Wear Clean Draws

Cover of Party Music

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The Coup, "Wear Clean Draws" (download until 2/23/09), from "Party Music."

So I'd heard of the Coup for some time, but never listened to them. A very good friend of ours, one weekend we were staying with them on a visit, played them for us and bam!, I was hooked. This particular song my wife latched on to, and her fantastic taste in music is of course spot on.

This, to me, is hip-hop, and it's worth stressing that this is Bay Area hip-hop. There was a little hip-hop boutique run by a kid in Daly City that we'd go to, that we actually patronized--bought a number of very cool t-shirts there, and even a painting that now hangs in my classroom. In any event, we would talk, to this really cool kid--really, a young man in his early 20's. We'd just moved up here, and I'd been teaching a bit, and had only just started to get a sense of the whole Hyphy thing. As in, student sitting in the middle of class bouncing up and down shaking his head insisting he was "going dumb" and not "going spastic." I wasn't, nor am I now, impressed.

Anyway, this cool kid with the boutique lamented Bay Area hip-hop and praised L.A. L.A. had a more diverse hip-hop scene, he said, with more room for "positive" and political music. I knew this, despite appearances, because I had some students years ago (Speak, for one) who made beautiful hip-hop and who would go in from Riverside County to L.A. and became participants in that whole process. They'd clue me in to things, and I paid them back with encouragement.

I was really surprised and very disappointed in Bay Area hip-hop. I suppose teaching high school gave and gives me a perspective that more or less necessitates that I oppose Hyphy. Yes, we love localism, but "going dumb on the yellow bus" is not going to help anyone. I should add that because of various circumstances I ended up, my first year teaching up here, taking a Special Ed position because there were literally no history jobs to be had. Talk about the "yellow bus" does nothing to help kids in Special Ed actually use the considerable intellectual abilities they all have. Remember--most Special Ed kids have perfectly normal IQs but have some learning disability. Like I was a history ace who blew math problems. But because I was a white kid, I was "idiosyncratic" rather than "Special."

While it's true that lots of people pronounce Hyphy dead, and have for years, I can attest that the kids still go on about it, though not as often as a couple years ago, and that there hasn't been a massive movement in Bay Area hip-hop toward real positivity, back to real hip-hop. One must always look, though, to the antithetical examples to look forward to a more positive synthesis, and the Coup, simply by being the Coup, points the way forward.

Just some quick praise: I don't think I know of a more straightforward, loving piece of music than this one. Che pointed out the fact--not "made the argument," but "pointed out the fact"--that revolutionaries are motivated by love. No love, no revolution. This is an excellent case-in-point.