IS GONNA TAKE ME BACK TO L.A. HIP HOP
author: L.U.I.S.
author: Pancho McFarland, Phd.
Hip hop, like our entire world, is ailing. But just as in our world where we find pockets of resistance everywhere from U.S. cities to the Latin American countryside to the Middle East, each hood or barrio has its homegrown rap revolutionaries. Every community has its artists who defy the norm of day-old beats, the canned money-cars-girls-violence lyrical content and bitten styles. Krazy Race proves with New World Games that he deserves to be recognized as a creator and innovator, a lucid thinker and talented vocalist. He works with eight talented producers to lay down a diverse soundscape that at times rocks harder than heavy metal, rolls smooth as a lowrider and drops funk like a '70s bassline.
The hard-driving production from Ringleader DJ Ace of Rhyme Poetic Mafia on "Toxic" is a highlight on the disc, especially for those who like hip hop that comes at you raw. Ace begins with a sparse introduction dominated by a repeated two-bar piano line. He quickly adds the heavy, distorted guitar sounds of A. Laguna, and a funky, relentless drum rhythm. Guest, Savage Joe, and Krazy Race spit in your face lyrics throughout and Ace finishes the masterpiece with quick scratching.
DJ Quad of 5th Battalion Entertainment begins "Illuminati" with a tight high hat rhythm. With the opening lines from Krazy Race he adds an eery piano line, a hard repeated kick drum sound, occasional power guitar chords held for a couple of measures, and other assorted sounds. Over this track Krazy Race drops knowledge and asks us questions about the elite policymakers, politicians, and crooks/businessmen who control most of our resources including our labor and food supply. He forces us to face up to such facts as the founding of this country as the theft of native land ("America the beautiful was one big crime" and "the land your standing on right now is fuckin stole"), the secret nature of the decisions of world capitalist planners at the World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund ("who will always rule this world with inner secrecy"), our dissolving civil rights ("seems like everybody's blind to the facts/ask your congressman about the Patriot Act"), militarization ("they created NAFTA/what comes after?/a global army government that brings world disaster"), mind control/psychological operations/propaganda, and increasing corporate control ("foreign nations run by corporations"). Krazy Race opens his critical, intellectual tour-de-force with a definition of genocide and ends with his response to the global elite as he samples a speech given by Students for a Democratic Society leader, Mario Savio, in which he encourages people to reject elite politics and violence and "stop the machine from working at all."
Lyrically, Krazy Race is among the best as he "spits soliloquies and metaphors that will never be cloned." He has the gift of language similar to that of Mos Def, Langston Hughes, raulsalinas, GURU, or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for that matter. While the production and lyricism distinguishes Krazy Race from most rap artists today, what really keeps me coming back to this cd is his ability to analyze social reality from the perspective of a young, brown, urban intellectual. Whether he is examining his hometown, Los Angeles, in "City of Angels," telling the story of the making and mindset of a young gangbanger in "Hole in His Soul," or relating his struggles and triumphs as in "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" and "Soul Asylum II," Krazy Race illuminates important topics with rare precision and lucidity.
Krazy Race's revolutionary critique on "Dedicated" and "Fact or Fiction" put him in the same class of political commentators as Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, El Vuh, Immortal Technique, F.I.L.T.H.E.E. Immigrants, Edward Said, Iron Sheik and Psycho Realm. Like these artists and intellectuals Krazy Race drops knowledge about the political and economic systems that George Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney, John Kerry and other global economic and political elites would rather you did not hear. On "Dedicated" Krazy Race links the destruction of native Mexican cultures and peoples with current policies that cause misery, pain and poverty in urban Chicana/o communities. With the following lines he suggests that Chicanas/os are being systematically undermined: "ever noticed in these streets liquor stores on every corner?/ killa-California, such a poisonous formula" and "and yet you celebrate the hate,/days of genocide where my kind was robbed and raped/In 1521 we we're slaugthered by the thousands/Now in 2000 we're still living in project-housing." Of course, these things are news to many of us who have been educated and socialized in a racist, eurocentric public school system and U.S. society. Many of us, Chicanas/os, have had a similar situation of brainwashing as Krazy Race describes in these lines from the song. "As I'm sitting in class their trying to teach me European/I'm listening to a voice, but I represent the bean/- eating population/Founders of cultivation/people of the SUN, mighty brown nation Who've been suppressed and held down for many long years."
"Fact or Fiction" continues his analysis of injustice, linking crimes and immoral behaviors to President Bush and others in his administration. He quotes President Bush in the intro. Bush in his normally smug and arrogant manner discusses the massive assault on Iraq which has now claimed over 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives. Krazy Race claims that as soon as "George Bush gets in office/global genocide" and acknowledges that "we're living in hard times." The greed of Bush and his corporate buddies ("mr. president/I've come to realize/you want complete control of everything under the skies") is currently the central cause of misery for millions. These "new world bonnie and clydes," thieves and murderers invaded Iraq for oil and greed. Any rational examination of the facts reveals the same truths. Bush is merely a "famous frontman for the powers that be" who continues to make "money for one percent of the nation." Krazy Race sounds off about the stolen 2000 Presidential election and wonders "will the people vote him back?"
As I write this the U.S. public goes to the polls in an election that so far is a dead heat. With so much disinformation and distractions fed to us through the media and popular culture (including corporate rap), we are likely to elect a dangerous man. In this era of propaganda and psychological operations aimed at keeping crooks and villains in power, artist-intellectuals like Krazy Race are needed. This cd is very necessary.
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