To the editors:
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As a young black woman who likes to dance and think, I find myself in the position of defending rap as an art form while simultaneously objecting to its often fragmentary, unexamined politics. Politics that espouse, among other things, misogyny, misdirected violence, and uninformed consumerism. Then along came Arrested Development, immediately accessible to someone like me, raised on the horns of Earth, Wind & Fire and nearly hypnotized by the innocuous beat of Chic, but reluctant to shake my butt to the equally innocuous, but blatantly degrading, chants of Luke and his 2 Live Crew.
Revolution–however “jaunty” and “attractive”–can sneak up on you when you least expect it, as it does in “Give a Man a Fish” (Brothers with their AKs and their 9 millimeters / Need to learn how to correctly shoot them / Save those rounds for a revolution). Speech acknowledges the rage that compels the “hatemongering and stupidity” of Ice-T and Chuck D, even validates it . . . then admonishes them to dispense their rage judiciously. As much as Mr. Wyman would like to think that Arrested Development is a nice rap group that would never advocate nihilism, he’s wrong. The difference between Ice Cube and Speech is that Speech is in favor of a strategic, planned destruction of this country’s unjust social order.
