Welcome to Brooklyn. It’s raining and the frequency of cigarettes being bummed by people who evidently forgot theirs at home has increased. I am trying to find a place that sells socks, and stubbornly not purchasing an umbrella that I am sure I could actually use. I have been living in Brooklyn for a week. I am still not completely charmed by it.
But Brooklyn is embodied by the bodies on its streets. Of these the three that grab my attention most fervently are those seated or standing under the awning of a closed shop, humming a beat, bobbing their heads to it and saying things that I can only begin to hear as I approach them. I enter their poems, en media res:
“I am on a journey,” says the first rapper though he’s standing still. And as I slow to listen I note that his verses are full of these contradictions between what he’s saying and what he’s doing. He says “Between that sight and this heard sound, I prefer what’s written down,” despite sight and sound being the only two prevalent components of his performance.
As the first rapper ends, the other rapper steps forward. This performer’s words are more generic, like he heard them somewhere, and rehearsed them, and is now performing them. And to this rapper it feels like the performance is the piece, he, as his opponent said, has a preference to “that sight and this heard sound” not “what’s written down.”
“My soul is in a box mama, and outside there’s only chains. But I am breaking out to turn these shackles into reigns.” And I think what’s interesting about this line is not the line. Rather the interest is in the spectacle he uses to articulate his words. When he says “to turn these shackles” each word is punctuated by a wave of his hand and an almost conducting of the third man keeping the beat, expressing to him with gesticulations to drop the upbeats for a measure. He holds himself, and shakes when he says “My soul is in a box”. And the subtle flipping of his hands from palms up and submitting on “shackles” to a fierce fist held up on “reigns” articulates the lyrical point he’s making faster than the lyrics can themselves. He is interpreting while he’s performing; removing that step for us voyeurs.
By the time this second performer is wrapping up his rapping with phrases like “Four score and seven times I’ve busted out these god damn rhymes. And I’m a tall ass nigger for my age...” The other performer is rubbing his chin like his preparing for his allowed rebuttal. He starts to interrupt, humming “mhmm, mhmm” on the upbeats until his opponents phrase is done and then taking back the flow with sharp words that seem to big to fit into a rhyme scheme like: “Now let baffle you, not battle you, confuse you and abuse your confusion by using your cranium to fuse your verse with babbling pollution.” This cuts the battle short. The rapped joke makes the hype-man laugh and lose the beat. Then they all start laughing.
Then I am forced to remember where I am. Then they recognize me. But they’re all smiles, asking me “How was that?” and for cigarettes. I tell them I liked it and hand them some smokes. And I’m already reviewing them in my head. I think that my whole review could have just be “I liked it, go to Brooklyn.”
I start to walk away, back to looking for socks. When I pass them, heading back to my room with what I had been looking for, they are still at play.
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