"New Jack" Anthology Xcrpt: Mourning In America (The Crack of the Dawn of the Dead)

Mourning In America 
(The Crack of the Dawn of the Dead)

An Essay By Barry Michael Cooper

"The velocity of history will either break your back or give you wings"

The '80s is dead, y'all, and crack cocaine murdered it. Crack both disfigured the Belle Epoque of the 1980s and wind-sheared the wings on the American Dream, sabotaging it’s flight path and fracturing it almost beyond recognition. Crack created a mass grave filled with the time-eaten corpora of our communal selective memory; a grave twenty-five years deep and a quarter-century long. 

For some, the 1980s were the dawn of an America the RRC (Republican Ruling Class) thought they had lost in the 60s with the election of Kennedy--John F. and almost Robert F.--the proliferation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s multi-colored Dream, and the specter of Malcolm X’s Black Nationalist resolve stamped, By Any Means Necessary. By the time Jimmy Carter--the son of a peanut farmer who became a Naval officer--was elected President of the United States in 1976, the American Dream was beginning to have the potential retrofit of a land filled liberty and justice for all. The Carter Era--not Jigga or Weezy’s but Jimmy C.’s--was a prodigious time for us Mountaintop Children. The Mountaintop Children (or Black Boomers, if you will) are that progeny--primarily African-American--born at the rise of the Civil Rights movement; children of cultural privilege and promise, hoisted onto the shoulders of history by ancestors who struggled, bled, and died to make this One-Nation-Under-GOD -With-Liberty-And-Justice-For-All-America, a level playing field. 

Video of Barry Michael Cooper Moderating The Planet Rock Doc Panel @ The Paley Center 12 September 2011

from left to right: Melle Mel, Martin Torgoff, Richard Lowe, Nelson George, Azie Faison, Ice T, Barry Michael Cooper-photo credit: Paley Center

By Barry Michael Cooper


Last Monday (12 September 2011), I was blessed to moderate the panel for the screening for VH1's groundbreaking documentary on the history of crack cocaine in America, "Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation."

Barry Michael Cooper-photo credit: S. Mack/Wireimage

Narrated and executive produced by actor, emcee, and burgeoning media mogul Ice T, and produced by Martin Torgoff and Richard Lowe, "Planet Rock," is an unflinching and in depth examination of the crack cocaine epidemic in America during the 1980s, and the sweeping, cataclysmic effect it had on politics, economics, culture, and society as a whole. I was also honored to be a participant (and unofficial consultant) on the VH1 "Planet Rock" documentary.

Get More: VH1 Rock Docs, TV Shows, Full Episode Video, Reality TV Shows

Xcrpt From The "New Jack City Eats Its Young" Anthology

The Carter Era--not Jigga or Weezy's, but Jimmy C.'s--was a prodigious time for us Mountaintop Children. The Mountaintop Children (or Black Boomers, if you will) are that progeny--primarily African-American--born at the rise of the Civil Rights movement; children of cultural privilege and promise, hoisted onto the shoulders of history by ancestors who struggled, bled, and died to make this One-Nation-Under-GOD-Indivisible-With-Liberty-And-Justice-For-All-America, a level playing field.


Even in the "imaginarium" of television, Black people had visions of a better life. Florida Evans and her familia of J.J., Michael, and a married Thelma were no longer scratchin' and survivin', and finally moved out of the Cabrini-Green Houses in Chicago. George and Louise Jefferson were the proprietors of a chain of successful dry cleaners, that allowed them to move on up and live among the wealthy on the Upper East Side of New York City.


But the good times were cut short by the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, which ushered in a former actor, laundry detergent shill, and poster boy for the Republican Ruling Class, by the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan. The Reagan Ideal was a get-one-for-The-Gipper return to an America the RRC was more comfortable with; white, Republican, racist, repressively transgressive, remunerated, and removed. Removed from the plight of the poor (Black and White folks, too), the blight of minorities, and the financial apoplexy of the middle class. The Reaganites were a coterie who took their White Parties on Sutton Place and in Santa Barbara, literally and seriously. This was an America the Reaganites saw as the dawning of a new day for old prejudices wrapped in a new ideology. President Reagan called it, "Morning in America."


However, for many others, that "Morning" became their own personal Mourning in America, and crack was the assassin. Crack was the explosion that shook fear into the Black Boomers and began to turn the purpose of the Mountaintop Children into an avalanche of nightmarish apathy. In the African-American community, crack was a dream-killer, a bank (and drug proceeds) builder, a cradle-robber, and prison-stocker, and a tomb-filler. Crack was the circuit-breaker in the psychic fuse-box of African-American advancement. Crack re-wired the descendants of the Motherland, reprogramming them into the 20th Century slaves of a new pharm-land, where the cash crops of cooked cocaine had been reaped from the infertility of their very own hopes and dreams...


My debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (and more current essays), "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Click here to go to the Amazon site.

Game of Thrones (Watching Opulent Gangsters Draped In Gilded Solitude)

by Barry Michael Cooper


Like Hip Hop's Jordan and Pippen, the tag-team comitatus of Jay-Z and Kanye West, are balling out of control, as their bejewled sneakers squeak into a two-man weave of vintage obsessions and futurist intentions. 

The oeuvre of Jay and 'Ye's brand new collaboration Watch The Throne manages to be both deadly serious and subconsciously political in its narrative. Watch The Throne subscribes to the politic of the nouveau riche; this is an album that escorts the listener into the corridors of power inhabited by the two most influential panels in the current triptych (the third being Sean "Diddy' Combs, whose Last Train to Paris offering seems to have a subtle influence on Throne) of post-crack era Art-Hop. Make no mistake; these are two young Black men who have worked hard to wear the crown(s). And heavy is the head that wears the crown, or as another illustrious crown-wearer--the late, great painter, Jean Michael Basquiat--once said, "Most young kings get their heads cut off." Jay-Z and Kanye reflect the sensibilities of deft (and somewhat jaded) guillotine-dodgers, in what turns out to be an instant classic. 

Raymond Jones: A Magnificent State of Humble Grace

by Barry Michael Cooper


Never has one flown so high, while grounded in such graceful humility.


On Friday, 1 July 2011, a true musical revolutionary named Raymond Jones passed away. He was 52 years old. These are my mental Polaroids of not only a great musician, but a majestic human being and a real friend. GOD Rest his creative soul.


The journey of Raymond Jones began on 13 December 1958. I was born in June that same year. We--like many young African American children born at the rise of the Civil Rights/Sputnik/I Have A Dream/Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You/By Any Means Necessary/Tune In Turn On aeon--were children of cultural promise and privilege. 


Black children like Ray Jones, the illustrious filmmaker Spike Lee, virtuoso guitarists Ronnie Drayton and Vernon Reid, noted film producer and political observer Geoffrey Garfield, phenomenal essayist/music critic/theorist Greg Tate, prolific author/film/television producer Nelson George, American musical innovator Prince, the greatest entertainer who ever lived, the late Michael Jackson, and even the President of the United States, Barack Obama, are Mountaintop Children.


Mountaintop Children are the children hoisted onto the shoulders of history by ancestors who struggled, sweated, bled, and died to make this America--this one nation under GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all America--a level playing field. The opus of Ray Jones not only reflected this momentous lineage--illustrated by his preternatural ability on the keyboards, his poetic and ingenious compositions for music and film, and his dynamically soul-searching narratives as a lyricist--but it underscored a Mountaintop Child's embedded sense of epos. Greatness. Ray's family expected him to rise to a sense of distinctive excellence.


Raymond Jones did not disappoint.

Dr. Dre (Chronic Symphonies Dressed in a Full Metal Jacket)

by Barry Michael Cooper


"It's a difference between making beats and producing. I go in and I produce."


Andre "Dr. Dre" Young,
November 1998, Philadelphia, Pa.


From Kabul to Compton, the bloody and tattered garment of war is threaded with the needle of a full metal jacket. No matter what set you claim--Blood, Crip, Taliban, or Al Qaeda--bullets tailor the design of victory and defeat.

For almost three decades, Andre "Dr. Dre" Young has scored the Wagnerian operetta known as The Battle of South Central. From NWA, to Snoop, to Death Row, to Hip Hop's Great White Hope--Eminem--a Dr. Dre production was body-rocking in it's sound, thought-provoking in its perception, and cinematic in its vision. Unlike New York Hip Hop--which was driven by the claustrophobic rhythms of subways and etched in the shadows of skyscrapers that seemed to choke out the sunlight--Dre's California G-Funk was alfresco; a dark and breezy ticket to ride, even if it depicted a drive-by victim taking their last breath.

Gil Scott-Heron: A Life Without Commercial Interruption

by Barry Michael Cooper

"The Revolution/will not go better with Coke/

...the Revolution will put you in the driver's seat/

the Revolution will not be televised/Not be televised/

the Revolution will be no rerun, Brother..."

Gil Scott Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

On Friday, 27 May 2011, the world of spoken-word lost its poet laureate, and Hip Hop is missing it's paterfamilias; Gil Scott-Heron died. He was 62. GOD Rest his soul.

When Gil Scott-Heron rejected the title "Godfather of Rap" it was with good reason. Money didn't own him; as a genuine post-modern griot, Gil Scott-Heron embraced poverty. Not that he was poor--he wasn't--or that he didn't like money (I'm sure he did). Gil Scott-Heron didn't love money, and therefore, money didn't own him. A true MC, a true Master of the Ceremony must be just that; a master, leader, and conductor of the ceremony, pageantry, and celebration. One who can lead the band without becoming a slave to the rhythm. Or the money. To embrace poverty means the corporate sponsors can't put a price ticket on your head, because if they can price you, then they can buy you, and if they can buy you, then they own you, and if they own you, then they can lock down and silence their caged bird when they disapprove of the song it sings.

Gil Scott-Heron said the Revolution wouldn't be televised but that was his reverse psych on an enthralled public. Gil Scott-Heron forecast a revolution of Black thought and American letters--an analog-to-4G broadband-of-a-broadcast--for more than 40 years. A waveform of a higher vibration.

The life and creativity of Gil Scott-Heron exemplified the true meaning of wealth in poverty, because he was free to say what was on his mind. And we were enriched by his platinum thoughts. As a true hunger artist, Gil Scott-Heron knew that his wealth in poverty was the vault of his soulful authenticity; protecting the riches of his heart, and money can't bankrupt a truth-tellers soul, overstand? Exeunt, noble Prince. We hardly knew thee, but what you allowed us to become acquainted with--the treasures stored in one of the greatest American literary minds this country has ever produced--changed us forever. No bottle could hold you. No crack could break you. The doves in all bedrooms will cry silently tonight as GOD steers your flight home. Many of us will rock something red, black and green in your memory. We have been saving it for just the right occasion.

Be sure to pick up my new anthology, "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a free, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click here to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.

The Earthquake Diaries (Apocalypse...Now???)

by Barry Michael Cooper

"And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven."

Luke 21:11

Another day, another earthquake. A few days ago--11 May--there was a 5.3 earthquake in Lorca, Spain; ten reported casualties, scores injured. Let's rewind: on 22 February 2011, 181 people died in a frightening 6.3 earthquake that upended Canterbury region of Christchurch, New Zealand. Less than a month later--on 11 March--Japan was rocked not only by a devastating 9.0 earthquake--the most powerful earthquake to ever hit Japan--but a deadly tsunami that fractured a nuclear facility and claimed the lives of almost 15,000 people. 

Five days later, on 16 March, Chile was rocked by a 5.3 tremor. Last year, on 10 January 2010, an earthquake leveled most of Haiti with almost 500,000 deaths. In April, 327 tornadoes tore through the Southeast, claiming almost 400 lives; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) estimates that since the start of 2011, the U.S. has been hit with 881 twisters, the deadliest outbreak in U.S. history.

On Tuesday, 10 May 2011, parts of Memphis, Tenn., was submerged underwater, as the swollen banks of the Mississippi River flooded that city.  Yesterday--12 May--Mount Etna erupted in Italy, painting the nighttime Sicilian skyline in spectacular fiery orange hues of lava and ash. How about the baffling reports of dead birds falling out of the sky, and millions of fish washing up on shores across the globe?

What's going on?

There is a Christian broadcaster named Harold Camping, who has done a series of mathematical calculations tied to the books in the Bible, along with the Hebrew calendars, and he believes that Judgement Day will commence on 21 May 2011. That's right; next Saturday. Of course, Camping has been written off as another nutcase and religious huckster, who in fact, predicted that the world would end back on 7 September 1994. So much for that prediction.