This new interview series amplifies Minneapolis voices following the murder of George Floyd in southside Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, and the city’s response to Floyd’s death, including its city council’s commitment to disbanding the Minneapolis Police Department. It is an honor to inaugurate the series with this conversation with MC Longshot.
Simon Calder:
Last Friday, you released I’m Saying, a 6-track album of “healing music” “inspired by the times for the times.” Bandcamp is waiving all artist fees, so 100% of the profits will go to community organizations working to end police brutality and systemic racism in Chicago, where you are from, and Minneapolis, where you live. Could you please open with some further words on your beloved cities? What might readers from elsewhere be missing about what has been happening in Minneapolis and Chicago since the murder of George Floyd? Which organizations will be receiving the profits for your new record, and what are those organizations presently doing to benefit your cities?
MC Longshot:
Peace and love to everyone across the world fighting for justice and human equality. Minneapolis is my home. Chicago is my home. And they are both torn by the injustices taken place over the past two weeks and hundreds of years. There is no denying that WHITE PRIVILEGE IS AT THE ROOT OF RACISM, AND RACISM INVADES EVERY FACET OF AMERICAN LIFE. Black Indigenous People of Color are the ones who fall victim to this racist behavior and are left asking questions as to why is this ok. It’s not. The proceeds from my Bandcamp sales will FOREVER be donated to some community-based programs in Chicago and Minneapolis. Organizations that I chose to donate to this time around are Good Kids Mad City (Chicago), The Minneapolis Foundation Northside Funding, Assatas Daughter’s (Chicago), & WE WIN Institute (Minneapolis).
SC:
In January, you and I sat down for a Minneapolis Cable Network interview, the first ten minutes of which covered how fortunate you feel to have developed crew in both your cities: from the release in Chicago of Happiness is Hard to Find in 2002, to your move to Minneapolis – and connection with Rhymesayers – in 2009, to your collaboration, Parades, with Doomtree’s Lazerbeak in 2018. In that interview, we were always already discussing the healing of trauma. Somatic experience came up as we touched on how dancing enables us to let things go, “temporarily dropping our hang-ups.” Before discussing the need for more radical, communal forms of letting go – including letting go of the Minneapolis Police Department and other manifestations of white supremacy – can you please share some reflections on the continuity of ethos from Parades to I’m Saying? When I asked you to expand on your lyric “we all wanna be free,” you asserted that freedom is achieved when we “look inside and then work outward, spreading love.” I’m Saying seems an acknowledgment of the (overdue) need for radical change within which that same ethos shines on. Do you agree?
LS:
I very much agree. The specific problem of racial justice calls on the white community to look inward and face the facts of their inherent privilege when dealing with racism. When doing that very necessary work, one is loving thyself. I had to do the same thing with this project. I had to look inside of me and ask what my role was in this uprising… as a black man in America/Minneapolis, as a black artist. I have been filled with anger for so long over just the problem of police brutality and the inequities in our judicial system, but the murder of George Floyd brought me to a boiling point where I couldn’t contain my anger. But I was reminded, by my people with love, that I should use my platform and voice in a positive way and that if I’m recklessly out, by myself, I may not be as effective. So, I just channeled all of the feelings and emotions into those 6 songs. Hope it helps.
SC:
In the closing five minutes of our TV interview, you spoke of how your internal fortitude has enabled you to get where you are today, becoming a successful musician – by putting in work and staying true to your purpose – despite having been taken by the Department of Children and Family Services at the age of eight. You spoke of being “an artist working hard to fulfill my goals and inspire others along the way,” and you expanded on your lyric “the secret of success is to work and try.” I’m Saying maintains that fortitude, with “Salutations” asserting “you have the key to unlocking your dreams,” for example, but there is a courageous new outspokenness about which external forces work against young black men’s fortitude: “THE WHITE MAN AIN’T GOT PLANS ON CARING 4 U BUT BLACK WOMEN THEY GONE CARRY US THROUGH” is written in all caps on the “P.O.P.” lyric sheet. Can you expand further on the secret of success and on the secret impediments to success? Who are these secrets kept by and from, and what is shifting as you and others shed light on them?
LS:
Well, the important and key line there is “BLACK WOMEN THEY GONE CARRY US THROUGH” … Black Women are the key. Black Women are leading this revolution and have always been the real servers and protectors of our community. I can’t imagine what George’s Mother is going through right now, but I bet she’s leading the family with grace, bravery and dignity like no man could. I just want us a black community to continue to lift each other up and not feed into the negative. We are all instruments of change, so let’s make some good music.
SC:
“Please let’s remember that black women are targets and being killed by police too,” you posted on social media last Friday, which was the release day for I’m Saying and would have been the twenty-seventh birthday of Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor was a young black emergency room technician who was killed in her sleep by Louisville police officers carrying out a “no knock” search warrant on March 13 this year. Your title track also honors Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot dead while jogging on February 23. “74 days world, what took u so long?” I’m Saying addresses us, calling the world out on the inexcusable amount of time that passed before the father and son responsible were arrested. Can you please share some final words on timeliness: on the significance of the timing of your record’s release, and on the timeliness of the revolutionary changes?
LS:
I feel blessed but also very sad that I had to make this project. I just want it to be about the messages and the memory of those you mentioned whose specific story I touched on, but also the countless others that have and will pass at the hands of a violent racist system. The album cover is all black to commemorate mourning, the people and the transition to light. Again, it’s a response to hate with love.
SC:
Last Thursday you made a Facebook post addressing the fact that “a large part of white America doesn’t want to take their medicine and won’t even acknowledge they have a disease.” I want to begin by acknowledging the truth of this, adding that white supremacy also plagues much of the rest of the planet, with roots going back to the unscientific “hierarchies of race” invented by subjects of the British Empire and others. People who would like to educate themselves more about the racialized trauma which exists in our minds and bodies as a result of that situation can take a short free e-course with Minnesota-based trauma specialist and healer Resmaa Menakem.
In Menakem’s e-course a specialist named Rachel Martin offers a possible name for the ailment that white people suffer from: Persistent Retraumatizing Colonizer and Enslavement-Master Syndrome. Martin suggests that becoming comfortable with such vocabulary might enable white people to help each other make themselves less sick, “enlivening” each other and bringing themselves back to life and health. This makes sense to me as it seems self-evident that true health is incompatible with the level of denial white people practice within a system we first created and then came to perceive ourselves (and everyone) as benefiting from. Do you agree? Can you elaborate further on your sense of the nature and the possible cures of white people’s sickness?
LS:
I really believe it starts with conversations. Having healthy, challenging conversations about the things we don’t know that much about, educating ourselves … these are the first steps in getting to know one’s self better. If one doesn’t ask questions or take the effort to do research, then ignorance will surely lead to complacency, which will lead to exercising white privilege more, which leads to blatant racism. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake in seeking the truth and getting better. No one is perfect and we all have work to do as a human community… but for the white community (I’m not a fan of the word race anymore when describing people: community is more welcoming and hopeful for me, while race is segregated and divisive), that’s where the work starts: talking.
SC:
I’m Saying has a lot to say about scarcity and abundance: “freedom ain’t free,” you acknowledge, and freedom is especially costly in a context where so much energy has to be expended on navigating a system suffused by white privilege and white incapacity. Meanwhile, in “Plenty” you speak with power about the abundance of flows you have on deck. What can white people do to help black people harness the energy that is rightfully theirs at this moment?
LS:
The energy is ours, it’s US (Unified Souls). I want all people to love each other. I am black and we have been treated like less than a full human for over 400 years, so yes, I fight for black liberation. ‘Plenty’ is a really great example of using what many might call a “party” type beat and still having concrete content … In the song ‘Parades’ I have a line challenging rappers and emcees where I say: “you should have lots to say when it comes to ya verse…” and that’s what the chorus is kinda touching on. “how many flows you got on deck?/I got plenty, I got plenty” is me saying I will always touch on these topics, I will always invest my “O’s” back into my community, I will always bless my brothers and sisters with the real art, conversation, and love. And white can do the same, invest in the communities in which you live, your flows are your words in conversation … CHALLENGE EACH OTHER IN CONSTRUCTIVE AND POSITIVE WAYS!
SC:
Over the course of the past two weeks, my old southside neighborhood, where George Floyd was killed and many businesses were burned down, have formed a 2,750 strong Facebook community “so that we can, block-by-block, organize to cooperatively defend against the active dismantling of our neighborhood now and into the future.” Like new community groups in other parts of Minneapolis, Southside Responds has co-ordinated fire watches and distributed food and medical supplies to its members (i.e., serving and protecting itself, at best in the absence, and at worst with the opposition, of cops).
When one moderator asked community members to share their “experiences regarding white supremacist infiltrators and tactics this week,” a member reported having witnessed police officers releasing two white men from custody at 32nd and Oakland: “the 2 men were white. When they turned, we saw that they were wearing shirts with hate symbols on them. The officers released them peacefully and handed them back their guns (1 automatic weapon and 1 pistol). They also helped them back into their bulletproof vest and let them back on the streets.” Do you have experiences to share of such activity? whether of the movement for change being hijacked by white supremacist infiltrators (with or without police collusion); or of police endeavoring to control the narrative by attacking journalists; or of our communities coming together to serve and protect themselves?
LS:
I do not have personal experience with those things: I live in a quiet part of the city right on the outskirts of uptown in a neighborhood that is predominantly white families, so the agitators fortunately did not make it our way. I can tell you that I have felt very strange and almost unwelcomed in said neighborhood, mainly because I feel now more than ever that we should be going out of our way to make sure the people of the immediate community we serve and live in are alright. That hasn’t happened here and that’s disheartening. I will say that the best source of media during these revolutionary times has been Unicorn Riot. If you are not familiar with their work, please look them up. They are telling the unbiased story of the people in this struggle for equality and justice. Huge shout and love to Unicorn Riot.
SC:
We spent much of our January interview discussing a song on Parades called “Let Him Go.” It’s a song, you said, about “letting go of someone not good for you,” about “celebrating self” by standing up against a person who hasn’t shown one due respect. In the song a woman leaves her abusive male partner: “I have to love myself now because you haven’t been loving me enough, or at all,” you paraphrased the sentiment. Something similar is now happening in Minneapolis with regards to the Minneapolis Police Department, which a veto-proof majority of the city council have vowed to disband. Before that, The University of Minnesota was quick out of the gate to loosen ties, with President Joan Gabel announcing two days after the murder of George Floyd that the university would no longer contract with MPD for law enforcement support during large events. Minneapolis Public Schools likewise voted to terminate its contract with MPD on June 2, and the Minneapolis Parks Board did the same on June 3. Can you please share some reflections on any or all of the ways in which Minneapolitans are choosing to let the police go?
LS:
One thing that happens when you remove police from a situation, especially one involving BIPOC, is you remove fear. The fear that we may be stopped for no reason… the fear that we may be searched and seized for no reason… the fear that I may not walk away from an encounter with a policer with my life. I am a youth advisor and educator for a non-profit organization here in Minneapolis called WE WIN Institute. WE WIN’s mission is to promote academic and social success for all children, especially black indigenous kids of color. It’s an amazing program run by one of my mentors Titilayo Bediako. After Philando Castille was unjustly killed by the police, Titi put together a town hall meeting to discuss relations between the community and the police and she invited the police chief at the time, and other officers. When the police were coming into the building for the meeting one of the kindergarten boys saw an officer and immediately ran to me and expressed how afraid he was because the police were there… He was six. We will figure out how to do just fine without them. We got small glimpses of what that might look like during the protests, when everyday citizens had to come together to protect themselves, their families and their neighborhood. It can be and will be done.
SC:
The final track on I’m Saying, “Burn It Down,” is not your first to open with the phrase “Rest in Peace Human Rights.” “Parades” also opens with that phrase, before honoring not just southside but also Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, and so many other stolen black lives. Back in January, you expanded on the lyric “let’s celebrate the precious lives that they took too soon before they got to see their lives full bloom,” talking of the promise of becoming what blooms in celebration of the spirit of those lost lives. With good reason, I’m Saying is more out-spoken about the forces that oppress growth, but it is also just as rooted in the same life-affirming, soul-expressing soil. Even as what “Burn It Down” celebrates is the destruction of a “crooked ass police system” you maintain fortitude enough to assert that something new and superior will be seen “rising up from the ashes.” What needs to happen now and tomorrow and the next day if such hope is to be resurrected and nurtured?
LS:
The very next step is ALL FOUR MURDERERS MUST GO TO PRISON. That is what has to happen next. And every case in which a black person was unjustly killed by police needs to be re-opened (and all cases in which blacks where killed with “justification” need to be re-examined). We need to continue to talk openly and with compassion and we must protect our human community, especially the Black Woman.
SC:
Let’s close by focusing on the growth of your own art again. Back in January you were wrapping up a music video for “Parades” with Mercies May, and you shared how you and Lazerbeak were plotting out the next twelve months, giving birth to a new project expected for early 2021. Congratulations on meanwhile completing this timely and powerful record with Omen. In time, will you and Beak be returning?
LS:
I am always, ALWAYS, creating music. My next album, ‘Champion’ will be out Friday 7.3.20 and I’m really excited to share that with the world. It is produced entirely by my long-time musical partner TGIK. Again, it is healing music and I hope people enjoy it. Beak and I will be back, and we are still working on the new project. I’m in the early stages of co-writing a script to shoot a video for all 6 songs of ‘I’m Saying’ with Blue G Productions. And my group project, Army Of 2 with Chicago emcee Ang13, is also in the works. Me and younger brother VI Tha Boss have been working on a project called ‘Brthrs’ as well. So, like I said, I’m always creating … this is my life’s purpose. Thanks for reaching out and I send healing and love to all. Peace, Chad.
Simon Calder is a Minneapolitan currently residing in Dorset, England after serving as a lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota from 2011 to 2020.