Scarface, Performance Art, and the Power of Rap
Scarface's NPR Tiny Desk Performance is a reminder to us all how art serves as another means to our liberation
I believe that poets are born, that they come out of the womb, loud with mouth agape, with language embedded in their throat, lungs full of hubris and braggadocio, a body’s worth of landmines and syllables full of the love that they plan to transmit out into the world. What will happen to the Poet is his tools will be sharpened, tongue as blade, to cut through the bayou of noise that will have them believe that their art does not have wings, cannot fly them out of the destitute capitalism wants them to subscribe to. if given the appropriate opportunity, the poet will morph into something else – a beacon of a different sort, an individual who can take the essence of the language and allow it to seed itself differently. One way the poet transforms is into the main character of the emcee. Rap, the actual embodied practice of rhyming words to a beat and melody, has its legs in many other forms of music: jazz, blues, disco, funk, reggae, and even gospel, it wouldn’t be until Kool Herc set up shop on Sedgwick Ave. at the behest of his party throwing sister Cindy Campbell, that the art form of rapping would become synonymous with the then newly created culture of Hip-Hop. Consisting of the four elements: rapping, deejaying, b-boying, and graffiti (and a fifth, defined by KRS-One: knowledge), the culture of Hip-Hop currently dominates the pop charts as the most listened to music genre, but has its tentacles in everything from fashion to food to literature. Yet, it is the art of emceeing and the voice behind the emceeing, the emcee/rapper, who continues to reign supreme.
It is in that tradition that we also saw the line blur (if there ever was one) between rapper and poet—Melle Mel’s verses on The Message could sit in the pantheon of Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised without missing the beat. Fast forward years later and we see Saul Williams take the legacy of Tupac Shakur on Broadway for Holler If Ya’ Hear Me. That same energy is seen in Common’s genre-merging collab with The Last Poets (arguably the first actual “rappers”) on the single The Corner. The reason this is relevant now is because Scarface’s NPR Tiny Desk performance may quite arguably be not only one of the best Hip-Hop performances on the platform, but maybe the most poetic, and potentially the greatest—and most liberated—ever.
Scarface, legendary Houston emcee, member of the rap group Geto Boys and, in many rap fans top 5 GOAT convo (myself included), blessed the Tiny Desk stage with a mesmerizing performance. Charismatic, funny, and heartfelt, what struck me most about Face’s set was his ability to turn what sometimes becomes a platform for an artist to run through a slew of their hits backed by a live band, into a piece of performance art that was both poetry in motion while simultaneously bringing the raw ethos of Hip-Hop and the art of rap centerstage. Joined on keys by another luminary—music collaborator and friend—Hip-Hop producer Mike Dean, Face took us on a tightly orchestrated journey. At times reflective, Face took the language of song and put it on display for the viewing audience to not only hear and see the lyricism and depth behind such classics Smile and My Block but also bring us back to the first time we heard his opening verse on My Mind Is Playing Tricks on Me, adding new nuance and color to lines like “having fatal thoughts of suicide.” More than just words, Face brought a physicality to the set that reminded me so much of my favorite poets: Nikki Giovanni, MuMs, Mahogany Browne, Black Ice, Saul Williams, J.Ivy. Face used his hands, fingers head, neck, and upper torso to send the words off, picking up a bass guitar at one point. Face would yell words away from the mic at certain junctures, almost as an affront to the mic as a fourth wall that separated him from the audience and the message, belting our lyrics as a means to draw the audience closer to the language.
Nina Simone told us, “An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians.” When I think of our collective struggles and suffering, I am also thinking of the ways we collectively get free. Art affords us the ability to both consciously and subconsciously dig below the surface to find the meaning behind our hardships and give them language. Scarface’s Tiny Desk performance showed us the range and impact of the artist, along with the art itself. Scarface, like so many who came before him and like so many who will come after, is not only an emcee but a historian, gifted with the ability to craft narratives that stretch beyond the blocks he grew up on, but touch on so many of the intersections that that marginalized, oppressed peoples both know and understand on a first name basis. It is this knowing that gives credence to our struggle while offering up a key to finding a way out: through our imaginations. By reinterpreting tragedy into song, into poem, into dance, Scarface is no different than the enslaved Black peoples, the Indigenous Native Americans, and countless other oppressed groups who took tragedy and turned it into artistic gold: gold that created the safety, the joy, and inspiration needed for a people to find purpose and a reason to fight for their freedom.
Scarface’s gift to us was not only in the music he shared but in the freedom he offered us; a glimpse into adult Black male joy that is seldom given the space to breathe and expand. Liberation does not happen in a vacuum: there is organizing, there is strategy; there is work that serves as the foundation, as the container for the momentum of a movement to enact change. And in that momentum lies the art: the music, the poetry, the paintings and the stories, each filling a void of creative sustenance to help carry us home. Scarface’s performance was a reminder of that.