Str8HipHip

*For some reason, Str8 Hip Hop is messing up every time I try to upload the song I'm describing; go to MySpace.com/starpowerhouse to hear it*

In the wake of the tragic Sean Bell verdict, I feel like sharing what such tragedy inspires me to create as an artist. I created “Laissez-Faire (Hands Off)” over the span of a week in the Spring of 2007. While participating in an intense weekly Police Awareness workshop series, our facilitator gave each member the task of creating some sort of propaganda to support the fight against police officers violating our civil rights. Some folks wrote poems, some made flyers, others created posters and comics. I’d always planned to write a strong song stating my views on the NYPD, but I’d never gotten around to it, so this was the perfect spark. One week was more than enough time for me – as long as I could generate a funky-enough chorus, and find the right musical inspiration. With those tools in place, I knew it would only take me a day, at most, to make the song, and an hour or two to record it. As the days passed, I found myself full of inspiration, mainly the militant, but insanely funky, classics of Public Enemy’s heyday. I wanted to write something that would incite a physical response as well as a mental one. Having already picked a beat I made a month earlier, I just needed a hook. With only 3 days before the project’s due date, I toyed with different sing-songy hooks that would stay in one’s head long after the song finished. Sophisticated simplicity was my aim. With only a couple of days left until I had to present my project, I started to sweat. Then it hit me like divine inspiration – “The Three Little Pigs!” Why hadn’t anyone made an anti-police song out of the most famous lines in the story? It seemed so obvious (probably too obvious; considering the seemingly millions of rappers out there, I’m sure someone has had the same stroke of genius). And though Nas said it best, that “No Idea’s Original,” I still felt like I had happened upon something that would capture my listeners’ ears in a new, interesting way.

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!” – The Wolf in “The Three Little Pigs”

These are the big, bad wolf’s words in the fairy tale. In “The Three Little Pigs,” the wolf is the villain, but in my hood pigs are cops, and not good ones. Filthy ones that need to be dealt with, forcefully. That meant that I had to flip the story a bit, and make the wolves the good guys, the people. I wanted the people to be the aggressors, and the police to fear our potential to…blow their house down. In the case of “Laissez-Faire,” the ‘house’ is the ‘precinct.’

“Huff and Puff, blow the precinct down!” –StarPower in “Laissez-Faire (Hands Off)”

After attending a rally that featured some really lame chants the week before, I wanted to create something easy and melodic, but that would really rock the streets if everyone joined in. Since I consider myself a storyteller, I also wanted to tell a story in as few words as possible. Within the chorus, I wanted to establish the basis for our chant, so I describe what each little pig does to me, where I end up at, and what the wolves do in response. When I say, “now I got the wolves outside the brick wall,” I’m referencing the brick wall in the original story that ultimately keeps the wolf out, but in “Laissez Faire,” it’s where the pig police cower from all the wolves threatening to ‘blow the precinct down.’ By what means do the wolves end up ‘blowing down’ the precinct, you might ask? Well, I leave that open-ended. I think the song is very visual, and I’m sure different people picture the confrontation in different ways.

I’ve been intrigued by the term ‘laissez-faire’ since I heard it in a middle-school social studies class. I’ve always relished the opportunity to flip the phrase in a fresh way. I remember one interpretation of the phrase was an economic term meaning ‘hands off.’ As in, the government doesn’t strictly regulate business. In my song, I’m telling the police to keep their hands off of the people. I wanted to bring about the visualization of a stand-off, an aggressive, not passive, one. One that may even teeter on the edge of violence and revolution. Musically, “Laissez-Faire” is a bit less chaotic than the P.E. standards. That’s because it reflects the character of a man who understands what must be done, but still has his reservations, considering what the consequences may be. I sampled some funky ‘70s drums as well as a horn from a very mellow Van Morrison love song. After programming the bass and sound effects, I knew I had what I needed. In the song, I speak of personal and well-known media incidents. Though the song wasn’t specifically inspired by the Sean Bell case, it was inspired by years of being faced with similar situations. After playing it for the other workshop participants and performing it for a variety of crowds, I knew that I had something special on my hands. The revolution will need artists who will fire as much as it needs soldier who will fire. I’m definitely the former, maybe one day I’ll become the latter.

-StarPower