{"id":13029,"date":"2017-07-28T05:30:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T09:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13029"},"modified":"2017-07-26T08:19:39","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T12:19:39","slug":"brother-ali-accentuating-the-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/28\/brother-ali-accentuating-the-positive\/","title":{"rendered":"Brother Ali: Accentuating the Positive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"If there is such a thing as a typical rapper, Brother Ali doesn’t fit that description. The Minneapolis-based member of the esteemed Rhymesayers Entertainment collective turns out rhymes that are often political in nature, but the 39-year old rapper is more interested in focusing on the positive. And that positivity comes naturally; Ali doesn’t employ a studied approach to songwriting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t start out with a goal,\u201d Ali tells me. \u201cI just try to create from the most authentic place that I can.\u201d And that place is rooted in his Islam faith. Ali converted at age 15, and follows a religious path that values harmony among different faiths, one that fits in with the realities of 21st<\/sup> century life. \u201cI genuinely do have a sense of hope,\u201d he says, \u201cand that comes from faith.\u201d He believes that to honor those who have come before, \u201cwe don’t have the option of despair.\u201d<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that Ali views the world through rose-colored glasses. One of his most well-known tracks is \u201cUncle Sam Goddamn\u201d from his 1997 album The Undisputed Truth<\/i>. In that track \u2013 based in part upon Nina Simone’s classic \u201cMississipi Goddam\u201d \u2013 Ali takes the U.S. government to task for what he believes is its complicity in slavery and the drug trade. Ali believes he has inherited \u201ca legacy of fighting against injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some rappers engage in creative license, using their own experiences as a jumping-off point for lyrical themes, Brother Ali writes from a more direct place. He says that his lyrics are \u201calways my experiences, never anything other than that. And even when I’m telling a story about somebody else, I tell it from my own perspective as somebody that loves them, rather than try to tell their story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali has always placed great emphasis on the music that supports his words. In fact several items from his deep catalog \u2013 he’s released six albums and four EPs \u2013 have also been released in instrumental-only formats. All of the music on Ali’s latest, All the Beauty in This Whole Life<\/i> comes from real \u2013 not sampled \u2013 instruments.<\/p>\n

That decision arises out of necessity, Ali says. \u201cThe business is in such a place now where they have people at record labels who just pore through hip hop music \u2013 even underground, independent hip hop \u2013 and just sue everybody that samples their records.\u201d He concedes that he would still sample if he could.<\/p>\n

But Brother Ali finds great value in using real instruments. \u201cThe beauty in that is that really creative things come out of necessity; I do like the outcome of what we’re doing now,\u201d he says. But he doesn’t necessarily think it’s superior to sampling.<\/p>\n

Ali says that his Islam faith informs his music more now than it once did. \u201cThe music that I’m making is about the spiritual path,\u201d he says. \u201cAll human beings are created on the same pattern, and we have an intrinsic quality that makes us want to connect with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there is such a thing as a typical rapper, Brother Ali doesn’t fit that description. The Minneapolis-based member of the esteemed Rhymesayers Entertainment collective turns out rhymes that are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,41],"tags":[3114,3115],"class_list":["post-13029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hip-hop","category-interview","tag-brother-ali","tag-rhymesayers-syndicate","cat-36-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13031,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13029\/revisions\/13031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}