NAS - MR. JONES

TRIP OUT TO THIS DUDE’S TRACKS AND VIDEOS

…I was hoping that these didn’t come out at this time, at least for another month as in anticipation, I was hoping to proceed through the former discussions (on NZ hip-hop) onto Nas’s new album—now entitled ‘Untitled’ rather than ‘Nigger’ or I think ‘The Nigger Tape’. Nevertheless, it’s here sooner than expected so I might as well get to it. I wanted to use Nas as an underlying example as to the idea of ‘urban/popular aesthetics’ and the significance of what I mentioned in the blog introduction as ‘prose’ and the ‘everyday-slang’ instrumental in how younger generations communicate—which on the surface level might be mis-interpreted as broken-English—which it is but we have to understand that tools of communications are not necessarily confined to a historical system and thereby we ought to understand elements existing therein in adherence to such systematic thoughts; I am referring here to proper English grammar.

Rather, what Nas (and every other hip-hop/rap artist out there) exemplifies and reveals is first of all the commercial side of the media and the aspects of ‘culture’ that are ably slipped in through this filtering apparatus. The idea of exploring a historical term with negative and dehumanising connotations can generate various responses depending on the magnitude of its receptions—certainly, it might evoke or provoke criticism as to the commercial exploitation of a struggling people’s history—especially its irrevocable tie to ‘slavery’ and so forth. It can generate or amass oppositions in terms of regenerating such terms within the conscious of the people—whom might be argued as actually in a process of moving forward and beyond such histories. It can also be criticised in juxtaposition with other black people who has actually contributed (quite relentlessly) to the betterment of black conscious and most of which authored books and texts with guidelines and histories of such conditions. In this, criticism may accuse Nas of cashing in on a history which has been relentlessly defended and costs people’s lives elsewhere in the world and so forth. Therefore, these people’s effort may have been affected by the enormity of Nas’s influence and so forth. So many angles can be argued in opposition to this case but it is also important to understand that as mentioned above, the surface level upon which younger generations conduct and understand their identity and make sense of themselves—such level exemplify or generate an awareness towards a different kind of space in which identity-negotiations and self-re-presentations actually takes place more so than what we might perceive as ‘heritage’ and ‘tradition’ and so on.

Such that I feel it is this very space to which Nas appeals. It is this very space which the artist has in mind and which he hopes to shape and overturn. It creates another discourse which is concerned with negotiating the self within an age imbued and overrun by/with information. The track ‘Sly Fox’ exemplifies this overturning process in which he essentially informs the listener with the nature of the media using FOX news presumably as a striking example—thereby equipping the perception towards the information which one draws from the media with negative connotations and crooked values.

I’m interested more so in the surface level within which we tend to understand the nature of the mass media and commercialisation. We’re quick to dispute the idea of such spaces as having any significance to the values of our cultural-self—especially as we understand ourselves in terms irrevocably tied to a historical space which at times transcends our contemporary experience and move towards justifying its importance in implying its existence within our ways of life implicitly—which is not to be disputed here but I think we should rethink our perspectives on how commercialisation as a heterogeneous and superficial space is an important element fundamentally. Nas invites us to an album which is able to bring forth important issues emphatically into a space highly regulated yet also de-regulated. The artist responds to the leaking of his album before its release date with excitement rather than resentment—which shows the importance of the de-regulated nature of this space to the spreading of his messages.

It therefore requires us to regard popular prose and everyday-slang as intrinsic element of a space allegedly robbed of essential and historical contexts in relation to its appreciators—at least in our thinking and discourse concerning our very own culture and heritage as Pacific people. It is important to understand that our identity must be connected to history but it is just as important to recognise that what we mean by history is not confined to the past.

The ideas of popular prose and everyday-slang is realistically a tool with which our younger generation communicate with and express themselves to one another, and aspects of these tools do exists in the majority outside the systemised space of language to which we appeal in issues of communications and clarification. Listen to Nas’s lyrics and the issues he explores are deeply entrenched in socio-historical and political discourses that are available only to a few privileged enough to attend Universities and similar Institutions, who find the spare time to sit down and read books rather than being overwhelmed with worries about where he or she’s gonna sleep tonight or where their family’s dinner gonna be from and so on. Yet, it is packaged in a way sensitive to a generation addicted to commercialisation and thereby imprisoned both mentally and physically within it.

The timing of the album and the issues are timely right as Nas as an image is highly popularised whilst rooted in ground zero—where the majority of our youths operate—tagging and escaping into the darkness of night, confined to a secret space behaving ‘offensively’, conforming to a system insensitive to their very existence as ‘mis-understood’ members of society and so on. We cannot help but appeal to figures such as Nas and hoppers in the space of commercialisation. Yet finally, someone’s words seek out our repressed consciousness and decide to speak truthfully about the importance of the elements we surround ourselves with. Over-flipping the regulated and politically pulverized space of commercialisation—at least an aspect of it.

2bcont….