On Colonialism

An upcoming cricket match has reminded me of a deeply illustrative bit of commentary from the 2009 test match series between the West Indies and England. In a West Indian innings during a limited overs match, the Windies were having one of their sadly all-too-rare periods where they surpass what is expected of the game, and begin scoring and hitting wildly for no loss. These are also the moments where cricket becomes the most entertaining sport on earth.

The English commentary team shifted in their seats for a few overs, audibly strategised, and decided that this was frankly disrespectful - to the bowlers, of course, but most importantly to the game. Grumbling continued, then, in one over, Kevin Pietersen achieved three successive wickets. The commentators could not have been more delighted. Order had been restored, and the underdog lay beaten.

Album of the 'Week': Fear of a Black Planet

Public Enemy are ludicrous. I possess the first issue of the Public Enemy comic, from 2007, in which Chuck D fires up a young, disillusioned black man to fight authority, and, I seem to remember, ninjas. The character voices awestruck approval at the revelatory and liberatory power of Public Enemy's music and Chuck D's public speaking before, during, and after fighting the power. All this would be fine if this was charmingly ill-thought out fan-fiction, but the author of the comic is Chuck D himself. Public Enemy have developed into a middling band of overly earnest, politically confused old men, which would be fine, if they didn't have the most musically radical back catalogue of any popular band of the last 30 years.

'Fear of a Black Planet' is often referred to as the first hip-hop concept album, but it is nothing of the sort. Politically confused, over-long and patchy, there is no concept that can be said to guide the piece. The driving force of the album is utter rage. Rage at the band's detractors, rage at homosexuals, rage at race mixers, at Hollywood, and, finally, 'the power'. Rage breeds incoherence, and, coming to 'Fear of a Black Planet' decades after its release, with its reputation as the apex of politically engaged hip-hop, the unpalatable depths of homophobia and (perfectly understandable) race-hatred were shocking, but not as shocking as the sheer fragmentation of Chuck D's lyrics. It's difficult to discern a thread in any of the lyrics. This is in no way a criticism, it renders his writing a collection of placard slogans and a mass of phrases, delivered in his college-trained radio announcer voice. It does however, get a bit much - Ice-T's verse in 'Burn, Hollywood, Burn' (which can be said, with fair confidence, to have predicted the L.A Riots of 1992) actually arrives as light relief, even when he shouts "don't fight the power/(gunshot) the motherfucker!".

The lyrics are the transcription of a riot of ideas, influences and emotions. They form new beats, get sidetracked, alternate between self-pity and bombast. One of the masterpieces of the album, 'Welcome to the Terrordome' begins "I've got so much trouble on my mind/Refuse to lose". The lyrics as a whole betray a seige mentality, following the controversy created by the band's conduct (particularly Professor Griff's claim that "Jews are responsible for 90% of the evil in the world today" a wonderfully precise bit of utter nonsense), and reflect the broader seige mentality of a black community seeing the gains of the civil rights era rolled back by Reaganomics. The shifting rhythm and shock phrase-turning ("brain game, intellectual Vietnam", "subordinate terror kicking off in error", "most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp") and the authoritative delivery make avoiding engaging with the lyrics impossible. They force debate. That MLK and various faceless nameless orators appear in sample makes this even more delicious.

This, however can be said of any number of earnest rappers. What gives 'Fear of a Black Planet' its continued shock power and enduring status isn't the healthy dose of Louis Farrakhan-era Nation of Islam politics or Chuck D's self-pity, but the mindblowing production of The Bomb Squad. As opposed to the fast majority of hitherto existing hip-hop, each track is through-composed, and the album contains thousands of micro-samples. At one point (the first 20 seconds of the gloriously titled 'Anti-Nigger Machine'), the level of abstraction resembles John Cage's 'Williams Mix'. This alone makes the buffoon I saw perform his rap version of Elton John's Tiny Dancer look even more like an arse. But there's more - the vast majority of the tracks have no tonal centre - no student will ever be able to perform 'Fight The Power' in an ironic fashion at an open-mic night.

But most importantly, the production embraces what devotées of anologue call 'the digital squelch' and computer sequencing (Chuck D even namechecks the Mac on which the album was presumably made). 'Fear of a Black Planet', despite its 'classic' status, belongs to an old school of hip-hop that purists and modern practitioners like to imagine doesn't exist - one that isn't identifiably old, and is directly politically confrontational. The wonder of 'Fear of a Black Planet is that not only has it not dated, but it sounds as though it could have been released in the distant future.

Album of the 'Week': 'Off The Wall'

Amongst all the tearful tributes, Jackson radio marathons and sick jokes (my personal favourite being the most simple - "R, I, P - easy as 1, 2, 3"), a gradual chorus has emerged that regardless of his manifest personal problems, we should concentrate on 'the music'. This is easier said than done, because Jackson's musical decline was pretty much unsurpassed. The dull grandstanding of his later career was a product of one thing - the poor musical and lyrical instincts of the all-powerful Jackson. The greatest parts of his work were all the products of outside influences - the magnificent Jackson 5 records, with tiny Michael's breathtaking vocals backed by Motown session players fucking around on a slow day, and the first two albums with Quincy Jones, 'Off The Wall' and 'Thriller'.

For someone devoted to Top Of The Pops around the time of 'Earth Song' and 'You Are Not Alone', 'Off The Wall' was a genuine surprise - the largest surprise being the sheer aggression underpinning the best tracks. Not only is Jackson's singing not devoid of character, as it was to become, but he fucking goes for it. The insane falsetto of 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough' and the joyous shouting of the title track (with the lyric "living crazy/that's the only way" - a sentiment he took far too literally) are reminders that he was a truly great singer, although, in contradiction to what various cloth-eared pundits have been repeating over the last few days, nowhere near as talented a musician as Mozart and Beethoven. Despite the hyperbole, the soft cloud of harmonies on 'Rock With You' are the closest he, and probably pop music to that point, got to the ecstatic.

Musically, the album pre-dates Jackson's personal and musical flight from his race. The sheer funk of the album, is, again a surprise. The nervy, jumping bassline of the title track, and the iron grooves that pervade the album are a wonder, and mostly the product of Quincy Jones's invention. The subtle, sane use of electronics are probably attributable to this as well - the Quincy-less Jackson would end up sanctioning the terrible production of 'Man In The Mirror'. Strings are used as simply another element, and not the point of the song, as they are at worst.

Given the hundreds of thousands of words written about Jackson following his odd death (there are many more to come...), this post feels oddly truncated. But perhaps the greatest tragedy is that, from 'Thriller' in 1983, his story overwhelmed his music, and, in musical terms, he'd died a very long time ago.

"Massa day done"

The New Statesman is a fixture of university libraries and the recycling bins of people still inexplicably members of the Labour Party. It features pullouts sponsored by Pfizer, the TUC and the Home Office, good arts coverage, and heartbreakingly unjournalistic interviews with New Labour ministers. Darcus Howe is a Trinidadian immigrant, and sometime mainstay of the British Black Panther Party and the Race Today Collective. The nephew of the Marxist writer and cricket theorist CLR James, he has devoted his time on our fair isle to unabashedly railing against white supremacy, capitalism and police brutality, getting hauled in front of a jury for riot and called "a cocoa shunter" by Chris Morris for his troubles.




From 1998 to 2008, Darcus Howe had a column in the New Statesman. While the New Stateman moved through avuncular advice to Blair, support for the Afghan War, lukewarm objection to the Iraq War, disillusionment with Blair, disbelief at Blair, hope in Brown, faith in Brown, disillusionment with Brown, and fixation on Clinton and Obama, Howe's column stood, seemingly immovable and utterly incongrouous. Though sometimes boastful, dumbly autobiographical, and solopsistic (he, or a subeditor, titled an article "Antigua: I am treated like a dog and given cold food", for fuck's sake) there is enough meat here to keep the devoted gnawing away.

A proper, old fashioned libertarian Marxist, with a focus on revolt from below, Howe takes obvious glee in puncturing the bubbles of idiotic grandees and professional shit-stirrers. He states the obvious with as much skill as Julie Burchill at her best, but uses his powers for good, not evil (well, sometimes 1/3rd evil). The rage he feels at the petty attempts of our leaders to control, to project and to patronise leads to an Enlightening blur - in his hand, the frequently spat aphorism "politicians are all the same", actually takes on a pleasing shape. Thus, Howe is the only person ever to compare bow-tie wearing wrong man Louis Farrakhan and war criminal/peace envoy Tony Blair, and with some success. Sometimes, it's actually laugh out loud funny the hate and scorn he pours on the featherweights who blunder into the race relations debate - I will never be able to look at arch-neo-con and cat-that-got-the-cream lookalike Denis McShane without imagining Muslim leaders, heeding his dog-whistle call for integration and praising the "beneficent bwana Denis McShane".

Sadly, Howe's column has gone, along with that of Mark Thomas, and although I didn't notice at the time, the New Statesman underwent something of a radical florish in the period when I was an enthusiastic reader. Now, it's a pitiful husk, with only John Pilger's prose-from-on-high, Owen Hatherley's art criticism and Rachel Cooke's reviews enlivening copy largely inspired by, but sometimes just nicked from government press releases. On top of this, the nearly century old bastion of the soft to hard left is facing a barrage of criticism for refusing to recognise trade unions. As long as it maintains its editorial coziness with the Labour Party, its fortunes are condemned run alongside those of the Labour Party, and right now, the prospects for the New Statesman and the Labour Party look terrible.