Decoded (5 page)

This wasn’t the first time I’d worn a Che T-shirt—I’d worn a different one during my taping of an MTV
Unplugged
show, which I’d taped with the Roots. I didn’t really think much of it. Her question—
don’t you feel funny?
—caught me off guard and I didn’t have an answer for her. The conversation moved on, but before she left she gave me a copy of an essay she wrote about me for a book about classic albums. The essay was about three of my albums:
Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 3 … Life and Times of S. Carter,
and
The Blueprint.
That night I went home and read it. Here are some highlights:

And:

And, referring to my MTV
Unplugged
show:

Wow. I could’ve just dismissed her as a hater; I remember her going on about “bling-bling,” which was just too easy, and, honestly, even after reading her essays I was mostly thinking, “It’s a T-shirt. You’re buggin.” But I was fascinated by the piece and thought some more about what she was saying. It stuck with me and that night I turned it around in my head.

WE REBELLIOUS, WE BACK HOME

One of Big’s genius lines wasn’t even a rhyme, it was in the ad lib to “Juicy,” his first big hit:

I loved that he described what a lot of hustlers were going through in the streets—dissed and feared by teachers and parents and neighbors and cops, broke, working a corner to try to get some bread for basic shit—as more than some glamorous alternative to having a real job.

He elevated it to “the struggle.” That’s a loaded term. It’s usually used to talk about civil rights or black power—
the seat where Rosa Parks sat / where Malcolm X was shot / where Martin Luther was popped
—not the kind of nickel-and-dime, just-toget-by struggle that Biggie was talking about. Our struggle wasn’t organized or even coherent. There were no leaders of this “movement.” There wasn’t even a list of demands. Our struggle was truly a something-out-of-nothing,
do-or-die situation. The fucked-up thing was that it led some of us to sell drugs on our own blocks and get caught up in the material spoils of that life. It was definitely different, less easily defined, less pure, and harder to celebrate than a simple call for revolution. But in their way, Biggie’s words made an even more desperate case for some kind of change. Che was coming from the perspective, “We deserve these rights; we are ready to lead.” We were coming from the perspective, “We need some kind of opportunity; we are ready to die.” The connections between the two kinds of struggles weren’t necessarily clear to me yet, but they were on my mind.

THE RENEGADE, YOU BEEN AFRAID

The day after the listening session, Just finally played a track for me. It opened with some dark minor organ notes and then flooded them with brassy chords that felt like the end of the world. It was beautiful. When a track is right, I feel like it’s mine from the second I hear it. I own it. This was the record I’d been waiting for. I spit two quick verses on it—no hook, no chorus, just two verses, because we were running out of time to get the album done and mastered and released on schedule. I called it “Public Service Announcement.”

The subject of the first verse wasn’t blazingly unique. It’s a variation on a story I’ve been telling since I was ten years old rapping into a tape recorder: I’m dope. Doper than you. But even when a rapper is just rapping about how dope he is, there’s something a little bit deeper going on. It’s like a sonnet, believe it or not. Sonnets have a set structure, but also a limited subject matter: They are mostly about love. Taking on such a familiar subject and writing about it in a set structure forced sonnet writers to find every nook and cranny in the subject and challenged them to invent new language for saying old things. It’s the same with braggadacio in rap. When we take the most familiar subject in the history of rap—why I’m dope—and frame it within the sixteen-bar structure of a rap verse, synced to the specific rhythm and feel of the track, more than anything it’s a test of creativity and wit. It’s like a metaphor for itself; if you can say how dope you are in a completely original, clever, powerful way, the rhyme itself becomes proof of the boast’s truth. And there are always deeper layers of meaning buried in the simplest verses. I call rhymes like the first verse on “Public Service Announcement” Easter-egg hunts, because if you just listen to it once without paying attention, you’ll brush past some lines that can offer more meaning and resonance every time you listen to them.

The second verse for “Public Service Announcement” was almost entirely unrelated to the first verse. I wrote the second verse, which opens with the lyric,
I’m like Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex,
as a response to the journalist. When someone asked me at the time of the Unplugged show why it was that I wore the Che T-shirt, I think I said something glib like, “I consider myself a revolutionary because I’m a self-made millionaire in a racist society.” But it was really that it just felt right to me. I knew that people would have questions. Some people in the hip-hop world were surprised by it. There are rappers like Public Enemy and Dead Prez who’ve always been explicitly revolutionary, but I wasn’t one of them. I also wasn’t a Marxist like Che—the platinum Jesus piece made that pretty clear.

Later I would read more about Guevara and discover similarities in our lives. I related to him as a kid who had asthma and played sports. I related to the power of his image, too. The image on the T-shirt had a name: Guerrillero Heroico, heroic guerrilla. The photo was taken after the Cuban Revolution and by the time I wore the T-shirt, it was probably one of the most famous photographs in the world. Like a lot of people who stumble across the image with no context, I was still struck by its power and charisma.

The journalist was right, though. Images aren’t everything, and a T-shirt doesn’t change who you are. Like I said in the song “Blueprint 2,”
cause the nigger wear a kufi, it don’t mean that he bright.
For any image or symbol or creative act to mean something, it has to touch something deeper, connect to something true. I know that the spirit of struggle and insurgency was woven into the lives of the people I grew up with in Bed-Stuy, even if in sometimes fucked up and corrupted ways. Che’s failures were bloody and his contradictions frustrating. But to have contradictions—especially when you’re fighting for your life—is human, and to wear the Che shirt and the platinum and diamonds together is honest. In the end I wore it because I meant it.

This is a public service announcement / Sponsored by Just Blaze and the good folks at Roc-A-Fella Records /
[
Just Blaze
]
Fellow Americans, it is with the utmost pride and sincerity that I present this recording, as a living testament and recollection of history in the making during our generation.
¹
/
[
Jay-Z
] Allow me to re-introduce myself / My name is Hov, OH, H-to-the-O-V / I used to move snowflakes by the O-Z / I guess even back then you can call me /
CEO of the R-O-C,
²
Hov! / Fresh out the fryin pan into the fire / I be the music biz number one supplier /
Flyer
³
than a piece of paper bearin my name / Got the hottest chick in the game wearin my chain, that’s right /
Hov, OH—not D.O.C.
⁴
/ But similar to them letters, “No One Can Do It Better”/
I check cheddar like a food inspector
⁵
/ My homey Strict told me,
“Dude finish your breakfast”
⁶
/ So that’s what I’ma do, take you back to the dude / with the Lexus, fast-forward the jewels and the necklace /
Let me tell you dudes what I do to protect this
⁷
/ I shoot at you actors like movie directors [
laughing
]
/
This ain’t a movie dog
(oh shit) /
[
Just Blaze
]
Now before I finish, let me just say I did not come here to show out, did not come here to impress you. Because to tell you the truth when I leave here I’m GONE! And I don’t care WHAT you think about me—but just remember, when it hits the fan, brother, whether it’s next year, ten years, twenty years from now, you’ll never be able to say that these brothers lied to you JACK!
/ [
Jay-Z
] thing ain’t lie / I done came through the block in everything that’s fly /
I’m like Che Guevara
⁸
with bling on I’m complex / I never claimed to have wings on nigga I get my /
by any means on
⁹
whenever there’s a drought / Get your umbrellas out because /
that’s when I brainstorm
¹⁰
/ You can blame Shawn, but I ain’t invent the game / I just rolled the dice, tryin to get some change / And I do it twice, ain’t no sense in me / lyin as if I am a different man / And I could blame my environment / but there ain’t no reason /
why I be buyin expensive chains
¹¹
/ Hope you don’t think users / are the only abusers niggaz /
Gettin high within the game
¹²
/ If you do, then how would you explain? / I’m ten years removed, still the vibe is in my veins /
I got a hustler spirit, nigga period
¹³
/ Check out my hat yo, peep the way I wear it / Check out my swag’ yo, / I walk like a ballplayer / No matter where you go / you are what you are player / And you can try to change but that’s just the top layer /
Man, you was who you was ’fore you got here
¹⁴
/ Only God can judge me, so I’m gone /
Either love me, or leave me alone
¹⁵