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The teacher speaks KRS One on being both a sovereign power and a slave by MIREILLE SILCOTT
Mirror: Hi Kris! KRS One: How do you say your name? M: Mireille, pronounced Mi-ray. K: [raps] Mir-a-a-ay, oh, oh, mo-r-a-a-a-y, please stop mo-r-a-a-a-y! Mo-ray, Mo- ray! M: Do you like it? K: Yes, it makes your tongue feel good! M: So, we've only got 20 minutes. K: Come on! Bring it on! M: Your friend Zizwe Mtafuta-Ukweli once wrote, "Recording artists are forms of slaves: owned, bought and sold." Are you a slave? K: Yup. I'll be free in 20 minutes, though. But Zizwe's statement comes from the idea of capitalism as a society. M: As a society? K: Oops, sorry, wow! I meant, ha, ha, capitalism as an economic system, a system of buying and selling. Now, where I'm from, that's called the system of pimp and hoe. You sign a recording contract, saying "I'm gonna work and someone else is gonna get most of the money." M: So you're not making enough money? K: As an artist, no. As KRS One, the hustler, yeah. M: You've said you think religion is slavery, but you preach hip hop as a religion. Is hip hop slavery too, then? K: No, but hip hop might become a religion, and thus might become slavery. But now, we're the originators. We're Israel now, in Jerusalem. M: Something intrinsic to both organized religion and hip hop is the clique mentality. Why is the clique so evident in hip hop? K: When you say clique do you mean click? M: Like a grouping of people. K: That's it. These clicks go back to the African tradition, to tribalism, something in black people's blood. It's a human trait, but for some reason black people are the only people dying because of it. We're the ones who've taken this [booming voice] "My click is the Ingugu click, and your click is the Gingugu! Now I have to kill you!" stance. We can't exist on the same turf. M: So you actually believe that violence is inherent to the culture? I'm sure many racists would agree. K: Yes, yes, yes. It's a part of African tradition that maybe Africans need to overcome. Definitely a bad habit. M: Um, let's move on to talking about lyrics... lyrics coming out now. When I listen to a Wu Tang album, sometimes I find it low on meaning. Do you? K: I always speak the truth, so my answer is: I don't think anyone could hang with KRS One lyrically. I'm the greatest lyricist. But Wu Tang, at times, show genius. When they become more conscious of themselves they'll stroke this genius more often. M: You once wrote, "We've been tricked into the consciousness of me, myself and I." That being said, how do you justify your self-promotion? K: Well, the public perceives me as a me. I have to come in [raps] "Yes, yes, KRS is the dopiest, ain't I? Yes, yes I am!" Man must be self-evident. That's when you're god-like on earth. M: Despite the aforementioned tribalism, you often rap about unity. But you do shun those--PM Dawn come to mind--who "aren't hip hop enough." Can you explain that? K: KRS One is the authoritative utterance, the sovereign power of hip hop. PM Dawn felt that they could challenge me! They said "KRS One is a teacher--a teacher of what?" This is not to be debated, this... [phone cut]. KRS One waxes lyrical with Rascalz and Shades of Culture on Saturday, May 17 at Spectrum. 9:30pm, all ages. $22 |
Blastmaster KRS One doesn't speak delicately. As one of the originators of conscious rap and the throat behind Boogie Down Productions, he's knocked out '80s party rhymes and dummy boasts under a brilliant blow of politics and intelligent lyrics. He's become known to most rap partisans as simply "The Teacher." And while KRS One (an acronym for Knowledge Rules Supreme Over Nearly Everyone; he was Bronx-born as Krisna Parker) has an obvious penchant for shock tactics, he also has a affection for verbose lecturing quite fitting his title. The Mirror seized 20 minutes out of Jive Records's crammed KRS interview schedule to talk to the man who says he's "the greatest MC in the world." And talk he did, right up until the record label cut the phone line after the interview surpassed the allotted time.