SYNCHRONIZED

             I’m fortunate enough to have insurance now,” Tim Parker mused during our conversation in January. “It helped a lot in terms of the pockets and getting into a hospital and whatnot, and not having to go through all of the bullshit.”

             In 2003, Parker—who is better known as the Gift of Gab, Blackalicious emcee—began experiencing severe complications with his eyesight due to an ongoing bout with Diabetes. Untreated it would have led to complete blindness. Wisely, Parker sought medical help immediately, and fortunately he was covered enough to receive proper attention.

             “I had some problems with the arteries in my eyes,” Parker explained, “and they had to take all of the fluid out and put in salt water to replace it. I was fortunate to have insurance, you know? And it was a trip, because around the time that my eyes messed up was when my insurance papers came in.”

             Although grateful for the good timing, what he calls “synchronicity,” there was a hint of indignation in his voice, and he added, “[But] you really shouldn’t have to pay for healthcare. Know what I mean?”

             Gab’s offhand comment reminded me of a conversation I had a few months prior with Def Jux emcee Mr. Lif. Except Lif was a bit more animated on the matter. “[Health care reform] is something that’s needed for sure,” he stated. “But, then again, after you do all of that work to reform the actual health care program, you’ll then have to deal with the good ol‘ racism that still keeps people in the fucking waiting rooms!”

             What was interesting about the two men‘s comments, however, was that while he probably shares a similar perspective with Lif, at the time of our interview Gab was (understandably) more focused on analyzing providence than the system he narrowly avoided being fucked by.

             “It was for the most part humbling, and it really got me to quiet my mind,” Gab recalled. "I was really doing a lot of meditation at the time. It forced me to be still a lot, and I began to peep off of how much the mind goes, and how a lot of times the mind is your tool. That’s one thing that meditation has taught me. I’m not gonna say I had some kind of ‘holy awakening,’ or anything like that, but it made me more appreciative and conscious about my health and being a diabetic. You never really trip off of little things like vision until you don’t have it anymore!”

             TRIPPING CONSCIOUS

             One will find many of Gab’s meditations on mortality on his first solo record, Fourth Dimensional Rocketships Going Up (Quannum Projects).  They are themes also covered on NIA and Blazing Arrow, but perhaps are dealt with even more so here. You sense the reality and transcendence that emanates from behind the speaker. It’s an almost electric kind of static detachment—from the MTV “Cribs” set, from mindlessness and crassness in general. It reminds me of the records that had such a profound influence on me growing up, and Gab too, as it turns out—Stetsasonic, Rodney O & Joe Cooley, Audio Two, Kool G Rap, De La Soul. I had to ask him, pointedly, Where are we at today in hip-hop Gab?

             “More towards the consciousness, like the 80s,” he affirmed. “I think so, but who knows. I hope that something ill doesn’t happen, like having a group that is spiritually aware or politically aware, and they ‘blow up,’ and then that becomes mainstream, and then that gets exploited. That would really be fucked up!” He laughed. “You know what I mean? It would be like the new blaxploitation!"

             The sort of exploitation he speaks of rings true in many circles. It may already be a virus being spread by the over-indulged, higher-than-thou spending forty years backpacking in the desert of the “keeping it underground.” Gab agreed.

             “Take Outkast, Jay-Z, Nas, and Eminem! There are a lot of artists I really like who I feel are making some of the best hip-hop of today…. Emcees are human beings, and we have egos as well.... We’re students of life, and we’re learning lessons too, you know what I mean? I think if you’ve reached a point of awareness to where you have something to share with the rest of the world, and you have that kind of report with people that are listening and paying attention to you, then it’s not just your duty—but everyone’s duty. You’ll have politically aware emcees, and then you’ll have emcees that may lead a gangster or dope dealer’s life that are tripping off of nothing but getting money, and don’t really give a fuck. They have a right to express that, because it’s art, because art doesn’t have to be morally right—it just has to be creative.

             “But to an extent major corporations only put their money behind a certain kind of mind state,” Gab added. “I don’t think if you’re talking about politically conscious things, or quote-unquote ‘spiritual music,’ that the major corporations are trying to get behind that right now—because that’s not hot right now. In reality, I think it’s a really good time for underground hip-hop….”

             Gab paused, then reacted to his own statement.

             “Dammit! I don’t even like to say ‘underground’ or ‘mainstream,’ because it’s about good music! People in the underground might not even be that dope, but because they're waving underground flags they think that automatically makes them dope.

             “And by ‘underground’ I mean music from the heart,” he continued, "music that means something to people with or without a major label—because labels come and go—and that the music will sustain itself. It’s a really good time for independent labels and people doing it themselves. Like, Living Legends have proven that they don’t even need any of the middlemen. They handle all of their stuff themselves—tours, records—they're completely self-sufficient and have proven the philosophy that you can do it without all the glamour and glitz. And that’s what I mean when I say ‘underground hip-hop.’”

             There is another interesting facet of “underground hip-hop.” Many of the new faces dominating conscious hip-hop, such as Atmosphere, EL-P, and Aesop Rock, all happen to share the same light-skinned attributes. And the majority of the people buying it and attending the shows (as with commercial rap) are just as white, with the exception of a lot of Asian cats who have really contributed. It’s quite a different audience when compared to the late 80s.

             “Hip-hop started in the ghetto,” Gab started to explain when I asked him what turns today’s young black audience away from underground hip-hop. “It then spread out to rich people and middle America. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but now when you get shows being promoted—they go to the college area. They don’t go to the barber shops, they don’t go to the projects, they don’t go to the ghettos, they don’t go back to the place where hip-hop started and promote hip-hop. You see what I’m saying? When you see flyers you don’t see any of them in the hood!

             “The promoters are afraid that the club might get shot up or turned out, so they don’t go to certain areas anymore and promote hip-hop. Hip-hop is now promoted to a more upper middle class audience. I could be wrong, I could be corrected, because I’m learning and all, but that’s what I see happening.”

             So does hip-hop need to go back to the ghetto?

             “Absolutely. And as for Blackalicious, Latyrx, DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, Lateef & The Chief, Lifesavas, and Joyo Velarde, we just want to create a comprehensive body of music. We want to be able to leave a legacy for people to look back at Quannum Projects and say, ‘They made some good ass music!’”

             AUTONOMOUS

             The Gift of Gab’s “day job” is pretty much being a full time emcee. With his comrade Xavier Mosley, AKA Chief Xcel, Blackalicious usually spends around two hundred days a year on the road, and a hundred more in the studio. But it was still important to him to record his first solo endeavor, the aforementioned Fourth Dimensional Rocketships Going Up.

             “At first it was just an idea, and I knew that people would be asking me, ‘Aren’t you the only emcee in Blackalicious? Aren’t you already making solo records?’” Gab laughed. "For me it’s about different chemistry. And the chemistry I have with Vitamin D and Jake One (both of Seattle) is completely different from the chemistry that I have with [Xcel]. When we did Blazing Arrow we got a chance to work with a lot of different artists. I realized at that point I knew I would always make Blackalicious records, but if you look at jazz artists back in the day, they used to play with multiple people. Really, I think working with other artists is the best way that you can grow—especially if it’s a different style. My whole thing as an artist—as a lyricist—is that I never want to be pigeonholed into a certain style. To me, it’s exciting to do stuff that I haven’t done before in the past, for real.”

             Fourth Dimensional Rocketships doesn’t stray too far from most Blackalicious projects, but overall there are noticeable differences in its production. Vitamin D and Jake One are apparently two of Seattle’s best kept secrets. While many cats outside the Emerald City can’t seem to get past Sir Mix A Lot’s ode to the African American female ass, the two producer/DJs have been accumulating work in the trenches with the likes of the Rhymesayers crew out of the Midwest, Jurassic-5’s Chali 2na, and NWA alumni Dr. Dre. I asked Gab what brought his attention to Seattle.

             “Wordsayer (emcee from Seattle’s now defunct Source of Labor) and I are really tight, like brothers and whatnot, and he was on the road with us tour managing. And around that time I had a vision for doing a solo record. So, he had some beat tapes of Vitamin D and Jake One filled with like a hundred beats a piece, and man, these cats are some of the most prolific producers I’ve ever met, and I was really feeling them. So, I started making trips out to Seattle a week at a time when Blackalicious was off the road [to record Fourth Dimensional Rocketships]. In all, it took about a year to do the whole thing, and it was on!”

             Fourth Dimensional Rocketships is due out in April, and Gab reported that a new Blackalicious record was also nearing completion. Tentatively titled The Craft, he said to look for it later this year.

             CORRECTION

             On his song “In a Minute Doe” from Fourth Dimensional Rocketships, as well as in passing, Gab speaks about his nephew locked up in a correctional facility. I asked him to tell us more of his thoughts on the prison business and the high percentage of jailed African Americans.

             “I think that’s just it! I think it’s a big business!” Gab responded. “It’s all about money. Now, really, why is a prison called a ‘correctional facility?’ What are people in a correctional facility supposed to do—rehabilitate! First of all, you’ve got all kinds of traps already set up for minorities outside of jail, and as soon as they go inside they get even more institutionalized. You’re not teaching or focusing on reform! That’s what I think the whole focus on jails should be—reforming and rehabilitating. All that they’re doing is locking up people in cages, and that’s not going to rehabilitate no one!”

             According to Tara Herivel and Paul Wright’s book Prison Nation, Gab is right on point with his statements. Paul Street, one of Prison Nation’s contributors, expressed a "sense of horror at the spectacle of society in which local officials are reduced to lobbying for prisons as their best chance for economic growth.” And it is stated that just after the turn of the millennium, over half of the “correctional” system’s populace was African American—a number that should be shocking in of itself. But oddly enough, by basic observational indicators, it would seem the gross imbalance is considered "normal” among the majority of White America.

             “I think They need for there to be crime, so that They can make more money,” Gab asserted. “Ultimately, it’s a small group of people that control the world, and I think that these people have an agenda. I think that their reality is warped and programmed. We're all programmed at the end of the day, making us all pawns. I’m programmed, too, because I have to make money! The best and the worst thing that could happen is a physical revolution, where people just say, ‘You know what? Fuck everything. You rigged the election and insulted everybody—this is complete bullshit. Let’s start some shit!’ But you know you can’t even be a revolutionary, man, because at the end of the day—unless you know how to live without eating food—you’re going to have to go to work and find a way to make money—legal or illegal—just so you can feed your family or yourself."

I believed that everyone wanted to be free. That no one enjoyed slavery and or addiction. I believed that everyone saw things this way. However, to my surprise, I was wrong … such a realization shocked the hell out of me! But when the security of hell left me, I then realized the truth! The world will not change unless I change it!

—KRS-One, Ruminations