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How dark is the world, how strong is a fist? X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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The raised fist has long been a symbol of black power, most famously when used by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics

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100

4 years

more power full as how is in the air

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Too much degrees for a silly pale thief
You can't define what's direct from the East! X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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J uses his typical poetic language to call for black self-determination, culturally and politically. The “east” language refers to the connection black nationalists feel with early African civilizations such as Egypt

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A.R.

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1 year

This verse is going at the rappers of the Stop The Violence movement. This particular bar seems to be a subliminal directed at Jeru the Damaja in response to his album titled The Sun Rises in the East.

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Amenkhumra

9 years

Again, shot at Masons. They teach 33 degrees of Masonry and Brother J is saying 360 degrees is too many for a silly pale Thief (Back to that thief apprentice reference). You can’t define what’s direct to the East is saying the Masons are always talking about the East and that is the direction of their wisdom or teachings and Brother J is saying if your mind state is not black, not black a color but black meaning full of all life and all vibrations. Masons, specifically masonic teachings, can’t know the 360 degrees of light or wisdom shining from the East. Brother J says, Professor X, when will they learn? Once Life enters doors, death no return. He means, once Life enters form, or Consciousness enters thought, it must be the truth or reality and not something of Ego or a belief that’s just imagined because the Death is experienced when Life enters form and there is no return from that Sin. Original meaning of Sin was to miss the Truth or miss the mark.

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I teach a funk code and don't preach a rap rhyme
Harambe to the sun as the mortals ask time X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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Harambe is a Swahili word meaning “a call to unity and collective work”. It has been adopted by black nationalists as part of the celebration of Kwanzaa, a week-long winter holiday celebrating black culture and history that was created in the mid-1960’s by Ron Karenga

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Flow in the Nile (ZOOM!)
Teach the many mortals, the times of a sun dial
To the East, teaching Gods to be
What it was, what it is, and again shall be X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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The X-Clan were influenced by Kemetism – a neopagan revival of Ancient Egyptian religion and culture that developed in the 1970’s. One branch of it, led by groups like the Ausar Auset Society, had a black nationalist spin

Many Kemetists and other Afrocentric thinkers claim that ancient Egyptians had black skin, equivalent to modern-day African Americans. However, that claim has been rejected by a strong majority of Egyptologists

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135

7 years

The final sentence, starting with “However…” should be deleted. The link does not, in fact, confirm that a “strong majority of Egyptologists” reject that ancient Egyptians had skin similar to African Americans. “Stuart Tyson Smith writes in the 2001 Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ‘Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as 'black’, while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans.‘”

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To the concrete, fighting wars in the street
The Day of Outrage, history another page X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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See here for X-Clan’s song-length tribute to the 1989 Day of Outrage march

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(Grand Verbalizer, what time is it?) X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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Brother J explained the history of his “Grand Verbalizer” name in Brian Coleman’s book:

I started using the name Grand Verbalizer way back, after I was out of Brooklyn College Academy…Grand Verbalizer defined MC differently for me. I didn’t want to be MC Brother J – I needed a title that would describe me to the fullest. Grand Verbalizer was like a royal MC

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And the voice to a many going verb to verb
Sit back and take heed, brother you must learn! X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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This “You must learn” – emphasis strongly on the “you” here –was a direct dis to KRS-One, whose Boogie Down Productions had a song with that name. Read about the KRS/X-Clan beef here

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Chilly and Magilla, chocolate and vanilla
How can polar bears swing on vines with the gorillas? X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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These lines, with their referring to whites as “polar bears” who can’t be a part of black means of expression, were disturbing to a young Eminem, as he recounts in a mid-aughts Rolling Stone interview:

I loved the X-Clan’s first album [To the East, Blackwards, 1990]. Brother J was an MC that I was afraid of lyrically. His delivery was so confident. But he also made me feel like an outcast. Callin' us polar bears. Even as militant as Public Enemy were, they never made me feel like, “You’re white, you cannot do this rap, this is our music.” The X-Clan kinda made you feel like that, talking [on “Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It?”] about “How could polar bears swing on vines of the gorillas?” It was a slap in the face. It was like, you’re loving and supporting the music, you’re buying the artist and supporting the artist, you love it and live it and breathe it, then who’s to say that you can’t do it? If you’re good at it and you wanna do it, then why are you allowed to buy the records but not allowed to do the music? That was the pro-black era – and there was that sense of pride where it was like, if you weren’t black, you shouldn’t listen to hip-hop, you shouldn’t touch the mike

This is also one of the jabs directed at MC Serch and 3rd bass, so it makes sense that Em wouldn’t like it so much…

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These lines, with their referring to whites as "polar bears" who can't be a part of black means of expression, were disturbing to a young Eminem, as he recounts in a mid-aughts [Rolling Stone interview](http://rapgirrl-271.tripod.com/id1.html):

>  I loved the X-Clan's first album [To the East, Blackwards, 1990]. Brother J was an MC that I was afraid of lyrically. His delivery was so confident. But he also made me feel like an outcast. Callin' us polar bears. Even as militant as Public Enemy were, they never made me feel like, "You're white, you cannot do this rap, this is our music." The X-Clan kinda made you feel like that, talking [on "Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It?"] about "How could polar bears swing on vines of the gorillas?" It was a slap in the face. It was like, you're loving and supporting the music, you're buying the artist and supporting the artist, you love it and live it and breathe it, then who's to say that you can't do it? If you're good at it and you wanna do it, then why are you allowed to buy the records but not allowed to do the music? That was the pro-black era -- and there was that sense of pride where it was like, if you weren't black, you shouldn't listen to hip-hop, you shouldn't touch the mike

This is also one of the jabs directed at MC Serch and 3rd bass, so it makes sense that Em wouldn't like it so much...

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552

3 years

Later in the song, when J says, “For you, the funk’ll never flow/But that’s another blow…” is a shot at the Beastie Boys.

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Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It? X Clan – Grand Verbalizer, What Time is It?

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The song that got Eminem bent out of shape as a kid, this black nationalist anthem is still funky (and divisive!) over twenty years later

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And you persist with legalities
I resist and rebel cause I'm reality X Clan – A Day of Outrage, Operation Snatchback

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As it turns out, resisting and rebelling was also a good career move for X-Clan. As Professor X remembers it in Coleman’s book:

The day after we took the bridge, there was a picture of us in the paper being part of it, and the head of 4th & Bway [the record label that had signed the group to a single deal, with an option for an album] saw it and signed us for the album right there, because of the picture. They were on the verge of getting rid of us up until then because of low sales on the single

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