Bomani Armah - Part One

 

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Elliott Farmer: Thank you for joining me today in the studio with Bomani Armah "D’mite", of notarapper.com. Thank you for sitting down and doing the interview with me. I would like to commend you for the work you do at Martha’s Table Teens Program. Could you tell me more about the work you do there?

Bomani Armah: Yeah, That was the gig that started me working with young people. I started working with a program called Crushed Ice started by Tim Jones who is the director there now. It was basically teaching creative writing and critical thinking through hip-hop. We would analyze hip-hop songs, hip-hop videos and then would have students write their own songs that would reflect their own goals and aspirations. And it really showed me the power of words and the power of media and how we can help kids understand that they don’t have to be the in takers of media but create there own media as well.

EF: That is funny being as hip hop artist because a lot of times they are criticized for not being mindful of the messages they are sending out to kids. You having worked with kids tend to be a big part of your work. Can you tell us more of why kids are at the center of what you do?

BA: Kids are impressionable. I know I am impressionable so I realize how I need catchy and repetitive music implanted in my heart and in my soul. I realize how important it is so that is what I try to get myself into. A lot of the time we talk hip-hop we talk about hip-hop in terms of TV and radio, but most of the hip-hop artists I know who keep hip-hop alive in the streets are teachers, social workers and after-school program directors. So it isn’t as out-of-whack for me; most of my partners I work with in the studio are all in the same field. It may not be the same for the national hip-hop artists but the ones that are keeping it alive in the streets stay very connected to young kids and they feel that it is very important.

EF: As a father, having recently having twins how has that impacted your artistry and your life in general?

BA: It has inspired me to write songs specifically about being a father and it has also made me to try to get my hustle game tighter. :) … I haven’t got to the point were I like it yet but I am still working on it. It’s cool. It makes me reflect on how I want to be remembered and how I am representing my family even more than I did before. But for the most part it gives me a new level of urgency and that is coming out of my music as well.

EF: In your song you say "while some people are into making small stuff, you’re into making plans". Park Triangle Productions has been around for about four years. What direction do you see forgoing in the future?

BA: I would love for this to be an entertainment boutique. And that no matter what your artist goal or endeavor is, you can come here and get all aspects of it met. I can’t wait to have the first national artists to come here and we record their album, produce their album, do the artwork for there album, do the music video, do the website so it is weaved together seamlessly. I think that is what we do here very well between myself, Gamel, the founder, and the other people we have been bringing in to really take someone’s vision from beginning to end. I love being an artist- I see myself releasing 2 or 3 albums in the next 3-4 years but I think my strength is me being a producer in the broader sense of the word. I think I can formulate it and bring it out of their head onto a CD. And I really see our company being really good at that and being well known for that, especially for artist coming out of D.C.

EF: There is definitely a struggle of being an artist and being an individual. As an independent person having your own company being able to do more than what you would do on a label. Have you ever though of being on the commercial scene and on a label?

BA: When I was younger, I was pretty anti-label- I wanted to do this whole grass roots thing but now I am a little more open to it basically because of my financial responsibilities. It would have to be in the right circumstances. I would like to have the help of larger companies to expand my ideas but I know what works for me as an artist how I work and I wouldn’t be down an A&R or a vice-president of a record label telling me this is what I had to do to get the songs out. I still might never get signed but I am talking to a lot of record labels and A&Rs now but unless I feel like I will have the artistic freedom. If I want to do a yodeling album, I am going to do a yodeling album and there is nothing any record label going to do to stop me from that. So they’d have to understand that walking into that.

EF: So no commercials for 40s or Skittles or something?.... :)

BA: I would love to do commercials as long as they are for the product that I would really endorse. I eat skittles but I wouldn’t endorse them because they are not healthy. I drink alcohol but I would not endorse it because I know it is not healthy. What I am about to start endorsing are some of these educational programs. I have a friend of mine, Ashton Rue, that has a reading program based off of hip-hop lyrics that I would love to be apart of, finding sponsors and taking it to another level. Or taking after school systems. There is an avenue for artist to find a commercial income. We have to find the right products and the right who understand you can invest have them invest in intelligent, responsible young people to invest and still make money out of it. We are now creating our own lane and we have to be patient with it.

EF: Yeah you mentioned the book reading initiative. You know I would be remised if I didn’t ask you about the smash hit "Read-A-Book". That’s where a lot of people outside the D.C. area know you. Let me ask you a couple question about that. I have heard why you chose crunk style because of its style and because of its energy and because of its reach. Why did you choose animation for the visual style by which to communicate the message?

BA: The animation wasn’t even my choice. What happened was the animation department at BET called me. They said they wanted to find a way to put an animation to the song. Then they got another company to do it- it wasn’t BET who animated it. They found another company and linked me with them we did the animation and put it on it. Animation worked perfectly for it. To really give the song the ridiculousness that it needed visually a lot that you couldn’t really do with real life people which we couldn’t do just budget wise. With cartoon artists, we had all the special effects in the world. I like to describe the video as beautifully ignorant- even more ignorant than I could ever imagine it being. I think it came out perfectly.

EF: So did you think that by making this video it’d give you an audience with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton was going to respond to you? Did you think about that?

BA: I knew it was going to make me bigger than I ever was. I thought 2 or 3 times bigger than I ever was. But not to the point where I was into a room- I went to the black Caucus and I went on the microphone and was like "Yeah, I am Bomani Armah, the artist behind Read-A-Book." There were 400 people in there and the entire mood and attitude changed, they were like "oohh, that’s him" and I did not think I would get to that level. I never thought I would get on ‘106 and Park’. I have been on BET now twice with music videos and I didn’t have to compromise who I was to do it. And I would never tell you that I was on it. Since I was 20-21-22 I have been telling people that I am going to be an artist for real. But I have resolved to the fact that I am not going to be famous because I am not going to do the blinged-out-bitched-and-hoes music videos, but it happened anyway. I am still trying to grasp what that means. I am still trying to understand that fact that more people know who I am. It’s a cool ride, I am enjoying it.

EF: So with that we have had a big discussion with the black community about what we should say. You know there is a lot of discussion in the NAACP about the ‘n-word’. We even had that thing last week when Eddie Griffin and he was using the ‘n-word’ in his skit and they basically they turned off the mike and took him off, we aren’t having it. We’ll pay him exactly what we promised him but…

BA: But stopped him from using nigger. Yeah, I don’t use the n-word. I think we should ban the ‘n-word’. I think if you mean nigger, you should say nigger. If you say ‘n-word’ and you mean nigger, might as well say the word you meant. It is all about the energy, your feeling. All language is context. All language is what you meant. We have to stop people from saying bad things about each other, not curse words in particular. I tell people all the time- love is not a good word, it’s not a bad word. It’s how you use it. If you say, ‘I love to kill niggers’, is love a good word in that sense? No- it’s the context; it’s completely the context. Using profanity in ‘Read-A-Book’ is completely necessary. That was the context of that satire. And those you are coming out so adamantly against it are the ones so disconnected from the culture- so disconnected that they could get the satire. When the lady who wrote the press release about ‘Read-a-Book’, when I debated her on the Rollin Martin Show and said that the only problem the Rainbow Push Coalition did not have anybody younger than 35 who didn’t get the joke. Someone in their organization should have been like "no, this is what he meant.’ They were so disconnected that they didn’t get the joke. Do I curse all the time? No- I think it is my job as a poet it is my job to use language to effect people. And at that point ‘Read-a-Gosh-Darn-Book’ wasn’t going to get the message across. You wouldn’t be talking to me now. It was the point of it.

What we should do is we should concentrate on people’s actions and the feelings being the words, not the words they use specifically. My friend Sasha pointed out something very, very crucial to me. All these people were telling me ‘you shouldn’t curse’, these ministers Jesse Jackson or whatever, and my man pointed out that there is no mention of the ‘f-word’, the ‘b-word’, the ‘a-word’, or the ‘s-word’ in the Bible. In the Bible cursing is not four letter words; cursing is wishing ill will on someone. So if you are like ‘I hope he trips’- that’s cursing. That’s a no-no in the Bible. And people try to make that correlation a magical thing about the power of these words, it’s not. It’s completely about what you meant when you said it. So since what I meant was not detrimental to anybody, I have no problem with using it at all.

EF: There are obviously people that don’t get it. And there are people like when you ere on CNN saying ‘you like to start fires’ and etc… Obviously there are people that don’t get it. How do we bridge the gap between the 1960s Civil Right era to the 80s-90s hip-hop babies. How do we bridge that gap where we are trying to do the same thing- it’s the upliftment of our people, but we tend to have critics with the older generation when we do these sort of things.

BA: The only way to bridge that gap is with continuous dialogue. My only concentration right now it to make sure this doesn’t happen with me and the next generation. I don’t want to be in 2040 arguing with 16 year olds. I want it to be that when I am sixty, these kids are coming up with this stuff and I am like what the heck is this- that I am open-minded enough to understand the generation gap and go talk to them. I tell students all the time: one day you’re going to be having this argument with your kids. "I don’t know what you guys are listening to but back in the day we had real music like Laffy Taffy. I don’t know what the heck this garbage is."

EF: I don’t know if that will ever happen but…

BA: Trust me, that’s exactly the way it is going to happen. I saw a video clip of Ella Fitzgerald doing a concert in the late 60s, doing her Jazz thing, blowing it away. She stops in the middle of her set and says ‘I don’t know what the hell these kids are listening to this day. They going like ‘OOOww I feel good…’ and she goes into a James Brown impersonation. But she was the generation before so she thought what James Brown was doing was some garbage. But our parents think what James Brown was doing was the height of music.

EF: Yeah Ella Fitzgerald couldn’t sing in churches. They thought she was a little to bit jazzy and in a black church the drums were evil.

EF: Each generation thinks the next generation is crazy. I mean, we are doing it now. The hip-hop generation. The real hip-hop was ‘94-’95 when we had A Tribe Called Quest and KRS-ONE. I don’t know what you guys are doing these days.

EF: I am in that mind set because now it just sounds like nursery rhymes.

BA: Yes, you might be right but it is also a generation gap. Each generation thinks the next generation is crazy. That’s been happening for millenniums. So hopefully there is a dialogue amongst us 20-30 year olds to decide now that when we are 55 and 65 that we will have an open dialogue with he 16 year olds. We are still going to be like, I don’t know what the hell they are listening to but I understand that is how youth popular culture works and I am going to talk to them rather than talking at them. And I m going to talk to them rather than talk at them and we are going to find a way we can we can make it work for everybody.

EF: Do you ever see local artist taking back radio stations or are we just going to keep this top 40. Or do you think if there is even a problem with that?

BA: Again I think we are going to have to look to the future for it. What we are going to have to keep checking at the radio but we have to make sure that the people that run the radio aren’t going to control t he internet. The Internet has balanced the playing field. I can sell on iTunes, there’s Internet radio and there is going to be a moment where Universal, EMI, and all these huge large companies are going to try to shut out the little guy again. But instead of doing tat we are just going to make sure. I would love to get back on the radio- I would love to see it happen. Maybe it will. I am kind of counting that one has lost. To really fight radio we would have to fight the bigger battle like capitalism but people aren’t ready to fight capitalism.

 

Introduction | Bomani Armah Interview Part 1 | Bomani Armah Interview Part 2