On Rice

Right before Jeff Rice visited the campus, Matt Gordon gave me a copy of “The Making of Ka-Knowledge” and said something like, “Here. You’re into this theory stuff—you understand it better than I do. Read this and tell me if it makes any sense.” The first part of what he said was an assertion that was equal parts compliment and insult in a way that only Dr. Gordon can deliver. The second part proved to be a challenge.

I read “The Making of Ka-Knowledge” then—something like three months ago now, so I’ve had that long to marinate on it and I have to say that I feel conflicted, at best, about it. Dr. Rice starts off by valorizing a non-traditional form of rhetoric and he makes a move to incorporate what's outside of the academy into the classroom (like Faith, I see this as a good thing). He then theoretically describes--in a wedding of McLuhan/Ong and Lyotard--how listening is bound up with engaging “the process of knowing as opposed to just the known… redefined through technological innovation” (267), which he exemplifies using the lyrics to various hip-hop/rap songs. Dr. Rice and I should be fellow travelers, then, but I found myself taking exception to a lot of what he had to say. (We probably are fellow travelers, but for the sake of this post I’m going to commit a trahison des clercs or, alternately, just play devil’s advocate).

Like David, I found myself resisting the beginning of the piece and then warming up to it in the second half (my resistance was aided by the fact that when I went to my copy of the 1964 edition of The Gutenberg Galaxy, the passages that Dr. Rice quotes weren't on the pages he cites, and that the quote he gives for McLuhan later on page 268 that doesn't reference a title but only a year--1967--has no corresponding entry for that year in the References section). I think David is right on when he says that

Rice's early discussion of Biggie and Wu-Tang feels awfully forced, and neither of these examples really show off what Rice ultimately finds most rewarding about aural writing in a digital world. Rather, the references feel like a desperate stab at street cred. The first pages of the Rice article feel a bit arbitrary at best, obvious at worst.

David goes on to make some great points, and I'll just add some of my own observations here.

First, for me there’s a problem of definition. Dr. Rice asserts that “droppin’ science” is hip-hop’s renaming of McLuhan’s “new physics." As Dr. Rice puts it (268):

Droppin’ science means to rhyme (usually in a unique way) in order to rhetorically engage with the aural dimensions of discourse. Rhyming, like McLuhan’s new physics, is meant to evoke new types of discursive relationships, to generate new kinds of knowing processes. Droppin’ science’s nonliterate status (as McLuhan might say) might be attributed to the ways it disrupts the conventions of print culture (linearity, syllogistic reasoning) in favor of rhyming. Droppin’ science is meant to lead to a new “wisdom” often rhetorically shaped as a physics or general science practice.

This isn't exactly the "droppin' science" that I know. At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to assert my own authenticity or street cred, rap and hip-hop are two genres that I listened to growing up. I have every album that Dr. Rice cites and I'm familiar with the lyrics he quotes, and my personal feeling is that he's overstating what "droppin' science" means. It can mean a few different things, actually, depending on who's doing the talking and when (in other words, deixis--but that's another post), but it basically means something very much like "to school" (another hip-hop phrase), that is, to demonstrate either skill or wisdom for the sake (or at the expense) of someone else. You can "school" someone by upstaging them in a battle or, alternately, you can "school" or "drop science" in the sense of disseminating knowledge to those listening to you. The expression goes all the way back to documented usage among members of the Five Percenter branch of the Nation of Islam in describing the uses of science (Rakim, whom Dr. Rice citess in his definition of "droppin' science," was actually one-half of the duo Erik B. and Rakim, and they were/are both Five Percenters). And the OED entry actually explains the term's use well: to "drop science" (you don't need the hip "-in' ending) is "to impart knowledge or wisdom, frequently about social issues" (from the OED's entry for draft additions for 2005, entry "b"). The OED offers this citation: "Recorded in 1989 on the television programme CBS This Morning in J. E. Lighter's Hist. Dict. Amer. Slang (1994) I. 660/2: 'Droppin' science is when she's really explainin' what's goin' on." In other words, "telling it like it is" or, one might posit, cutting through the b.s.

So it's ironic, in a way, that Dr. Rice's article "directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized audience, one that shares a common language rooted in the very master narratives it claims to challenge" (to quote bell hooks, speaking about what I'd say is a related matter in "Postmodern Blackness"). Or as Faith puts it, "if Biggie's argument is a rejection of traditional schooling, how would he feel about his lyrics being co-opted for an article in an academic journal?" It seems like Dr. Rice took the Urban Dictionary's entry and ran with it (seriously, he seems to quote it almost verbatim), adding to the entry's description of it meaning "to rhyme, say or do something original or unique, especially when rapping or in music," the puzzling assertion that it also means "to generate new kinds of knowing processes." Really?

The point is that Dr. Rice should've dropped the "droppin' science" bit, and especially the Beasties' use of both that phrase and even more so "ka-knowledge," which means nothing, period, but especially not what Dr. Rice develops for it (for a thorough discussion of the Beasties' use of the terms, see Dan LeRoy's treatment of Paul's Boutique in the 33 1/3 series--search for "sound of science" on amazon's page and read LeRoy's discussion, starting on page 85). The whole enterprise is a red herring that got the best of him. Furthermore, I think Dr. Rice would have done himself a great service if he would have actually dug deeper into the history of hip-hip and rap. For example, bringing in Public Enemy's "Caught! Can I Get a Witness?" from their seminal It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988), which is about PE going on trial for "stealing beats" (the title of the song itself is an homage to Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness?"). Chuck D starts the track thusly:

Caught, now in court cause I stole a beat
This is a sampling sport
But I'm giving it a new name
What you hear is mine
P.E., you know the time

Soon afterwards, Flavor Flav (I know--cringe) interjects into Chuck's flow to tell the court that "Man, y'all can't copyright no beats, man!" At the time, sampling was becoming a matter for copyright infringement cases. PE was encouraging the free exchange of ideas and bricolage composition that Dr. Rice sees in emerging digital forms, but they also are pointing out something that Dr. Rice seems to miss altogether in his analysis: if he had went further back still, he could have brought in Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Kaz (and Grandmaster Flash), Kool Herc and other DJs' use of sampling and mixing that would speak directly to his use of McLuhan/Ong and Lyotard much more than any of the latter, hipper albeit less relevant artists he cites do. For example, in Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap and Hip Hop Culture, William Eric Perkins points out that

The DJ ruled during hip hop's early days, and it was the DJ who established the foundations for the lyricist (the MC). The DJ's style was determined by the beats he was able to exploit from the continuous riffs, solos, traps, and thousands of other snippets of sound in the audio treasure chests at his disposal. It was sound that molded the first wave of hip hop (page 6).

Like Mark says about his own post, I might seem "grumpy"--or even captious--here. It probably seems absurd to critique Dr. Rice's gloss of "droppin' science," but I think it speaks to what Faith means when she says that "the juxtaposition of rap lyrics and academic discourse sometimes had a comic effect." I agree, but I'd qualify that by saying it's a matter of execution, not of any essential incommensurability of the two--and I see that comic effect beginning with Dr. Rice's gloss of what needn't have been a violent yoking together of heterogeneous ideas. The definition of "droppin' science" also happens to be where I'd locate the move Dr. Rice makes from the theoretical discussion of McLuhan/Ong and Lyotard to hip-hop itself, the move David and Aaron (and I) found problematic. I think the reason why it's problematic is because--like David and Faith have both pointed out--the academic-speak does a disservice to what is actually an interesting argument, once the layers of unnecessary obfuscation are removed.