I can’t help thinking that the Pulitzer prize committee missed a trick in their award to the rapper Kendrick Lamar this week. If they had given him the Pulitzer for literature rather than for music it would have elevated his artform and sent a message that would have resonated around the world: that rap is a legitimate form of poetry and should be put on a par with, and treated with the same deference as, Shakespeare and Wordsworth.
Let’s be honest, Kendrick Lamar, Stormzy, BBK and Giggs have a greater impact and more relevance today than all the literary “greats” wandering lonely as a cloud on some dusty bookshelf in some crusty corner, waiting to be forced down the school curriculum gullets of young people.
If the Pulitzer people had only bitten the bullet and done the equivalent of what the Nobel committee did for Bob Dylan and rock lyrics when they said, “You know what? We’re going to get dissed and ridiculed for even putting Dylan on the same level as John Steinbeck, but what the heck. Let’s just do it and take the flak.” Who knows what the dividend would have been for wider society?
In Tottenham, where I am from, literary recognition would transform every other young black boy writing rhymes. It would stick two fingers up at the notion that the only way young black boys can get respect is on the streets. Contrary to popular belief, young black boys spend more time writing poetry than they do stabbing and shooting each other. For real. They have transformed the English language with an unparalleled lyrical dexterity. But we refuse to acknowledge that – even on Roger McGough’s Poetry Please on Radio 4.
It is shocking. But the fact there is no recognition of this “new English” in our classrooms is criminal. No wonder so many youngers are bored out of their skulls and headed right down the “schools-to-prison pipeline” – as Cheryl Phoenix of the Black Child Agenda calls it – when they should be in class learning. Believe me, if the lyrics of Biggie Smalls were on the GCSE reading list, state education wouldn’t be failing our children. And if there had been an O-level in rap when I was at school I would have been the first person through the school gates every morning and the last person out. I wouldn’t have been expelled, and I certainly wouldn’t have burned down the chemistry lab.
And big up Her Majesty for recognising that in her New Year honours list, which acknowledged homegrown rap poetry by giving a gong to grime artist Wiley. So why isn’t the rest of high society following QE2’s lead? Isn’t the measure of any civilised society how it treats its rappers? If it was white kids spending so much time writing poetry, would the government not be co-opting the phenomenon as a standard bearer for this amazing country we live in?
And, please, don’t start talking about the content or the character of these rap poems and blaming it for the gun and knife deaths this year. Aim that vitriol at the opening exchange of Romeo and Juliet, where Samson and Gregory talk of stabbing up the Montagues and doing unspeakable things to their women. Let’s face it, the play needs a “parental advisory” sticker because it would have run foul of the obscenity laws that saw Lady Chatterley’s Lover being dragged into court in 1960.
If we’re asking our children to read filth such as Shakespeare in school, and turning a blind eye to the content because it has been deemed by the gatekeepers of literary imperialism, known as “the canon”, as beyond moral reproach and contemporary social responsibility, then we cannot blame Eminem for corrupting the minds of our youths.
Indeed, the corruption is from us, the guardians of their mindsets, in refusing to make the connection between Romeo and Juliet and Straight Outta Compton. I challenge any English teacher to make a comparative study between the lyrics of the title rap from NWA’s debut album and that opening scene of Romeo and Juliet and tell me they’re not the same thing. The only difference is that an AK-47 is Ice Cube’s tool, whereas Samson vows to stab any man or maid of Montague’s.
When schools neglect their duty it is left to black parents in particular, in this respect, but wider society in general, and the arts, to pick up the pieces and make the change. As the new chair of the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham, in these most challenging times for my neighbourhood, I’m trying to give our youngers their due and to turn this incredible venue into a safe space to “spit bars” and make the connection with the past 100 years of black British musical creativity. If more people appreciated the real talent within young black men and women, this task would be a whole lot easier.