Before we can fully evaluate thugs or yobs, it is important we understand their aims and objectives. To do this, we need look no farther than the words of thugs themselves. One of our generations most prolific “thug poets,” Nas, has told us exactly what we need to know in “I want to talk to you.”
The song explicitly tells us of the motives driving Nas, and those like him. The very name of the song foreshadows the nature of its artists discontent, as can be observed during the first lines of the song; Nas raps, “I wanna talk to the mayor, the governor, and the motherfuckin' president, / I wanna talk to the FBI, the CIA, and the motherfuckin’ congressmen.” Here we can begin to understand the nature of Nas’ discontent. The one thing he states he wants over and over is to talk to a figure of authority, and the overly repetitive nature of his demands make it clear that this desire is not being fulfilled. Herein lies the nature of Nas’ grievance; he is dissatisfied with the conditions he and those around him are subjected to, and he has no way to approach anyone in a position of real authority to draw attention to his plight.
Thus, he finds his own way to gain the attention of the powers that be; he resorts to violence. We can plainly see the link between violence and Nas’ frustration with his inability to talk to “the establishment” when Nas writes “I wanna talk to the man, understand? / Understand this motherfuckin’ G packed in my hand.” When his attempts to draw attention to how the “streets is upside down” fail, he uses his gun to force the attention of the authorities on to his problem. We can observe one of the major aims of yobs in Nas' words. Yobs and hooligans want to "make a change," and alter the way they are governed.
While we may find Nas’ solution overly aggressive, his issue with the state of representation in modern society bears much closer consideration. After all, if a citizen is truly dissatisfied with the way they find themselves being governed, what outlet do they have in today’s world? What if we do want to talk to the FBI? What if we do want to talk to the president? We simply cant, and that seems like a problem.
3 comments:
The deeper problem that may be being addressed in Nas' lyrics may be the question of whether the system of representation in place is a system that can really accurately convey the notions of the people it is supposed to represent. The democratic system in place here is the same system that in the past has been at least partly responsible for some of the decisions, policies, and cultural practices that can arguably said to have created some of the problems related to yobbism in the first place.
So from this we can sympathize with Nas' obvious frustration in his desire to have his voice heard. For Nas to even have a voice his voice must in some sense conform to the pre-set conditions laid out by a government that he has no choice in being a part of; a cultural construction whose purposes have often been, in the past, antithetical to everything Nas, and the "thug culture" he "represents" may stand for. If one exists as an "outsider" to the system then there is no point of contact other than aggression in one form or another. To enforce change from within the system, however, required, by definition, conformity in at least some degree to the rules of that system and through conformity becoming non-representative of the original values one held as an "outsider", a yob, a thug, a hooligan.
While Nas emerged out of a different culture than the scope of British masculinity (Nas was, after all, born in New York), it is important to remember the United States' colonial roots, and, thus, the similarities in thuggish behaviour. There is a definite democratic deficit, as you (and Dave, subsequently) have hinted at, and that is a major problem.
Perhaps the lack of democracy is more of a dilemma in Nas' home country, as the United States is nearly completely without direct democracy, with the exception of propositions in California. That said, as Dave mentioned, it's easy to sympathise with Nas' frustration.
I'm probably not adding much in this conversation, but kudos to you, Ben, for starting off our discussions with such a bang!
I think that Ben's point brings up a theme that might be worth exploring: mainly, how can we see the types of vocabulary and dilectics that we have been discussing in American terms?
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