It’s the Lyrical Sex Pistol: Or, A Rebel Music that Rewrites Anatomy—Rhyme after Fiery Rhyme

Abstract

The category of “Rebel Music” comes to us from Bob Marley, of course, chanting down police states forcing roadblocks and curfews on the Black masses in the African diaspora in Jamaica and “America” at large. We hear Tuff Gong lyrically wailing on record: “Why can’t we be what we want to be? / We want to be free!” The song appeared on Natty Dread (1974) and Babylon by Bus (1979) before Rebel Music (1988), the album. To speak of Babylon, U.S.A. along with Maria W. Stewart and Black Power rebels in addition to Rastafari¹ is to separate from standard Anglo-North American rhetorics of rebellion. The rebel in this popular media is a cliché. He is white, male and “wholesomely” racist. There is the “rebel” of the southern Confederacy, fighting to uphold plantation slavery, or at least its flag, downpressing Africans in the name of “Dixie.” Then, there is the “rebel” of 1950s nostalgia on film, James Dean and the like, who readily admits that he has nothing to rebel against. Hip-Hop replaces this Rebel Without a Cause (1955) with Public Enemy’s “Rebel Without a Pause” (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 1988). Later, the self-proclaimed “Black Panther of Rap,” Paris supplied a similar message on “Escape from Babylon,” a track from The Devil Made Me Do It (1991).

Lord, I’m bound for Black Mountain, me and my razor and my gun: [I’m] gonna shoot [my man] if he stands still and cut him if he run.

(Bessie Smith, “Black Mountain Blues” [1930])

[I]n this white-man world you got to take yuh mouth and make a gun!

(Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones [1959])

As though their entrance had been a signal, one of the lesbos [sic] leaped atop her table and began doing a frantic table dance, as if spraying the audience with unseen rays from a gun hidden beneath her mini-skirt. The skirt wasn’t much bigger than a G-string. It was in gold lamé, looking indecent against her smooth chamois-colored skin.

(Chester Himes, Blind Man with a Pistol [1969])

A lyrical gun dat di people have fun / fi gyal jump up an just a rail an bomb.

(Shabba Ranks, “Gun Pon Me” from As Raw As Ever [1991])

Play private airports, Fashion Week I’m on tha runway / Fedz tryna tie me to all sorts a gunplay.

(Lil’ Kim, “Who Shot Ya?” [2004])