This Black History Month is the perfect time to reflect on a seismic album that hipped a whole generation to the extraordinary richness of the African-American experience
The song’s archival flavor is appropriate, seeing that “Fight the Power” — an all-hands-on-deck anthem originally commissioned by Spike Lee forthe previous July — is intended as a post-soul update of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the 1900 hymn by James Weldon Johnson that’s been dubbed the Black National Anthem.was indeed make the planet “jump along to the education.
That year, regarded as the zenith of Black nationalist rap, there were also legions of faux fellow travelers. No need to name names. But the climate got so contrived that, three years later, the Chris Rock vehiclewould brilliantly satirize kufi-wearing conscious rappers whose entire lyrical output amounted to “I’m Black, y’all!”
’s highlights. And it isn’t on “Revolutionary Generation,” which synthesizes a doctoral thesis–worthy range of ideology from the Black intellectual past into five-odd minutes of fury. Suitably, a sample from the same Jesse Jackson speech utilized on “Rebel Without a Pause” is paired with a fiery snippet of a Mary McLeod Bethune slogan popularized in the Seventies by the radical Combahee River Collective: ”The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its woman.
On the blistering “Burn Hollywood Burn,” Chuck, Ice Cube, and Big Daddy Kane play the streets’ Siskel and Ebert. Long-festering concerns about Black representation in the movies — call it the poetic piggybacking off of Buggin’ Out’s “How come you got no brothers on the wall?” demand in Lee’s masterpiece — lead to a skewering of stereotypical maids, nannies, and foot-shuffling chauffeurs when these rap superheroes crash the multiplex.
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