The Tight Rope

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As we navigate the balance between hope and uncertainty, we invite you to join Dr. Cornel West & Professor Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope, a weekly program where we welcome listeners and guests as thought collaborators. The Tight Rope is rich in creative, unfiltered dialogue on topics ranging from culture, art, and music to the contours of systemic racism, philosophy, the power of Socratic self-examination, and the possibilities of a peaceful and just world. Our innovative and interactive format will highlight the professors’ combined expertise to encourage critical thinking, self-reflection, and human connection as we navigate The Tight Rope.

Episodes

Thursday Jul 23, 2020

No Justice, No Peace: Rapsody on Art, Activism, and the Power of Music

Thursday Jul 23, 2020

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Tight Rope, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose engage in an honest and invigorating conversation with emcee Rapsody. Calling in from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rapsody speaks about current and future projects and her role in today’s young generation and music industry. Together, they wrestle with how to protect one’s creative spirit in a fad-driven, consumerist market. Tune in to this vulnerable and unforgettable episode of The Tight Rope.

Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.

Tricia Rose

Professor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.

Rapsody

Rapsody is Grammy nominated emcee, lyricist, rapper, and recording artist. This multi talented North Carolina native is celebrated for Laila’s Wisdom (2017), her breakthrough album that earned her two Grammy nominations including best rap album in league with Lamar, Jay-Z, Migo, and Tyler the Creator. One of the greatest female rappers of all time, Rapsody continues to share her awakened, bold voice and creative rhyme schemes in her 2019 album Eve, dubbed a “masterpiece of hip-hop feminism,” released by 9th Wonder’s Jamla and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Each track of Eve is named for an influential Black woman, including “Michelle,” “Oprah,” and “Sojourner.” Rapsody works with the biggest artists in the industry, including Chance The Rapper, Erykah Badu, Raekwon, Anderson .Paak, Estelle, Kendrick Lamar, Busta Rhymes and Mac Miller, among others.

Insight from this episode:

Strategies on supporting youth activists, empowering their voices, and harnessing improvisational creation.
Benefits of intergenerational connections and opportunities in preserving musical traditions, sounds, and legacies.
Details on Rapsody’s fight against the pressures of the commodification of the music industry.
Behind-the-scenes reflections from Rhapsody on her inspiration for Laila’s Wisdom and Eve, including songs that did not make it onto the album.
Details on Rapsody’s future projects.
Secrets to defining your own path— true to your identity and goals— and forming habits to improve your life.

Quotes from the show:

“Almost every emcee and producer I interviewed back in the 80s and early 90s talked about their parents’ record collection as an amazing archive of sound and experience that they were both being bequeathed and also being held away from. They said, “My daddy said don’t get in my record collection!” ...It was about really having a cultural archive that the generations wanted to relate to and connect to. That is probably [hip hop’s] most important intergenerational legacy.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

“There’s so many connections to the Panthers, to the Civil Rights Movement, in hip hop... Through hip hop, [Rapsody’s] connecting Tupac to his mom but also to the legacy of the politics of respecting Black women and really just respecting ourselves and each other.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

“You cannot box up black genius, black creativity, confined to any genre.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3

“What hip hop really did was try to make music in a context in which [its] tradition was being completely undermined…. the schools are not teaching the Black music tradition, and then they’re not getting access about it. So hip hop had to work with the shards of that legacy.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

On young leaders: “We appreciate you. We see you. We hear you. You should be celebrated for being fearless, for using your voice, for being young leaders. [And we want to] give them a space to learn how to be activists.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“There’s never been and there never will be a Black freedom struggle without Black music being at the center of it to keep us fortified, keep our souls determined, and also just keep a sense of humor and laughter along with the tears.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3

“Music is the soundtrack of the times” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

On the commodification of the music industry: “Artists like [Rapsody] who become the real conduits and caretakers of the best of our tradition, which is the best tradition in the modern world— the Black musical tradition— you have a heavier burden.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3

“The pressure that an artist who wants to be free, like [Deniece Williams’ “Free”] really expressed at its core is about how to be yourself, how to take the art form seriously, not cave into faddish sounds, not cave into basically white supremist thinking about black subjectivity. That is very hard to do.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

“Improvisational creation is a way of putting to music and putting to words the experience and condition they’re facing. It’s in that act of creation that I think a lot of that market pressure can be pushed off… it’s in that place that you imagine new things. It’s when you’re not doing exactly what is being expected that you have your own political surprises, emotional surprises.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

“A lot of times, the industry likes to narrow the scope of what we’re supposed to create, how we’re supposed to look creating it, and the voice that we have. Back in the days, we had so much ownership. We had mom and pop stores, we had our own radio stations, we had the Chitlin’ Circuit.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

On maintaining her creative spirit: “The greatest thing I had was 9th Wonder and Young Guru, who were my mentors. And the first thing they did before I put out any music was they sat me down and they said, you have to define your line right now. You have to define what you won’t do, what you will do, what you won’t compromise. Know what you want out of this business first, so you know how to maneuver and make the best decisions.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“We first knew it was going to be a marathon. Anything you want to last 20 years, you have to build a strong foundation of.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“I didn’t want to be a cookie cutter version of anyone… how I am is enough, I don’t have to change that. I don’t want to become this sexual rapper. That’s not my lane, that’s not honest to who I am.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“You have to be willing to fall on your face, and then see what your bounce back is like because creativity goes hand in hand with a certain vulnerability and invincibility.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3

On inspiration for Laila’s Wisdom: “One quote [my grandmother Laila] would always say… “Oh you came to give me my flowers.” It made me think what flowers do I want to give to the world? What generation do I want to inspire? What seeds do I want to leave behind? …I took that and used that as part of the album. I want to give you these flowers. I want to give you the best of me that I can give you and hope that it inspires you to be the best in you.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“I know what Lauryn Hill meant to me, and what Queen Latifah meant to me, MC Lyte, without them I wouldn’t be the woman I am today. Without Phylicia Rashad, without Cicely Tyson, without Nikki Giovanni. So I had to show up as myself and be that person that they were for me but for the next generation. That’s why I can’t compromise my art, I can’t afford to for the culture.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

On compromise: “I have to go against the grain… even if I fall flat on my face and fail, I’m willing to take that risk because I have nieces, I have young girls that I know, that need to see what a woman in hip hop looks like, to see the rainbow and spectrum of what we can be. I know people want it. I just have to stick with it and knock down the door.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“Who cares what the Grammy’s think? The Grammy’s could have done left you [Rapsody] behind, and we’d still be behind you. That’s the point, to have our own standards.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

On reaching a younger audience: “[Parents can make sure their children] have a good palate and good beginning of what good music sounds like. When they grow up, of course, you’re able to like what you like in your generation, but you also know and are connected to the sound you grew up in… that’s one thing that you can always do, is expose them to a wide range of music, just to lay the foundation.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

“The best habit for improving my life was figuring out how to keep the rage that white supremacy produces at bay, figuring out how to keep it at enough distance that it doesn’t circulate in my body literally. It’s a disposition that allows my habits to thrive.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3

“Cultivate at the highest level the capacity to listen, the capacity to serve, and the capacity to find joy in fighting for freedom.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3

“We haven’t done the best job of protecting our culture that is hip hop. We give it away too easy. And they use that against us. I’ve heard of plans to take control of our culture. And they’ve done it by taking control of the radio and the mediums, and allowing us to give our art away, and our ownership away, and our voice away, and our creativity away. And we have to find a way to get that back because it is sonic warfare at the end of the day.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3

Music from Rapsody:

The Idea of Beautiful (2012)

Laila’s Wisdom (2017)

Eve (2019)

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