Davey D on Surveillance and Hip-Hop

Recent reports in Miami and New York have revealed how the police in these cities have been closely monitoring the hip hop community in ways critics say are a throwback to COINTELPRO. We talk with acclaimed hip hop journalist Davey D who hosts a daily show on Pacifica station KPFA. [includes rush transcript]
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Since the Bush administration took office three years ago, the number of secret surveillance warrants sought by the FBI has increased some 85 percent. This is one of the findings of the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.

Recently, there have been a number of stories in the press about surveillance against Hip Hop artists. Recently, the New York Police Department hosted a hip-hop training seminar, attended by several law enforcement agencies. At the meeting, a six-inch thick black binder was handed out. It included the arrest records and photos of dozens of rap artists and their companions. Also, the Village Voice newspaper recently revealed the existence of a Hip-Hop Intelligence Unit within the New York Police Department.

Davey D, a hip hop historian, journalist, deejay and community activist. He is the webmaster for what is considered one of the oldest and largest Hip Hop sites on the web: Davey D's Hip Hop Corner
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TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: With us right now to talk about these issues as well as hip-hop culture and the elections we're joined by Davey D. He is a hip-hop journalist, DJ, community activist. He is the web master of what's considered one of the oldest and largest hip-hop sites on the web Davey D's hip-hop corner, which can be found a www.daveyd.com. He also is a community broadcaster here in the Bay area. He does Hard Knock Radio every afternoon at 4:00, Monday through Friday when he can. It's on KPFA. Davey D is our community broadcaster today. Welcome.

DAVEY D: Thank you for having me. You also forget, I'm a vicious opponent to George Bush. Add that to my resume.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, maybe this first subject has something to do with it. Can you talk about surveillance?

DAVEY D: Well, I think right now, there's a lot of interest because you are hearing in the headlines as you mentioned that hip-hop artists are being put under surveillance and I think when we look at that if we take it out of the historical and political context, we're left with the impression that this surveillance just happened and the reason that it's being triggered is because something is wrong with hip hop culture and the people involved with it, so therefore, we need to keep close tabs on everybody from P. Diddy Combs to Jay Z and whoever and make sure that their entourage - cause the police is always saying it's not artists, it's the entourages on causing any crime, you know, in the areas that they happen to be at.

The thing is, the truth of the matter is that the surveillance of black men in particular has been taking place for generations, and the surveillance of hip hop artists is just a new name for the War on Drugs; it is a new name for COINTELPRO. Meaning there's always these excuses to somehow have law enforcement come into the community and keep tabs. So that's one thing.

Now, if we are surveiling hip hop artists the question comes, you have to ask is, how much crime - because the reason why you're surveiling these artists is there must be some sort of laws that they're breaking -- So how much crime is taking place in hip hop in relationship to crime in general? You know, Are P Diddy or Jay Z, running drug cartels? And if you surveil them and you somehow take them off the scene, will drugs in the community stop?

If you are able to surveil them, will shootings and gun trafficking stop? That's not really the case. Even if you are able to point and say, well over the past couple of years, 30 or 40 rap artists have been arrested, how does that stack up in comparison with just crime in general? And I would think that you would find, that what they collectively do is a very small blip on the radar.

So, what's really going on? I think that what is happening is that the artists are being used as pretext of surveiling artists is being used to set up a situation where you can really start coming into communities where there's a lot of activism going on. For example, while we now have in the headlines, rap artists who have troubled pasts are being surveiled, what they're not telling you is that Van Jones [Bay Area Activist]who was right here on the show earlier was surveiled. Do you see what I am saying? What they're not telling you is that Michael Franti of Spearhead, who is going around the country doing anti-war songs and peace work and every album that he has put out is centered around a theme for peace and justice issues has been surveiled... meaning that law enforcement has shown up at the homes of his band members with pictures and dossiers and the whole thing. I think right here on Democracy Now!, you broke that story. So, that's one of the few scenarios that we really have to look at.

The other thing is that if you are surveiling these rap artists and the rap artists are connected to the music industry, and we know that the music industry has had this long, seedy and shady past, and that there's always been a lot of flirtation at the very least between legitimate business and an underworld business, has that stopped? Payola still exists in the music business. In fact in the last year --

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by payola?

DAVEY D: Payola meaning that a lot of the records that you hear on commercial radio are bought and paid for. Now there's ways in which it's masked. You might see a radio station van, you might see an artist doing free concerts. You might see a convention taking place in a tropical place like Jamaica or Hawaii where every everybody was flown to it, you might have a listening party, but payola still takes place. And in fact, last year, there was an incident involving I think the Hot 97 DJ in New York, Funkmaster Flex and this whole thing of payola came up and there was talk they were going to do this big investigation at the Senate and Congress and all of these people that are now allowing the police to surveil rap artists were going to do this investigation of payola, which means if you really start to dig deep, there's going to be much more than the P. Diddie's and Jay Z's getting in trouble. There is going to be some suit and tie cats [executives] who are pulling a lot of weight in the music industry who are going to be going down. Suddenly that was off the radar...It disappeared. I know that there were going to be magazines and newspapers and TV outlets like 20/20 doing big stories on payola. Those stories all got killed. Yet we still have the police surveiling rap artists.

The other thing we have to look at is that with all that surveillance going on, they still have not been able to find the killers for the Notorious B.I.G., they haven't been able to find the killers for Tupac, and they haven't been able to find the killers for Jam Master Jay. and the list goes on. So with all this surveillance going on, how is it that you can have law enforcement show up at the homes and places of work of activists like Van Jones or Michael Franti and say, look, we have been following their travels. We know everything they did, we listened to their lyrics, yada yada yada, but you can't find the killers of some of the most prominent artists who have been slain dead. Yet and still we are able to find here in San Francisco for example, a police officer was killed the other day. Suddenly, they were able to find somebody that they want to hold accountable for that within a day. You have a woman that was in Concord, a suburb outside of San Francisco who was murdered maybe about a year ago. No witnesses. Six months later, they find the killer, because DNA testing. They they brought all of this technology into play and were able to solve the crime. Yet, you can have hundreds of people on the strip in Las Vegas when Tupac was shot and we still can't find the killer?

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think they haven't found the killers of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac?

DAVEY D: Well, I think there's a few things that come into play. I think one, that they're not really serious about it, and I think the other thing is that a lot of times with law enforcement, there's funding that's goes on, if you are undertaking certain types of activities. So, meaning that you might have divisions in the police department that will apply for a grant and get a certain amount of money under the auspices of enforcing, like, in San Francisco maybe smoking regulations, so that's what they get paid to do. I'm not law enforcement person, but maybe that is one of the guises in which people are able to justify their jobs. We have to surveil these rap artists. They're the ones that are causing the problems. Maybe it's a public relations spin that if we keep tabs on these guye who have the controversial and pro-violent type lyrics, if we surveil them, then the public is feeling, okay the police are doing a good job versus really looking at the entire picture and saying, for example, why aren't we surveiling the executives that give safe haven and actually promote and market some of these songs that people are concerned about.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the theory that it's an east-west clash between rivals Biggie and Tupac and each side killed the other?

DAVEY D: Right, the east-west clash that they had when the Black Panthers were around, right? The east-west clash that they had from any generation meaning that people from different geographical areas are going to have the potential for clash. There's a clash between the Celtic and Laker fans. There's always going to be that. With the situation when the rap scenario, first of all, I think that was overblown. But if you really want to get deep into it, let's get deep into it. It wasn't just Biggie versus Tupac. One of the things that triggered any sort of tension between the coasts, meaning New York and L.A. was the fact that New York was a major marketplace where radio stations would not play music from those artists outside of New York. That was the seed that really spawned that. So, we really want to investigate what was behind that. Was payola at play? Maybe we need to get a Tracy Cloherty who is the Program director of Hot 97 which was one of the stations accused of not playing music from non-NY artists. Maybe we needed to talk to whoever was running MTV and other video outlets and go, well, if this is a problem, what role are you playing in it? Why aren't you giving access to these artists to try and diffuse a potentrially violent situation? because after all, if you are not, it's causing some sort of a tension. If the name of the game is to prevent a scenario that could lead to violence, but that was not really the case.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to hip-hop journalist Davey D. We're going to be back with him here an Democracy Now!, broadcasting from San Francisco in a minute.
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, and democracynow.org. We are broadcasting out of San Francisco in our 70-city "Exception to the Rulers"" highlighting community radio and television stations around the country. Independent media in a time of war. I'm Amy Goodman and we're joined by a community broadcaster