From Organizer to Rapper: Driving Around with M-1
Pascarella, Matt
By Matt Pascarella Illustration by Mickey Duzyj From Organizer to Rapper: Driving Around with M-1 M-1 comprises one half of one of the most controversial hip-hop duos in the history of the...
...Made me say, ah man, is this what I got to do...
...2: Get Free or Die Tryin...
...Them little dudes...
...The U.S...
...People would buy mix-tapes and bootlegs on the corner of Fulton Street and Utica Avenue in Brooklyn before they even went to the store...
...I got to put it in this form for you to get it, and want it, and want to move with it...
...He takes a deep breath and slouches down in his seat before responding...
...We saw mix-tapes as a hood phenomenon,” says M-1...
...My problem organizing in the movement was that nobody wanted to move, but everyone wanted to listen to Tupac,” he says...
...1 and then another year later, Turn Off the Radio Vol...
...Yet M-1 grew frustrated with the lack of unity in the black community...
...The lyrics read, “What if we could all get united...
...When he finally arrived, he pulled up in a black Suburban SUV, jumped out, and said, “You must be Matt...
...I wonder why they seem so despondent...
...His solo album seems to be a subtler and, perhaps, a more mature version of dead prez’s earlier politics...
...Loud Records, which released Let’s Get Free, was concerned about this picture because the shootings at Columbine High School were still fresh in the minds of many Americans...
...M-1 became more deeply immersed in activism after meeting Omali Yeshitela, a longtime community activist involved in the civil rights movement...
...Following the success of Let’s Get Free, M-1 and stic.man decided to head back to where they felt their voices needed to be heard most and, literally, ended up on the streets...
...He has denounced capitalism on stage, even setting dollar bills on fire to show his disgust...
...Black South Africans hold guns in the air, mouths open, yelling in unison...
...it’s one side...
...Our community is this...
...The album cover of Let’s Get Free also caused considerable controversy...
...You mind hopping in my ride and talking while I run errands with my wife and baby girl...
...The ideas you hear coming out of rappers’ heads are not our own...
...So M-1 and stic.man offered a compromise—they asked the record company to place a sticker on the cover stating, “This artwork has been censored by the powers that be due to its political content...
...M-1 began organizing families, often going door to door in neighborhoods throughout the United States, trying to persuade people to speak out about issues affecting their communities...
...It is with this attitude that M-1 took a break from dead prez and decided to release Confidential, his first solo album...
...I went there to change my life...
...We organized ourselves into a political unit called the Black Survival Movement, which was a really young group of people—twenty to thirty people, sixteen to nineteen years old—not even knowing what the hell was going on, but knowing that we wanted to do some revolutionary shit,” he says...
...I looked underneath and found a revolutionary fighting cadre,” he says...
...The one line that kept replaying in my head after listening to the album was from the song “ ’Til We Get There,” which states, “I took a page from the book of Martin Luther and decided that it’s better to hug you than to shoot you—I’m sorry homey if it’s not what you’re used to...
...The apartment units were tiny, dingy, and crowded...
...Matt Pascarella is a freelance journalist and producer based in New York City.f...
...I kept all of this in mind while waiting outside his apartment near Taaffe Place in Brooklyn...
...In the video, the wearing of the noose, the rebellious students, and the presence of the police and military in our educational process represent a hostile environment that our children are miseducated in...
...We never tried it...
...By Matt Pascarella Illustration by Mickey Duzyj From Organizer to Rapper: Driving Around with M-1 M-1 comprises one half of one of the most controversial hip-hop duos in the history of the genre, a group known as dead prez...
...educational system has been the primary force behind the miseducation of our people and is a system that leaves us powerless and hopeless,” M-1 said at the time in response to criticism...
...When M-1 was eighteen, his mother was arrested for drug possession and sentenced to fourteen years in prison...
...Another song, “Don’t Put Down Your Flag,” recalls M-1’s frustration with organizing in the community, but offers hope...
...The photo is a well-known picture taken during the Soweto uprisings in South Africa during apartheid...
...Then I remembered the clusters of tall narrow buildings with tiny windows that I passed through after getting off the subway, only an hour or so earlier on my way to meet with M-1...
...Nobody wanted to move but everyone loved Snoop Dogg...
...The song “They Schools” attacks the education system: “The same people who control the school system control the prison system and the whole social system ever since slavery...
...To change the video would be an injustice...
...It made me leave the movement to go rap,” he says...
...As I look up, I see people walking in front of the car, crossing the street, carrying grocery bags, their faces conveying a sense of exhaustion and defeat...
...He has been banned from music venues and commercial radio play throughout the United States, effectively eliminating him from competing with more mainstream hip-hop counterparts...
...This is a serious situation...
...Without hesitation, he points out the window and says, “Those little boys right there...
...He turned down the jazz station on the radio, started driving, and we began talking...
...I wanted you to open up my FBI file and see who the hell I was and where I was coming from...
...M-1 continues, “It is a battle of our ideas...
...Look...
...In 2002, the duo began releasing consecutive mix-tape albums, including Turn Off the Radio Vol...
...Rolling Stone said, “Let’s Get Free is a statement of sedition wrapped in a synergistic blend of urgent noise, angry rhythm, and rhymes that display black skill in the hour of chaos...
...I couldn’t drum up enough support...
...In 1990, he enrolled in Florida A&M, not sure what he was going to study...
...To him, his frustration meant he simply had to find a new way to get the word out and reach the community...
...When someone would get beat up by the police, “I had to pull teeth just to get the family to come out on the front line and say it’s wrong,” he says...
...In Florida, people had to stick together because—damn it—if we don’t, they’re going to bust down the door and hang us all...
...They Schools’ is a tool for change...
...These are ideas that are put here by careless, wanton, blatant capitalist bullshit in the world...
...It should be easy if you choosing a side, ’Cause over here we fighting for the future of the seeds and over there they fighting for money, oil, and greed...
...Cause we know how it feels to be divided...
...As he makes a turn onto another street, he pauses to look out the driver’s side window and says, “That’s what niggas want in the hood—doors that flip up...
...A minor hit, “HipHop,” tears apart the record industry with the lyrics, “It don’t reflect on how many records get sold/on sex, drugs, and rock and roll/whether your project’s put on hold/ . . . you can be next in line and signed, and still be writing rhymes and broke...
...It’s not two sides...
...A year after his mother was sent to prison, M-1 decided he needed to get away...
...Iask M-1 if the two sides of hiphop are reconcilable—the artists promoting craven consumerism, misogyny, homophobia, and blatant greed versus artists like him, who try to promote social, political, and cultural awareness...
...He spreads open his arms, directing me to look out the car window to what is in front of us...
...I’d rather be there than in the store because that is where people are going to buy it...
...As we pull up in front of his apartment, I ask him whom he looks towards now to make a difference...
...It was at A&M that M-1 met stic.man, his eventual partner in dead prez...
...He shakes his head and goes back to the topic...
...I didn’t go there to get an education...
...If I hadn’t gone, I would have been right where my mother was,” he says...
...Pounding bass and biting lyrics define the album...
...In 2000, they released their debut LP, Let’s Get Free, considered one of the most influential albums in the history of hip-hop...
...Two young boys are on the corner, playing with a ball in front of the grocery store...
...A few years ago, I, too, had lived in one these projects...
...We have to recognize our own interests, and that’s what we have not done,” he says...
...Everybody wanted to go to a concert, but nobody wanted to go to a rally...
...After years organizing around the country, M-1 and stic.man made their way back to Brooklyn and formed dead prez...
...As I think back to this, he continues talking...
...It’s really nice to meet you...
...I continue watching the people that were, a moment ago, passing in front of us until they disappear, out of sight, around the corner...
...Another reviewer said the album was “harkening back to the days of Public Enemy” and was “up there with Fear of a Black Planet...
...Out the window, I see a car jacked-up, new paint job, spinning rims on the tires and doors opened vertically, like the car in Back to the Future...
...Television networks refused to air the video for “They Schools” because M-1 and stic.man wear nooses around their necks in it and include scenes of students rebelling against their teacher...
...This is us...
...It made me understand the system was wrong and that it had wronged me in such a personal way that I knew I had to avenge all the pain I felt,” he says...
...I climbed into the front seat as he introduced me to his wife and his daughter...
...He adds, “And if we don’t get to them now, before 50 Cent get them—then it is a wrap...
...The elevators barely worked, and when they did, I’d stand on a floor covered in urine and empty plastic baggies...
...Confidential’ is the word used for those secret FBI documents they collect on individuals who are move-makers inside our community,” he says...
Vol. 71 • February 2007 • No. 2
