Last month I had the pleasure of chopping it up with Dead Prez about their new mixtape and forthcoming album, but I also took the opportunity to ask them about some remarks they made regarding the Lovelle Mixon shootings at this years SXSW concert. As much as I have thought about the Grant/Mixon/Bart/OPD fiasco, I think Stic.Man connects them all in a pretty solid and logical progression. Check it out below, and read my full interview with them HERE.GIANT: There was a recording of Dead Prez performing at SXSW at which yall announced the shootings of four police officers in Oakland, CA. Your announcement seemed somewhat celebratory and there were cheers in the crowd. In the “conscious” hip-hop scene there is plenty of revolutionary rhetoric, but not much action. Did you see the shooting of the Oakland Police officers as a revolutionary act?
Stic.Man: Rebellion happens in different ways and in different stages. The revolution is the process of people becoming conscious that we need power and then demanding it through organization. In instances where an unarmed brother (Oscar Grant) can get blasted for no reason laying down in hand cuffs in front of everyone, I think its progressive that people say “Hey Man our lives are not guaranteed and it’s the system that’s taking them.”
These events put people in a state of emergency and fear. They don’t know what’s gonna happen when they get stopped by the police. They could comply, lay down on their face in hand-cuffs and still get blown away. When you force people to live in those kinds of conditions, people are gonna react to survive. So I think the things you’ve seen in Oakland in the past, and the recent stuff, is evidence of that. People might not be politically developed enough to call themselves revolutionaries, but they are socially smart enough to say “God damnit Im gonna live. I’m not just gonna let someone take my life.” And I see that as a revolutionary development.
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