Above is a photo of Nas. He’s a rapper from Castle Heights, New York who made a name for himself in the 90’s as one of the greatest of all time. It’s alright if you don’t know who he is, or haven’t heard any of his music. I’d recommend it, but you don’t have stop reading because of it.
This isn’t about rap music.
He’s sitting across from Professor Elisa New. She’s a poetry prof at Harvard University. Yeah, that Harvard. Don’t worry, it’s alright if you don’t read poetry. You don’t have to, to have an appreciation for this moment.
This isn’t about poetry.
It’s about cross polination. Bee’s are indiscriminate about where they get their nectar. When they polinate plants they don’t just do it for a particular group of plant species. The pollen that sticks to their underbellies is passed along from plant to plant, flower to flower, until you’ve got several different plants with several different types of pollen all up in them.
That’s what’s happening here. A Harvard professor is sitting down for a discussion with a famous rapper. These are two worlds that don’t often mix, species of plants that don’t get the other species specs of pollen.
And it’s the greatest thing ever.
I’m biased.
I love this stuff.
I do it all the time.
I don’t know much about Football. I’m a new fan to the sport (12th man baby) and one thing I’ve learned is that there is an awful lot to digest. Depending on the position you play and the side of the ball you play on, the game is totally different.
With that many players and so many moving parts (you could make a whole Basketball league out of one team) it’s overwhelming. To stay afloat, I use my basketball brain as a method of understanding.
What? That’s a totally different sport. A totally different species of plant.
Yeah, you’re right. That’s the fun part. I can’t understand football from the perspective of someone who used to, or still does, play the sport. If I am to appreciate it, to gain a greater understanding, then I must use my own frame of reference.
Granted this frame of Basketball is in no way similar to Football. Right?
Don’t be so sure. The more I converse with my friends who have played the sport, and understand it, the more similarities begin to emerge.
At the beginner stage, I see the Quarter Back with the ball in his hands, making decisions, reading the defence, calling the plays.
That looks like a Point Guard to me.
Getting a little more advanced, let’s use the concept of routes. Wide Recievers run routes to get open for the QB. I’ve learnt that the recievers are told which routes to run during the huddle. Once the ball is snapped they run the route that they were told.
My uneducated Football brain sees this and figures that Wide Receivers aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.
Until, I discover that the QB can call an audible, meaning that receiver’s route has been changed, all in the two seconds before the ball is snapped and the play goes live.
That takes some serious mental power.
Basketball teams have set plays that they run in the half court, similar to routes. However, unlike wide receivers, every player is capable of changing their route on their own, and each teammate must adjust accordingly to fill in for that players decision.
5 players working in cohesion instead of being instructed on what to do.
I see basketball as akin to jazz, capable of improvisation and alternate direction.
Football, with so many moving parts, requires clinical precision to change direction. It’s an orchestra, a symphony.
But what about Hip hop?
The beauty of rap music is in the lyrics. Obviously, I’m biased. I worship the written word (I’m assuming you do to) so I’m partial to the rhyme schemes, the beat, the delivery.
That doesn’t have to be why you like rap music. Like all media driven consumer content; different strokes for different folks.
For me, it just happens to be the strokes of the pen.
“The pen is the tongue of the mind” — Miguel de Cervantes
Few weild pens as redily and as well as poets.
Granted there are some stylistic differences, I’ll admit.
Would it surprise you to learn that 2Pac was an avid reader and student of poetry?
If you ignore what’s on the surface, and take a deeper look at the two, you’ll find more bonding them than what you see or hear at first glance and listen.
So when a poetry professor and a rapper sit down together to discuss symbolism, beat and rhyme scheme, should it really come as that much of a surprise?
Unfortunately, it does.
These two worlds, with so much in common, rarely recognize the other.
That’s what’s at play here.
Recognition.
Appreciation.
Respect.
Empathy.
Let me just make something clear, I’m not black.
GASP.
You mean, you’re not a cartoon rendered asian grandpa in real life???
Sorry to burst that bubble for you. I’m ill equiped to deliver the proper treatises on black produced artistic content and its deserving of more naunced artistic recognition.
Perhaps, a post for a later date.
Until then, Poetry in America has got it covered.
What? That’s a totally different industry. A totally different species of plant.
I told you, I love this stuff.
The Breakdown
Let’s get into it.
This interview opens with a quick breakdown from Nas on the subject of growth.
Both for himself, and his music,
“As I grow, the music reflects that”
Elisa opens, from her end, with a quick statement,
“Great poetry always needs to be re-read. You don’t have to get it the first time around. And the way you rap, one could never take it all in”
This is establishing the common ground. Art ages and grows with the world that produced it.
The artist’s relationship to their work is subject to change. No peice of great art can be interpreted quickly and easily.
Things get going when Professor New pulls out a written copy of the lyrics for Nas’ single “It Ain’t Hard to Tell”.
She asks Nas to read it.
This is the face she makes when she asks him.
This giggle is for good reason.
Reading out loud is a sacred element in poetry. There is a skill to it. Entire classes are devoted to the practice. There is a style that must be followed, a beat that must be played, there are rules.
It’s subject to interpretation. Academics and poets will debate until kingdom come over to how to pronounce a single syllable.
The opportunity to bear witness to the artist read their own work out-loud is cherished.
They are the ultimate authority, this is how it was meant to be read.
Professor New is chuckling at her luck in getting to see Nas recite his work.
The twist is Nas has already done this. The track came out in 1994. You can hear him perform right now on Youtube.
That’s what rappers do. They rap. So what’s the big deal?
Nas wrote those lyrics and recorded the track in a studio. He’s performed live on stage countless times.
This isn’t that. This is a meeting in the middle. This is the work of Nas through the lens of poetry, not rap music.
Spoken word.
A line by line breakdown of the rythms and rhymes of an alltime great wordsmith at a structural, syntactic level.
The lines are as follows;
This rhythmatic explosion is what your frame of mind has chosen
I’ll leave your brain stimulated, niggas is frozen
Speak with criminal slang, begin like a violin
End like Leviathan, it’s deep, well let me try again
Wisdom be leaking out my grapefruit, troop
He stops here to explain the last line, an interruption Elisa welcomes.
He explains; troop = my guys, my crew.
He provides an example, “What’s up troop?”
“Grapefruit is this” indicating his temple.
Brilliant.
The guy is decoding the inner workings of his message. This isn’t something I could accomplish now matter how many times I listened to the record. It’s a perfect example of how using the lens of another creative medium bares fruit.
Not just for the audience, but for the artist as well.
“And that’s one of the ways that your pen is extreme”, Elisa comments.
That’s putting it mildly, and succinctly.
Nas getting a shout out from Harvard?
Fuck yes.
Nas continues,
I dominate break loops, giving mics men-e-strual cycles
“What does it mean to dominate break loops?”, Elisa asks.
“That’s the beat”, Nas explains.
Now, this is where Professor New really shines through for team poetry.
“Are those cycles in any way metaphorically related to the loops?”
The explanation had been given to her only moments before, and the professor had already picked up on the theme of cycles and indentified it’s reoccurrence within the verse.
This caught Nas, the author, off guard, “Now it is, since you said it. But I didn’t think of that”.
Kudos to Nas for not rolling with the compliment and taking credit where it wasn’t do.
“Well that’s what poetry does, right?” Elisa explains.
Beautiful.
Each artist lending their perspective on the subject, teaching the other the methods and techniques they use in the same exact medium, discovering new elements within the piece neither knew existed.
The Wrap Up
Collaborations like this are often categorized as unorthadox, but the learning opportunities that they present are endless.
If nothing else, they’re cool. Listening to someone speak about what they love is something we all enjoy. And for good reason.
It’s attractive witnessing the kind of skill level that can be obtained through passion and commitment.
There is plenty of more content like this out there in the web.
Matthew Mccounaghey did and interview with Seattle Seahawks Quarter Back Russell Wilson discussing “The Zone”.
There’s an interview featuring a conversation between Kobe Bryant and Ariana Huffington.
We can’t all be billionaire business moguls, stud athletes, actors or media icons.
We can all draw connections.
The details and differences can shed light and knowledge for all of us.
Interviews like these make the special obtainable and the extraordinary and otherworldly seem a little less so.
