AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! Up next, a look at the world of hip-hop.

TUPAC SHAKUR: [performing “California Love”]

AMY GOODMAN: “California” by rapper Tupac Shakur. Tupac Shakur is in critical condition after being shot four times in the chest Saturday night in Las Vegas. Shakur, a leading gangsta rapper, and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight were in a caravan headed for a nightclub after watching the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight boxing title fight, when a car pulled up and fired a hail of bullets into their vehicle. Police say they have no suspects, no motive and no arrests yet. The New York Post today says all 15 members of Tupac’s entourage claim they didn’t see or hear anything during the shooting.

Tupac Shakur, by the way, is the son of former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, not Assata Shakur. In fact, she was pregnant with him when she was in the women’s detention center here in New York when she was standing trial for the Panther 21 conspiracy trial, of which she was eventually acquitted.

Some on the hip-hop circuit are concerned that a war has broken out, blurring the lines between rap music and gang violence. The latest news is that Tupac Shakur has lost his right lung.

I’m Amy Goodman. And joining me now from Chicago is Salim Muwakkil, senior editor at In These Times and a columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times.

And, Salim, you’ve been following what’s been going on in the hip-hop world.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Yes, I have, Amy. This is an extremely important development, I think. This is the second time in two years that Shakur has been targeted by gunmen. In November '94, he was shot five times in the elevator of a Manhattan record studio. Now, his shooting may have had its own dynamic, but observers worry that it is part of an escalating feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers, a feud that has taken a growing toll in lives and in civility. Exactly a year after Shakur's ’94 shooting, for example, an associate of his, a guy named Randy “Stretch” Walker, who had accompanied him at the time of this shooting, was himself executed on the streets of Queens exactly a year after Shakur was shot. And last October, a Death Row employee was killed during a party in Atlanta, and observers credited the East-West Coast feud with precipitating that incident. There are other incidents that are really too numerous to mention here, and many fear that the feud could spiral out of control.

Well, what exactly is happening in the hip-hop world? And what does that mean for the rest of us? Well, to help us sort out some of these issues, we have with us today Harry Allen, New York-based hip-hop activist and media assassin. Allen had a brush with mass fame himself as a lyric and a cameo in a Public Enemy classic song, “Don’t Believe the Hype.” And in our Chicago studio, we’re joined by Scoop Jackson, a Chicago-based publisher and contributor to Source magazine and Vibe magazine, two magazines that are considered the bibles of hip-hop. And he’s with us in our Chicago studios.

Harry Allen, how are you doing?

HARRY ALLEN: Hi, Salim. I’m great. Thanks.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: What is this all about? What is all this stuff about? What is your take on the hip-hop — on the shooting of Tupac and the accompanying East-West Coast feud?

HARRY ALLEN: Well, first of all, that shooting of Tupac is obviously a very unfortunate incident and one that has taken down a very talented vocalist and talented artist, and that it just represents, you know, confusion in — yeah, the confusion that we’re saddled with under racism as Black males on this planet, and that in hip-hop, we should really, you know, look very hard at where we are, every single one of us, and where we’re going and what we’re here to do. I think that, you know, as Amy said earlier and as has been reported in the news, that Tupac’s lung has been removed. I mean, this is a very, very serious invasion, you know, of his person. And he’s going to have to really reconsider what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, you know, when he comes to —

SALIM MUWAKKIL: When you say “reconsider,” do you think — I mean, some of his recent lyrics, for example, are absolutely scandalous in the way he talks about, for example, Biggie Smalls, another rap artist on the Bad Boy label in New York City. I mean, he becomes personal to the extreme. Is that what you mean when you say he should reconsider what he’s doing, those kinds of things?

HARRY ALLEN: No, I don’t mean that at all. What I’m really talking about is the fact that this music has become really sated, if you will, with a certain amount of self-indulgence, that we’ve lost — you know, there was a time in hip-hop when the norm was to talk about white supremacy and to talk about racism, you know, and to talk about what we, as Black people, were bound to do and what we had to do, you know, in our music. This was a norm, if you will. But it seems that as the struggle went forward and as we realized more and more in the music that if we were to progress as we were, that eventually this would mean a direct confrontation with white power and with white supremacy, that a lot of us backed off into so-called gansterism. It’s almost like it’s far easier to shoot another Black person than it is to shoot a white person, or to get away with it, certainly. So, a lot of us realized that this meant direct conflict, intellectual, physical and all kinds. This is where we were heading. And we just decided to, you know, turn against each other.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Robert “Scoop” Jackson, here in Chicago with me, you hear Harry Allen say that the rap artists turned to gangsterism after confronting white supremacy.

SCOOP JACKSON: Right.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Do you think the corporations had anything to do with that? I mean, are they the ones who are really marketing this, this gangster —

SCOOP JACKSON: Oh, easily. Because of the fact that they found it viable to the Black community that there was a medium there that they could sell to us and make a profit off of it, it became formidable for them to do that. They started putting — I don’t want to get into the coasts, but they started putting, quote-unquote, “gangsta rappers,” you know, up front as opposed to behind the scenes. They started making the covers of mainstream magazines like Rolling Stone, Vibe and The Source. They started getting Newsweek. I mean, Tupac made — I mean, Snoop made the cover of Newsweek before his album even came out, you know, and they started doing research —

SALIM MUWAKKIL: And his album debuted at number one.

SCOOP JACKSON: It debuted at number one, but the story was never about that. The story was about his lyrics and his gangsterism, outside of the fact that he did something that The Beatles never did, he did something Michael Jackson never did, he did something Madonna never did — debuted at number one with his first debut album. They hardly ever mentioned that in the story, but they talked about something else. And with them promoting that aspect of his character instead of the fact that he did something nobody else had done, that started the whole flood of a gangsterism being put into the mainstream of hip-hop. And other groups fell into that trend, because they said, “Hey, well, this is what I have to do in order to get notarized.”

And that’s the problem, I think, that goes down with Tupac. I hope and I pray to Allah that Tupac does not die, you know, in this situation, because what’s going to happen is that he’s going to be considered being killed in the line of duty, all right. And if you think about where Tupac came from, all right, as a roadie, as a lyricist for Digital Underground, and look at him now, what scares me is the fact that if he stayed just a regular lyricist for Digital Underground, he would not have been known. But because of the characteristics that he took, because of the changes that he made, and because he fell into this gangster mode, all of a sudden he’s a household name. So you see people behind him saying, “Well, this is what I have to do in order to get notoriety. I have to fall into this.” And yes, white supremacy had a lot to do with that, because the record companies own them and the publication companies are owned by those people.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Well, Scoop, you sound — you and Harry, in your kind of disdainful attitude toward the way hip-hop has turned to a gangster sound — a bit like William Bennett and C. Delores Tucker, two people who have joined to protest the mainstreaming, so-called mainstreaming, of gangsta rap. Do you have much in common with those two?

SCOOP JACKSON: Well, I think Harry and I — and, Harry, yo, nice piece in Vibe the last issue, man. You know I got love for you anyway.

HARRY ALLEN: Thank you, Scoop.

SCOOP JACKSON: But, no, I think we are more qualified to make statements on hip-hop than they are, because Harry and I have a love for the music, and we have a different type of love for Black people within the genre of hip-hop as do William Bennett and C. Delores Tucker. So, we can be a little more critical of what goes on in hip-hop, because we are part of it. All right? They are detached from this.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: But you agree — you agree with their criticism that —

SCOOP JACKSON: With some of it. With some of the things. With some of the things. You’re also looking at the fact that young Black men and Black women are trying to find a way to make a living for themselves. And they’re doing it through a form of entertainment. Now, this form of entertainment may be harsh and something they cannot deal with, but they’re not in control of their destiny, as opposed to the record companies and the publication companies that are in control of what the product is being put out. As Black people in this industry of music, we are still the software, all right? That’s all we are, is the software. They put us in, and we deliver the goods. That’s all. But we do not control the distribution of this. We are not the computers. So, you know —

HARRY ALLEN: I would also add that, one, I don’t accept the term “gangsta rap” as descriptive of this music.

SCOOP JACKSON: Right, right.

HARRY ALLEN: I don’t know where the term came from, and I don’t know what it means. It seems to be only applied to the music of young Black males. And whenever I see something applied only to young Black males, especially knowing that, essentially, young Black males are no different from anyone else, except for their victimization under white supremacy, that I become suspect. I wonder, “Well, what’s the use of this term? Why is this term being used unilaterally, as they would say?”

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Do you think it —

HARRY ALLEN: Or, I should say, not unilaterally.

SALIM MUWAKKIL: Do you think it has a — it’s being used for political purposes, much in the same way, for example, that Clinton, Bill Clinton, when he was running in ’92, he held up the name of Sister Souljah as a way to demonize a people through their music?

HARRY ALLEN: Well, all speech is political. And the fact of the matter is that, you know, if you grant money to a person who’s poor, you know, a white woman or a nonwhite woman who’s poor, it’s welfare, and if you give it to a corporation which has billions, it’s a corporate endowment or something like that. I mean, the language is used to serve obviously political ends in all cases. But —

SALIM MUWAKKIL: But you — are there difference between what is called West Coast gangsta rap, what has been labeled gangsta rap — I mean, aesthetic differences between West Coast style and East Coast style? Aren’t there distinct differences in that?

HARRY ALLEN: There are differences, yes, but the differences are not even that substantial, ultimately. They’re not as substantial as, say, the differences between hip-hop and jazz —

SALIM MUWWAKIL: Well, then, why do you think —

HARRY ALLEN: — or hip-hop and country and western.

SALIM MUWWAKIL: Well, why do you think this feud has developed? What do you think is behind it?

HARRY ALLEN: Oh, it’s nature hates a vacuum. It’s people seeking power in the context of powerlessness. It’s because no one will ever recognize Tupac Shakur for the talented, able person he is. When he was in the movie Juice and he acted the role that he did, for those of us watching it, it was absolutely chilling to watch what he did. But we knew at the same time that Tupac was never going to get credit as an actor. It was, as — if you’ll pardon the language, as one writer used to describe what many people saw as the Black person’s natural talent in jazz, “freak nigger magic.” OK? This was just something he did because that’s just what he was. This wasn’t seen as a portrayal. I think, underneath all this, we all understand that we’re being undersold as we’re being sold, you see? So, this causes a certain amount of combativeness. It’s a crabs-in-a-barrel effect, is what you have here.

AMY GOODMAN: Harry, do you think industry feed this? Do you think industry gains by this?

HARRY ALLEN: I think white supremacy feeds this, and industry is just a refraction of that, so-called capitalism. This is just a refraction. This is just a facet, if you will.

SALIM MUWWAKIL: Well, what do you think, Scoop Jackson, here in Chicago — what do you think can be done within the hip-hop community, or do you think it should be addressed? Do you think this issue should be forthrightly addressed or simply ignored?

SCOOP JACKSON: I think the issue should be addressed, but I don’t think it should overtake anything else that goes on in hip-hop. This is a fraction of what goes on in the genre of hip-hop. It’s just like the drug situation in rock 'n' roll. It’s just a fraction of what goes on. But music is still being made, and there are still some positive things that could come out of this. This should not be at the forefront, I don’t think, of what hip-hop is about. I don’t think Vibe magazine, I don’t think The Source, you know, should every other month put the West Coast or the East Coast battle on the covers of the magazine, because there’s so much more going on. You know, you got stuff going on by Jay-Z. You just got stuff going on by Wu-Tang. You got stuff coming out by Tribe Called Quest. You know, you have Salt-N-Pepa doing their thing. You got a whole lot of other aesthetics of hip-hop that are still going on that do not deem the importance of this, quote-unquote, “East Coast-West Coast” thing.

And more importantly, what should be addressed — and you and I talked about this earlier — is the fact that at Tupac’s first shooting, the police haven’t done any investigating on it, and there’s still speculation on who did it. And now, you know, what type of investigating are they going to do now? You know, they look at Black folks killing each other, especially at this high level, and they don’t do anything about it. Nobody’s questioning that. Hip-hop should question how come no investigating is being done professionally about some brother being shot. If this was a white group, yeah, if this was somebody from, like, Guns N’ Roses or somebody like that, you know there would be some type of investigation going on as to how come this person got shot. But because of his characteristics, they’re looking at it, “Well, hey, you know, it’s just another stain on the sidewalk, another nigger dead.”

SALIM MUWWAKIL: Harry Allen, do you see any change in the near future, any attempt to forthrightly deal with this feud or whatever it is? Whatever is causing this dissension, do you see any attempt to forthrightly deal with it?

HARRY ALLEN: Well, what’s causing the dissension is people being underplayed. What’s causing the dissension is the fact that as artists and as creative people, that wealth is sucked out of the so-called Black community at a logarithmic rate, and has been done so for decades. And so, we have made companies like CBS and PolyGram, etc., extremely wealthy, while we go on just essentially on a treadmill of creating wealth for white individuals.

SALIM MUWWAKIL: And it is kind of ironic that both Bad Boy and Death Row are Black-owned labels and that those are presumably the labels that are fueling this tension between the East and West Coasts. Well, Harry Allen and Scoop Jackson, thank you for being with us.

HARRY ALLEN: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. Hold it. They are Black-owned, but they are white-distributed —

SCOOP JACKSON: That do not — white distributors, yet nothing important —

HARRY ALLEN: — which means that their master tapes are not owned by them.

SCOOP JACKSON: Thank you.

SALIM MUWWAKIL: OK.

SCOOP JACKSON: Thank you.

SALIM MUWWAKIL: That’s a good distinction.

HARRY ALLEN: And also, this East Coast-West Coast — we need to put an end to this, the myth of this battle. I mean, these are big places. We don’t own any of this land, you know. And what I was trying to say even yesterday, when I was on Channel 9, what I was trying to say is it’s media organizations, to a great extent, which are fueling this debate. And they took my statement out of context and made it look like I was saying Puffy and Suge were doing this. And I think the same thing is going on here, if we end on this note. We need to recognize the fact that we’re dealing with Black males in all parts of the country who are trying to deal with powerlessness, coming up with awkward ways to compensate.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Harry Allen and Scoop Jackson, we want to thank you very much for joining us. Harry Allen, a hip-hop activist and media assassin, works with Public Enemy, a contributor to Vibe magazine. And thank you to Scoop Jackson with The Source magazine in Chicago. Thank you Salim, Salim Muwwakil, my co-host in Chicago. And if you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can call 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. Democracy Now! is produced by Julie Drizin; our engineer, Errol Maitland; our director, Brother Shine. Janice K. Bryant helped with production. I’m Amy Goodman, with Salim Muwwakil. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!