Music’s one-man revelation

By Aylin Zafar • October 21, 2008



Felipe Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique, is the closest thing we have to a one-man revolution in music today. Long before the slew of Obama-centric rap that has emerged in the past few months, Technique has been educating and urging listeners to become active participants in their politics and global community. While the line in hip hop seems to be a delicate one when it comes to politics (Ludacris, anyone?), Immortal Technique spits it like he sees it.

I catch up with Technique about twenty minutes after he performs his politically-charged, passionate set from his new album, The 3rd World. Marching directly offstage to the main entrance area to sign autographs and greet fans, clad in military fatigues, Technique stays until every last fan has a chance to take a picture and meet him. I barely introduce myself before he motions to fellow NPR intern Carina and me to follow him. Opting not to enter by way of the proper entrance to the food services tent, Technique has us winding through a sea of artists and managers as we bust onto the mainstage where Wale is performing. We hop over wires and equipment, squeezing through people backstage as we finally make it out and into the tent, where Technique makes a beeline straight for the buffet. As he sits down and starts to eat, he beats us to the first question. “So, before we start anything, tell me about yourselves. Where are you from, what do you do?” He wastes no time with small talk and warns us to ask tough questions or “I’m going to have to start insulting you,” though he utters this with a glint of mischief in his eye, trying to push our buttons.

But intimidating or not, he’s got a soft heart. While his past may be characterized by violence and aggression, for which the Peruvian-born emcee spent a year in a New York prison, his rapping persona has always been one about awareness and progress. Growing up in Harlem, where he still resides today, Technique’s frustrations with social inequality and racism were expressed in sometimes violent altercations that eventually landed him in a prison for aggravated assault. It was there that he was able to study up on the issues that had been causing him anguish for so long; he read extensively about his native South America and its revolutionaries, and got in touch with his Latino and African roots. He started writing with newfound focus, reflecting on his past experiences and of the oppressed people from his native cultures, creating music at rapid speed.

After his release, he quickly rose to the top of the underground hip hop battle scene in New York City. Famous for his hard-hitting, raw style, Technique emerged from the circuit winning every major underground battle. Unable to appeal to major record labels when attempting to put out the music he had developed while he was incarcerated, he took matters into his own hands and released Revolutionary, Vol. 1. He eventually created his own label, Viper Records, through which he released Revolutionary, Vol. 2. His latest album, The 3rd World, was released June 24th, and its release marks an important next step for Technique and his efforts in bringing change to the underrepresented people and issues he’s been rhyming about for years [details below the interview].

From creating a high school essay contest centered around America’s relation to “third world” countries to promote writing and critical thinking skills, to putting together a hip hop benefit concert to fundraise for his latest project in Afghanistan, Technique works a different type of hustle. While today’s hip hop scene is seeing a coming-up of socially conscious, backpack-rappers (or the exact opposite, à la Lil’ Wayne…there doesn’t seem to be a happy medium), looks can be deceiving. Rather than speaking the truth from the safety of a studio or a security-enforced club, Technique is one of the rare few in hip hop, and the entertainment industry at large, to actually do something about it.

Were politics always a part of the subject of your rap?

I think it was always a part of my persona, [it’s] just [that] when I was a kid I was a little more ignorant…A lot more violent, for no reason. I was very misdirected. Like I said on The 3rd World, what good is a good education without direction, you know? I [was] still robbing and stealing. So, I stepped away from doing that, and I took a long hard look at myself, and endured a lot of self-criticism and self-analysis to deal with what I needed to change about my life. So, from there, I began to redirect a lot of the anger and fury that I had toward random people in the street that I would get into drama with […] and I decided that I wanted to always be rapping, but at the same time, the political aspect of what was naturally a part of me began to seep through. I was a battle rapper at first, but then I made the transfer from just being a battle rapper to writing music, It was naturally that progression. When I was in prison, that was the kind of music I was writing.

Do you think art and politics should always go hand-in-hand, or is there a place and time for it?

I think that […] people who don’t like politics have to realize that that’s part of art all the time. Why did Michelangelo paint Jesus white? Because the Pope told him to. Why are certain songs made, and certain lines edited out of songs? I was watching an old tape about race, and they were saying that Frank Sinatra sang a song back in the day [where] he was talking about how all races should be together, even the black people. And Hollywood decided that was a little too much for them to deal with back in the 50s, so they cut that part out of the song. You know, we have to realize that [it’s political] whether you like it or not, whether you sit there like “oh I don’t want to hear this political s—.” Well, then don’t listen to music. The fact that there’s a certain artist that’s out from a record label and [another one] that’s not…that’s political, you know?

You speak often about revolution. What is revolution to you, and how is it different from its previous incarnations?

For many years, it bothered me that as much as people complain about fake gangster rappers, I don’t really find them disturbing. I mean, everyone knows they’re a fraud, people in their hood know they’re a fraud, the problem with fake revolutionary rappers, is people are so impressionable, they’ll […] believe that. So, all the work that I try to do, I do myself, and try to get as much accomplished as I possibly can, whether it’s working for immigrant rights, or fundraising for children’s hospitals in Palestine, whatever it is that I’m involved in—but I felt like using the power that I have and the voice I have, I can really bring other people who are interested in that type of project, to it. So, I came up with this idea of the Green Light Project, where I would hook up with a human rights organization, or another revolutionary org, and really live that dream and make it happen, and not only commit myself to it, but commit as many people as I can find who share the similar objectives to the same thing. So that was one aspect of it. Then, of course, in terms of revolution, I think that definitely it’s something that’s very romanticized here in America. they have to understand that revolution is not an easy thing, it’s not something you just readily accept. It’s a very difficult, arduous process. In every revolution, even for the most righteous of goals, innocent people are murdered, innocent women get raped, innocent people’s property is stolen. And yet, the people are willing to endure that, the risk of that happening to them personally, because the central government has become so unbelievable, because it’s become so corrupt, because it’s become so abusive to them, they’re willing to risk all that and gamble with their future for a better life, not just for them, but for their children. And it’s not something to ever take lightly, and it’s not something that I take lightly.

What projects do you have in the works?

The orphanage in Afghanistan is definitely one that I’m very heavily committed to, that’s the one that’s going to be on my mind, fundraising and working on for the next six months, and I’m going out to Afghanistan either next year or beginning of next year to oversee construction myself. Its not like it’s never been done before, I’m sure you know Hollywood actors need a tax rideoff, Oprah, and the rest of them… [but] this is done with underground hip hop money. I ain’t no […] millionaire, I’m doing this out of my own pocket, and I’m trying to get as many people who are like-minded to help me. It’s time to put up a shutup. I see a lot of motherf—— that talk it, but I don’t ever see them do it. But since I’m not the type of person to fill myself with bitterness for other people, I just worry about me and what I can do and what my people can do. I have a lot of [people] that roll with me now, I have a squadron of ten to twenty men, and not everyone rhymes about the same s— I do, but they all stand for the same s— that I do. And they’re willing to die for this. That’s what it is.

On the same day of the release of his new album, Technique announced “Project Green Light” on his MySpace blog. He outlines what he calls the “first stage” of a series of projects to which he is committing, the most major of which is his partnering with a non-profit human rights organization, Omeid International. Technique will be working closely with the organization, pledging $10,000 of his own money to build an orphanage/clinic/school in Kabul, Afghanistan. In his blog, Technique explains, “This is not a Middle Eastern issue. It is not a Muslim issue. It is a Human Rights issue…to some people this music is just entertainment, and even if it is that for many people, entertainment can inspire, it can brighten people and it can feed their imagination. It can also pacify it, it can placate and distract it, it can shadow and mask real problems around us we cannot see. But for me this is not about entertainment, it never has been. It has always been a mechanism for delivering so much more.”

Source: http://www.npr.org/about/nextgen/interne...log/?p=881