2015: The year that rap’s “free n*ggas” re-wrote the “New Negro” Archetype
Here’s a shocking newsflash: Kendrick Lamar didn’t release the best rap album of 2015.
Rather, Kendrick was tied for that honor with a group of black male emcees who, 100 years after the likes of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston and more wrote pieces in then-Howard University professor Alain Locke’s 1925 Harlem Renaissance anthology The New Negro, successfully refreshed that notion as the “free n*gga archetype.” At a time where black bodies are “being destroyed” at an alarming rate, it’s not a moment too soon.
In doing something much bigger than rap in 2015, rap artists including Kendrick, Kanye West, Tyler, the Creator, Lil Wayne, Killer Mike, Big Sean, J. Cole, Chance the Rapper, Lil B the Based God, Oddisee and more blended hyper-awareness of America’s post “post-racial” reality with a digital age version of the same “great migration” that allowed blue-collar Southerners and educated Northerners to create the Harlem Renaissance. In doing so, these rappers didn’t just make great music, they successfully re-invigorated black consciousness to early 20th century levels of awareness.
Just like the Harlem Renaissance, 2015’s stellar year for conscious black rappers didn’t happen by accident. Similar to the 1920s outbreak of significant black intellectual progress, societal conditions had to occur in order to make this impressive epoch of thought and action occur. Akin to (but different than) the 1920s, what happened in 2015 was the culmination of a stunning decade in which groundbreaking black achievement and the digital age almost succeeded in disrupting the connection between race and second-class citizenry for African-Americans. For those who didn’t pay attention or who need a refresher, let’s play catch up, shall we?
- By 2006, Lil Wayne emerged as a rap superstar after having the door to pop greatness smashed open by his affiliation with Universal Records-distributed Cash Money Records. Cash Money was started by Bryan “Birdman” Williams and Ronald “Slim” Williams, a pair of brothers from the ghettos of New Orleans, Louisiana. Regarding why he started the label in 1991, Birdman told HitQuarters, “I was hoping it would get us out of the projects and into a positive way of life. And we wanted to help other people get out of this poverty.” Helping people out of poverty included a 1998 deal between Cash Money and Universal Records that involved a $30 million pressing and distribution with $3 million advance, entitling the label to 85% of its royalties, 50% of its publishing revenues and ownership of all masters.
- In the decade between 2004–2013, Kanye West went from Roc-a-Fella Records beatmaker and the creative force behind Jay-Z’s 2001 hit “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” to being a critically-acclaimed (and lambasted) firebrand of an artist who embraced an almost anti-gangsta aesthetic. As well, in diving into middle class, baroque, electro, techno, pop and noise punk inspirations, re-introduced all of these sounds into now extremely mainstream hip-hop culture. 25 million-plus albums and 15 solo or collaborative efforts topping charts worldwide later, and he’s a ubiquitous and iconic mainstream presence.
- Compton-born Kendrick Lamar embraced the gangsta aesthetic that Kanye never did. In that particular aesthetic being that of late-80s archetypal rap bad-men NWA, he blended that legacy with an unrepentant honesty, awareness of keeping his music rooted to the urban struggle. When incorporating the history of black music and black people (alongside that aforementioned aesthetic) availed itself to him with sophomore album To Pimp A Butterfly, he created a modern masterpiece.
- Tyler, the Creator was the leader of the Odd Future collective, a group of rappers, artists and generally creative and intelligent teenagers inspired by the groundbreaking creativity of performers like Pharrell Williams and non-directly by the same type of middle class quasi-political aggravation that motivated punk acts like the Sex Pistols. Eight years and one Jay-Z brokered label deal where full creative control was granted to Tyler and his collective of friends later, 2015 found him ultra-aware of life, the cost of creative liberty and a desire to find happiness by any means necessary.
- Artists like Chicago’s Chance the Rapper, Atlanta’s Killer Mike, San Francisco’s Lil B the Based God, Detroit’s Big Sean, Fayettville, North Carolina’s J. Cole and Washington, DC’s Oddisee fit in as those who fell in line behind the Kanye Wests and Lil Waynes of the world who blew the doors off of the established industry. Their legacy allowed for performers like Chance, Lil B, Mike and Oddisee to develop sustainable internet-based fanbases independent of the (by 2015) dying label model and for performers like Sean and Cole to grow so disenchanted with label life (but remain in the system) that they began to turn inward and emerge as their own best selves after ten years of aimless material that accrued fans, but may have fallen short of critical acclaim.
Throw into the mix that created the “free n*gga archetype” the two-term American presidency of America’s “first black President,” Barack Obama. Obama’s election was in many ways fostered by a voting bloc of first-time voters, second-and-third time Caucasian voters and black people in general who had likely grown comfortable with black power as a guiding socio-cultural force via seeing Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” and “Stronger” hit the top of the pop charts in 2005 and 2007 respectively. Add in Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” and Tha Carter III albums smashing pop culture to bits by February 2008 and the “free n*gga” era was in full effect. Add in Tyler, the Creator’s mantra of “kill people, burn shit, fuck school” and Kanye talking about “POWER” in 2009, and the effects of black consciousness in the mainstream during the Obama presidency were certainly were being felt and heard.
The story of the creation of the “free n*gga archetype” continues with this new era of conscious black rappers running both mainstream and digital culture simultaneously. Lil B, Oddisee, Killer Mike and Chance the Rapper have NEVER had a mainstream hit single. However, between the Based God’s “Wonton Soup,” Oddisee’s album People Hear What They See, Killer Mike’s stellar work alongside El-P with Run the Jewels and Chance the Rapper’s excellent Acid Rap mixtape, the digital-era’s internet-only fanbase has successfully crowned all four of these artists as sustainable kings of the genre. When Killer Mike is eating lunch with Democratic nominee for President of the United States Bernie Sanders, Lil B is routinely speaking at college campuses, Chance the Rapper headlining Trillectro and being named a “Chicagoan of the Year” plus Oddisee still brilliantly fighting The Good Fight, there’s something definitely noteworthy happening.
Much like the Harlem Renaissance experience involving what, in retrospect, must’ve seemed like repeated thunder-strikes of brilliance by black progressives, 2015 has been a similar time. Consider the idea that there were weeks and months in the Harlem Renaissance in say, 1925–26 when a work by Langston Hughes would be topped with a work by Zora Neale Hurston, while a legend like W.E.B. DuBois could swing in and write A Negro Art Renaissance and re-set the bar and keep the creative forces apparent in the nascent creative movement vibrant, relevant and wholly progressive.
This was the case in 2015, wherein at various points, a creative force like Chance the Rapper changed the expectation of what a creatively “free” artist could achieve. Foremost, Chance released Surf, a free album he recorded with his soul band The Social Experiment. As well, he put out brilliant collaborative singles with the likes of BJ the Chicago Kid and Noname Gypsy. By the time he released a free mixtape with Lil B the Based God, the game had changed forever.
J. Cole and Big Sean released albums, too. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive actually was a harbinger of this push by coming out in December 2014, with the only significant marketing push behind the album being a YouTube video saying that the album was coming on December 9. The album featured singles like “No Role Modelz” which is described by Pitchfork’s Craig Jenkins as “(parlaying) a suspicion about a hookup being a golddigger into a tirade about black women lacking respectable public figures, crudely suggesting that ‘she’s shallow but the pussy deep.’” Also, Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise features as its mainstream hit single a song bluntly entitled “I Don’t Fuck With You.” In both artists stripping away the facade of niceties typically associated with top-40 pop rap, their brazen honesty about themselves, their lives and society in general was incredibly well-received.
While every word has been written about Kendrick Lamar’s black empowerment magnum opus of an album To Pimp A Butterfly, relatively fewer words have been written about Tyler, the Creator’s sophomore album Cherry Bomb. It’s an excellent, oftentimes acerbic and generally fun-loving cultural take that arguably reaches its creative apex when Tyler pairs with fellow kings of this “Harlem Renaissance”-like era of “conscious” black intellectualism Kanye West and Lil Wayne for “Smuckers.” Moreso than what Tyler and Wayne say, let’s focus on the words of Kanye West, as in not just containing the term “free n*gga archetype,” but breaking down exactly what that means to him, we get a glimpse of where black folk are headed emerging from this progressed era of black awareness.
Why, oh why, why, why don’t they like me?
Cause Nike gave a lot of niggas checks
But I’m the only nigga to ever check Nike
Richer than white people with black kids
Scarier than black people with ideas
Nobody can tell me where I’m headin
But I feel like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen at my weddin
They say I’m crazy, but that’s the best thing goin for me
You can’t Lynch Marshawn if Tom Brady throwin to me
I made a million mistakes, but I’m successful in spite of ‘em
I believe you like a fat trainer takin a bite or somethin
I wanna turn the tanks to playgrounds
I dreamt of 2Pac; he asked me “Are you still down?”
Yeah my nigga, it’s on, it’s on, it’s on, it’s on
I know they tell they white daughters “Don’t bring home Jerome”
I am the free nigga archetype, I am the light and the beacon
You can ask the deacon
It’s funny, when you get extra money
Every joke you tell just be extra funny
I mean, you can even dress extra bummy
Cocaine bathroom break, nose extra runny
And I gave you all I got, you still want extra from me
Oxford want a full-blown lecture from me
And the Lexus pull up, errr, like hop, I hopped out, like wassup?
Err-err-err, step back, hold up, my nigga, you suck, hold up
I studied the proportions
Emotions runnin at a Autobahn speed-level
Had a drink with fear, and I was textin God
He said “I gave you a big dick, so go extra hard”
Kanye’s verses on “Smuckers” may be the greatest gift to progressive black awareness since anything written since the era of the Harlem Renaissance. In invoking religion, sociology, issues related to wealth and empowerment, pop culture, sports and more, it’s everything that black people should be thinking and stated in exactly the way that black people should be thinking about it. In embodying everything that Alain Locke could’ve been feeling when he developed The New Negro, everything that transpired after its writing and all of the fascinating things black people should be considering regarding the future of our race and culture, it’s astounding.
In 2016, let’s consider the idea that the eight years of Barack Obama’s American presidency that served as a harbinger to this “Harlem Renaissance” movement will be done, and could be followed by evil American white dude Donald Trump taking over the controls. As well, consider the idea that even after all of this positive development for black consciousness that the most dominant pop stars are still a white Canadian pop singer, a willowy blonde white American woman, and a heartbroken UK-based white vocal powerhouse.
2015 was the year that rap’s “free n*ggas” re-wrote 1925’s “New Negro” archetype. Given where we’re likely headed as black people, and what we’ll likely need to steel ourselves against black lives not mattering anymore, again, it’s not a moment too soon.
