It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation (30 page)

Tucker later went on to unsuccessfully sue Tupac for “damaging her sex life” with her husband. Misunderstandings such as this contributed to the hip-hop generation’s don’t-give-a-fuck mind-set and furthered a deep divide comparable to the one that separated the rebellious white hippy/activist/flower children of the sixties from their white happy/consumer/cookie-cutter parents. Later, Tucker remarked that “we’re going to keep fighting it until it dies or we die.” It’s ironic that a woman who fought on the front lines during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements outlived Tupac. They both died, however, having never sat down with each other.

One hopes that misunderstandings such as these would allow the hip-hop generation and civil rights generation to come together; however, a few years after Tupac’s death, the public face to this gap would be reopened with this hook:

That was the chorus for “Rosa Parks,” a hit single from the rap duo OutKast. No matter where you were in the summer of ‘98, hood-to-hood, “Rosa Parks” was on heavy rotation.

Although the song, which sports an upbeat tempo and party tone, doesn’t actually address who Rosa Parks was, most in the hip-hop generation simply saw it as a harmless dance track named after a civil rights pioneer. In fact, the song may have been a helpful reminder for a generation who many believed “don’t know their history.” Many
people in the civil rights generation, however, took the song as a dis. The song’s rotation was scratched when Rosa Parks, the matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement, took Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and Andre 3000 (Andre Benjamin) to court.

Parks is famous for her refusal on December 1, 1955, to obey bus driver James Blake’s demand that she relinquish her seat to a white man. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history. The boycott also launched a young Martin Luther King Jr., one of the organizers of the boycott, to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Her role in American history earned her an iconic status in American culture and her actions have left an enduring legacy for civil rights movements around the world.

In March 1999, Gregory Reed, attorney for Mrs. Parks, filed a lawsuit claiming that OutKast’s song defamed his client, unjustly appropriated her name for commercial purposes, and, because of consumer confusion, hindered the sales of the Parks-authorized gospel album
A Tribute to Rosa Parks
. Reed, at this point in time, asked for an injunction and upward of $5 million. OutKast responded, just as numerous rappers and artists had previously responded in similar situations, by pointing to the First Amendment. So there it was: icons of the hip-hop generation versus an icon from the previous one. The case, in one sense, was seen as widening the gap between the generations. In another sense, however, the case revealed some of the keys to closing it.

Mrs. Parks said she was disturbed by the sexual references and vulgarity in the song. Lines like: “Bull doggin’ hoes like them Georgetown Hoyas” and “Doing doughnuts ’round you suckas like them circles around titties” offended Parks and prompted the suit. In addition, the song throws around a civil rights-generation vocab no-no: “nigga.” Regardless of the hip-hop generation’s ranging views on “nigga,” “nigguh,”
“niggah,” or “ngh,” the civil rights generation is almost unanimously against its use.

From the beginning, this dispute revealed one of the major challenges that has hindered intergenerational progress: communication.

“There’s nothing wrong with the youth, unless you look at NBC and CBS and ABC,” says comedian, writer, civil rights and antiwar activist Dick Gregory. “All we got to do is go and give the youth the truth, and they will respond.” Gregory’s analysis is an important one because one of the major factors that has contributed to the intergenerational disconnect is the way in which the older generation is exposed to the youth. Because of the decline of Black institutions where young and old can interact together, the older generation is mainly learning about young people not through illuminating conversations or engaging dialogues, but through mainstream media outlets, TV being the largest medium among them. BET, MTV, and the nightly news are the primary informants that shape their perceptions and vice versa. We know from the most recent research studies on the ethnographic effects of television, including those conducted by the Center for Media Literacy and Alliance for a Media Literate America, that TV not only plays a major role in teaching white America about us, but also, and perhaps most detrimentally, teaches us about us—the older generation of Black folks about their successors. Just as media is not a good third party to communicate, it’s not a good learning tool, either, especially as far as images of young Blacks are concerned. Generations need to take time to get to know each other on a personal, familial, and communal level.

Tupac’s genius lay in his ability to make keen observations on human relationships. He recognized this lack of communication and quality time. Consider what he said when asked about people who misperceive him: “Once people take the time to find out who I really am—they’re surprised.”

Any real attempt at conflict resolution, without direct communication and dialogue, only complicates the message and distances the generations still further, as we will see as this unfortunate case proceeds.

Although Parks’s case was initially dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Hackett in November 1999, Parks, in the summer of 2000, hired the late Johnnie Cochran to help her appeal the court’s decision. Cochran, who ironically represented rappers Tupac Shakur, Sean Combs, and Snoop Dogg, took the case to the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in the case being remanded. Cochran explained, “Rosa Parks is an icon in this country. She’s the mother of the civil rights movement,” he said. “Because she stood up, we can all stand up.” Cochran’s message echoed that of Georgia congressman John Lewis, a mahogany man who marched beside Rosa Parks in the sixties. When asked about the case, he said, “Rosa Parks is a mother of the civil rights movement. It would be very unfortunate if people forgot her raw courage and remembered her as an elderly African-American lady who sued a rock band.”

Both Cochran’s and Lewis’s statements reflected the idea that the younger generation had forgotten its history. Forgotten the marches. Protests. Fights. Pain. Despair. Spit. Sacrifice. Dogs. Cheeks. Crosses. Whips. Hate. Hoses. Hydrants. Sirens. Sweat. Fire. Panthers. Us. Shoes (worn). Epithets. Strange fruit. Pride. Solidarity. As John Leland writes of the hip-hop generation in
Hip: The History
, no group “has been less interested in the past, except as something to be scratched.”

A pathetic example of this forgetfulness is when Joseph Skipper, a hip-hop generationer, broke into the then eighty-one-year-old Rosa Parks’s home. Once he entered the house, he asked: “Hey, aren’t you Rosa Parks?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Parks said as she handed him three scrunched-up dollar bills.

“Give me more!” Skipper demanded.

When Parks couldn’t come up with any more loot, Skipper punched Parks in the face. Soon after, he was caught and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. If we are to be successful, by the true measure of success rather than simply money, we must employ the principle of Sankofa—going back to the past to move forward in the future.

On April 15, 2005, just a week after Johnnie Cochran’s funeral, the lawsuit was settled. OutKast and company agreed to pay an undisclosed monetary amount and to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs “to enlighten today’s youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races,” said the court in a statement. OutKast also agreed to perform on a tribute CD and appear on an educational TV show about Parks’s legacy. And finally, under the agreement, OutKast admitted no wrongdoing. This was a disaster. A disaster because once in the courtroom, all real communication between Parks and OutKast, representatives of two powerful generations, was severed. The potential for collective good was amputated. OutKast, along with their label, never admitted to any wrongdoing. It is imperative that all generations recognize that we need each other’s support rather than contempt.

On October 24, 2005, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, dubbed the mother of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement, passed away. This death, like those of Tucker, Cochran, and Tupac, raises the stakes and reminds us that time is running out. The post-hip-hop generation, whose promise is to heal relations between all generations and classes of Black people, must learn from the mistakes that were
made in this case, as they are symbolic of larger intergenerational issues. In learning from these mistakes, solutions reveal themselves that will enable us to conquer the divide.

Even with
the deaths of Tupac, Tucker, and Cochran, the fire that separates the hip-hop generation from their parents rages on. Bill Cosby is not the lone voice of his generation when he describes the hip-hop generation as “people putting their clothes on backwards… people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack… standing on the corner… these knuckleheads… with names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all the crap and all of them are in jail.” He goes on:

Cosby’s comments, which he emphasizes were “out of love,” expressed what most of us have heard in churches, schools, barber shops, beauty salons, and other community spots where young people interact with elders. It’s more than a complaint, it is, rather, an indictment. An indictment that accuses the younger generation of dropping the ball, torch, and mantle. It more than suggests that the hip-hop generation has blown the opportunities the Civil Rights Movement created. Cosby says it explicitly:

A cinematic expression of this indictment can be seen in the Hughes Brothers’ hood classic
Menace II Society
. When Caine, a teenager symbolic of the hip-hop generation and the protagonist of the film, gets arrested, he is interrogated by an intimidating middle-aged ultra-Black detective, who utters the infamous lines, “You know you done fucked up, don’t you? You know it, don’t you? You know you done fucked up.”

What’s interesting and often overlooked is how similar Tupac and Cosby are. Cosby opens the preceding speech with this statement:

Similarly, Tupac ends his song “White Manz World” with this plea:

Tupac’s and Cosby’s ideas of personal responsibility are stunningly similar. Cosby even indicts the parents of today and himself, as Tupac did:

Despite these similarities, many in the hip-hop generation embrace Pac’s sentiments while denouncing Cosby.

Above the
sunken black heads on the bus, a sign spoke of King. Not the Jordan King who I had just met behind bars, but Dr. Martin Luther King, whose photo was used to promote an annual celebration of the national holiday in his name. The tone of the incarcerated J. King’s message, in many ways, echoed the tone of Dr. King who once said that “There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.” In that speech, delivered at Oberlin College and aptly titled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” Dr. King discussed the strides that had been made since “the Negro was first brought to this nation as a slave in 1619.” Dr. King illustrated the then-recent developments that had been made—“the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, a
comprehensive Civil Rights Bill in 1964… a new voting bill to guarantee the right to vote.” Although pleased with some of the progress being made, Dr. King was under no illusion: