The Intellect U Well Journeys: Afrofuturism book discussion at the African American History Research Center in Houston, Texas last weekend was a blast and a blessing! Many thanks to Deborah “D.E.E.P.” Mouton, James Stancil, Tonya Stancil, Davin Stancil, Suzanne Simpson, Lily Brewer, everyone at the Gregory School, and everyone who came out.
Me and Deep Mouton at the African American History Research Center in Houston, Texas.
Deep Mouton’s book, Black Chameleon(Henry Holt & Co, 2023), takes hefty strides toward creating a Southern African-American mythology, its horror tempered by hilarity. Talking with her about it, Boogie Down Predictions, and our views on Afrofuturism, hip-hop culture, writing, poetry, performance, and scholarship was a privilege and a party. I hope we get to continue it sometime soon.
On July 13th, Ytasha L. Womack and I met at Volumes Books in Wicker Park in Chicago to talk about our book Boogie Down Predictions and our other work in hip-hop and Afrofuturism.
Me and Ytasha Womack at Volumes. [photo by Shannon Keane]
It was a great discussion that covered the material in BDP and then used it as a jump-off point for other projects and concerns. Ytasha had just returned from Ghana a few days before where she toured the slave castles at Elmina and Cape Coast. Her stories, like so many other concepts we discussed, went backward to look forward. You truly missed a treat if you weren’t there.
This book, edited by Roy Christopher, is a moment. It is the deconstructed sample, the researched lyrical metaphors, the aha moment on the way to hip-hop enlightenment. Hip-hop permeates our world, and yet it is continually misunderstood. Hip-hop’s intersections with Afrofuturism and science fiction provide fascinating touchpoints that enable us to see our todays and tomorrows. This book can be, for the curious, a window into a hip-hop-infused Alter Destiny—a journey whose spaceship you embarked on some time ago. Are you engaging this work from the gaze of the future? Are you the data thief sailing into the past to U-turn to the now? Or are you the unborn child prepping to build the next universe? No, you’re the superhero. Enjoy the journey.
Boogie Down Predictions also features contributions from Omar Akbar, Juice Aleem, Tiffany E. Barber, Kevin Coval, Samantha Dols, Kodwo Eshun, Kembrew McLeod, Chuck Galli, Nettrice Gaskins, Jonathan Hay, Jeff Heinzl, Rasheedah Phillips, Steven Shaviro, Aram Sinnreich, André Sirois, Erik Steinskog, Dave Tompkins, Tia C.M. Tyree, Joël Vacheron, tobias c. van Veen, and K. Ceres Wright.
Cover art by Savage Pencil.
Here’s what other people are saying about the book:
Roy Christopher’s dedication to the future is bracing. Boogie Down Predictions is a symphony of voices, beats, and bars messing with time, unsettling histories, opening portals. — Jeff Chang, author, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
The study of hip-hop requires more than a procession of protagonists, events, and innovations. Boogie Down Predictions stops the clock—each essay within it a frozen moment, an opportunity to look sub-atomically at the forces that drive this culture. — Dan Charnas, author, Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla
How does hip-hop fold, spindle, or mutilate time? In what ways does it treat technology as, merely, a foil? Are its notions of the future tensed…or are they tenseless? For Boogie Down Predictions, Roy Christopher’s trenchant anthology, he’s assembled a cluster of curious interlocutors. Here, in their hands, the culture has been intently examined, as though studying for microfractures in a fusion reactor. The result may not only be one of the most unique collections on hip-hop yet produced, but, even more, and of maximum value, a novel set of questions. — Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin
Boogie Down Predictions offers new ways of listening to, looking at, and thinking about hip-hop culture. It teaches us that hip-hop bends time, blending past, present, and future in sound and sense. Roy Christopher has given us more than a book; it’s a cypher and everyone involved brought bars. — Adam Bradley, author, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop
I had the pleasure of talking with Alex Kuchma of the New Books Network podcast about my recent edited collection, Boogie Down Predictions, as well as my books Dead Precedents and The Medium Picture. A student of hip-hop culture like me, Alex is steeped in the stuff. He came to the discussion with sharp questions and insight. It was a pleasure.
Check it out here, on Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Many thanks to Alex and the New Books Network for the interest and the opportunity.
I’m on Talk Your Talk with my man Alaska this week. I’m the first guest on this spin off from his usual show, Call Out Culture with Curly Castro and Zilla Rocca, on which I was also the first guest. I did the artwork for their Michael Myers/Nas-themed “Killmatic” episode, too.
In this new one, we talk about my books, new, old, and not-out-yet, as well as a few high-minded social-science theories… and the raps, of course.
Charles Mudede is a senior editor at The Stranger, “Seattle’s Only Newspaper,” and he’s recently started doing a video series called Charles Mudede’s Book Nook. He writes,
Because a big part of the only life I’ll ever have is devoted to books, the best thing I can offer during this holiday season is a recommendation of five books you can read by a fake fire (like the one in my cottage) or gift those who happen to be close to your life or who you want to be close to your life.
I was in the tenth grade when Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way” came out. I remember hearing it and feeling like something truly unique was happening. Raw, raucous, and rocking. It brought together fans of both traditional rock n’ roll and rebellious hip-hop.
Recently, I pitched the song to a book series specifically about individual songs, but they didn’t agree on the impact or the import of it. Well, while I was factchecking my memory, I found out there’s already a whole book about it! There’s no doubt it was a special moment in music, a new node in a burgeoning network of sound.
Notebook cover I made from the sleeve of Run-DMC’s Raising Hell (1986).
Aerosmith’s original version of “Walk This Way,” from their 1975 record Toys in the Attic, starts with a few measures of just the beat. It’s just the kind of clean drum beat hip-hop DJs scour recordings to find. With two copies of the record, one can loop it back and forth, providing a seamless backbeat to rap over. Run-DMC’s DJ Jam Master Jay had already been using the record in this manner.
In 1986, Aerosmith was in shambles. Their 1985 reunion record Done With Mirrors had not met the expectations of their fans or their label, and their personal lives were in decline due to persisting drug problems. Starting with singer Steven Tyler, they would all enter rehab over the next couple of years. If not, they knew they were likely over as a band. After rehab and collaborating with Run-DMC on “Walk This Way,” Aerosmith followed the song with a string of multi-platinum albums and Top 40 hits, entering the most successful era of their careers and becoming one of the biggest rock bands of the 1990s. It was a miraculous turnaround.
Though they hated the idea at the time, Run-DMC’s version of “Walk This Way” is a testament to the ear of their producer Rick Rubin. His production style, which he’d already used on previous Run-DMC records, as well as records for T La Rock & Jazzy Jay, the Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J, was credited as “reduction” instead of production. He stripped their sound down to its basic elements: boom-bapping 808 drums, classic-rock guitar riffs, the shouted voices of Reverend Run Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and the nimble cuts and scratches of Jam Master Jay.
As a nascent record label mogul and producer, Rubin was only getting started. The iconic sound he developed with early hits like “It’s Yours,” “Rock the Bells,” “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” and “Walk This Way” keep him in demand to this day. He’s gone on to produce everyone from Public Enemy, Ghetto Boys, Sir Mix-a-Lot, and Kanye West to the Mars Volta, Metallica, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Lana Del Rey, and Adele, and he’s redone the reduced style of his early work on everything from Jay-Z’s double-platinum “99 Problems” (2003) to Eminem’s Grammy-nominated “Berzerk” (2013), even appearing in the videos for both songs.
Speaking of, the video for “Walk This Way” was as iconic as the song. It starts as a fight, with Aerosmith practicing loudly in one room, disrupting Run-DMC’s session next door. Run-DMC then turns up the volume on their equipment and launches into their version of “Walk This Way,” confusing the aged rockers. By the chorus, the wall is torn down (inviting more than a few interpretations), and the two groups are ripping through the song together. The video was even parodied in 1994 by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on their song “Flavor” which features Beck in the practice space next door.
For better or worse, “Walk This Way” also sparked the further mixture of rap and riffs, giving birth to collaborations between rap groups and rock groups and a start to acts firmly on the fence in between. Public Enemy and Anthrax covered PE’s “Bring the Noise” in 1991. The two groups even toured together that year. I saw them at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in a chocolate-and-peanut-butter package that also included Young Black Teenagers and Primus. In 1993, the infamous Judgement Night soundtrack featured collaborations between Slayer and Ice-T, Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill, and Dinosaur Jr. and Del the Funky Homosapien, among many other embarrassing pairings. And, as if reading “Walk This Way” as a blueprint to success, acts like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Rage Against the Machine also emerged in the 1990s.
“Walk This Way” was an unavoidable song and an undeniable hit, Run-DMC’s biggest, peaking at #4 on the Billboard chart. It was bigger even than Aerosmith’s original, which just broke the top ten. Run-DMC is one of the core groups of the first recorded era of rap music and hip-hop culture. They were successful and respected before and after this song, but they never saw heights like “Walk This Way.” The song was the nexus of several trajectories and the birth of a hybrid new life form that still stomps around today.
In 1997 I put out a zine called wow&flutter [.pdf]. It was an attempt to merge two of my main musical interests at the time, turntablism and experimental noise. I interviewed DJ QBert, DJ Spooky, John Duncan, and Daniel Menche, and reviewed records from the rapidly expanding releases of ambient, noise, and turntable artists. I lived in Seattle at the time, and there was so much going on in all of these areas. There were regular live events and several specialty stores, and I tried to bring them all together under the banner of sound experimentation.
wow&flutter was intended as part of a series, but the second issue, attack&decay, featuring interviews with Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto and Warren Defever of His Name is Alive, among others, never made it to press. I still love the idea of noise and hip-hop coming together, and there are others who’ve merged them in the meantime better than I could have imagined (e.g., dälek, clipping., Ho99o9, Death Grips, Cloaks, Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin, et al.)
I am stoked to announce that my new book, Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, is now available for preorder! Dead Precedents uses the concerns and conceits of cyberpunk to thoughtfully remap hip-hop’s spread from around the way to around the world. Its central argument is that the cultural practices of hip-hop culture are the blueprint to the 21st century, and that an understanding of its appropriation of language and technology is an understanding of the now. This book is about is the many ways that the foundations of hip-hop appropriation—allusions and creative language use, as well as technology and sampling—inform the new millennium.
Here’s the cover:
Here are some nice words about it:
“Hip-hop has been around for well over forty years now, and in many ways, it has been absorbed into mainstream culture. Roy Christopher argues, however, that its radical practices still contain untapped possibilities. Dead Precedents shows how this cultural movement opens new hope for the future by changing our understanding of the past.” — Steven Shaviro, author of Discognition
“It’s exciting to be quoted so close to the beginning of a book with so much energy and passion in it… a lively screed.”
— Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren
“This book dives into the essential nature of hip-hop re-invention and cyberpunk’s relationship to our web2.0 construct. Roy extracts detail after detail on these two topics and gracefully weaves together a clear and fresh perspective of these genres and their impact on where we are today. Such a refreshing nonstop read!”
— M. Sayyid, Antipop Consortium
“An intellectual hornet’s nest, buzzing with ideas. The canon of hip-hop crit welcomes a bold new entry, calculated to blow the doors off the usual moribund academic fare. Theory finds its own uses for things.” — Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
Dead Precedents comes out March 19, 2019 on Repeater Books.
Once a member of the brain-forward UK crew New Flesh for Old, Juice Aleem has long since stepped out on his own. Griff Rollefson writes in his book Flip the Script that on Juice’s first solo record, Jerusalaam Come (Big Dada, 2009), Aleem “recuperates universalism by locating and privileging a pre-Enlightenment performative linguistics” (p. 196). In other words, he uses his lyrics to go back in time in order to envision a better future. His latest record, Voodu StarChild (Gamma Proforma, 2017), continues his quest to create not just better visions of the future but also better futures for real.
I first met Juice when on the Infesticons tour in the UK in 2001, I think. We didn’t have enough money to bring over the whole band so Juice filled in. Rob Sonic and I were so drunk every show that Juice did all the rapping. Mostly freestyle, I think. Since then, Juice has been a consummate collaborator and best friend. I know few emcees personally who are as introspective thoughtful and as studious as Juice. This man has volumes of knowledge at his disposal and dispenses them with a gentlemanly generosity… Juice will blow your mind on stage as a performer and off stage as a friend. Every time. Without fail.
I’ve been in touch Juice for the past few years, and I concur with Mike Ladd: He has always been genuine, generous, and supportive. Juice’s old crew, New Flesh, did some tracks and shows with the god Rammellzee back in the early 0s, so I had to ask him a bit about that as well.
Roy Christopher:Your first solo record, Jerusalaam Come, goes back to a precolonial time in order to imagine a better future. Is there an underlying aim with Voodu StarChild? If so, what’s the story?
Juice Aleem: Yeah, there are several themes and aims within Voodu StarChild. A lot of it is about people being aware of the magic inside themselves and understanding how that is under attack. How that hidden Self is dark, female energy, and it’s questioned at every moment. Our original selves are out of equilibrium in regard the male and female balance, and this album is a play on that. It’s not only a critique, but it has a few answers within on how I address certain parts of this for myself and those around me in regard to things like diet, family, love, and when to go to war.
For years we have been taught that Voodu is a bad thing, when it is our own personal rituals and practices that will do a better job of saving us than the politicians and the religious have done so far. There is nothing to fear in the dark.
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RC:In your book Afrofutures, you talk about hackers and whistleblowers. What do you see as the connections between them and hip-hop?
JA: To me there are many connections between them all. The hacker is the most obvious though with the wiretap on all the juicy insides of whatever tech is already out there. Using everything from drum pads and samplers to magpie the last few centuries of speeches, music, and commercials and turn them upside-in for the betterment of the practitioner and listener. Hip-hop is hacking.
The whistleblower is also well seen in hip-hop form, from P.E. telling us “Don’t Believe the Hype” to Kanye telling us “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.” The moments are loads with little between. Hip-hop traditionally has been one of the biggest whistleblowers out there till recent years. I’m sure the new gen can get there too in between the adverts for big Pharma opiates.
RC:You’ve been organizing and hosting festivals and workshops and such. Tell me about those.
JA: Workshops have been a thing on and off since Lord Redeem started the Ghetto Grammar sessions back in the mid-90s. I helped out, then he and myself took it London and UK wide. Since then I’ve worked and tutored in many places including schools, youth centres, Uni’s, and even a few prisons. Even got caught up doing work in France in a prison outside of Paris.
It’s not sumthing I do everyday, but I like to bring it back now and then for certain projects such as my lyric-writing workshop as part of this year’s AfroFlux events within the B-SIDE Hip-Hop Festival here in Birmingham, UK. B-SIDE has been running three years now, and this year had around 10,000 visitors over the weekend in May.
I’m one of the core artistic directors of B-SIDE and the main person behind AfroFlux: It’s a concept where we look to celebrate the Black and brown thinkers and makers who don’t usually get the accolades while also applying hands on practical applications of cultural markers such as Afrofuturism. We have had a few stand-alone events and plan to expand on that with our partners in other parts of the globe.
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RC:You and I were talking before about Rammellzee. Did his work influence your own?
JA: In a way, but similar to other’s in his kind of cultural echelon, you don’t always realise till looking back, and also seeing that part of the reason you like them and their art so much is due to the parts of self that have a resonance within the artist you look at. Ramm is a perfect mirror for the things you’d never think would be reflected and magnified. There are things I had thought before I ever knew of Ramm, and to see a person not only having a knowledge of things but living them to the full is his real influence on me. Not just on my art but the living of it, being all aspects of my thoughts and creations.
— New Flesh Plus One: The Rammellzee as Crux (the Monk)
RC:You recorded a song with him with your old crew New Flesh for Old. What can you tell me about that session?
JA: We did a few songs, two of which made it to the Understanding album. They were a little out there, ‘cause those were the days of still recording songs in the same studio with people actually being there. So, having these songs come from Ramm rambling down the phone at all hours and us making sense of it was a real new thing. Then he sent tapes over to Part 2, and we edited the pieces we liked best. There was intended to be a whole series of stories from his Cosmic opera. “Mack Facts” was cool ‘cause we had a theme of this whole future arena style thing with us being the gladiators and Ramm as the announcer. Think of an intense episode of that Gwar, Mad Max show starring Sonny Chiba and Sho Kosugi as Nuba warriors on Plutonia. Speaking with him and listening to him so much on those tapes was kinda trippy, and how he’d take any little idea and run with it creating a session’s worth of vocals. This wasn’t your average 16 bars, but reams and reams of classic adventure rasped in an intense style that fully drew you in. We still have a few bits and pieces from those sessions.
RC: What’s coming up?
As per usual there are a lot of things happening. My three main things I’m gearing up for right now are a new festival in Birmingham by the name of High Vis Festival. It’s a bunch of art loving heads such as myself and graffiti writers like Mose, Panda, and Wingy who have decided to put on a festival highlighting comics, Street Art, Graffiti, Zine culture, and other visual movements with a strong ethic in serious Street Culture.
A couple of gigs with the Exile All Stars, which is myself, Mike Ladd and TIE. We have all been friends for a while and have promised to take new music and perform it. This is the promise.
The number three is from even longer ago, and it’s all about new music from Shadowless. We took the passing of one our brothers by the name of Defisis to cement the call for new tunes. Watch this space.
RC: Is there anything else you’d like to throw in?
I contributed several entries to the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop Culture, including ones on Gangsta Rap, Horrorcore, Rap Metal, and 1500 words on the hip-hop scene in my beloved Pacific Northwest, where I first lived from 1993 to 1998 (and three other times after). Here’s an excerpt from the latter:
Underground Hip Hop nationwide saw a resurgence during the mid-to-late 1990s. Having remained primarily underground since its inception, Pacific Northwest Hip Hop soldiered on… Wordsayer (Jonathan Moore, 1969-2017) formed the group Source of Labor in 1989. After moving back to Seattle in 1992, Moore, along with members of Source of Labor and soul group Beyond Reality, formed Jasiri Media group. “The artists in Jasiri forced the Seattle hip hop scene to move from the grandiose, self-aggrandizing rap of Sir Mix-a-Lot to a more educated, meaningful form of musical expression” (Key, 2010, p. 294). Fighting the Teen Dance Ordinance, which had all but killed all-ages events in Seattle since its implementation in 1985, Moore promoted “Sure Shot Sundays” in 1999 to open up possibilities for local youth to experience and perform Hip Hop. He passed away at age 47 in March of 2017 of kidney failure.
Labels like Loose Groove, Do the Math, Impact Entertainment, and Conception Records released definitive compilations showing and proving that the Pacific Northwest’s underground was rife with intriguing and engaging Hip Hop artists in the 1990s. 14 Fathoms Deep: Seattle Hip Hop Compilation (Loose Groove 1997) featured Source of Labor, the Ghetto Children, and Prose and Concepts. Do the Math (Tribal Music, 1998) featured Wordsayer, DJs Topspin, B-Self, and Vitamin D, and three tracks by the Ghetto Children. Classic Elements (Impact Entertainment, 1998) boasted Ghetto Children’s love letter to classic Hip Hop, “Hip Hop Was?” Walkman Rotation (Conception Records, 1998) was a DJ-blended mixtape, a form popular in the underground at the time, mixed by J-Rocc of the Beat Junkies. Other local DJs include Vitamin D, B-Mello, and Topspin.
This massive, 500-page encyclopedia of all-thing hip-hop is out now!
Reference:
Key, Rachel. 2010. From the SEA to the PDX: Northwest Hip Hop in the I-5 Corridor. In Mickey Hess (Ed.), Hip-Hop America: A Regional Guide. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, pp. 287-314.
