But now the word turned Conscious, De La refused to scowl and Stetsasonic shouted across the Atlantic gap. First, Chuck, then KRS, and then everywhere you looked MCs were reaching for Garvey’s tricolor, shouting across the land, self-destruction was at an end, that the logic of white people’s ice had failed us, that the day of awareness was now.
Across the land, the masses fell sway to the gospel. Old Panthers came out in camouflage to salute Chuck D. Cold killers would get a taste of “Raise the Flag,” drop their guns, and turn vegan. Brothers quoted Farrakhan with wine on their breath. Harlots performed salaat, covered their blond french rolls in mud cloth and royal kente. Dark girls slashed their Apollonia posters, burned their green contacts, cut their hair, threw in braids. Gold was stashed in the top dresser drawer. The fashion became your father’s dashiki, beads, and Africa medallions.
The music boosted the words of my father, though he only partially understood. He was frustrated by me, even as my Consciousness bloomed. He kept a notebook chronicling my slow progress: Ta-Nehisi came to work ten minutes late today. He then spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom. He worked for ten minutes. He then spent fifteen more minutes in the bathroom. He came out and played with Menelik. He was trying to shape us before the winter age of eighteen, and change, though coming, was never fast enough.
But we were changing. Big Bill was touched by the transformation, trading the everyday struggle for the Struggle. The same music that pulled me out of my fog, left him reeling. Again and again he went back to the lab, reveled in mourning bass lines, and crafted sweeping images of the great Satan’s fall. They added Joey on the keyboard, changed the group’s name to the Foundation, and switched their sound until it was holy and urging rebellion. I played his tapes along with all the others, and began to understand.
I was twelve, but when I heard “Lyrics of Fury”—“A horn if you want the style I possess / I bless the child, the earth, the gods, and bomb the rest”—I put away childish things, went to the notebook, and caged myself between the blue lines. In the evenings, that summer, I would close the door, lay across the bed, and put pen to pad.
At first I felt the words of others pulsing through me — my reforming brother, the esoteric allusions of The God, the philosophy of KRS-One — and in truth, in many years of trying, I never completely touched my own. My hand was awkward; and when I rhymed, the couplets would not adhere, punch lines crashed into bars, metaphors were extended until they derailed off beat. I was unfit, but still I had at it for days, months, and ultimately years. And the more ink I dribbled onto the page, the more I felt the blessing of the Jedi order of MCs. I wrote every day that summer, rhymed over B-side instrumentals, until my pen was a Staff of the Dreaded Streets (plus five chance to banish fools on sight) and my flow, though flicted and disjointed, a Horn of Ghetto Blasting. The words were all braggadocios, but when done with the recital, even though I was alone, I felt bigger.
I’d walk outside, and my head was just a little higher, because if you do this right, if you claim to be that nigger enough, though you battle only your bedroom mirror, there is a part of you that believes. That was how I came to understand, how I came to know why all these brothers wrote and talked so big. Even the Knowledged feared the streets. But the rhyme pad was a spell book — it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. That summer, I knew what Fruitie was trying to say, that when under the aegis of hip-hop, you never lived alone, you never walked alone.
I harried Big Bill until he took me up to Wabash to spit a sloppy verse. Marlon had cordoned off his father’s basement. He presided over the 1200s, spinning breakbeats. Joey played with the keys until he found a riff he liked. I just sat on the couch going over my rhymes, while Bill stood blessing the mic behind what was once a bar.
By then I had raided the tall box of my father’s old collection of Black Panther newspapers, devoured them during off-hours in Dad’s office, and scribbled allusions to them in my book of rhymes. Dad no longer had to assign readings. My comics collections lapsed. Cartoons felt nonessential. I plunged into my father’s books of Consciousness that he’d shelved in nearly every room in the house. That was how I found myself, how I learned my name. All my life Dad had told me what I was, that Ta-Nehisi was a nation, the ancient Egyptian name for the mighty Nubians to the south, but I could not truly hear. Where I’m from, Tamika is an American name. But Ta-Nehisi was hyphened and easily bent to the whims of anyone who knew the rudiments of the dozens. But seeing that handle among the books of glorious Africa, I knew why I could never be Javonne or Pete, that my name was a nation, not a target, not something for teachers to trip over but the ancient Nubians and the glorious Egyptians of the 25th.
I felt a light flowing through me. I awoke, excited, hungry to understand this immediate world, how we had all fallen to this. Now I knew Lemmel in a fuller sense, that it was troubled because all things worth anything ultimately are. That my world, though mired in disgrace, was more honorable than anything, was more beautiful than the exotic counties way up Reisterstown and Liberty Road. All the Mondawmins of the world — with their merchant vultures, wig stores, sidewalk sales, sub shops, fake gold, bastard boys, and wandering girls — were my only home. That was Knowledge and Consciousness joined, and when I grabbed the mic, that was the alchemy I brought forth. When I was done, I emerged taller, my voice was deeper, my arms were bigger, ancestors walked with me, and there in my hands, behold, Shango’s glowing ax.
Big Bill was gone much more now. He’d done a little better in school, and Dad rewarded him with leave time at his mother’s. No more veggie sausage. No more books. No more yard work. He yelled, I’m out of here! as he walked out the door. More frequently I found myself alone. Menelik was four and not allowed to play beyond our brick front porch. My brothers Malik and John were entering their last years of high school. So I went out on my own, and in search of whatever else I did not know, pedaled my double-gooseneck dirt bike up Burlief to the alley and observed.
The boys would be picking up for three on three, and I was always picked last or not picked at all. On the short granite wall, off to the side, I’d sit next to the boom box, rapping and pantomiming along. I had spent so much time in my room that by now I had the lyrics, pacing, and breath control down. I could untangle the meaning and many syllables of “The Symphony” or deliver the sick monotone of “I’m Housing.” This came to be known, among the boys my age, as a talent and they would gather around and request various renditions. Then we’d spend the next few hours debating Kane versus The God.
And then there was basketball, my people’s national pastime. I was more enthralled by the violent grace of Steve Atwater and Ronnie Lott. I’d joined the cult of Len Bias, but after he fell — dead from a coke-induced heart attack at twenty-three — I left the rock alone. But Magic and Kareem were still paragons in the alley. Niggers would throw the blind pass or sky hook and call out their names like a spell that could conjure the proper spin on the ball.
There was no magic for me. I couldn’t take two dribbles without a carry or walk. My jumper careened over backboards. My foul shots were all left of the rim. That was a cause for much laughter and jokes. But so was something about everyone, in everything else. Most of us had something wrong, and all it took was the right Larry Young, David Pridgett, or Big Bill to call out your girl feet, enlarged nose, busted shape up and summarily cut you to pieces. What I came to understand was the great democracy in this, and that what mattered to these boys was not so much what you came to the street with but how you carried what you were given.