Few musicians are as wise, spiritual and deep-thinking as Brother Ali, which certainly makes him somewhat of a rarity in the world of hip-hop. The Rhymesayers Entertainment artist recently took time out from his European tour to speak to Gingerslim.
It’s coming up to a couple of years since you released your last album and we got that single last year; is there a new project looming?
There is…
*line goes dead then reconnects*
Sorry I lost you then, man.
Okay, are we back?
Yeah I think so, all I heard you say was “There is”, then the line went dead
Oh well maybe that’s for the best [laughs]. But yeah I started working on a new project and it’s very different from the last project – the way I’m writing it is different, the production is different, really the whole approach is different and so I’m excited about it. I’m not really wanting to say too much right now cos it’s still taking shape, but I hope to have it out by the end of this year.
That’s good to hear, man. Now, you’ve been quite vocal in previous interviews about some of the problems you’ve faced as an American Muslim; I was wondering how noticeable the impact of Trump’s presidency has been from that perspective?
For me personally it hasn’t really changed anything. The security people at the airport always gave me trouble and they still do sometimes, so that hasn’t really changed. I think the differences are for my wife, my daughters and for the community that I’m a part of. You know my ancestry is European and I’m an albino, but I was raised in African American and black culture, so sometimes people are unsure of my racial makeup, but for the most part if I have problems it’s because of the work that I do.
But for black and brown people, and those who small-minded people think look like Muslims, it’s dangerous. I mean not only from the authorities but from regular people who are from the dominant group, you know they’re poor, they’ve been financially oppressed, they’ve been used, but they’ve always been told “oh but you’re white and this is your country”, so pride in America is really pride in their group.
But now they’re losing that hope of whiteness and being an American, so when they say make America great again, what they mean is make white people great again. And then they see black people being proud as a direct threat to them, and also Muslims, you know anyone not completely bowing to them is a direct threat to what they want their life to be about. So it’s really difficult and because the president now is one of them, they feel completely confident acting really horribly – really bad character, really bad manners, being really violent. There’s a video that’s on Facebook of this grown man in a parking lot and he’s just screaming in the face of this black woman who’s pregnant. It’s really bizarre how empowered people are feeling now to be horrible cos they think they’re fighting for their country when they do that.
And how powerful a role do you see music playing in the act of resistance?
Honestly I’m not that impressed with it. I love hip hop music, I feel like I’m a part of the culture, but me being an underground artist who is a little bit of an outsider in certain ways, I’ve always looked at the landscape and wondered what’s the next thing? What should we be doing next and what are we not thinking about? What should we be focusing on? So when I came out in the early 2000’s, the popular narrative at that time was about triumph over adversity, so Jay-Z was leading it and 50 Cent, people like that – I came from nothing and now I’m cool and I’m rich and powerful – and that’s great, that’s a great story cos it’s true and it gives people hope, so I appreciate that.
So I was never against that, I’ve always okay, but what are they not saying? And so I made music about being vulnerable and then in the late 2000’s, I would say 2010, I put an album out and at that time people were celebrating extravagance and being really successful and rich, that was like the Rick Ross time, Watch the Throne, that type of thing. Kanye and Jay-Z were talking about black capitalism and black consumerism as a way out. So then I came out and said look most of us are poor, let’s just start from there. Were not living extravagantly, we’re actually going to tell the truth and we don’t just want to beat the capitalists at their own game. Not that I’m a communist but I’m saying hyper-capitalism, hyper-consumerism, that’s not a win for me – for us to be able to buy more than other people can buy and then say that that’s freedom.
But you’re still stepping on people and people are still suffering, so that you can have more; that goes against the grain. And now that Trump is the president, so many of the artists are now talking about prisons and all this stuff, but to me it just feels really anaemic, man. It’s not powerful to me, most of what’s being talked about. I mean Lowkey has always been talking about this, Akala has always been talking about this, Immortal Technique, Mos Def, you know you have artists who have always been speaking on this stuff. And I like hearing Jay-Z talk about it, I’m a big Jay-Z fan, but I just don’t think it’s really impacting the people.
So what do you think they could be doing, could they be doing more? Do you think it needs an alternative voice?
I don’t spend any time thinking about what I wish other people would do differently, but I really do like a lot of the emerging voices and so that’s really cool. But in terms of all the public political thinkers in America, I probably align most with Dr Cornel West. He’s a Christian and I’m a Muslim, but his idea of justice comes from a loyalty to being moral and there’s a spiritual dimension to being a moral person because the unseen virtues have to be more important to you than anything worldly, including power. So if it’s a pure Marxist idea about power, that basically starts with the same epistemology, the same metaphysics as secular capitalists, that basically say the world is all goods and resources and power to control those goods and resources, that’s what life is. So then we just fight over how to get power over those goods and resources, and that’s what winning is. I’m sorry, but I can’t with that. To me the unseen world of virtue is more important, to me virtue is more important than power. They’re both valid ways of looking at things, but that’s what I believe in. So that’s why when everyone’s making this political music that I already did, now I’m focusing on spirituality, which is not instead of or in lieu of, it’s not a bypass for the political and social reality, but it’s like how am I going to become the type of person that will deny myself material things because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s going to take something spiritual to do that and you’ve got to have the type of heart that can put virtue and other people before yourself. The modern conversation around power and revolutionary power, is not talking about that. Even modern spirituality, kinda like internet spirituality, it’s not about breaking the ego and that’s what real spirituality is about in all the traditions – in Hinduism, in Buddhism, that’s in authentic Christianity, authentic Judaism, indigenous peoples’ religion. It’s like look the human condition is we have beautiful hearts but we have ego. Ego will always command us to take from other people and to oppress other people, the ego is always going to want more, so we have to discipline the ego. But most modern spirituality doesn’t do that and so basically without doing that outer work, or the inner work to get your heart right, if the oppressed people got power now they would just become the new oppressors. And to me that’s not a victory, to most people that’s not a victory, but what’s the road map to be able to live with dignity in a way that is also virtuous? Virtue requires us to deny ourselves things that our ego demands. Like I should be able to have sex with whoever I want, why can’t I just grab a woman and have sex with her? Because that’s rape! Well okay then I have to tell my ego that this woman’s right to freedom of choice and freedom over her body, is more important than my desire, but I’m going to have to discipline my ego to get to that point.
And it’s the same with what’s wrong with consuming gold, if I want gold and it looks good on me? Well then you say what’s gold doing to South Africa, what are diamonds doing to West Africa? So if I had the money to buy gold and it looks good on me and people seem to think it looks good on me, there’s something spiritual that’s going to make me think that those people I’ve never met are more important than how good it feels for me to wear gold. So to me, that’s what my focus is and I can’t say what other people should do, but I listen to my heart and that’s what I believe.
That’s a really good perspective to have though. Now you’ve said before that each of your albums has been the result of the pain, growth and eventual healing that you’ve experienced, and to me your last album sounded like your most joyous one to date, so I was wondering if you feel fully healed now from whatever you went through before?
No, I think it’s always a process and I think that’s one of the things about real, genuine spirituality is that we know it is a never-ending process. But I will say when we’re early on that path, sometimes the narrative that spiritually immature people have is that they were once lost and now they’re found, or they used to damned and now they’re saved, but it doesn’t work like that [laughs]. Once you start going on the path it’s just like anything else, like now does Venus Williams think she’s the greatest she can ever be? No because she’s always going to be working on it until she can’t anymore and it’s the same with anybody who is really dedicated to something. Once you solve one problem, you just move up in problems and you realise there’s a much more nuanced problem that you couldn’t even know about because you weren’t wise enough to see it.
So do you feel like that sort of complacency is a problem elsewhere? Because that’s how I see it in music, I see some people who feel like they’ve achieved everything they can so they get complacent and then their art suffers as a result.
It can be a really traumatic experience to create without fear cos the reality is there is fear. So you do something that is really creative, you pour your heart into it and then people might just ignore it, or they might hate it. And I mean hating it is better than ignoring it honestly, but I know I’ve been through that and then it’s like why did I do all that? I kinda died internally to make this album and now it’s just another one with all the 50 million albums that came out and so I think at a certain point some people are like I’m not going to plunge the depths of my soul again if it’s not going to be received.
So people who have done that in the past, or they’re no longer in the spotlight, it’s really hard work doing that and so the average person isn’t going to keep doing it. I believe that’s a spiritual practice too, even if people don’t think that they’re religious. Like you listen to someone like James Baldwin talk about what it really means to create from a true place – it’s a death. So I think with musicians, maybe they did that once or twice and everyone celebrates them for it, but it’s hard to keep doing it. You know you can make a living off the spiritual war you fought 20 years ago and so you could just keep touring that album, people still like it so you can make a living doing that and honestly I feel like a lot of those people go to Europe, but it’s not fair to Europe and the UK because the artists from over there can’t do that. They gotta keep creating cos they’re basically being ignored on the global stage. How come everybody all over the world doesn’t know Akala, or doesn’t know Lowkey? Everybody should. There’s a million of these artists and I probably don’t even know most of them, but I really think it’s unfair because European people know what real music is. So I think it’s unfair that a lot of old skool hip hop artists just keep going over there and doing the same old songs over and over again. I mean I’m glad they’re making money, people seem to like it, that’s cool but it’s like they’re still living, they’re still learning, they’re still being a human being, what’s going on? We want to hear that, we want to hear what it feels like to be 55 year old and trying to figure out how long you can keep rapping.
Now speaking about Europe, you’re about to touch down over here for your tour. Do you feel any sort of different connection with the fans here, compared to those back home?
I don’t think that they’re different, but when we go round Europe and the UK, or around the world in general, there’s an understanding that our experiences aren’t identical and so like the interviews I do with journalists over there are always the best. Because they’re thinking I don’t really know what this person is about so let me really pay attention and listen to them, where as in the US there is this familiarity that I think can make us a little complacent and can make use feel like yeah I know what you’re about, we’re part of the same group and you’re probably saying the same things that someone else is saying, so it’s just a different level of attention. And artists are driven by a few different motivations, so some of them want control, control of their life and environment, they want to be able to do what they want to do, not what someone else is making them do. Some artists want power and that’s different cos power is the ability to be able to control other people.
Some artists, and it’s true with people too not just artists, some of them just want fame, they just want to be known. It doesn’t matter what they’re known for, it doesn’t matter if it’s true to them or not, they just want a lot of people to know who they are. For me – and again none of these are necessarily good or bad, it’s about what you do with them – fame is the one I respect the least. For me it’s about connecting and it’s about being understood, like I want to genuinely communicate and exchange with people. I want to listen and be listened to, so going to Europe there are smaller crowds than anywhere in the States and I don’t make much money, so the main reason for me wanting to go is because I know that people are listening! [laughs] You know what I mean? And ultimately I’m going to care more about that than making money.
So you’ve got the tour and then you’re working on the album; is there anything else on the horizon?
So my wife and I teach Islamic spirituality at home in Minneapolis, we have a weekly gathering that we do. I basically split my time between writing, recording and performing music on the one hand, then studying and teaching the spiritual path on the other and I’m really fortunate that we live a really simple life. Slug gave me really good advice when I bought my house, he said buy a house that you can afford to keep up even in a slow year, so you’re never a slave to your living expenses. So my family and I live in a small, simple house and I make enough off music so I can do the spirituality thing half the time and I don’t have to worry about getting paid to do that. I don’t have to try get donations or something like that, not at this stage and so it’s a really good life, man. I’m really happy.
Yeah that sounds very fulfilling, man. Well I know we’re running out of time so I’m going to leave it there, but it’s a pleasure to talk to you.
It’s a real pleasure to talk to you too, man.
I’ll be at the Bristol show next week, so maybe I’ll see you then.
Yeah that’d be great, I’d love to say hello to you in person.
Okay, man, well take care.
Thank you, brother, peace.
***
Brother Ali is on tour across Europe until the end of March. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow and Front Magazine. His main interests in rap are UK hip-hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best. Follow him here.