Editor’s Note: Paris is a Bay-area artist who has made a big impact on hip-hop as an independent artist through his use of the Internet as an organizing tool for political activism as well as making his work available to the public. His most recent album, Sonic Jihad, was released last summer. Most recently, he has come under fire for his criticism of Bush’s perpetual “war on terrorism” and on Iraq.
PA: How important is the Internet for artists who are rejected or ignored by big labels because of differences over artistic or political values?
Paris: It actually goes beyond artists and music. It speaks to a time right now where there’s such a concerted attempt to clamp down on dissent and on alternative points of view that it’s necessary for us to turn to the Internet. The Internet is the only thing that exists now that remains uncensored. For people to really get news from credible sources and to have access to real information, the Internet is the only place left to go.
PA: Your website guerrillafunk.com has a lot of content other than merchandise or downloads. Can you talk about what we can find there?
Paris: I do that website in tandem with a website called Guerrilla News Network. Guerrilla News Network really is what CNN is supposed to be in that it provides the truth and talks about information and issues that are neglected in the mainstream media. What I do with guerrillafunk.com is take a lot of that same information and make it applicable to the hip-hop audience. The whole idea right now is to give information with entertainment, because that’s all that people seem to respect nowadays. It’s pretty effective from what I can tell so far. I have a huge subscriber base and people are receiving the e-newsletter with all the current goings-on and alerts when additional information is posted.
The website talks about the adverse affects of the military on the hip-hop community and the need to become involved politically and exercise our rights to vote. It talks about taking financial responsibility for your individual situation. There’s a lot of financial advice; I have licenses for all that. There are video documentaries on the site that were produced in conjunction with Guerrilla News Network. The Diamond Life is specifically relevant to the hip-hop community because of our fixation on diamonds. It exposes Sierra Leone’s dilemma and the fact that many people in Africa are murdered to provide these diamonds illegally to these corporations. Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11 talks about the lies and the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11. It really goes far towards exposing the truth about a lot of these issues and being sure that people understand that what they are being told in the mainstream media is not the full story.
PA: How do you encourage people to oppose Bush’s war and his domestic policies?
Paris: First of all, realizing that the policies are wrong. The first step is breaking the hold that organizations like Fox News have over people. There are so many people who are blindly in allegiance to everything they see on TV. A recent survey, that CNN turned me on to, said that 85 percent of the people in America get their news from, not reading, but watching television. When you have a propaganda machine that influential (it is a propaganda machine, there’s no such thing as a liberal media, that’s a lie) in making people believe this administration can do no wrong and that there really is a valid terror threat, you begin to realize how difficult it is to undo this.
There’s really not a whole lot of sugar coating that goes on with Guerrilla Funk. It’s intended to be incendiary, to spark dialogue. It’s not intended to skirt around any issue to make people feel comfortable, but rather it’s supposed to be the hard truth. That’s why I have this Hard Truth Soldiers in Cyberspace for people that want the information straight. They want things that are applicable to their lives. So it’s a way to shed light on issues that need to be discussed other than diversionary propaganda that we get like the Laci Peterson investigation or whatever.
PA: Your work often reflects the pervasiveness of violence in our country. Because you are honest about that, you often get accused by right-wingers of being pro-violence or of being a violent person.
Paris: And some people on the left. I had a lot of people in anti-war organizations up in arms about the cover [of the album Sonic Jihad], and the Sonic Jihad project, saying that I’m going to miss people that need to be reached the most. Again that goes to speaking about watering down what I do to be palatable to people who probably don’t like Hip-hop anyway. The whole objective was to make a statement, and in the case of Sonic Jihad to show solidarity among artists who feel similarly who now no longer are able to reach people on a mass scale, most notably Public Enemy and Dead Prez. It’s easy for people to come out and be up in arms and say that I’m pro-violence, when they don’t listen to the music anyway.
I did an interview with Fox News not too long ago, and, of course, they hadn’t heard the record. They might have read a couple of the lyrics and saw the cover, and their knee-jerk response was that I’m some type of a terrorist sympathizer, and that I don’t know what I’m talking about. And “who am I to comment about the state of political affairs”? But, who are they? I’m just as qualified as any talking head that you may come across to speak on what’s going on right now.
PA: Is there hypocrisy between them attacking you for this and then turning around and saying its ok for Bush to go to war on Afghanistan or Iraq?
Paris: Of course that hypocrisy is evident – even without bringing Bush into the picture – in their widespread silence, which amounts to complicit approval of other people’s sentiments in Hip-hop. Sentiments that reflects negativity, a degradation of our culture, Black-on-Black violence, misogyny, an endorsement of the drug trade and the corporate rewarding of this type of behavior and imagery. Hip-hop is in everything now: Toyota commercials, Mitsubishi, Reebok, Nike, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, anything you can think of. The entire genre for the most part as it is presented on a mass scale has been presented that way by large corporations who profit from debauchery. I do my best to counteract that. I’m not saying I’m the moral police or anything, but what I do is supposed to be an alternative to bullshit you get in on BET, Viacom, MTV, Clear Channel, Radio One and Infinity broadcasting stations. They have banded together and for whatever reason only support and endorse negative imagery with the explanation that they are only reflecting the street, which is bullshit, because they dictate the tastes of the street. In our community life imitates art; art doesn’t imitate life.
