Run D.M.C. - How to Raise Hell in Three Steps: on RUN-D.M.C, Parliament, Blackness and Revolution lyrics

1. In 1987, in a small Southwestern Pennsylvania steel town, I was the only black kid I knew. I was also the only kid with a copy of Run-D.M.C.'s Raising Hell. At the time those two facts seemed to be very much connected. For those who haven't had the pleasure, being the only black kid in middle school is a little like having a disease that you don't want to talk about and don't want anyone else to talk about either. You feel ashamed. You feel guilty. When you get to the three or four paragraphs in your social studies book about slavery, you try to look so deeply engrossed in taking notes that you don't even notice how many kids are stealing glances at you. And you don't even take notes. You feel like black is hateful. You feel like black makes people uncomfortable and unhappy. You feel like black is your fault. Because you are a kid. So this weird thing happened with the Run-D.M.C. tape. Whenever I made copies of it for white kids whose parents wouldn't let them have it, I always left off this one song. It was called "Proud to Be Black": "I'm proud to be black, y'all/ And that's a fact, y'all/ And if you try to take what's mine, I'll take it back, y'all/ It's like that." That song bothered the ever loving sh** out of me. The thought of the white kids that I went to school with listening to it made me cringe. Why did I have to have a song that made it ok to be who I was? Why did I have to be so lame, and so ridiculous, that Run-D.M.C. needed to devote the weakest, corniest track on an album full of bangers just to making me feel special? The problem wasn't that I was black. The problem was that black was something so terrible that it needed a hip-hop PSA just to be alright. That was some embarra**ing sh** for an 11-year-old. None of the white kids I knew needed that. I didn't want to need that. So I just ignored the song entirely. In a seemingly unrelated story, there was this one kid named Jason who liked to call me a n******g. A lot. n******g this. n******g that. How many n******gs does it take. Did you hear about the n******g who. Hey n******g. Shut up n******g. I wasn't much of a fighter. I was more of a book reader and clarinet practicer. But Jason made me angry. More than angry. He made me seethe. That's the word you use when you hate something so very deeply, but you feel that forces bigger than you are preventing you from doing anything about it. Seethe. One day, this other kid who I wasn't even really friends with took pity on me and offered the following advice: "You oughta just f**in' punch him in the face." "Really?" "Just…f**in'…s**er punch him, dude." "You think so?" "f** yeah, dude. I wouldn't let him talk to me like that if I was you." I guess that was all I needed to hear because twenty minutes later, when Jason walked past me, I hit him directly in the mouth as hard as I could. I wanted to draw blood. I wanted to knock him unconscious. I wanted to k** him. I wanted him to never be able to say the word "n******g" again. But all that happened was I got his spit on my knuckles, which were now sore. It was intense and kind of gross. He looked at me with something I can only describe as bewilderment. "What the hell was that for?" I shrugged. "You know what it was for." He never bothered me again. Even still. I fast forwarded past that stupid Run-D.M.C. song every f**ing time it came on. 2. Four years later, I bought my first Parliament record at a store on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. I had since left Small Town America and moved to L.A. to live with my mother. It was, you could say, a jarring transition. Hollywood was a was a different kind of place then. It was seedy and uncomfortable, piss-smelling and prostitute-y. Grimey. The intersection of Hollywood and Highland in the '90s had a deep sense of failure. It was on this corner that I listened to The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein for the first time. I don't know why I chose that one; it was completely random. I was afraid to ask for help. I had been told Parliament was good. I grabbed the first one in the section, paid for it, walked out, put it in my walkman and hit play. What I heard next literally made no sense. Weird, sped up voices. Galactic Pyramids. Gross s**ual metaphors. Nonsensical lyrics. Unnecessary use of multisyllabic words. It was uncomfortably sick. Ludicrous and nonsensical lyrically, but surgically, almost magically proficient musically. The combination was downright creepy. Standing there listening to it was kind of nice. I didn't feel like getting back on the bus to Van Nuys. I didn't feel like going anywhere at all. So, I stayed. I didn't move from that corner until both sides had played. I bummed a cigarette. I watched cops arrest a dude who was yelling. I saw about four near auto accidents. I smelled weed. I peed in an alley between two buildings. I had just turned 15-years-old. Something else happened that day. I realized that I really liked being an anonymous kid on a street corner in L.A. I realized that I really liked not giving a solitary f** about what anyone was doing, not even myself. I realized that in some way it was my natural state. Two days later, I started dressing differently. I cut my own hair into a weird nappy mushroom top. I took this goofy trench coat I had and sliced it at the waist with a pair of scissors. On the chest I sewed the patch that I earned in a middle school spelling bee. I wrote graffiti on the sleeve in Sharpie. I took to wearing pajama bottoms and black chucks. In short, the combination of Parliament and Hollywood had instantly funked me out. And it worked, because the first time I left the house in this new uniform, I experienced something that I never had before. You might call it freedom. Abandon. Cultural immunity. I had a self. It was adolescent and awkward and trying too hard. But it was my very own self. It was a me that was all mine. It didn't matter what anyone thought about it. For a brief moment in time, I simply didn't give a f**. And that's an important thing. When you have come to regard your very skin color as an insufferable disease, when you have to punch other people in the mouth just so you can be ok with who you are, not giving a f** is the single most divine experience you can ever have. 3. On that very same corner twenty years later, the LAPD k**ed a man who was wielding a Swiss Army knife. He was a street performer. His schtick was dressing up as the Scream dude and freaking out tourists before posing with them for photos. Police were responding to a report of a stabbing. They arrived, saw the man, and he apparently approached them. In 2014, we learned that this could mean anything. Did he turn toward them when they called out? Did he start toward them to explain that he was a performer? Did he turn into a superhuman and run through fire and bullets while tearing his shirt off? We don't know. All we know is that he had a Swiss Army knife, and a group of trained officers felt that their lives were in danger. So, as an LAPD spokeswoman put it in the noncommittal cop speak to which we've all become woefully accustomed, "an officer-involved shooting occurred." That word. Occurred. Like rain occurs. Or wind. An officer-involved shooting is an act of nature that happens of its own volition. The stab victim was never located. It's been a really sh**ty year for stuff like this. Mike Brown's shooting occurred, Tamir Rice's shooting occurred , Eric Garner's d**h by asphyxiation occurred. Jordan Crawford's shooting in a Wal-Mart occurred. A whole lot of d**h at the hands of police has occurred. Black folks have realized, en ma**e, that we have to start fighting all over again. For the umpteenth f**ing time. We had hoped we were done. Or at least done enough to have a life that doesn't involve taking to the streets in order to be considered human. Apparently we were wrong. Even white people have started to wonder if maybe the racist system is unfair in a way that should actually matter to them. People have gathered in protest. Thought pieces have been fired off. Tweets have scored in the 10k's on favorites. Comedians have been serious. Riot gear has been donned. Windows broken. Fires set. The victims are all still dead. The k**ers are still free. So what now. As a general rule, no one really wants a revolution. They are a lot of work and are tremendously inconvenient. Especially in this country. We have a lot to relax over. I'm writing this on a comfortable chair in a decent home. You are very likely reading this on a device the market worth of which could feed a family of four for a month in some parts of the world. We have "The Voice" and 3D-printers, and websites that pick out outfits for us and mail them to our front doors. Nobody wants to fight right now. Fighting is for people who don't give a f**. But each time an innocent person dies at the hands of police under questionable circumstances, that equals one less f** to give. In middle school, I lost a few f**s because I was alone and seething. And someone told me that I don't have to sit and take it. On the corner of Hollywood and Highland, I lost a few f**s because it was ugly and dirty and I was alone, and the music was so disturbing, so well-executed, and so incredibly and viscerally powerful, that it made me into someone I didn't want to be, but truly was. Since then, they've cleaned that corner up real nice. Put in a Metro Station, got rid of the hookers and the pimps, and opened up some national chains. That corner almost got its f**s back. But then like an act of nature, like the rain that suddenly sprang up these past few weeks to end the California drought, an "officer involved shooting occurred." And another one occurred. And another one occurred. And another one occurred. And with each one, we lose a f**. With each one, we turn into who we are even if we don't want to be it. And we become ready to punch directly in the mouth whoever or whatever is making us seethe. In 1987 "Walk This Way" was the breakout single from Raising Hell. But it's a lyric from a relatively unknown track that seems most prescient nearly 30 years later. "If you try to take what's mine, I'll take it back y'all. It's like that." No wonder I hid that one from the white kids.