Essay On Brother Ali

Music has the power to directly influence people. It takes direct control of the minds of listeners and influences the ways people operate, including their actions, motives, and feelings. This influence can be seen in all genres of music. Each genre is made to generate a specific response from listeners, whether it is a high energy, head banging response from metal, or a smooth and relaxing response from R&B. When addressing responses to music, another interesting aspect to consider is the lyrics. Lyrics have a strong presence in music, usually telling a story or circling around a common topic or theme. Songs that separate themselves from others are those possessing lyrics that portray a message. Often times, these lyrics that can rally a group

of people together to make a change. There are many groups that make music with the sole purpose of promoting an issue. One person who is still trying to gain steam with his message is Brother Ali, a Minnesota born hip-hop artist. Through his lyrics and actions, Brother Ali is using the power of music to try and make a difference in the world by promoting awareness of issues such as violence in the Middle East, economic priorities in the government, cultural standards, and racial equality. This paper will explore Brother Ali’s message and the influence it has on his listeners.
The purpose of Brother Ali’s lyrics directly relate to the experiences he has lived through since his youth.

In 1977, Ali was born into an impoverished white family and was often exposed to the racism, violence, and hardships experienced in African American communities. One feature that set Brother Ali apart from his other white counterparts was his albinism, a defect in melanin production resulting pigment in the skin, hair, and eyes. From the start of his life, he started to experience similar sorts of rejection and unfairness that some black people would similarly face. Brother Ali actually tried to find an answer in life that would promote opposite outcomes to what he was experiencing. At the age of 15, Brother Ali converted to Islam. Through an interview with Chris Riemenschneider and the Star Tribune, he said it helped him improve his “self-identity after years of feeling like an outcast due to being an albino” (Ali, “Discusses His Arrest”). Since these experiences early in his life, Brother Ali has expressed his harsh feelings towards

discrimination.
Brother Ali was exposed to rap music at a young age. A big part about what fascinated him about the art form was the “emotion” he felt from the lyrics. Some rap artists have amazing lyrics that can preach a message and really make people stop and think. This is what influenced Brother Ali the most, though there are still others who just use lyrics as filler like any other instrument (Ali, “Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”). He said in an interview with Skye Rossi on NPR entitled “Brother Ali: A Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”: “Emotion in the song, the feeling, the mood, can really strike people home,” (Ali, “A Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”). By feeling the power of lyrics on himself, Brother Ali started to build his way up as a hip-hop artist to hopefully create a similar emotional experience upon his listeners.
In his music, Brother Ali often brings his own experience as an albino to his lyrics. This includes his stance on race and inequality. Many of his earlier songs preach about his difficult life as an underground rapper, his impoverished family, and his skin tone in context to racial relations. An example being his song “Faheem”, a song written for his son explaining the struggles of living with little money and raising a child in impoverished conditions. Most people don’t know what this experience is like and can’t relate to raising a family with almost nothing. Brother Ali liked to create this experience for his listeners to further open their eyes to the poor community (Ali, “A Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”). In one of his most famous songs, “Forest Whitaker”, he comes out about his personality, how he deals with his self-image, and how others negatively criticize him.
The themes of these earlier songs gained recognition from many black communities. His black audience, who are still a big part of who he is today, praised him early in his career. “I really felt like I didn’t have a whole lot hope for living any type of happy life that I could feel good about until I was toyed and loved and embraced by African American people,” (Ali, “Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”). In his NPR interview with Steve Inskeep titled “Brother Ali: A Voice For The Suffering”, Ali mentions how he was influenced by the “Black is Beautiful” movement, which gave him hope of feeling good about his presentation as an albino person (Ali, “Voice For The Suffering”).The connection he gained with this community helped him get off his feet and gain more fame in the music world, as well as gave him more of a reason to be a key spokesperson for the black community.
Word of Ali’s music started to get around the local Twin Cities metro area. One geographic area which rap music has been traditionally popular are suburban, white communities. This is a theme that has been seen since the beginning of Hip Hop. From the Gangsta Rap era in the 1990’s to now, this genre of music has generated a primary audience of youth in these suburban white areas. According to Nelson George in his book: Hip Hop America, though rap music is proportionally more popular among blacks, its “primary audience is white and lives in the suburbs,” (George 1998: 57-64). This arises the question of why? In his article: “The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Hip Hop: A Cultural Sociology of Gangsta Rap Music”, Alexander Riley acknowledges this issue by asking the question:
How precisely is this audience, whose conditions of life are so clearly different from the monolithically urban, black and lower-class suggest by much existing literature on rap, reading the symbols and narratives of gangsta hip hop? (Riley 2005: 299-300)

Part of the answer may reflect on the rejection of the music embraced by the parents’ generation, as well as the rise in popularity of new subgenres of music including hip-hop, metal, or thrash amongst the youth. Also, with the media and older generations speaking against these new violent types of music relating it to poison for the ears, it is easy for the youth to disagree with what they think about this new popular music (Riley 2005: 301-302). According to the Recording Industry Association of America, hip-hop music was the second-most-purchased music after rock for all age groups from 1999 to 2008.
When he gained more followers from the suburban community, Brother Ali used this extra publicity to tell the stories of the people around him who really needed help, the people who he was raised around. Ali had the up close and personal experience with the poverty and struggles in ghetto communities. He took the opportunity to rap about his relationships with these people to inform his more culturally diverse fan base to get the issue out. Ali approached these songs the same way he told his own story. He knew that even if these people did not share the experiences in his lyrics, they were connected to his music and his story (Ali, “A Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”). “I was trying to see if we could stretch this connection a little bit further and make us really realize how alike we are,” (Ali, “A Surprising Face Of Hip-Hop”). His main goal at this point of his career was to begin to influence a group who can really make a difference in America, the white youth audience.
Most Hip Hop music revolves around local “scenes” created by an artist. As described in their article: Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form, Marcyliena Morgan and Dionne Bennett define scenes as “where young people practice the elements of hip-hop and debate, represent, and critique the cultural form and their social lives,” (Morgan, Bennett 2011: 178). Examples of Hip Hop scenes can be seen all over the world like in North Africa and the Middle East during the protests of 2011 when hip hop became the “music of free speech and political resistance” in these cultures (Morgan, Bennett: 178). These national scenes were strongly present in America in the 1990s with artists like Public Enemy promoting the “Fight the Power” movement, but since have taken a back seat to the commercial lyrics heard today. Brother Ali is bringing back a strong use of scene to try to create his own movement with music.
When Brother Ali actively started to use his lyrics to try and spread his message, he introduced a view that was critical of the United States government and stated how they are obsessed with war and corruption. The song that brought him to the most fame in this regard was “Uncle Sam ***damn”, where he directly criticizes the US government with lines like: “Shit the governments an addict, with a billion dollar a week kill brown people habit” and “And even if you aint on the front line when massah yell crunch time you right back at it,” (Ali, Uncle Sam ***damn). These lines consist of a deeper meaning with “crunch time” referring to American taxes and how everybody pays for the war and the racist judicial system, whether they support it or not. There is even a line that compares the US to a “Goliath Nation” and that the nation is continuously holding auditions for the part of “David” to free us from the racist and violent society that America has turned into (Ali, Uncle Sam ***damn).
When explaining his motives behind the lyrics of this song, Brother Ali mentions his disappointment with humanity and cultural norms in present day America. They have prevented the nation from taking any direction on these issues, and to rather ignore them. On his interview with Abby Martin on “Breaking the Set”, Ali explained that he believes that the country is “normalizing greed and making virtues out of vices like greed,” (Ali, “Breaking the set”). He also goes on to explain the “value on humanity is very low” in the nation and that people are too focused on money, racial groups, and status. This causes “disconnection from ourselves and each other,” (Ali, “Breaking the set”). There is a gap between the different status groups in America, and there are not many activists who are rising up to the problem. Back in the Black Power movement, there were speakers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X who preached a similar message to motivate the issue. Brother Ali is trying to generate a rise in this generation and create a similar kind of movement that can make a powerful difference in society today.
In Brother Ali’s most recent album so far has had the strongest message. Released on September 18th, 2012 and titled: Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color, the lyrics he uses in this rap album are unlike most. It criticizes American consciousness but at the same time displays a beacon of hope behind the ideals and potential of this country. As he said about his album on Rhymesayers.com:
This is not just a new album, but a new chapter. There’s a kind of democratic reawakening in people at this point in time. I was really looking to take these topics and really hit them hard. To try to open ears and hearts and invite people to take some action and feel empowered. To be engaged and take some agency and responsibility for what’s going on in the world (Ali 2012).

The first controversy that came up about the album was the cover. The cover features Ali kneeling to pray using an American Flag as a prayer rug.
It was meant to be a literal depiction of the album title. That the things that we believe about our country - freedom, justice, equality, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, all people being equal - that these things are on the ground, these things are suffering, and so I am kneeling and praying for it (Ali, “Voice For The Suffering”).

Ali claims the meaning behind kneeling in this reverent way and praying is only a problem if people believe that being Muslim and being an American are mutually exclusive (Ali, “Voice For The Suffering”). Ali is pursuing to fix this problem with his music.
One of Brother Ali’s most powerful songs on the album, which depicts the problems in America, is “Only Life I Know.” In the song, Ali covers topics ranging from single mothers to drug use on the streets. He mentions kids on the streets trying to gain respect using violence and husbands leaving their wives. He states that the pain and hatred felt in the lives of the impoverished is trying to be covered up by any means possible, sometimes by material possessions. One of his key components he stresses is the use materialistic objects to help cope with the struggles of living in this unfair and unequal world where these struggles are accepted. He also stresses the condition of our prisons, military, and even the entertainment industries taking the money that could be used to educate. One example of what he is preaching about is the city of Minneapolis and how budget cuts to education were made at the same time as the funding of three new stadiums in the city: Target Field, TCF Bank Stadium, and the new Vikings stadium. Those who are underprivileged and can not afford to be educated end up with “prison-like jobs” that barely get them by, or on welfare where the government: “gives you just enough so you're not gonna starve and constantly harass you while you're looking for a job,” (Ali, Only Life I Know). His main claim revolves around the idea that the country is dehumanizing its standards and letting these problems sit (Ali, Only Life I Know).
Ali addresses this issue in his other songs like “Letters to My Countrymen” where he says: “Power never changed on it's own you got to make it, that's why community is so sacred, that's the symbol that we make when we raise fists,” (Ali, Letters to My Countrymen). He is making the point that the people of America can’t sit around and wait for these problems to be resolved, they need to start a revolution themselves to make a real difference. He brings up the raised fist as a reference to the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s as well as to express unity and how we need to stand together and support what we believe in. In the song “Mourning in America”, he stresses what our nation was built on and how it is getting painted over by the blood of those being lost in war. He develops his view on anti-war and anti-violence in this song. He defines terrorism as another war on the poor, just like here in America. The poor nations are trying to get somewhere using warfare and the rich countries are crippling them even further and causing a non-stop cycle of war (Ali, Letters to My Countrymen).
Brother Ali has taken a drastic shift away from common lyrical trends in hip hop.

In his novel: Hip-hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap, Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar addresses the traditional themes of Hip hop music. There are the traditional minstrel stereotypes caused from “the marketing of hip-hop” (Ogbar 2007: 41), the dehumanization of women in hip-hop culture where they must have a persona of “soft femininity or being one-of-the-boys” (103), and the “thug life” theme where violence against the police and gangs is deemed satisfactory in this way of life (156). Brother Ali similarly addresses these issues but the other way around. Instead of praising and accepting these common lyrical practices, he counters them by calling out the problems and promoting ways to fix them. By making this music, he also potentially setting an example for the black culture in the

future.
An area where these lyrical practices can be observed are in pop culture. In pop culture Hip Hop, listeners do not value the knowledge and intelligence behind the lyrics as much as the tradition and authenticity of the lyrics. The Hip Hop songs often heard on the radio often include the possession of power, beautiful women, and money (Jenkins 2011a: 1233-1234). In his article “A Beautiful Mind: Black Male Intellectual Identity and Hip-Hop Culture,” Toby Jenkins states that: “Knowledge and intelligence within hip-hop does not seem to have a place within American pop culture,” (Jenkins 2011a: 1234). This is what makes Brother Ali’s music unique. He was able to escape the authenticity of mainstream and popular hip hop themes and focus on more important topics. His intelligent lyrics and songwriting make his music underground even if his lyrics are more creative and focus on actual issues. Jenkins relates to the disregard of hip hop artists’ minds back to racial stereotypes in his article: “Mr. Nigger: The challenges of educating African American males in American society.”
The ways in which the mind of the hip-hop artist is all but ignored within popular culture is, largely, a part of a broader trend within American society to disregard the experiences, perspectives, and ways of being, knowing, and expressing that are offered forth by African American men (Jenkins 2011a: 1234).

This similarly relates to part of Brother Ali’s message in that the thoughts African American males are undervalued in classrooms, sent into prisons, and almost all but ignored within American society (Jenkins, 2006b: 127-155).
These points Brother Ali makes are not about getting directly involved, but the meanings behind them is to try to get people to stop and think. First we need to recognize these problems before trying to come together to fix them. Brother Ali has shown a hint of what has to be done with his activity in the community. Recently, Ali has been a lead voice for Occupy Homes Minnesota. This movement rises up against attorneys who use the criminal justice system for political purposes instead of helping families who are falling to the power of the banks. Ali stated in an interview with Occupy Homes spokesperson Becky Dernbach,
We've lost our way as a society when wealthy banks face little or no consequences for robbing us of our family homes but everyday people who peacefully stand up to them face outrageous and dishonest charges. Our souls won't allow us to settle for anything short of justice for hard working families and the people who stand with them (Ali, Occupy Homes).

Ali was actually arrested for trespassing during the protests to demonstrate his cause. It was a way for him to make a bold statement outside of his music and fight for dignity in the community.
In an age of Hip-Hop where the paradigm of swag over substance reigns supreme, few artists are willing to use their platform to address the controversial topics and pressing social issues of our time. Brother Ali is one of those few to try to make a change using the lyrics of his music, and the background of his life to inspire people to recognize the problems and stand up for them. It is hard for artists like this to break into mainstream audiences, but with a collective effort, his voice can be heard across the country. We need to put a stop to the mourning in America and grasp the true potential of this country.