and I was grounded that weekend, anyway). The Evens are a way-quieter-than-Fugazi, skeletal punk-rock duo featuring MacKaye on guitar and Amy Farina on drums, and I saw them play their first New York show in the amphitheater at East River Park, which is the same place Charlie Ahearn filmed the big finale in his pioneering hip-hop movie Wild Style. The show was free, and part of the East River Music Project www.eastrivermusicproject.com series started by anti-dating website provocateur (www.datexedge.com ) Sarah "SB" Bennett, who used to jog by the amphitheater while playing Black Top Street Hockey. Lamenting its lack of use, and because she is a punk rocker informed by D.C.'s Fort Reno park concerts, she called up the NYC Parks and Rec and arranged to use the theater to host free concerts.

Planes, airport-bound, split the sky behind the Evens, as Amy Farina's clear voice made arcs over Ian MacKaye's gruff one, their guitar and drums contracting out over the East River that flows along the park. For "Mount Pleasant Isn't", MacKaye requested the audience shout the chorus-- "The police will not be excused/ The police will not behave"-- and singing some good old fashioned protest lyrics, I felt like I would pass out with joy. The hope inherent in that one act was like a tire-pump inflating my heart, and medicine to these ears, so used to listening to frown-faced fash-kids crack angles from their guitars, or escapist dance music or escapist folk music or escapist whatever-whatever, not to mention the 29 hours a day I spend listening to depressing/nihilistic rap music. Sometimes you gotta rub a little Tiger Balm on those bruises.

Which is why Common's new album, Be, is so amazingly beautiful. Again, some context: Remember when Kanye West's The College Dropout came out last year, and it seemed like it everyone in the universe predicted both "a return to quality" in hip-hop-- also propped up by the release of Ghostface's The Pretty Toney Album-- and a shiny new world of diversity in hip-hop themes...or at least maybe some more middle class lyricism butting up against the cloistered world of deaththreatspimpzhoezLamborghinidoorsonmyEscalade, ad nauseum? Like everyone wanted to get back to the progressive thought of the Native Tongues era, and College Dropout was the greenlight album. This was, of course, before narcissism and "Jesus Walks" were Kanye's defining public characteristics, but the point is, it never happened: College Dropout raised the bar for production and themes, but it didn't usher in a whole new era for hip-hop. 50 Cent still sold a gazillion albums hawking "lollipops." The Game's friend still got shot. As Common raps on "Chi-City", "It ain't '94, Joe, we can't go back."

Then Common goes, "The game need a makeover/ My man retired/ I'ma takeover," damn, and that's only one track, and then, "I wonder if these rap niggas realize they wack/ And they the reason that my people say they tired of rap." And then, "So many raps about rims/ Surprised niggas ain't become tires." On Be, Common's dialing 9-11, maybe hoping to prove Jay-Z wrong: Maybe Common Sense can stack five mil just by rhyming like himself. Jay's man Kon, dropping Chicago soul jewels like manna from heaven-- no pun intended-- would be the man to usher in Common's own moment of clarity.

But Common gives the impression that if he packed in that much cash, he'd send all the kids on "It's Your World Pts. 1&2" to college. Kanye tells it like this: "We're just trying to do something good for our city." The proof lies in Common's beautiful, urgent and diagnostic hood storytelling, on tracks like "The Corner", "Real People", "Faithful", and "The Food". If you've been near a TV or radio recently you've heard Common talk about what a great team he and Kanye make, and it's true; they work terrifically together, from Be's amazing freestyle "The Food" to "Get 'Em High," to "(Wouldn't You Like to) Ride."

The latter track included my favorite example of Kanye's great flows and ridiculous lyrics...until I heard his verse on Be's "They Say," where he raps, "God don't ever give me nothing I can't handle/ So please don't ever give me records I can't sample/ So I can vaca where there ain't no channels/ But it's quite okay for a gangster to wear sandals." After comparing himself to Jesus, Common responds, "They say the crochet pants and the sweater was wack/ Seen 'The Corner' now they say 'That nigga's back.'" It's the last thing you'd expect to hear in 2005: Two of America's most important rappers defending their proclivities for hippie fashion...and it feels about as refreshing as shouting "the police will not be excused" into the open air. Or, in Common parlance: "On the street you turn code and then go screech...I tell 'em fuck 'em like I do the police."

Julianne Shepherd is totes blogging right now at Cowboyz 'n' Poodles.