Nelson George
As a journalist, author, filmmaker, and television producer, Nelson George has explored themes in contemporary black culture for the past 30 years. His work as a pioneering hip-hop journalist at the Village Voice and Billboard led to influential texts like The Death Of Rhythm And Blues and Hip-Hop America, as well as a handful of novels. So, it’s not exactly a surprise that when George hits Toronto this weekend, he will be discussing two projects in two different mediums.
Following up Good Hair, the documentary he executive produced with Chris Rock, George will be screening his latest film project, Brooklyn Boheme—a film he co-directed that chronicles the thriving African-American arts community in the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighbourhoods of Brooklyn in the ’80s and ’90s—at 8 p.m. on December 9th at the Toronto Underground Cinema. George will stick around to read from the The Plot Against Hip-Hop, his latest novel, at A Different Booklist from 4 to 6 p.m. on December 10th. The A.V. Club caught up with George at home in Brooklyn.
The AV Club: People probably recognize you as a writer first rather than a filmmaker, even though your involvement dates back to the beginning of Spike Lee’s career. Can you tell me the importance for you of using film as a communication medium?
Nelson George: Well, it’s just reaching more people. I’ve had a couple of books that have been translated into a bunch of languages, [and] college courses, but you’re just going to reach more eyeballs with film and that’s what I’ve been doing a lot more, particularly in the last 10 years—a lot more documentary-style or docu-style stuff. From the American Gangster series at BET, to the travel show I did, to Good Hair working with Chris [Rock]. The piece that I’m working on now is a piece that if I’d been working on it 15 or 20 years ago, it would have been a book, but I thought that there was a great story in the neighbourhood that I lived in. Fort Greene and Clinton Hill has had an amazing community of black artists who’ve come through here. Particularly from the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, it was an amazing 10-year or so run, where you had everyone from Spike, who lived here, Branford Marsalis, Wesley Snipes, Laurence Fishburne, Rosie Perez, and then Vernon Reid. And then you had another kind of wave that came with the hip-hop spoken word scene: Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, and Saul Williams. So, you know an incredible roster of people who lived in the area and made some amazing work, partly because of the community that was here. I’ve lived here in Fort Greene since 1985 and had really benefited from that community, and I wanted to celebrate it. The neighbourhood has changed. It is gentrified. Some of those people are still here. Rosie is still here, Carl Hancock Rux still lives here. But the majority of the neighbourhood is more or less a white neighbourhood now. I wanted to capture that time that was very important and made sure that it was remembered.
AVC: There seems to be a sense of home or a spiritual link now, having lived there for this long. But what is it about Brooklyn? You’ve been traveling around the world with the Black Atlas project, for example, but you’re still there.
NG: I’m very intimately connected to Brooklyn in general. My first apartment as an adult was here. I had a roommate, but the first apartment I had was here. I’ve lived in about five places in the area since ’85. The other thing about Fort Greene is that it’s a beautiful area. It’s one of the beautiful neighbourhoods in New York. We capture a lot of that, I think, in the film. Just the brownstones and [Fort Greene] Park give it a character and give it an elegance that you don’t see everywhere in New York. And then it’s convenient. I mean, I can leave my house and be in lower Manhattan, I could probably be at where I’m having the meeting in less than half an hour depending on how the trains run. That kind of convenience you can’t beat.
AVC: Even visiting Fort Greene, there’s a sense that the area is very invigorating.
NG: I think when you watch the doc, that was one of the themes that ran through [it]. For Branford, when he came here in the ’80s [...] everyone who we interviewed had kind of their “wow” moment. Walking down DeKalb Ave., walking down Lafayette, going past BAM [Brooklyn Academy of Music], there’s something special about the area that captures the imagination. That’s why I’ve stayed. I’ve thought about moving other places for business, to L.A. and stuff like that. But Brooklyn is one of those magical places that has a certain kind of history. It’s not like everything good has happened here, but there’s something about the mix of conflict, beauty, and energy that has always made it a mecca for all kinds of artists. Brooklyn has spawned an incredible share of writers and musicians and actors. You know, it’s the fourth-biggest city in America, if you take it away from the rest of [New York] so it has a scale to it, it has a diversity which is, if not unmatched, is pretty close to being unmatched anywhere else in the country.
AVC: History is something that is important to you in your work. It’s not only in this film. You’re also in Toronto to also do a reading for your latest novel, The Plot Against Hip Hop.
NG: The book’s about a lot of things; one of the things it’s about is also a loss of community. [It starts with] the murder of a music writer and it sends our hero, D Hunter, a hulking black bodyguard, on this investigation. In a way, part of what [the investigation] determines is the breakdown of community. What hip-hop was—parallel to what was going on in Fort Greene in the mid-’80s into the mid-’90s—was that it was a relatively small community of people who were making a lot of decisions, and the tours that happened, the people seemed to know each other very well. They’d come up through the ranks of hip-hop. So, it’s [now] a much more splintered and fragmented world, obviously. So, he’s obviously tried to understand the journey of the culture as he goes through the investigation of the murder, and that was very intentional. I think that history’s never dead. History affects us now in some ways that people overlook or forget. I wanted to deal with it. I also wanted to deal with the fact that a big part of the African-American consciousness and hip-hop consciousness is conspiracies. People believe in conspiracies, and maybe [have] too much faith in them, and are very aware, though, so I wanted to weave those two threads together.
AVC: Talking of conspiracy theories or underhanded tactics, this book in some ways has some parallel themes to topics you’ve explored in books like The Death Of Rhythm And Blues, where you talk about The Harvard Report and efforts to infiltrate black culture, so to speak. Do you see any parallels with what’s going on in hip-hop right now?
NG: The bottom line is that commercial hip-hop is really hip-pop. Its connection to the beats, rhymes, and the ideology of the past is pretty tenuous. I think what we have is commercial products and not as much culture. I think most of what is made that gets heard on mainstream radio is very culturally specific. These guys could be singing party songs or love songs, or they are picking at [their] navel. [Laughs.] And their own psychoses. And [they are] maybe not as much as engaged in dialogue with the world around them. There’s a very narrow strata in theme and topic. People not just like Public Enemy, but Stetsasonic, KRS-One, a lot of even what NWA did when you look back on it, was social commentary and political in many ways and very little of that is made by anybody selling a lot of records today. So, that’s a profound difference. Also, hip-hop itself, the word has become so overused, it’s lost its meaning. It’s not a culturally based meaning, it’s just a marketing phrase. So, Rihanna and Beyonce are hip-hop artists to a lot of people, because they have rappers on their tracks and that’s what hip-hop has become, it’s become commercial dance music with some slang in it. [Laughs.] I think 30 or 40 years down the road, its connection to the beats and rhymes that speak to New York, or any of that type of aggression, is very tenuous. D Hunter is from that generation that grew up on earlier forms and has a very tenuous connection to what’s being made now, other than [that] it’s a way to get paid.
