52 Books in 52 Weeks: The Corner

"Got the game on lock. On a paper chase, can't stop. On a roll, still hot. Gotta be top notch" - 213, Another Summer (...The Hard Way)

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood by David Simon and Ed Burns, 1997 (Broadway Books). The Corner isn't about hip hop. In fact, while it covers a year in the lives of the downtrodden in a neighborhood in East Baltimore in 1993, a sprawl of urban malaise if ever there was one, hip hop is only referenced once. The young hoppers of Monroe and Fayette go crazy whenever they hear a local hip hop anthem blast out at them through car stereos and boom boxes, "Fayette and Monroe, get ya guns out! Get ya guns out!" No, The Corner is about our failed war on drugs, our failed education system, and our failing (or already failed, although that's an abysmal thought) neighborhoods. Communities whose primary problem isn't the drug trade but is the failures of the lie. The lie that says that America will take care of its own. That if you just try hard enough, learn enough, and stay on the right path, that there will be a job and a place for you.

The corner knows it's bullshit. The corner knows that those union jobs aren't there any more and that the government ain't hiring for public works and office workers much anymore. The corner knows these facts without ever having to open the Village Voice or turn on 60 Minutes. The corner knows that if you're living in East Baltimore or Brooklyn or the south side of Chicago or South Central or any of the other neighborhoods that Uncle Sam forgot that America doesn't have a place for you. The corner has a place for you. Can you count? Then you can sling that shit. Can you sell a match to a burning man? Then step up on this corner and tout for me. No brains but a lot of heart and general ambivalence about human life? Stick-up kid have we got a job for you. And you, you just want to get high on the hype and top that shit off with a little coke? Well, that's what all this is here for. You, the loyal customer. We wouldn't be here without you. We don't really care that you're gonna run a caper on your own kids to get these here red tops. We don't care that you will lie to your mother and rob from your brother and, even worse, lie to yourself in order to chase that high. The corner knows that the only thing that matters is survival and whether that means copping enough vials to get you through the day or getting up enough on a package so you can stay laced in Timberlands and take your girl to the movies, well, that's just the way of things.

So why do I keep putting The Corner next to Greg Tate's piece in the Voice this week, and the ensuing conversation, together in my head? Is it because the sense of hopelessness I feel about hip hop is really the sense of hopelessness I feel about our dying inner city and our growing underclass and hip hop is just an easier target? To suggest that hip hop is failing is easy. It's art, it's pop culture, it's disposable. We can always make more hip hop records. To acknowledge that America's truly disadvantaged have failed and been completely failed by the system is much harder because to acknowledge that is to acknowledge something else, that there really isn't a way to fix it. There are no easy answers and, soon, there won't really be a community to fix. Hip hop isn't broken. There is always more art. We can begrudge what sells but for every pimp anthem and blinged out party jam, there's a Def Jux or Stones Throw artist or some local kid with rhyme skills and an A in English class at freestyle Fridays in some back alley joint to sate the hunger.

Tate argues that the "[p]roblem today is that where hiphop was once a buyer's market in which we, the elite hiphop audience, decided what was street legit, it has now become a seller's market, in which what does or does not get sold as hiphop to the masses is whatever the boardroom approves." True, but what Tate doesn't understand, what all we old heads never understand, is that this is just the lie we tell ourselves. If we were once the gatekeepers of hip hop (and that's a lie too), then we let it slip through our fingers. It's the same lie an old drug dealer or addict says about the good old days. The highs were better, the game was better, the players were better, the rules were better.

But hip hop is like the corner. In truth, everything in America is like the corner. The stakes might vary in degrees but the game don't change. Everyday somebody is going to need that fix, whether it's that bomb like Ready to Die or it's a watered down Ja Rule burner bag, somebody is going to be out there to buy that shit. And there will be the J-Kwons and the Cassidys and the other less than clever cats out here selling it.

Maybe we old heads are like old addicts always chasing that first high knowing it's not out there but unable to give up the dream. We can always find $20 on the hype hoping it's going to be the one. Forever hoping that that next record is going to blow our minds like Public Enemy or Poor Righteous Teachers or Ice Cube or BDP. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But hip hop, much like the corner, doesn't care if it blows our minds or moves our butts or leaves us flat. It knows we're coming back, and even if we aren't, the next man is.

The Corner is highly recommended. Especially if you love The Wire.

How this got all wrapped up in the hip hop discussion, I have no idea but here's what others are saying on that:
Hiphopmusic.com
Hip Hop Blogs
I'm So Sinsurr
Pop Life
Hiphopmusic.com: Facing Hip Hop Love Addiction
Kitty Power
Lynne D Johnson
Thought 4 The Day

Comments

[Trent]

Thank you for this Jason.
Great write-up and insight on this ongoing debate(??). I love the anology and everything.

I like your thought here:
"Maybe we old heads are like old addicts always chasing that first high knowing it's not out there but unable to give up the dream. We can always find $20 on the hype hoping it's going to be the one. Forever hoping that that next record is going to blow our minds like Public Enemy or Poor Righteous Teachers or Ice Cube or BDP."

I'm not going to lie, I'm like an old head and I want a record to knock me on my ass like Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions or Cannibal Ox's Cold Vein or DJ Shadow's The Entroducing.

But I feel Gregg Tate's pain. Hip-hop is not what it used to be -- at least for him.

For me, I still see and hear brillance in our music and culture. I will always love hip-hop, I'm just tired of defending it.

I'll try to formulate some sort of cognitive statement on my own blog. I have mixed feelings about Gregg Tate's article.

But reading your viewpoints has help me maintain some faith that hip-hop is not dead . . . it's just in another spirit.

Thanks Jason.

Good work, as usual.

I can't keep up with you guys (EJ, Hashim, Jay Smooth, Lynne, the whole blogsphere)

Peace!

[Jason]

For me, I'm always hoping for 93 Til Infinity or Bizarre Ride II Tha Pharcyde or Ice Cube's Amerikka's Most Wanted or The Predator. I know nobody is going to hit me like those records did but I hold out hope.

I was in expectation for some brilliant work out of New York in a post 9/11 world the way that the LA Riots provided fodder for Cube or the way New York's Reagan Years motivated Chuck D but it just didn't come.

So we settle for weak rhyme slinging and solid production from Kanye West and the adept spitting of Jay-Z who we know could lace us with so much more but just doesn't.

It's not that old high but it's enough to blast us off for the day.

And have I killed the drug metaphor yet?

[Rod]

I read The Corner some years ago, and immediately thought of Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here. I grew up in a neighborhood much like that of described in both books, and had to stay firmly focused to leave.

Both books talk about despair, hopelessness and the cyclical nature of poverty. It's distressing that many non-whites have fanciful notions that 'race' is becoming a non-issue. Simon and Burns seem to imply that it remains the defining lightning rod in our society.

Your blog is an interesting read. You're irreverent and obviously well-rounded, I like your perspective.

I'm curious: what do you think of The Wire and how it's fared at the Emmys? I think the show is incredible, one of the best-written dramas on television. The Times and other critics have agreed. But it's been snubbed by the ATAS, probably because there are so many black faces. I read your bio, and see you are in the business, too. I'm a producer and writer in NYC, news and entertainment.

Check out my blog, Brotha2Brotha.