Interview transcript 03/11/09

Daniel Finkelstein, Associate Editor of The Times of London wrote a piece on the eve of Obama’s election about the key difference between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, arguing that while Martin Luther King’s non-violence moved mountains, Malcom X’s violent quest for segregation made him wholly ineffectual.

Dead Prez’s M1 gets his name from the brand of carbine that Malcom X used in his iconic Life Magazine photo, and his politics are suitably militant. However noone can accuse the group behind Hip-Hop – perhaps the most recognisable tune in the history of rap – of lacking reach.

Dead Prez’s daring takes them beyond the usual agitators; in the US where blacks are more empowered lyrics like “F*ck welfare – we say reparations” may be less shocking: here their show at KOKO this friday may make some feel uncomfortable. However this is not to say that their politics have left them marginalized, M1 and his DP partner Stic.man have worked with Jay-Z, Nas, Chuck D, been signed to Sony and feature on every kid’s crash course in hip hop.

Speaking to me from Atlanta, Georgia, M1 is everything you’d expect: polite, with an excessive formality that you feel is overcompensating, slick [he manages to arrange a special delivery package while on the phone] and with a practiced capacity for rigorous political debate.

You say in your first album Let’s Get Free that you grew up with rednecks. How so?

In the southern part of the US there is still that kind of racism [and basic crimes against the black community] that existed in the 1960s. As we came up in high school in the late 1980s and 1990s which was when I was at school in Florida along with Stic.man [the other half of Dead Prez], the line that you are referring to ["I went to school with redneck crackers"]) is accurate because it describes the sons and daughter of people who still believed it was their right to deeem black people inferior.
The south is very racist. Tallahasse Florida [where M1 went to college] for example, is just 40 miles from Georgia, which has a history of brutality. We’re still seeing burning crosses, and I think my time there was definitely influential in where I stand now. In the north there’s a contrast, although the same things are happening. There they won’t call you a nigger to your face, they’ll call you a nigger behind your back.

How did you get into MCing?

I got into MCing being a member of the hip hop community in Brooklyn. I was a DJ and a Graffiti writer. As I became older I got into rapping proper. The person who inspired me to MC more than anyone else was my partner Stic.man. I exude hip hop culture because I am hip hop. The dancin’, the b-boying, the graffiti art, everything.

Critics say you have mellowed with your latest album / mixtape, the DJ Green Lantern-produced Pulse of the People. Do you agree?

Look – we are not compromising our political stance. We have the same political objectives since before we started with Dead Prez. However I’d say that we have definitely been studying different ways of communicating with our people through hip hop. Our style is often changing, because we aim to meet people with one style when we haven’t gotten through with another. Pulse of the People was more of a snapshot – we wanted to give people our personality and our rhymes. It was more of a day in the life of M1 and Stic.man.
The production came from Green Lantern (Eminem’s old DJ) so a lot of the feeling came from him. You can expect anything from Dead Prez – we can write an album that’s totally love related – it doesn’t mean that we’re less political, because revolutionaries need love too. I am still a revolutionary with goals like the complete annihilation of capitalism, by any means necessary, but we are strategists as to how to get to our goal.

Tell us about the hostage situation in Cairo [during a trip from Egypt to Gaza to deliver supplies to the bombed Palestinian communities there]

I was in Palestine with George Galloway and UK rapper Lowkey. It became a hostage situation because the Egyptian government didn’t let us leave our hotel, and had no intention of us getting to the border of Gaza. We were held at that perimeter. There was a suspicious looking security detail following us about – they say they were for our security, but I know they were watching us to make sure they didn’t do anything.
Watching the leadership of George Galloway, being able to meet MCs like Lowkey, was an honour. These people will be my comrades for life.

Is it true you discovered an Egyptian informer in your midst at one stage?

It was George Galloway himself who identified the informant. Informants come from all places. He has the look off an Egyptian man, or someone from North Africa. He was sitting at the back of the room [with 100 people in it] taking notes. When we discovered him it became very inflammatory, with tempers rising, and almost resulted in physical violence.
I doubt he was the only one. In my mind there were snitches everywhere. I personally didn’t know any of the people that I was there with, so everybody to me was questionable. However that comes from me – I undertstand what it means to be on a poltical mission. It’s US that is against us, that wants to keep us down so that we don’t expose the ugly US imperialism that goes on in Gaza.

You say some of the bombed out Gaza strip reminded you of US ghettos. How so?

Indeed – if you go to Brownsville in Brooklyn you get the same kind of buildings that look like they were hit with f16 missiles. I’d have actually thought that had I not known. Of course the intensity of the terror is greater in Gaza. There’s a place called Hunters Point in San Francisco that is enduring the same kind of chemical warfare as Gaza – they’re dropping bombs that are laced with depleted Uranium in Gaza, while in Hunters Point the whole community sits on top of chemical waste. I was able to draw a lot of comparisons between the war in Gaza and the war in the USA.

What would you to people that say that Hell Yeah [the video from their Revolutionary But Gangsta album where they depict armed robbery and fraud as ways to 'pimp the system'] was a negative, dangerous video?

I would say to them to check Hollywood, and check Arnold Schwarzenegger, check Ronald Reagan, who was an actor in Hollywood who became the president of the US. And then I’d say check the negative message emitted from that toxic place into the minds of our people, versus our video Hell Yeah.
Hollywood puts the idea of fear into US citizens’ heads. However I hope that nobody looks at a video and tries to live their life from a video. If someone looks at that video and says ‘I’m gonna run out and do it’ I’d say they have no direction, I’d say they need another level of leadership in their life. It doesn’t actually give the correct details of how to fake a credit card – anyone who hustles is going to know that.

It is exactly what it is – its a song – it’s imagination. Just as Ice Cube when he gave us ‘It Was a Good Day’, it’s not the exact scenario that he didn’t have to shoot someone to have a good day [one of the lyrics] – its just a feeling – its music .

And we should be allowed the artistic licence to be able to use music just as that. The point of the video is that we shouldn’t have to live like this in order to survive.
We should be able to express violence – we should be able to express peace – we should be able to express love – any emotion that we feel – because we’re artists.

Run us through the creation of the seminal Hip Hop bassline

I remember we were at the end of the recording process for our first album. Because of the cookie cutter approach to the hip hop industry we were not able to come up with what they call a ‘single’ for the radio. Actually we weren’t trying to make a radio song – we were trying to make a revolutionary album – which couldn’t be picked apart. Anyway – I remember being in our room frustrated with this – and Stic.man says: ‘we ought to do something like this’, and he says: ‘play the beat’ and he starts to mix a noise in and out on keyboard, and that’s how Hip Hop was made. It was made in one second. Then I heard it and said ‘we should make the hook like this ‘Hip Hop…Hip Hop’, and then in one minute I wrote my rap, Stic wrote his rap and the next day we went and recorded it.

Do you ever regret the positions that radicalism puts you in? For example supporting a corrupt government like Chávez’s

Well, if radicalism means having a firm position about being anti-imperialist and then you have Hugo Chávez who is anti-imperialist, you make a huge assumption by saying Chávez’s government is corrupt – I think you make a judgement that no jury will support.
I think that my radicalism binds me in a strategic way in unions that are based on principle, on united politics. No government is perfect – one thing I do know is that the United States government is a criminal government, and that is proven – we can’t say whether Chávez’s government is criminal, but we do know that George Bush is a criminal and that Obama has done some criminal things.
Does that put me in the room with questionable characters? No. It puts me in a room with people who use critical thinking to help them arrive at new conclusions.

So for you do the ends justify the means in politics?

I wouldn’t say that the ends always justifies the means, I would say that there is an end to the misery of black people, and it has to come with direct action. Does that mean that anything goes? No. I wouldn’t use the same tactics and language as our opressor.

What car do you drive?

It used to be a Nissan. before that, a Chevrolet. However people miss the point if they judge a revolutionary on what car he drives. Revolutionaries wear three piece business suits and go to million dollar meetings . The image of a revolutionary wearing tattered clothes and a red star is that of the old revolutionary. If we acted that kind of way the revolution would never win. It would be very poor to judge a revolutionary on what car he drove.

You were described as the most reactionary rap since Public Enemy when your first album dropped. What was it like collaborating with Chuck D on your latest joint?

He’s an amazing individual – I have worked with Chuck in many ways – being in a studio with him is my favourite. I’ve worked with him on radio shows, I’ve done interviews with him, I’ve been on panels with him – as a whole human being I think he’s fantastic.

Tell us about your forthcoming album Information Age

We’ve been talking about it for a year and a half. It’s a different kind of production – with more up-beat more synthesized sound. Its political objectives are very clear – to provide a political education from the standpoint of information that will arm the masses up with love, health and information.

1,000,000 in the UK recently voted for the BNP, a party which has been widely condemned for its racist policies. What are your views on this?

There is no doubt – this is war. Sometimes they call it a war on poverty, sometimes they call it a war on crime – which means a war on poor and oppressed people, sometimes its a war on immigration. It’s clear – these are tactics of war.

Interview conducted by Miguel Cullen on November 3, 2009.

Visit the Soundboys section of his website www.stateofthearts.org.uk for an organic non Q&A version of the interview