SOHH NYC

I know Immortal Technique has been out for a while now, but he didn't really catch my radar until I heard his verse on DJ Green Lantern's 2006 mixtape Alive on Arrival (which, to this day, remains one of my favorite tapes). On this tape there was a song called "Impeach the President," where--alongside Dead Prez and Saigon-- Technique killed all 20 bars. I've been loyally following him ever since. Shortly after that song came out he announced the coming of a DJ Green Lantern mixtape-- that never came. Many were anticipating this mixtape, and others, understandably not into the angry black man preaches and rebellions of "revolutionary hip-hop," said that Technique was dope, but they couldn't stand to hear an entire album from this guy.

In Technique's Myspace blog, he hit on this subject. And he also talked about how a certain executive said that we as black and Latino people are looked upon as a bunch pee-brained idiots who can't and never will comprehend political conversation.

I remember being on the subway train writing rhymes and running into people I used to know and telling them about what I was doing and they would look at me like I was crazy. First off because I had a legal source of employment (I finally found a job an internet company in 2000 doing absolutely nothing,) and then I had started making all these rhymes about the world and about the Revolution that I saw this nation headed for. I thought about how an illusion of freedom could not last forever and as much as we had technological advancements, we were still held captive by our own disingenuous relationship with our human spirit and with the Earth. Eventually the world would turn on us, and we would begin to turn in on ourselves. Most of my peoples understood what I was saying but some just scoffed at the idea of getting Revolutionary Hip Hop and Street Hip Hop combined in a manner that could infiltrate several demographics. They just told me I was dreaming and missing out on "street money", that was going to pay the bills.

I learned a lot about real friendship during this time and a lot about the industry. I constructed an album called "Revolutionary Vol.1", with the help of many of my friends and I began to take it around and sell it myself. I also met with a few major labels to have meetings with them about my music. I would go up to the offices of some executives, both black and white, and the answer was always the same: they loved the lyricism and the concepts of the album but they wanted the politics out. Some liked aspects of what I did, but never felt the vision. Looking back at the situation now I guess I was naïve for thinking that someone who had been ingrained with the idea that acting like a corporate vavasour was the only ticket to success could ever understand what I was saying.

Most of the people I have met in the music industry touted their marketing background and their ability to hustle people into thinking something was dope when it was just nice looking, but they didn't know shit about music. And their struggle coming from the hood was 1 dimensional. They hadn't really left that mentality, they were still a prisoner to it, still a slave to themselves. The worst part came when an executive told me that his kids liked it, that HE liked it he thought it was sick as fuck. He had asked me for an extra copy even. But then he confessed that he didn't think that Black and Latino people would ever understand it. This dude (I'm not going to say who it was) actually told me that he didn't think we as a people were smart enough to grasp what I was talking about!

To view the blog in its entirety, click here.

On a side note, people like Immortal Technique-- not cornballs like Al Sharpton-- is what I expect of today's leaders, today's "civil rights activists." Because currently, we have none.

The 3rd World came out yesterday. Cop that.