Rhyme Deferred
Rhyme Deferred by Kamilah Forbes
They never thought it would last this long or go this far…
“Boom bat. Bat, boom, bat. Dis that that, that got this that.” Hip Hop, a world filled with intricate rhyming word play inspired by.... Call out culture. Resistance culture. Dis culture. Misogynistic culture. Race conscious culture. Braggadocios culture. Socially conscious culture. Fuck the police culture. Dope warriors ready to do battle with the sword that cuts deep and makes the most difference, the word.
In the early 1970’s this new form of expression thrived in New York City in pockets of Brooklyn and Harlem but primarily in the south Bronx. Largely it’s a response to the rampant economic and political inequality of the post-civil rights era and the black arts movement of the 1960’s and ‘70s. In the 1970’s at recreation centers and parks DJs leveraged flair and showmanship to attract a crowd while layering and remixing beats and rhyming over those beats while partygoers would break-dance battle to see who would claim bragging rights and take home the title of “best” at least until the next party. It was a break from the day-to-day state sanctioned violence and oppression the black community was constantly subjected to. Pioneers like Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five were among the early breakout artists who pushed the music industry to take this revolutionary Black American art form seriously.
On its face Hip Hop word play simultaneously calls out social inequities while also turning the finger back on itself and demanding more of its people. Riding the momentum of its early pioneers, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s Hip Hop explodes onto the music scene as a counter-culture art form, creating the kind of music that unapologetically disrupted the status quo. It called out crime, class disparities, unemployment, police brutality, political hypocrisy and systemic racism. But Hip Hop also fostered a form of misogyny and self-aggrandizement that threatened the respectability politics identity of many of those who fought for Black rights during the civil rights movement. They believed Hip Hop would be the undoing of all they had fought for.
April 10, 1990, Public Enemy releases “Fear of a Black Planet” and America recognized that in the hands of conscious determined black activist musicians who inherited genius in their DNA, Hip Hop was a formidable weapon that demanded social justice by any means necessary.
Following the self-actualization and freedom-dreaming centered raps that flooded the airways by Hip Hop artists like Public Enemy, Sister Souljah, Arrested Development, Queen Latifah, A Tribe Called Quest and Diggable Planets, a Hip Hop group conceived in Washington DC, who blended drum machine beats with Afro-Futuristic styled jazzy raps; in the mid ‘90s Hip Hop would take a turn towards groups emulating gang rivalries that intersected Hip Hop and rap identities and influenced black culture while pioneering new forms of expression. Celebrity rappers like Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur came to represent heightened commercialism when they and their record labels became millionaires seemingly overnight. Record label and media driven competition exploited black pain, manipulating the rivalry between the two rappers while increasing their bottom line. Many believed that the media manufactured the wedge between these two artistic geniuses and before they could call a truce, they were both gunned down, Tupac Shakur in 1996 at the age of 25 and Notorious B.I.G. in 1997 at the age of 24.
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“We be to rap what key be to lock.” ~ Diggable Planets, Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat), 1992.
In Kamilah Forbes’ September 2020 American Theatre Magazine reflection letter to Chadwick A. Boseman, “You Knew that People are Divine,” she states: “We were both in a program called “Playwrights Lab” for artists interested in more experimental writing. We learned In Playwrights Lab what we now know as devised theatre. We were both majoring in directing and we were all curious about the idea of “artistic possibility.” Back in the late ’90s, hip-hop gave us the permission to reinvent ourselves.”
Devised theatre is the collaborative act of reinventing theatre as form, conception and practice. While it was 1997 when Forbes and Boseman begin crafting the story for Rhyme Deferred, it was in 1998 that a group of aesthetically curious and culturally potent artists who epitomized “we be to rap what key be to lock,” gathered to develop Rhyme Deferred along with the support of Howard University professor Sybil Roberts who created The Playwright’s Lab as a space to support the exploration and dreams of artist activists’ black playwrights.
On April 23, 1998, at Howard University, using methods derived from devised theatre, Forbes along with Boseman, Amin Joseph, Ali Wisdom, Greg Reid, Nyakya Brown, choreographer Princess Mhoon, Ta-Nehisi Coates and other young creatives, would riff the story of Rhyme Deferred into existence. Afro-centric and Diasporic in its’ ethos, Rhyme deferred engages four of the elements of Hip Hop as culture framing aptitudes… MC-ing/rapping, DJ-ing, B-Boying/breakdance and graffiti, tools that serve as cultural and personal advancement for two brothers at the precipice of an adversarial crossroads, Invincible Suga Kain and Gabe.
After the 1998 Howard University workshop development production Rhyme Deferred underwent more development through national productions at festivals and solidified its shape with a new core production team and cast for the October 1999 Howard University production and other future productions.
Rhyme Deferred honors the deep African Diasporic roots and conventions of Hip Hop, showcasing the multiple forms of artistic expression inherent in both the music and the culture while highlighting how the genre has evolved over time.
DJ’s, functioning like conductors’ making music with turntables and mixers revolutionized music and serve to advance the story. The sonnet like structure of the play utilizes MC/rapping, making vocal rhymes over music, which has diasporic roots and draws on traditions of west African storytelling, black church call and response (“I say HIP, and you say…HOP!) and Jamaican remixing and music sampling. The MC, analogous to the griot in west African storytelling traditions, reflects the unbreakable cultural bond with our diasporic roots that supersedes time and geography. Moving away from the restrictive European forms of dance that control the body, B-Boying/Girling and breakdance articulate a demand for freedom and unabashed creativity, style and innovation. Graffiti, typically viewed as destructive art is reframed as disruptive art, inviting disgruntled youth to use their dissatisfaction with the power structure to arm themselves, transitioning into activists who fight the power through word and art.
The biblically inspired characters Kain and Gabe anchor a story that revolves around a music industry that maximizes profit at the expense of artistic expression. Through the character Eve, the female MC, the play also explores women as a powerful source for the reckoning and redemption of Hip Hop which in the mid to late ‘90s was viewed as having lost its way as a music genre. It had become a misogynistic cultural force ushering in celebrity centered rappers focused on making money while largely ignoring social consciousness. Rhyme Deferred, an artful critique, takes us on a journey that investigates Hip Hops influence on the evolution of culture. The mythic story asks us to grapple, to consider, to think and to regard…who bears the responsibility of a rhyme deferred.
Happy 50th anniversary Hip Hop. They never thought it would last this long or go this far…but we here.
Denise J. Hart, MFA
Dramaturge/Playwright/Artist
