Monday Minutes E3_Tomorrow Kings Reflections on How We’re Doing

Listen—people be askin' me all the time
"Yo Mos, what's gettin' ready to happen with hip-hop?"
(Where do you think hip-hop is goin'?)
I tell em, "You know what's gonna happen with hip-hop?
Whatever's happening with us"
If we smoked out, hip-hop is gonna be smoked out
If we doin' alright, hip-hop is gonna be doin' alright
People talk about hip-hop like it's some giant livin' in the hillside
Comin' down to visit the townspeople
We are hip-hop
Me, you, everybody, we are hip-hop
So hip-hop is going where we going
So the next time you ask yourself where hip-hop is going
Ask yourself: where am I going? How am I doing?
Till you get a clear idea

Mos Def (Yasiin Bey), “Fear Not of Man,” Black on Both Sides (Rawkus, 1999), CD.

The days of long intros, the most meticulous construction of syllables and symbols, and the most aggressive of stone faces await you. You’ve probably never encountered the contradiction of calm and Dionysian within a body that somehow isn’t torn asunder, to reference DuBois’ rendering of double consciousness. Why? Because you ain’t from that era. The time where the backpack was the passport to the underworld. The time where portable cassette decks and CD players opened portholes the seasoned would use to slip between seething demons and and return with what they’d learned to inflict ruptures in time structures to puncture a score of solar plexuses and cover the universe in infinite screaming. The time when Hip-Hop was a world within a world with planets, nations, alliances, wars, and knowledge. Perhaps I can show you something about it. Perhaps you had to be there. Well, perhaps I’ll advance a world that may be un-de-ci(y)pher-able to you as stuttering in graffiti before the eyes of the blind. See what I did there?

Anyway…

As I/we gear up to celebrate the second full-length release of the Tomorrow Kings second full length SALT (You’ve heard the singles, no? If not, you must have stayed away because your feared your ears would get bitch slapped and your face would resemble that of scarecrow after the impact of the razor sharp syntax), I really rejoice. I rejoice that the magnetic energies of the universe propelled all of us (those we’ve both maintained and the Brothers we’ve lost) toward each other in the name of the synonym of the action of a babbling brook. I rejoice because this crew continues to forge me into the MC I constantly become. I rejoice because we’re among the best to ever do it. I rejoice because the collective attests to the axiom that the art is within but beyond us.

We stood out in the conceptual landscape of the Wild Onion’s Hip-Hop multiverse. I say that as I think of O Type Star’s “Onion Rings” on Molemen’s Chicago City Limits Vol. 1. Such a dope song. I digress while not digressing. In the early 2000s before the crew existed, the members of the collective did and were all wrestling with something. Whether that “something” was bucking against what parents expected of them, coping with the isolation of perpetually becoming artists, relationship issues, patience while waiting for the bus and train to take us back South after staying at a set on the North Side a bit too late, etc., it held dynamic potency that meant our art was forged through struggle. None of the members of the group had an easy time within the underground networks of Chicago Hip-Hop. We were hated on, unable to fit in, unappreciated, weird even to the weirdos, and expected to fail. Of course, we weren’t seen like this by everyone. But a good amount of key figures within the oughts of the 2000s did. We were the persistent thorns in the side of the scene bringing a gnostic gospel laced in breaking away from what everyone else was doing. Individually, that’s who we were. Collectively, we became that even more.

Why the fuck did I bring that Mos Def quote up?!

Oh, yeah. I think this is why. After almost 20 years of Tomorrow Kings, I ask myself, “How am I doing?” And I can answer that I’m doing just fine. I have my challenges. There are several. Every member of the warlock coven does. However, we’ve sown seeds that have grown in to earth-shattering MCs who block writers serving as emissaries of writer’s block and lure them to their knees. Our model of championing the corner dwellers with good ideas gave platforms to those younger and destined to go further. The live demo is simple: get a venue, book a show with good acts, promote hard, pay everyone. Repeat. The art regiment isn’t complicated, either. Eat vegetables. Use sex as creative exercise. Stretch yourself to think of an ill concept. The stranger and more unsettling the better. Write and rewrite. Record with precision and passion. Engineer it professionally. Get it into the world in a visibly presentable way. When we can look around and see that we’ve done a little bit of that, the “I” becomes “we” and that “we” is no longer limited to TK members. We observe that this tactic resonated with those who looked up to us, not because they were ever beneath us, but merely because we were from another world and had a few…thousand…years on them. Now, their stature is the same as ours. “We” are fine, and so is Hip-Hop.

Get that SALT 2XLP at Buenaventura Records.

Check us at Schubas for the SALT Release Show. Pre-sale tickets HERE.