Kanye West and Jay Z released their new collaborative music project this week. I downloaded the CD from itunes and I won’t offer my review because I don’t really think it matters. However, I did find one track titled “Murder to Excellence” particularly noteworthy. The song addresses “black-on-black crime” specifically murder and also makes reference to police brutality by focusing on the case of Danroy Henry.

As someone who laments the fact that mainstream rappers tend to avoid consequential topics like the prison industrial complex, structural racism, and sexism, I really should be happy that “Murder to Excellence” exists. Yet I instead find myself profoundly unsatisfied and even slightly depressed. Here’s one verse by Kanye that references Chicago’s homicide rate:

And I’m from the murder capital where they murder for capital
Heard about at least three killings this afternoon
Looking at the news like “damn! I was just with him after school”
No shop class but half the school got a tool
And “I could die any day”-type attitude
Plus his little brother got shot repping his avenue
It’s time for us to stop and redefine black power
41 souls murdered in fifty hours

Do you know what came to mind when I heard these lyrics? I thought this is “Self-Destruction” circa 1989 except immeasurably less conscious or sincere. For those of you who remember when that song was released in the late 1980s, we were two years away from the New Jack City era and the rappers involved in creating and releasing that track had the good judgement to call themselves the “Stop the Violence Movement.” We at least had a sense then that there was a community of like-minded people who were lending their voices and energy to the effort to curb community violence. No one really believed that a song would “stop the violence” but it did offer a rallying moment.

Here’s another Kanye verse from “Murder to Excellence:”

Is it genocide? Cause I can still hear his mama cry
Know the family traumatized, shots left holes in his face about piranha-sized
The old pastor closed the cold casket
And said the church ain’t got enough room for all the tombs
It’s a war going on outside we ain’t safe from
I feel the pain in my city wherever I go
314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago

This verse provides a description of the violence that some communities in Chicago experience. I appreciate that it’s not Kanye or Jay Z’s role to necessarily offer any solutions or deep insights into the root causes of this interpersonal violence. I really do get that. This should ideally be a role that social scientists fill. Yet we have a stunning lack of public intellectuals in our culture who can translate academic research for the general public. So I find myself actively longing for others to step into this void. I wish that rappers could move beyond description and offer more analysis. This is desperately needed and could serve as an invaluable form of popular education. I know that it is unfair of me to ask rappers to do this when people with PhDs can’t.

Coincidentally, this week is also the premiere here in Chicago of a new critically-acclaimed documentary by Steve James called “The Interrupters. I have previewed clips from the film here over the past few months. I saw an unfinished cut of the film back in December when it was over 3 hours long. I then spent a day with other community organizers and activists providing feedback to the director James and the producer Alex Kotlowitz.

The documentary follows three violence interrupters from a local Chicago organization called Cease Fire as they try to prevent shootings in communities across the city [note: I have several critiques of the Cease Fire model which I will not address here today]. It is a film that asks how we can dramatically reduce homicides in American inner cities. The film is engrossing primarily because of the stories that it tells about both the interrupters (who are amazing people) and about the people who they try to engage. It also allows you to act as a fly on the wall observing (from a safe distance) parts of Chicago that most people ignore. The film is getting terrific reviews and as a work of art these are well-deserved. However, I have to admit that as someone who works daily to uproot violence, the film falls short for me. And you know what? There is nothing that the filmmakers could have done to change that. They were making a film about public interpersonal violence and in this they did a masterful job. The film that I want to see though is one about structural oppression and the role that the state plays as the chief purveyor of violence in our country and beyond. You can see then why the Interrupters could never truly satisfy me.

I am the wrong audience for both the film and the song because I want them both to do what they were not intended to do. Neither deeply examines and foregrounds the root causes of violence. And frankly, it is too much to expect that they could. It isn’t necessarily the role of artists to provide analysis or to engage the larger contexts within which their art lives. But again, I feel that our times need this context and this analysis desperately if we are to uproot oppression and create a “just” society. We need some films and songs about how we will “interrupt” structural oppression.

Earlier this year, in January, I wrote a post about my frustrations with respect to our endless “national conversations” about violence. I titled it “Everybody wants me to talk about violence but no one wants to hear what I have to say.” In that post, I suggested:

Yet what is always missed in the countless “national conversations” and recriminations that take place after such tragedies are perspective and honesty. The root cause of violence in the U.S. and across the world is oppression. Frederick Douglass famously wrote:

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where one class is made to feel that society is organized in a conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

There it is. In one sentence. Clearly articulated. Eloquent. Easy to understand. And yet we ignore the truth and the wisdom of these words every day. We do so because it is easier to focus on quick fixes and band-aid solutions that will not disrupt the status quo and will not challenge the powerful. It is a sick game of willful ignorance.

If 50 youth under the age of 18 years old are killed by gun violence a year in Chicago, what about the 30% of youth under 18 who are living under the poverty line this year. Is poverty not violence?

What about the over 2200 youth in Illinois who are currently incarcerated in our juvenile prisons. Is youth incarceration not violence?

What about the thousands of youth in Chicago who drop out of school every year. Is educational malpractice not violence?

As London burns and people struggle to understand the reasons for this rebellion, I think that more than ever we need analysis and context in our discussions about violence. I worry though that both will continue to elude us.

Note: Here is an interesting take on understanding the roots of the London rioting by Casey Rain.