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Ghost is as explosive as the stand off between The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms forces and David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound that ended in a giant fire, burning it to the ground, killing dozens, including many children. Ergo, pretty explosive.
That all happened in Waco, Texas in 1993.
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"We did, umm, two whole cars
It was me, Dez, and Mean Three, right?
And on the first car, in small letters, it said 'All you see is'
And then, you know, big, big, you know, some block silver letters
That said 'crime in the city', right?"
"It just took up the whole car?"
"Yeah, yeah, it was a whole car and shit..." Black Star (Ft. Common) – Respiration
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Dialogue from the seminal Hip Hop documentary Style Wars. This is graffiti writer Skeme describing his latest piece on the New York subway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beORPckw-pY
The skinny kid called Dez mentioned here grew up to be Hot 97’s DJ Kay Slay.
Why begin this song with this sample? First, it gestures back at the origins of hip-hop in the gritty urban milieu of New York City. Second, Mos Def and Kweli are drawing a parallel to the New York of 1998, still beset with crime and oppression, where hip-hop culture is still a vehicle for protest. And since Mos Def utters the notable line “Can’t tell between the cops and the robbers,” it is worth noting that the end of the subway fresco described here by Skeme is a large drawing of a police officer, implying that the power that runs the city is just as “criminal” as those it targets and locks away.
'Cause I never met nobody planned to be a parent in the hood JAY-Z & Kanye West (Ft. Curtis Mayfield) – The Joy
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What is this?
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Digital Underground was a funk/hip-hop group who scored a number of hits in the early 90’s. “Pac” refers of course to Tupac Shakur, one of the most influential rappers of the 1990s. Early in his career, Pac was a backup dancer and then part-time collaborator with Digital Underground, and his first recorded rap came on DU’s tune “Same Song”, whose chorus runs “All around the world, same song”.
The significance of the line: before Pac got his big break on “Same Song” he was a lowly backup dancer for his idols, just waiting for an opportunity to grab some spotlight. Kanye is describing a time when he was in the same boat.
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We used to kick routines and the presence was fittin' A Tribe Called Quest – Check the Rhime
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Linden Boulevard is a major thoroughfare in Queens, near the neighborhood where Tip and Phife grew up in. This is where they first practiced their rhyming abilities and honed their stage presence, so Linden Blvd has become pretty heavily associated with the Tribe.
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Kanye’s point is that while the formal infrastructure of segregation and white supremacy may appear to be dismantled, Blacks continue to be disadvantaged and treated as an underclass. This is in part because the old, vicious discourse of anti-black racism still remains in place, now disguised via ostensibly race-neutral code words and “dog whistles.”
Here’s a powerful poem based on this line:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOUTr1U__ow
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What is this?
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Nat Turner lead a failed slave rebellion. Nat and his mob killed 50 whites but after they were caught, hundreds of slaves died
Paul Revere was a revolutionary messenger who warned Lexington, MA of an oncoming advance of the British army, enabling them to prepare an effective resistance.
GSH’s point is that the fad for “revolutionaries” is not all bad – it has awakened the black youth (“youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up”) to the importance of militant resistance. But the side effect, which concerns him in the rest of the song, is that the fad has also reached white America, leading to foolishness like the “Rainbow Conspiracy.”
To say Turner’s rebellion was “unsuccessful”, is a subjective opinion. It was successful in terms of opening the minds of many enslaved Afrikans to the fact that europeanized christianity is used as a tool of white imperialism, to keep us enslaved at the deepest mental-spiritual levels. Amongst other vital reprogramming of Afrikanity, it sparked the necessary spirit of rebellion in Afrikan people, from which we are still benefiting.