Close to 10 year ago, I worked as an Senior Investigator at one of the most infamous prisons in the United States, Rahway State Prison, known now as East Jersey State Prison (EJSP). The name was changed (like New Jersey State Prison, which was known at one time as “Trenton State Prison”) due to the towns desire to cease being continually associated with the infamous facility since the reputation superseded the small town. The New Jersey prison was made popular by a plethora of things like the several riots that took place there years ago when inmates had taken over the facility in protest twice, once in 1952 and in 1971. The prison was also known to house several professional boxers the controversial Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, who prompted Bob Dylan to write a popular song about him due to his shaky conviction and World Champion Dwight Muhammad Qawi and of course for the recordings of the R&B singing group The Escorts and the Hip Hop group, The Lifers who recorded the popular anti-prison song “The Real Deal.” The song was at least popular here in the north eastern tristate area.
According to the writers of the book “The Organic Globalizer: Hip Hop, Political Development, and Movement Culture”
edited by Christopher Malone, George Martinez Jr:
The music of The Lifers Group falls into the realm of prophetic Hip Hop for its awareness raising lyrics and social commentary. The music was to demystify prison and stop the romanticism of serving time in prison.The music mirrored the hell of the day to day existence of being confined in Rahway State Prison.
The short of aforementioned, to quote Super Dave from De La Soul’s verse on the phenomenal Stakes Is High from the same namesake as the album “Ay yo, these nigga’s live it!” One of the best things I have ever learned was from an officer while working at the infamous facility EJSP was a term, on a piece of paper taped to the “1-Left” wall (an area in the prison for badasses) known as a “pyrrhic victory.” A pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way; however, the heavy toll negates any sense of achievement or profit (another term for this would be “hollow victory”) hence the title of this diatribe regarding the “worlds most dangerous group” NWA.
NWA, the acronyms for Niggaz With Attitudes was hailed as “that real shit.” The reality that you don’t necessarily see on television or hear on the radio. Pure unadulterated realness known as “the strength of street knowledge.” All though I had been born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, where it doesn’t get any realer, these stories from the West Coast were stories that we had not heard here on the East Coast for the most part. The only description that we had over here on the East mostly was a movie known as “Colors” starring a few A-listers today, Don Cheadle, Sean Penn, Robert Duvall, Damon Wayans and a host of others. We were inundated with stories of gangs that were different from the gangs that we had here in the north east and they were compartmentalized based on the colors of their sets. We were under the impression that they were highly organized and that they had a system of how they did things and to a degree, their own language, unlike the Dunn language popularized by Mobb Deep, Capone, Noreaga and Tragedy Khadafi out of Queens.
NWA gave us a visualization of what was happening out in the West, or so we thought. Due to the great migration of African people in the United States, not too many went to Los Angeles, Compton or Watts for summer vacations so we couldn’t give a definite account of what was culturally going on but due to Hip Hop, the West and the rest of the world were familiar with what was going on, at least with the younger African and Puerto Rican Americans as well as some Spanish speaking cultures in the tristate and Philadelphia areas. From Run DMC/LL Cool J to Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-1, Tribe Called Quest, etc
I remember like it was yesterday when in 1991 NWA secured the number 1 spot on the Billboard charts with their album “Niggaz For Life” knocking Mariah Carey out of that coveted spot. It was unprecedented. Here an album with literally no airplay as well as being a regional album in 1991, shooting to the front of the class on the music charts and although it contained the lyrical talents of Ice Cube/MC Ren and the production acumen of Dr. Dre and Yella and the marketing strategy and savvy of Easy E (and his “business partner” Jerry Heller) it did what no other group had ever done before this time. It was actually the first Hip Hop group to ever grace the number one spot on Billboard. With its incessant use of the word nigger/nigga, extremely misogynistic messages throughout the album and relentless violence, particularly against Black woman, one has to wonder who was pulling the strings. As we know from history, even more so now than at any other time in history, that when certain things are materialized, they are done with a strategy, influence and power. For an album of this magnitude and content to evolve, despite the talent encompassed within the project, only someone who has no fundamental understanding of how things work would assume that this album got to where it did because it was so ground breaking alone.
Some of us LOVED IT! We were willing to overlook Dee from Pump it Up getting the shit stomped out of her by Dr. Dre, who in my opinion, due to marketing, acted as if he truly didn’t give a fuck about the repercussions of said act. Sheer marketing savvy! It was almost as if he was egged on to display this lackadaisical attitude regarding what he had done and pretty much expressed that position on the popular show at the time “Yo MTV Raps.” Dr. Dre was forced by a court order to conduct public service announcements against violence due to the act. He has also been known to “lay hands” on other females, including recording artist Michel’le and mother to his child (she also shares one with Suge Knight). Michel’le has stated that Dr. Dre whipped her ass regularly.
We overlooked Easy E not only being invited to the White House for dinner by Senate Majority Leader at the time, Bob Dole with President George Bush I but actually going and spending the $5,000.00 required for a plate with the Republican President despite Bush’s administrative policies and how they eventually affected African-Americans. We also overlooked the many times Easy E and Dr. Dre constantly produced music on either beating the brakes off of woman or killing them. Lets be honest, besides the songs “Express Yourself” and “F@ck the Police” when has the group NWA ever spoken on issues that were socially relative to our communities? Ice Cube came to his senses to a degree after hooking up with Public Enemy, Min. Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad (who clowned him later on when he had gotten shot and stated that he reached out to Cube for some protection and his response basically was “those just records man” when he was seeking some type of reinforcement.) Now with regard to Dr. Dre, Easy E, MC Ren, none of them have ever stated that they had any desire to be socially responsible or conscious of issues affecting the community, I get that and that doesn’t negate the sick beats produced by Dr. Dre and the lyrical delivery by MC Ren but at the end of the day we need to stop lauding them as if they have done something groundbreaking besides rapping about rape culture, violence, pedeophilia (yes, on the song “Just Don’t Bite It” MC Ren said he wasn’t passing up the chance of getting his dick baptized by the preachers daughter who wasn’t of age.) and total disregard for Black folk. Hell, Dr. Dre told us he didn’t care too much for Black folk when he gave up 70 million long, along with his “business partner” Jimmy Iovine (starting to see a pattern with these guys and their paternal “business partners!?) to USC.
Ice Cube is another story. Upon leaving the NWA group and producing the Amerikka’s Most Wanted album, it appeared his direction seemed to totally change all together. He responded viciously to the dis song by Easy E, MC Ren and Dr. Dre aimed towards him called “Benedict Arnold” with the scathing “No Vaseline”
“I never have dinner with the President.
I never have dinner with the President.
I never have dinner with the President.
And when I see your ass again, I’ll be hesitant.
Now I think you a snitch,
throw a house nigga in a ditch.
Half-pint bitch, fuckin’ your homeboys.
You little maggot; Eazy E turned faggot.
With your manager, fella,
fuckin’ MC Ren, Dr. Dre, and Yella.
But if they were smart as me,
Eazy E would be hangin’ from a tree.
With no vaseline, just a match and a little bit of gasoline.
Light ’em up, burn ’em up, flame on…
till that Jheri curl is gone.
On a permanent vacation, off the Massa plantation.
Heard you both got the same bank account,
dumb nigga, what you thinkin’ bout?
Get rid of that Devil real simple, put a bullet in his temple.
Cuz you can’t be the Nigga 4 Life crew
with a white Jew tellin’ you what to do.
Pullin’ wools with your scams, now I gotta play the Silence of the Lambs.
With a midget who’s a punk too,
tryin’ to fuck me, but I’d rather fuck you.
Eric Wright, punk, always into somethin’, gettin’ fucked at night.
By Mista Shitpacker, bend over for the gotdamn cracker, no vaseline…”
Although it seemed like Ice Cube had gotten some common sense (get it…Common Sense? OK, real “heads” will get it!!) upon leaving the group of NWA (Dr. Dre left not too long after Ice Cube) Cube’s radical persona seems to have succumb to the trappings of success it appears and you barely hear his position on race as you did in the 90’s. Ice Cube has also appeared in non-threatening film roles and he has seemed to distance himself from those he associated with during his Amerikka’s Most Wanted/Kill at Will/Lethal Injection days. To each is own but ironically, with the release date of this film, the same time as the outcry against police brutality, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the threat to voters rights in the south, etc it seems like it is almost akin to when they were making their music that was indeed the antithesis to African people doing something collectively to offset the multiple attacks from society at large. I just heard from the film Director Dalian Adolfo out of London there was a review where Dr. Dre was being praised for his avant garde stance as the first to move away from the ‘political’ stance of Public Enemy. Imagine that? This is what this journalist saw, which means that there are many more that feel this way and they are willing to go to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum even when it is detrimental to the community of people he speaks of in his music.
Although I was a fan of the music, something always existed in me, eternally and said to me that much of the music by these dudes was sheer ignorance embraced and it contributed to the destruction of our children. I get that even more so with maturity and a daughter. How do I tell my daughter when she gets of age that “this was the joint?” How do I tell my daughter that with all the overdose of misogyny, rape and violence that it was just music and my generation wasn’t affected when listening to NWA? Can I rationalize this music with my daughter when my son who is 17 can’t understand why the violence and rape were over done in the music? (Tahgee is a Pharoahe Monch and Immortal Technique head, I wonder where he got that from?) I realize that “when I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” (1 Corinthians 13:11) Despite it being a bible verse, this is some real shit.
The Lifers group members are still doing their time at the East Jersey State Prison and the Scared Straight program no longer is in existence after some at risk children tried to jump a member of the Scared Straight program IN THE PRISON and were literally charged. Mass incarceration is a topic at the top of a lot of folks agenda, it seems even the President is concerned. He just recently became the first President to visit a Federal Prison but it is extremely hard for me to see this as anything but political grandstanding for the most part. The marketing frenzy for the movie “Straight Outta Compton” is going wild right now but I can see the forest for the tree’s. Dr. Dre is worth close to 1 billion dollars and Ice Cube is an A-list actor and director. Easy E died from complications caused by the AIDS virus and Yella and Ren haven’t been in the limelight for years. The affects on Hip Hop by NWA have been detrimental despite the rationalization you may hear from folk about how great the group was. The culture of Hip Hop was on a decline when “gangsta rap” became popular and it has never quite recovered since. There is a lack of balance in the genre and it is hard to create songs in Hip Hop today without always having to add a mandatory reference to violence, guns or misogyny. Yes, NWA is largely responsible for that and to deny this is to deny reality. Yes the beats were sick and the songs were dope but we are adults now, lets call a spade a spade.
Thank God for Public Enemy…
Afrikan Echoes 