Also, wildly talented producer Ganzobean (Musab, Abstract Rude, etc.) took a crack at remixing the Sifu Hotman song “Limb from Limb” and it’s a banger– and a FREE DOWNLOAD. Listen to me and Dem Atlas (who just signed to Rhymesayers, in case you haven’t heard) get venomous. The beat changeup when the third verse hits is just gorgeous. I got another song or two with Ganzo coming soon, not to mention another song or two with Rube, who produced the OG version!
I think my favorite part of this update is looking at how different these two pieces of art are. It’s good to keep your listeners on their toes I guess. Any re-posts, shares, links, etc. of EITHER piece are greatly appreciated!
So this poem has been online for a minute in one form or another, but now we get a definitive recording courtesy of the good people at Button Poetry, who continue to provide absolutely essential signal-boosting services to spoken-word poets all over the country.
Lots of frustrating things happening, but lots of GOOD things happening too, as those three bullet points illustrate.
(2025 edit: just adding the full text here. The poem is very much out of date by this point, and may be subscriber-only on Button’s channel, but it’s still got some good lines)
CHERRY SPOON BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
1.
So, I’m a rapper, and my stage name is Guante, and my last name is Tran Myhre, so at the end of every show, there’s always one person who kind of awkwardly approaches me, like: so… what are you? And it’s not an easy question to answer; it is a complicated and emotional topic. I’m mixed, both by blood and by history, but… if you saw a picture of me in a magazine, what would you see? A white guy. So there’s always a kind of tension between my abstract heart and the more concrete reality of privilege, between internal and external identities.
And maybe that’s why I feel so at home here, in the Twin Cities, a community inextricably bound to that tension. Where the arts and literary and musical scenes are all so diverse and vibrant and beautiful. But if you saw a picture of them in a magazine, what would you see? White people. This is not a question of diversity; it is a question of who… edits this metaphorical magazine. Who funds it? Who profits from it?
Have you ever been in a magazine? Who decided that your story mattered, that your voice deserved an audience? Have you ever hung in a gallery? Have you ever bared your soul to the abyss only to have it chuckle back at you? When asked “what are you?” Have you ever answered honestly?
2.
In a Facebook Q&A, The Ordway’s Artistic Director James Rocco responded to 46 questions regarding the decision to produce Miss Saigon despite community outcry and protest of the musical’s racist elements, by saying: Miss Saigon is a complicated and emotional topic. …and nothing else.
It is one thing to chuckle at their callousness or cluelessness. It is something else to refuse to acknowledge, that this is how just about every arts and media institution in the Twin Cities operates, every day. When they say our programs are open to everyone; it’s not our fault when only white people show up. When they say we’d like to hire more people of color, but they’re just not applying. When they say stop making good the enemy of perfect, and never question who gets to define “good” in the first place.
When every insufferable list of the things that make our community so great, share the same two dozen bullet points: Craig Finn, skiing, hotdish, Joe Mauer, Target, the Coen Brothers, MN NICE, 3M, sculptures made of butter, the Mall of America, the fact that the Oregon trail video game was invented here and, to quote the City Pages, “everyone has a cabin on the lake.”
To my fellow artists: remember: art is a weapon, not the war. Remember, your job is not to make people who look like you chuckle; it is to make people who look like you uncomfortable. Remember… Cece McDonald, Terrance Franklin, Fong Lee, the biggest achievement gap in the country, the foreclosure crisis, teen suicides…
I don’t mean to dwell on the negative. But I dwell here. No cabin on the lake. No helicopter on the stage. A cherry-spoon bridge to nowhere.
3.
It’s a hundred degrees outside, sirens in the distance, Big Quarters in the headphones; where are you? The neighbors are chain-linked, landing punches like mallets on meat; where are you? It’s a literary reading, except the entire audience is people of color; where are you?
I do not doubt that somewhere in Minneapolis, a skinny white guy with an ironic handlebar mustache and aviator sunglasses is riding a fixed-gear bicycle to his favorite coffee shop. Or that at this very moment in St. Paul, a rich soccer mom is power-walking her golden retriever past Café Latte. But I’ve never met them. I’ve never been to a Twins game, never seen a play at the Guthrie, or gone to Rock the Garden. I’m sure they’re all very nice. But the Twin Cities that I know keep me busy.
A kid gets slammed into a locker for wearing a rainbow button; where are you? A group of men pray together in the back room of a mom and pop restaurant; where are you? The students learn the footwork first, internalize the rhythm, save that spinning on your head shit for later; where are you?
Go to Tibet or Central America or India to “find yourself,” if you really think that’s where you’re hiding. As though there weren’t a million stories in every crack in the concrete here, as if the Southside weren’t “exotic” enough.
The things we make invisible do not disappear; we only cloud our own perception— Minnesota nice, Minnesota passive-aggressive, Minnesota gentrifier, closet homophobe, white supremacist, bystander; open your eyes and watch Garrison Keilor possessed, irises burning blue and red, pop-locking down university avenue, his spine a light rail, his voice an empty wind, howling like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A Hmong teenager is shot eight times by a police officer and dies; where are you? That same police officer is awarded the medal of valor; where are you? A planted gun, an all-white jury, not guilty; where are you?
I can’t listen to the Current any more. It sounds too much like history being re-written, basslines diluted, polyrhythms unified. There are days, I forget the dirt underneath the endless white of winter. There are days, I forget that race and culture are not just about blood; they are also about blood. There are days it is easier to believe the lie, to buy into this politely whitewashed, liberal utopia on a stick. But remember: the things we make invisible do not disappear. And the things we choose to see are not everything that’s here.
A cipher blooms in the lunchroom; all of the kids love hip hop, and none of them has ever heard of Atmosphere; where are you? A group of activists march for gay rights, but it’s not pride week, and they’re not talking about marriage; where are you? The difference between Keith Ellison and Michele Bachmann is a single step further up Central Avenue, where are you?
Frogtown, where are you? Northside, where are you? Philips, Eastside, Little Earth, Midway, Cedar-Riverside, Uptown, Downtown, Northeast, suburbs, where are you?
Guante & Big Cats featuring Chantz Erolin and Rapper Hooks: “The Invisible Backpacker of Privilege” from the album “You Better Weaponize” directed by PCP
Generally, artists make videos for the songs that they think people will fall in love with. With this one, however, we decided to make a video for what is definitely the most divisive song on the album. “The Invisible Backpacker of Privilege” features me, Chantz Erolin and Rapper Hooks talking about how whiteness functions in indie hip hop and beyond, exploring concepts of appropriation, privilege and responsibility. Good times.
The title of the song is a reference to Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Privilege.” The term “backpacker” is casual slang for underground hip hop fan.
Depending on the listener, I’d imagine, it’s either extremely straightforward or quite frustrating and confusing, so I wanted to take this opportunity to dig a little more deeply into what the song is trying to say. Because we live in the future, I’ll use bullet points:
What Privilege Means The concept of privilege isn’t nearly as complicated or controversial as its critics would have us believe. Basically, our identities impact how we move through the world and how people treat us; some identities (white, male, straight, rich, etc.) confer certain advantages, and/or are seen as either normal or desirable.
In the context of the song, it means that even though hip hop was born out of and is still driven by black musical tradition, whiteness (especially here in Minnesota) carries certain “perks” with it. This may include ease of networking (with white music writers, venue owners, DJs, bloggers, etc.), lack of negative stereotypes, more access to certain spaces (clubs, colleges, etc.), the capacity to potentially sell more CDs to fans who identify with you, the ability to make “edgy” music with a “safe” face on it– the list goes on.
Clearly, this is bigger than hip hop. This song is about using hip hop as a lens through which we can see how privilege functions everywhere. If white privilege exists in a rap scene, what about in a school, or a corporation, or a bank, or the criminal justice system, or in government, or in a thousand other places?
What Privilege Does Not Mean Privilege does NOT mean that “all white people have an easy life” or that “no rich person has ever worked hard” or that “no woman can ever be as successful as a man.” Literally no one is arguing that. So save your “but I’m white and I had to struggle too” comments. Being oppressed in one identity (race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.) doesn’t mean that you can’t be privileged in another. They don’t cancel each other out; they exist simultaneously.
This song is not saying that white rappers will always succeed and rappers of color will always fail; that’s obviously not the case.
But privilege isn’t just about those “perks” that play out on an individual level. It’s also about power. It’s about general trends and patterns. It’s about what gets propped up as normal or desirable and what gets stereotyped as dangerous or bad. Even if there are many successful artists of color, we still have to look at who owns the labels, who profits from radio play/CD sales, who gets to create art on their own terms and who has to follow a format in order to pay their advance back. Even if hipster rap bloggers trip over one another trying to hype up the most “authentic” MCs, we still have to interrogate why they do that– is it a genuine love and appreciation for the culture, or is something else going on? It’s not just about the two dozen artists who make it to the top; hip hop is an ecosystem comprised of millions of people—artists, engineers, promoters, fans, etc.—and this song is about recognizing how privilege plays out at every level.
Especially here in MN (admittedly, this song won’t have the same relevance in every scene, though it will always have some), we need to open our eyes. It’s easy to have a “we’re all just humans, dude” attitude when you refuse to see the persistent trends of who makes it vs. who doesn’t, who gets media attention vs. who gets media support (not the same thing), and how that aforementioned hip hop ecosystem functions. Again, I’m not saying that race is the deciding factor in all of those questions— but it does play a role. To ignore that is dangerous.
“Acknowledging Privilege” is the First Step, Not the Last One One reason that I’m proud of this song is that I think the three of us did a good job tackling the issue in context; we know that a big part of our audience is actively resistant to this stuff, another big part has never thought about it before, and another big part has thought about it so much that they’re ready to move beyond the privilege framework into more radical places.
Because it’s not like no one’s ever written songs about this before (Macklemore, Murs). But this song is about digging deeper, about “next steps.” So much social justice education focuses on intro’ing concepts of privilege and oppression, and that’s not enough. The question I ask in my verse is “what now?” We could have an academic argument about whether white people should be rapping, but the fact is that white people ARE rapping, so let’s talk about what that means, and what responsibilities come with that.
“Know the history, build community, and put people on” are starting points, at least for me. That’s the baseline. I hope we can continue to build from there. See you in the YouTube comments.
TRANSCRIPT: [Verse 1: Guante] I don’t identify as white But I identify as white enough, to get that indie rap writer buzz And benefit from, a system set up For rappers who already have advantages to get love Think about it, how many music writers are white? How many bloggers, how many booking agents? How many college radio DJs? How many publicists, concert-goers and critics got white faces? Cause you can watch 8 mile and assume White rappers got it hard, but it isn’t really true This is America, even if you’re not racist Racism’s in the foundation, face it I’m not saying white people can’t participate Obviously, I’m just saying please eliminate The myth that it’s just about hard work and lyrical ability ’cause it’s about responsibility Know the history, put people on, build community ‘cause not everyone who works hard earns it And if they ever make you a monument Scratch your name out, break it, spit on it, burn it Yo, it’s so messed up how You talk about whiteness and half your fanbase shuts down So nod your head, you ain’t got to understand us Just put your hands up, put your fucking hands up
[Verse 2: Chantz Erolin] Ayo white kid, yeah, yeah, I hate to say it like this But I’m trying to help you get enlightened to having light skin Don’t trip, I don’t hate kids, and someone’s gonna called me racist But I’m running out of patience so I gotta say this I know it’s hard for you to see it conceive what it means to be me Well, not me, but be defined by what society sees They say I’m to believe We’re post racial but still, I feel confined by police This dude called the cops on the crib the other night Saying that I robbed his wife or well some dude that wasn’t white Maybe Native, maybe Asian Either way, three squad cars hit my crib at 3 AM And no white boy, in no way is that your fault You may hate pigs and think that profiling is awful But understand that you would not be in that position Just for smoking on your porch with your particular pigment You got the privilege to not having to deal with your race While my relatives are off putting bleach on their face I used to wish I was white, but I’m disgusted by skin cream I was bullied and cried without knowing what chink means Have severe doubts you’ll be bumping this song or humming along You’ve been taught that skin color means nothing at all And whiteness is considered normal and neutral You may not notice race when them white rappers do shows It’s crazy in a rap show devoid of brown and black folk Hearing white kids saying words they should get smacked for This shit was built on the backs of our oppression Now you think it’s just your raps that’ll leave impressions? Hands up.
[Verse 3: Rapper Hooks] Foolish in my glory tap dancing, drinking 40’s Don’t judge me if you do not know my story And I’ll do the same, it’s more than just a name, nigga Mainframe spinning like I’m twister knowing Most of these listeners won’t understand Race and change, I guess it’s time to grow up If you can’t acknowledge how you get here then don’t even show up The token black leaving heart attacks more righteous than my phonies speaking stories of my homies On some things they never knew, they only heard about Darker than the couch up in my mama’s house My roots are deeper than these double standards so I’m speaking out Love it when we’re all connected in the ‘sota But I can’t respect my brother if he can’t respect my culture Moving fast like Testarossa growing up Dream in color, kid I’m in living color, on my Wayans brothers spit Hoping that my whiter color brother can relate to this If you can’t we can see how bad our separation gets Preaching on the Newest Testament like we’re in Nazareth Press they love me cause I’m cosigned by my lighter publicist Knowing that we’re all connected, to police I’ll plead the fifth No equality in this, if you racist or you hate this You can give my ass a kiss, please no lipstick on your lips Cause I don’t wanna change my color, not even a little bit In the end all I ask is you acknowledge privilege Cause I promise you, you wouldn’t be poppin’ in ’96
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